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plax512

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Well, the idea is that for a fee, you will provide each restaurant with a custom phone number, maybe from twilio, but email would work I guess, but that doesn't seem as cool to me. Textamonials has an appeal, but I guess email can as well. You would probably have to have a feature where owners can either turn on or off, that when turned on, will send a follow up email back to the customer after they write a review saying "thanks for the testimonial, here's 10% off your meal!"

EDIT: To better explain it, because that was from my phone, I think it can work if you charge restaurant owners lets say $30/month in exchange for a custom backend and phone number, that allows customers to send their testimonials, and the backend is where the owner can approve of which ones get published to his site. THe backend would also be where the owner can turn on certain features, like the "rewards" feature... So, for a testimonial, a customer may get no reward, or 10% off his meal. That would be up to the owner. Of course, a phone number is only allowed one review, so you would have to keep track of each number. In the end, I think it's a very plausible idea though.

It would be cool if there was a service that let customers "text their testimonials" straight from their seat. So, customers would be able to write a testimonial right from their phone and send it as a text. These texts would go to a central backend, where the owner can approve/disprove each one as they come in. The ones that are approved get published to the site so customers can view the reviews in the tab. If I was a restaurant owner, I would pay a decent fee to for this service, especially because I get to approve of every review and I'll probably get a lot of them. It's different than yelp because all the testimonials go on the restaurant's website, as opposed to Yelp's own... Customers would like it because it's easy to write a review, and maybe restaurants can offer deals for customers who do write them or whatever. Textmonoials is where it's at...

It's dangerous business for him to be saying stuff like this. I mean, are we all going to go out and be lucky enough to have a successful comic strip? No, it's a fluke. It worked for him, great, but shut up and take your success. Don't tell others what they should do.

it would mostly growth-related data-- you will get how the company has grown over the quarter in terms of users and revenue, what new marketing strategies they have undertaken, new products or features they have released, complaints current users are giving to them, and their overall strengths and weaknesses, as observed objectively by me. The point is to allow you "to keep an eye on your competitors" because most startups don't have the time to do so.

the point is to make competitive analysis available to any startup. So, if you signed up, I would manually do the research for you on any 3 competitors you like. This competitive analysis would be sent as a pdf, and the data would entail recent milestones reached the company, how many users they have, their current marketing strategies, what new products or features they are offering, etc. Essentially, it will allow you to examine the 4 p's of any company: product, price, promotion, and place.

I hope that helps. The first report would be free.

Hmmm... I was planning on doing the research manually, but if you want to share any examples of sites that have gotten better at data extraction, I'm all ears. I will do research as well on that.

thanks!

Like how so? It's essentially competitive analysis as a service... There are known templates in which these are formatted. I would simply do one for a company every quarter, and list each source in the back. You're telling me I'm not being specific enough, yet you are doing the same. It goes both ways I guess

You are absolutely correct. Great point. And sorry, I wanted to keep the post short. Here is what I would offer:

For $30/month, you will get reports every quarter consisting of evaluating a company's top 3 competitors, in what they are doing in terms of marketing, what new milestones they have reached in terms of growth and revenue, what sort of complaints they get from customers concerning what, and a little more such as outreach and giveaways they do, and their projected success in the future.

It's just you get an updated report on them... So, what sort of milestones they reached, any new marketing stratehies they've undertakem, any new product changes or releases thet've done, and any sort of complaints they got from customers, and about what. It's a way to stay updated on your competitors.

Maybe bi-quarterly would work better?

Hmm... That's very startup focused. While I'd market to startups as well, any business would work. Plus, I am really gearing for the subscription model, which I see they do, but for other company's swag. That's not really the business I'd be in.

thanks

Edit: By that I mean I just want to cater to small business and startups that would like some swag every month for a relatively low price.