January 30, 2008

Matchpoint Buys Get.Vendors, Pushes Lead Gen

The Kelsey Group analyst and local search industry expert Peter Krasilovsky posted his thoughts on the Matchpoint launch for The Kelsey Group blog as well as his The Local Onliner site.

President Peter Adams says too many companies have focused on the search marketplace vertically. But Matchpoint takes a broader, horizontal view, listing up to 2,000 categories.”

Matchpoint generates leads for any kind of business. The next step up from pay-per-click is pay-per-lead.

Written on January 29th 2008

Matchpoint Launches Local Business Search Service

adotas notes that Matchpoint users have more options to quickly and privately obtain competitive offers from local businesses in their neighborhood as well as major corporations nationwide.

Matchpoint gives consumers the ability to describe their needs by filling out a short category specific search form after which the user is matched with 3-5 relevant businesses. Businesses will then have the opportunity to respond to an inquiry via Matchpoint’s proxy message service.”

Matchpoint advertisers only pay to have their offer or their proposal delivered to qualified prospects that meet their target customer profile.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Matchpoint Launches Local Business Search

AltSearchEngines reported on Matchpoint’s service and listed a dozen reasons to give Matchpoint a try in your town. Here are a couple of the highlights.

- The consumer’s email or personal information is never given out so they maintain control of the process, evaluate the responses, and can then contact the business(es) directly whenever it is convenient for them.

- Local businesses that do the majority of their business over the phone can now utilize Matchpoint to meet new customers online without needing to have a web site or any online marketing expertise.”

Consumers now have more options to quickly and privately get competitive offers from local businesses in their neighborhoods as well as from major corporations that operate nationwide.

Tue, 2008-01-29 08:05

Matchpoint helps match providers of products and services

Even FrostFireBUZZ picked up the news on Matchpoint’s new way to find multiple providers of products and services and have them compete to earn your business. Their report was short but sweet.

Matchpoint anonymously connects consumers and businesses with providers of just about any type of product or service via Matchpoint.com or its partner network. This looks like a great way to get providers to compete for your business. Matchpoint will need to gain traction to make this service work.”

1/28/2008

Matchpoint Gets Businesses To Bid For Consumers

Tomio Geron from Dow Jones VentureWire Newsletter (sorry, it’s subscription only) reported on Matchpoint’s recent launch of a new form of local search. He explains one of the highlights here:

Consumers using Matchpoint’s system search for items under specific categories, such as Lasik surgeons or online banking, and enter specific parameters of their search. Matchpoint sends automated phone messages to five businesses with the lead. The businesses can then make a phone call to a third-party voicemail, and the consumer receives an email link to the message, which is essentially a bid for service.”

The company can give new leads to small businesses that do not have Web sites or that do not do search marketing to generate traffic to their Web sites.

Matchpoint Launches Local Business Search Service Nationwide
Posted on: January 27, 2008

Ubergizmo posted this on several gadget and technology sites. Great to see that it worked quickly.

Today, Matchpoint launched its beta version of an online service to anonymously request and compare offers from 10 million businesses. I would nickname this service the “yellow pages with adrenaline”.

As the editor points out — because Matchpoint delivers a message to the consumer’s email box, it’s a convenient way for local businesses with no online presence to reach potential customers searching online.

Matchpoint – Let Them Compete For Your Business
January 28, 2008 — 12:00 PM PST — by Stan Schroeder —

Stan Schroeder from Mashable Social Networking News reviews the Matchpoint beta site launch and provided step-by-step instructions on how to yield the best results with the service. He summarizes it here:

Let’s suppose you need a plumber. Instead of going through the drudgery of looking over hundreds of Google results, or calling company after company on the phone, Matchpoint will – in theory – give you precise, local and relevant results. On the other end of the equation, if you have a business, Matchpoint will work even if you don’t care about having a website, and it will charge you only to have “your offer delivered to qualified prospects that meet their target customer profile.”

Matchpoint Provides Anonymous Consumer-Biz Connection

Saturday, January 26, 2008

John Gartner from Marketing Shift spoke to Matchpoint President Peter Adams about the beta launch of its service to make an anonymous consumer business connection.

This service could be attractive to companies that haven’t jumped online, which sadly is the majority in a lot of service categories. If I’m looking for a contractor or a job that might require competitive bidding, it could be beneficial to use Matchpoint to screen potential businesses.”

Acquisition of GetVendors.com enhances technology to better match consumers who can anonymously request competitive offers and proposals from 10 million local businesses across the US

Mountain View, California—28 January 2008—Matchpoint, an online service for people to anonymously request and compare offers and proposals from businesses, announced today the beta launch of its service to include over 10 million local businesses across the Unites States. Consumers now have more options to quickly and privately get competitive offers from local businesses in their neighborhoods as well as from major corporations that operate nationwide. The expansion scales a model established by GetVendors.com, which Matchpoint recently acquired. Search portal GetVendors.com is an online resource for consumers looking for household services in California.

“We are focused on providing consumers with a more efficient, and extremely private, way to connect with any of the millions of businesses that can provide the products or services they need,” said Matchpoint President Peter Adams. “The Matchpoint model takes the work off the consumer by putting businesses in a competitive situation to win the consumer’s business, not vice versa.”

From LASIK eye surgeons to gyms to house cleaners, Matchpoint provides consumers with a new way to find and select businesses that can provide them with the products or services they need. Matchpoint’s matching service allows consumers to forego the fatigue that results from using search engines to find relevant businesses as well as the effort that goes into contacting and researching businesses – many of which are not online. Instead, with Matchpoint:
- Consumers describe their needs by filling out a short category specific search form after which they are matched with three to five businesses that match their criteria.
- Businesses then have an opportunity to respond to the consumer’s search through Matchpoint’s proxy message service.
The consumer’s email or personal information is never given out, so they maintain control of the process, evaluate the responses, and can then contact the business(es) directly whenever it is convenient for them.

Users can access the Matchpoint search forms on thousands of websites in Matchpoint’s partner network, where they are placed relevant to the content they are reading.

The Matchpoint model expands on the success seen in key verticals such as finance, health and fitness, to 10 million businesses in nearly 3,000 business categories. Unlike traditional search engines or PPC models, Matchpoint advertisers only pay to have their offer or proposal delivered to qualified prospects that meet their target customer profile.

“There are many local businesses that are not online but are looking to tap into online channels to meet new customers,” said Adams. “Matchpoint now provides local businesses with a much needed bridge that connects them to online prospects via the telephone.”

Integrating the GetVendors technology, Matchpoint now includes a unique method of delivering leads to local businesses over the telephone whenever they are matched to a consumer’s search. Local businesses that are not already registered with Matchpoint can respond to consumers via voice mail messages that Matchpoint delivers to the consumers’ email inbox (the consumer always remains anonymous).

“We are pleased to become a part of the Matchpoint team and see the next evolution of local search expand across all products and services nationwide,” said GetVendors.com CEO Ashish Mohole. “Matchpoint gives consumers an easy way to input their search preferences and get competitive offers and proposals sent to them in a private and quick fashion.”

Local businesses that do the majority of their business over the phone can now utilize Matchpoint to meet new customers online without needing to have a web site or any online marketing expertise.

# # #

Today we announced the expansion of Matchpoint to local businesses across the United States. This is really exciting news for everyone that is frustrated with the amount of time and effort that it takes to find and connect with service providers.

Specifically, what this means for consumers is that you can now use Matchpoint to solicit competitive offers and proposals from over 10 million local businesses across the United States. Whether you are looking for a local gym/health club, landscaper, or a career counselor, there is now a quick new way to broadcast your needs to businesses in your area, evaluate their responses and determine which to choose to do business with.

Consumers remain competely anonymous to businesses throughout our entire process. We protect their privacy, by obscuring their personal contact information and relay the responses that they receive to them via e-mail. Our model ensures that consumers stay in control of who receives their personal information at all times. No more unwanted phone calls or e-mail.

This announcement is also very exciting for local businesses across the country. What it means for them is that there is finally a way to meet new customers on-line without having any online marketing expertise or even a web site.

What new fangled technology have we cooked up to make this a reality?

The answer is simple: the telephone.

The majority of local businesses do most of their business over the telephone and are not yet on-line. Knowing this, we wanted to meet local businesses where they were and not ask them to learn a whole new way of doing business. That means calling them.

When a business receives our phone call they are given a special telephone number that they can enter into Matchpoint.com to see the details of what the person is looking for. If they think the person matches the type of customer they want, they respond by calling the phone number and leaving a detailed voice mail message that is delivered to the user via e-mail.

So starting today, local businesses across the country are starting to receive phone calls from Matchpoint.com delivering them potential customers — for free!

That’s right, we are giving away a limited number of introductions to potential customers to every local business in the United States.

We are confident that once businesses experience the value Matchpoint delivers that they’ll want to sign up for an account and take advantage of the benefits that our paid program provides. This includes:

• Access to many many more leads.
• Targeting control – by category, geography
• Qualification questions – the ability to ask qualifying questions to the consumers on search forms
• Ability to respond to consumers via rich HTML e-mail

So if you are a local business that has been frustrated with other on-line marketing products that have you buying clicks or impressions, you are going to want to give Matchpoint a try.

Or at the very least, answer that phone call.