The Problem:
People’s attention is nearly impossible to come by. Interruption marketing’s glory days are numbered. That said, some people still have the customers attention.
The Business
An online marketplace for the exchange of service provider marketing. Individual service providers are one of the few people with a customers attention anymore. Why don’t they refer customers to each other more? Doctors and lawyers do it. Why don’t plumbers and electricians?
John the plumber is repairing a toilet. John sees that the bathroom tile could use a redo. John asks his customer if she’d ever thought about it. She says, “Why yes, I just haven’t had time to look for someone good.”
John says, “Funny you say that, my friend Louie the groutman does excellent bathroom work.”
“No kidding, give me his number.”
John logs the name in a website – the same website that introduced John and Louie in the first place. Louie gets an automatic notification with customer contact information if the customer permitted giving contact information. Louie gets a $3000 job and gives John a 20% cut. Everyone’s happy.
Doableness
Engineering and marketing. What else is new?
The engineering isn’t too tough. In theory, the site could create a natural monopoly, which would obviously help from a marketing standpoint.
My Thoughts
Maybe plumbers, carpenters, landscapers, electricians, etc already have this service. I, quite frankly, don’t know. But I know that I’ve never had a provider like this pitch me the service of another in even an informal way, much less a formal way.
Even though accountants and lawyers have these relationships all of the time, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a service like this.
Relationships have already been digitized. Now many people are working on monetizing these personal, digitized relationships. This is just another example of that.