The first GREAT bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah vendor directory!
FAQ's
Q. How much traffic is your website getting?
A. MitzvahChic gets several thousand unique visits per week. While this is not a big number compared to the Internet itself or the largest wedding sites, it makes us the most trafficked bar/bat mitzvah resource site by more than a factor of 10 and all these visitors are highly qualified - they're virtually all actively planning b'nai mitzvah. Top internet marketers advise online advertisers to focus on how qualified a site's traffic is - rather than just raw numbers - and to use tested conversion techniques to turn the greatest number of "lookers" into buyers. To facilitate this, we offer tips to vendors to help them get maximum benefit from our site and from all their marketing efforts.
Q. Do you have a lot of vendors in my geographic area?
A. If you check the directory for your region, you can see exactly who is in there. You should also know, though, that we are completing our “startup phase’ as a site and embarking on a huge campaign to vastly increase vendor participation in the directory. So whatever you’re seeing now, it will likely be very different soon.
Q. Do you limit the number of competitive vendors within the same category and geographic area?
A. No, but we do everything we can on the site and we will be giving regular tips on such topics as “converting lookers into buyers” to give all our vendors an unfair advantage over their competitors who are not on MitzvahChic.
Q. We have a web-based business that sells products/services nationwide. Since we have no control of what geographic area business is going to be coming in from, do we have to purchase regions in all 126 market areas in order to reach customers throughout the country?
A. We have an “online” region for businesses of this type. We also offer a large discount for companies who want to buy “nationwide” coverage, meaning that your listing appears in every region.
Q. How do you promote your website? How are people finding out about MitzvahChic?
A. MitzvahChic was initiallly an independently published book and, as such, could not get the distribution and fanfare of a work put out by a major publisher. Even with these huge disadvantages, though, it quickly climbed to be the #1seller in its niche on Amazon and every other online retailer and the site blew past its competitors. The reason was largely word-of-mouth. We are now pushing the wave with a major marketing campaign – online, with the search engines, through direct contact with women’s groups and educators within the synagogues and more. When our big publisher, Simon & Schuster, puts out their edition in early October, we expect the synergy of our dual efforts to be extraordinary.
Q. How long have you been in business?
A. The book was originally published in summer, 2003 and the website debuted shortly afterwards.
Q. In what order do listings appear within the Vendor Directory?
A. Listings are arranged from top to bottom of page starting with Gold Level listings first, followed by Silver and then Bronze. Free listings appear at the bottom of the page immediately following the Bronze level. In order to give every vendor frequent turns on top, listings rotate position in the rankings every time the search page is loaded. Only free listings remain in static positions – they are in alphabetical order.
Q. Can we include our website and/or e-mail address in any listing package? And, are these addresses hot-linked?
A. Our Gold and Silver listings both give you a website icon that’s a hotlink to your site. The email icon brings up a form that gets sent directly to the email address you choose.
Q. How do we access the Page Views Reports so we can see how many people are looking at our listing?
A. Simply login to your Vendor Control Panel and click the appropriate link. You can also change any element of your listing from here, as often as you wish.
Q. Once I sign up for a listing, when will it appear live in the Vendor Directory?
A. Within an hour. Just be sure by looking in the upper righthand corner of the Vendor Control Panel that your listing is not “hidden.” All listings start out “hidden” when you’re first building them so they don’t appear in the directory until you’re finished and completely satisfied with them.
Q. If we need to make changes to our listing (i.e. phone #, address, etc.), can MitzvahChic make those changes for us? If not, why?
A. We’ve made it very simple for you to create your own listing and to change it. We want you to experience how simple it is – so you’ll feel very comfortable managing your own content.
Q. If we decide to pay for our listing by check, will our listing appear in the directory as soon as we finish creating it or when we’ve mailed in our payment and the check has cleared?
A. We will let you go “live” immediately and will expect to receive your check within 30 days. If the check is not received in a timely fashion, your listing will be suspended until it clears.
Q. Who do we contact if we have problems signing up or creating our listing?
Q. I signed up for a listing but forgot my log-in email address and/or password. What do I do?
A. There is a “Forgot your password” function on the login page. If you’ve forgotten both your log-in email and password, contact CustomerService@MitzvahChic.com
Q. If we recommend your website to another vendor and they decide to sign up, do we get a referral fee?
A. We have a Vendor Partner program that will pay vendors a commission for vendors they refer who sign up. Annual commissions from each referral will be continue to be paid as long as the referred vendor stays in our directory, which could become a great source of passive income.
Q. I notice that several regions and categories have few or, in some cases, no paid listings. Why is that?
A. As noted earlier, MitzvahChic is completing its startup phase as a website. During that time, we were so focused on building great features and value for our vendors and visitors, we didn’t put as much emphasis on recruiting vendors. As you can see now, we’re locked and loaded and going into full build-up.
Q. Do you have any stats on how many bar/bat mitzvahs are done in our market area?
A. There is no organization that tracks this regionally or even nationally.
Q. We do mostly weddings. Why should we list our site/service on your website?
A. Bar/bat mitzvahs, although fewer in number than weddings, are probably the most valuable assignment a vendor can get. Since it’s eight times easier to re-sell services to an existing customer than to gain a new customer, all savvy marketers focus on the “lifetime value” of the families they serve. With a bar or bat mitzvah, you’re meeting the family when the kids are very young and it’s very early in the “celebration cycle” of the family. This means if you delight them now, you’ll get the sibling b’nai mitzvah, the Sweet 16 party, perhaps the weddings, the big anniversary parties – everything.
Q. We don’t get many requests for bar/bat mitzvahs in our area. Why should we list our site/service on your website?
A. Most vendors only need one to cover the cost of their ad. Meanwhile, you’re establishing visibility with this audience in your region and getting into the all-important word-of-mouth communication web.
Q. Do you offer any type of money-back guarantee if we don’t get any business as a result of listing our site/service on your website?
A. There are no guarantees. But, we are marketing experts and if you have traffic seeing your listing (you can confirm this through your reports) and you’re not getting inquiries or converting prospects, we’ll help you find where the problem may lie – your offer, your landing site’s landing page, etc.
Q. We haven’t gotten any inquiries so far from the free listing that we currently have on your website. Why should we upgrade to one of the paid listings?
A. Think of the Yellow Pages and who gets the business there. Is it the people with the informative display ads or the one-liners wiith just a company name and phone number? We include free listings as a service to our site visitors, but we don’t expect them to generate any traffic for the vendors. Visitors aren’t interested in vendors who don’t want to invest in them.
Questions regarding referral service
Q. What type of leads would we be getting?
A. We'll be sending out leads for weddings, private parties, corporate events and more.
Q. Do you qualify the leads you receive?
A. We won't send out any leads without checking to make sure we have the correct contact information. We also won't send out leads for events that are very small or are working with a very limited budget.
Q. How many vendors in my area would you be referring people to and how is that decided?
A. On average, we'll refer between 3-5 vendors depending on the event and the services being requested.
Q. How often can we expect to receive leads thru your new referral service?
A. This is a new service we are offering so we cannot forecast how often each vendor will receive leads.
Q. How will we receive leads thru your referral service?
A. Each time a lead comes in that is relevant for your site or service, we will notify you via e-mail.
Q. What does it cost to receive leads thru the referral service?
A. Our referral service will be included in one of our new listing options. If you sign up for this type of listing, you will not have to pay us a separate fee for any leads you receive, nor will you have to pay us any commission for business that results from the leads we send you.
Q. What geographic area will leads be coming from?
A. Leads will be coming in for events throughout the country.
