Dear readers, I can only hope that you enjoyed the holiday period as much as I did. Now that we’re all back I would like to inform you about our plans and ambitions for 2010. We ended december with new locations registering every day, a better than expected Google position and double digit visitor growth. That was very motivating. We also found that our last mail campaign to inform promotion agencies about the FDI marketplace and individual location profile was well received. We defined five major themes to drive the development of the FDI Marketplace in 2010. These are:
- make the FDI Marketplace truly global
- make it easier for agencies to register and maintain their free or premium profiles online
- increase our engagement with companies globally to help our location promotion clients connect with prospect investors
- continue to add valuable information to the platform to provide value to our users and participants of the FDI Marketplace
- start a focus group to guide our new developments and make sure we meet market needs most effectively (please let us know if you are interested to join this)
Make the FDI Marketplace truly global:
Clearly we are not yet The Global Arena yet; our current coverage is 16 European countries. We had to start somewhere but we quickly recognized that we did not align very well with the market demand and opportunity associated with the fastest growing global economies, FDI growth patterns and company location needs. Therefore we will complete full European coverage in january and start to offer full global coverage in 2010. Now this presents us with a major challenge concerning the availability of the data we need at the quality standard we promise our clients. We will work with our data-source providers and national promotion agencies to address this challenge. We do however promise that locations can join the marketplace to promote their location online on the FDI Marketplace in 2010.
Make it easier for agencies to register and maintain their free or premium location profiles online:
We want our FDI Marketplace to be easy to use, just like online services such as Linkedin or even Facebook. Version 2 of www.global-arena.com – which is scheduled to come out latest in March – will offer functionality to create a personal account and a location profile online. We will apply authoring to make sure that locations are claimed rightfully and location content is accurate.
Increase our engagement with companies globally to help our location promotion clients connect with prospect investors:
The FDI Marketplace aims to connect FDI supply and demand. To be of value to our Business clients – the providers of FDI capital to the Marketplace – we have to provide a meaningful amount of countries, regions and locations. We believe that starting as of 500 locations we begin to meet this basic requirement. With our current pace we will get there soon. So this is the right moment to start a dedicated campaign to network and communicate with companies about the services and value the FDI Marketplace offers companies (re)searching location options and opportunities. This campaign is an additional mechanism and channel to connect companies to the FDI Marketplace.
Our primary mechanism to connect Companies with the the FDI Marketplace is based on Search Engine positioning. We need to connect companies with the FDI Marketplace while they are in their location discovery, long-listing and selection process. The assumption is that primarily and increasingly the Internet – specifically Search Engines where Google has over 85% marketshare – will be the starting point of a location search and selection process. Our core strength and added value is our Google ranking. We already have numerous location profiles where highly relevant location search queries put you on the first page of the Google search results based on your location profile at the FDI Marketplace. Our aim is to achieve global top-100’000 website ranking summer 2010.
Continue to add valuable information to the platform to provide value to our users and participants of the FDI Marketplace:
We can not yet disclose the categories of new information mash-ups that we are developing for the FDI Marketplace. Our aim is to add relevant information on the map and in the overall country-region-location navigation that helps companies understand important local market attributes.
Start a focus group to guide our new developments and make sure we meet market needs most effectively:
We are building a focus group with the objective to integrate their inputs, point-of-view and expertise in our future developments. The FDI Marketplace focus group should ideally consist of people that can represent key stakeholder positions on the FDI Marketplace. Please contact me if you are interested to join the FDI Marketplace focus group.
Did we miss anything? Let us know – the FDI Marketplace is there for your. Your location is our business at Global Arena.
