Louie The Fly Has Nothing On Quotify
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Paul McCarney at SER
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By Martin Kelly, Editor, Search Engine Room
TWO of Australia’s most experienced search engine marketing professionals, Paul McCarney and Peter Crowe, have started a new business that connects consumers with trade and professional service providers.
Quotify.com.au launched with a pest control offering and has just rolled out a second vertical covering home and business security.
Chief Executive Officer Peter Crowe, formerly Head of Local Search at Yahoo!, said Quotify has plans to launch up to 40 verticals over the next couple of years.
Revenue is generated through delivering qualified leads to trade and professional service companies.
“We are ultimately selling to an audience on a cost per lead basis,” Crowe said.
It is using a comprehensive pay per click advertising strategy developed by McCarney’s old company, 24/7 Real Media, to drive traffic.
Arbitrage – where the cost of driving traffic to the Quotify site is less than it receives from suppliers for supplying leads – is a key component of its strategy.
Crowe added that the company had identified more than 200 industry verticals where it believed the model would work.
“But we’ll probably just go with around 40.”
Crowe said Quotify uses a sophisticated matching engine to identify the right suppliers for consumers who want a quote and that technology is a big part of its offering.
This ensures that someone who wants a pest controller in inner-city Double Bay, Sydney, doesn’t end up with quotes from suppliers in far-flung suburbia.
The quoting process – where a customer’s requirements might be farmed out to three relevant companies – is totally automated.
Quotify currently employs six staff and is looking for more.
Crowe’s partner, Paul McCarney, co-founded premier search marketing agency, Decide Interactive, at the end of 1999.
In August 2004, Decide Interactive was sold to the NASDAQ listed, 24/7 Real Media.
December 11, 2006
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