200,000 jobs and counting! The history of how Service Central got there.
After a huge 2009 and a great start to 2010, Service Central has flown past the 200,000 job mark.
In four and a half short years the Service Central team, our providers and our supporters have taken the idea of an easy way to find trades and services and turned it into a reality. And what a reality it is! Back in 2005 job requests for tradespeople started to trickle in at a rate of 2 or 4 new jobs per week. In fact we got extremely excited when our first advertising campaign generated 2 jobs the first week, 4 jobs the second week, 8 jobs in the third week and 16 jobs in the fourth week. We were convinced that we were destined for greatness and that the jobs would continue to double week after week. Unfortunately, 16 jobs a week was as good as local newspaper advertising could do for us and that just wouldn't cut it. The search for a good stream of quality jobs continued.
With that we launched our first radio campaign in July 2005 where the (in)famous "You can find trades and services the hard way ..." radio ads went to air on Gold FM. In fact, Service Central won the right to be the head sponsor of Gold FM's "Write your own cheque" competition where a listener would win a $50,000 cheque. The combination of our radio ads and the branding impact of the Write Your Own Cheque campaign kick-started the stellar growth of Service Central thereafter.
Service Central's radio campaigns quickly spread across the commerical radio stations. At one stage Service Central was similtaniously advertising across 15 different radio stations. These included Austereo's Fox FM and Today FM, SEN, 3MP, ARN's 97.3, 3AW and more! You couldn't jump in a car anywhere in the country without hearing the call of "you can find trades & services the hard way ....".
Television was next with 2 separate television campaigns launched across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. The second campaign had a blockbuster budget and we built a Mission Control centre in the film set. We had a great script, great actors and in the end a brilliant set of TV commercials ready to go to air. However, when the hit the airwaves in early 2008 the reaction from the public was disappointing. Did everyone want our "You can find tradespeople the hard way... " ads back afterall?
In good time we found out that the answer was no. That with the continued growth of Google and new online destinations like Facebook more and more consumers were spending their time on the internet. This growing group of web-savvy consumers were also starting to use the internet in vast numbers to find and buy services online. This resulted in a boom in online job requests for Service Central, a boom that continues to grow to this day.
Service Central was perfectly positioned for the growing popularity of finding services online. Since day 1 when the system was first designed back in 2003 Service Central was built as an online platform. Every aspect of Service Central was designed and built with the internet in mind. In the early days there was a great deal of scepticism about the validity of posting job requests online, and over 90% of our consumer base actually preferred to use the telephone option. However, in 2008 there was a phenomenal tipping point where consumers came to the internet in droves to find trades and services and suddenly more jobs were posted online than over the telephone. In fact, today over 90% of Service Central’s jobs are posted online rather than over the telephone.
These rapid changes have meant that we have had to move quickly as an organisation to keep up. We had to quickly learn the ways of search engine marketing and search engine optimisation along with a host of other techniques and systems to keep at the forefront of the online marketing space. We were fortunate to have a great team of inhouse programmers that were also able to quickly learn the secrets to online marketing and SEO, they have done a great job of taking Service Central to the next level.
Service Central’s increasing popularity as Australia’s premiere online services marketplace also began to attract a fair amount of media coverage. After featuring in BRW’s Fast Starters List in both 2008 and 2009, Service Central has now graced the pages of BRW a number of times. We were also awarded My Business Magazine’s E-Business of the Year in 2008, and have been featured in The Age, Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald, Courier Mail, and more!
A major sponsorship of the Jack of All Trades TV show (a show that scours the nation for Australia’s best tradie) lead to a strategic alliance with Home Hardware. This alliance has now been enhanced with alliance with industry associations including Archicentre and the Master Builders Association of Victoria.
So the momentum grows. What started out as a trickle of jobs back in 2005 is now a flood of new jobs ever single day. Consumers now trust Service Central as the easy way to find trades & services. Providers now trust that there is a constant flow of quality work coming through, work that they can rely on to help maintain and grow their business. With this trust Service Central continues to bring consumers and providers together. We look forward to matchmaking for the many years ahead.
However, we can’t rest there and we refuse to rest on our laurels. The Service Central team is already hard at work to bring you many more innovations and advancements in 2010. We’re taking our years of learnings and mixing them with the latest in technological advancements to continue to improve life for both consumers and providers. We can’t wait to share the result with you!
