Specific strategies for finding small businesses for my service

[Scipio]

I start next week a service for small businesses like hair cutters and spas.

On my website, people can make appointments with hair cutters online. I invested about 20k$ in the development of my website. The market is Germany.

Problems:
1. There are 25k hair cutters in Germany. Germany is full of smaller cities. In order to buy end users I need a minimum amount of hair cutters in each city.

2. My Startup is funded by myself, so going live nationwide would be complicated. I don´t want to spend 100k in advertising for the hair cutters. There is a big chance that end users just don´t like making appointments online. So I have to test out cheap (locally, for example in one city first).

3. There are some websites that have targeted traffic but it doesn´t make a lot sense to advertise nationwide for testing purposes.

So how can I target locally these small businesses?

Phoning them -> not allowed in Germany
E-Mailing them -> not allowed neither
Writing Sales letters -> Yes, I will do that. But from what I´ve heard that´s a low outcome marketing strategy in my country
Hiring a sales man -> very expensive. I think 2 stores an hour are somewhat realistic. But I have to create print material and I still pay probably 10$ for each try.
Facebook -> the people who liked magazines for hair cutters are very low

Do You think it´s possible to start in only one city for testing purposes or do you think I have to go nationwide and live with the costs? Did I miss any possibility to market locally? I also don´t live in Germany, so it´s even more complicated.

I have my own SEO agency and I´m good with generating end user traffic. My problem are the sales to the small businesses.

 

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[SUKI]

I had some ideas until I got to the bottom where it says that you don't live in Germany. I should start by asking where do you live? And why are you starting with a market that you don't live in?

With that said, online isn't everything. You will need to get out and hit the pavement yourself. If you Have pride in your product and believe in it, you should have no problem talking about it.

I understand trying to scale is not easy. I would look at place where "hair cutters" buy their supplies such as distributors or catalogs. If the distributor has a store front, offer a small kick back if they would allow you to advertise at the front counter or see if the catalog company would be willing to let you advertise for a fee in there catalog. If the hair cutters are buying from a website, that maybe right up your ally to get an advertisement on the site.

You need to put in some leg work though to see where these hair cutters are buying from though. I will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.