Marketing Gimmick…. perhaps for a noble cause?

Khojguru seems to be yet another classifieds/city listing/yellow pages site. I say “seems to be” since my five odd minutes of surfing on this site could not tell me much. Anyway, not so much a review on the site, but a thought on how Anurag Agarwal, perhaps the founder of the site, is trying to promote it.

What do you do when you’ve hardly any differentiation in your product and when you haven’t been able to position it right. “Isko sab pata hai” (meaning this knows everything; that’s the tag line on the site), par isse mujhe kuch nahin pata chalta hai! (but this hardly tells me anything!).

Take a guess. Do you give freebies to everyone who joins? Do you do an ad blitzkrieg? Do you sponsor events? Huh. All that’s old!

Khojguru promises to donate Re 1 for every registration on their site to the National Defence Fund. Given the high voltage patriotism after the recent Mumbai attacks, this sure is going to  persuade a user to spare a minute for registration. Think about it – Re 1 for every registration – I’m sure if they reach a critical mass, they’ll get back at least 10 times for every user. Neat, hmmm!

PS: Don’t ask me if this persuaded me to register