VAZUMO.COM - How in just 12 months we are already the number 1 online directory in Ireland The VAZUMO.COM team is dedicated to making sure every internet user in Ireland knows about and uses VAZUMO.COM. Here is a summary of our marketing campaign so far. See VAZUMO Stats tab above. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Coming soon...details of VAZUMO.COM'S new Motors feature and Mobi Site!
VAZUMO.COM launches Radio campaign on PHANTOM 105.2FM starting in October 2008 VAZUMO.COM will be running an intense ad campaign with popular radio station Phantom 105.2FM. Tune in to listen or listen below.
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10th September 2008
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO VAZUMO.COM!
Today is our 1st birthday!
Thank you to all VAZUMO.COM'S Members and Users for your continued support.
TXT Directory Service 53118 launched June 2008.
To listen to the 53118 Radio campaign... please click here.
For more details on the 53118 TXT Directory please follow this link:
http://www.vazumo.com/companydetails/191491/Vazumo/53118
VAZUMO maps
Location and search services in one native site
Networks & Internet | 12 May 2008 :
The Irish business search engine VAZUMO has launched new mapping features.
The new map view enhances the results view of the site by displaying the location of businesses on a local map. Irish business addresses are often notoriously difficult to locate due to the lack of a proper post-code system. VAZUMO claims that its patented algorithms have allowed over 95% of Irish Businesses to be located by their GPS co-ordinates.
The VAZUMO business search engine is free to use and can be used to find Irish businesses, products, services or just plain old phone numbers. All phone calls made through the VAZUMO website are free to end users.
"This new feature makes VAZUMO even more useful to our customers enabling them to locate businesses on the web - including those with no web address and they can now be quickly located on a detailed local map," said Chad Gilmer, CEO of VAZUMO.
The company said that organisations are invited to check their details and map locations and update any additional information or details about their business online at www.vazumo.com
The VAZUMO search engine is growing rapidly and there are now over 1,000 businesses providing visual search results as well as over 180,000 business listings.
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VAZUMO.COM has forged successful relationships with many of Ireland's Chambers.
August 2008 - Advertising on popular website IOL.IE
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During the Cork Jazz festival a 20meter Vazumo.com advertisement on the main street's LED Big screen ran every 20 minutes.
2000 Vazumo.com brochures are sent out per week and followed up by our Sales teams, who are successfully recruiting more members to Vazumo.com
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Vazumo, the 7ft Squirrel mascot, and his merchandiser pals have been out and about all over Ireland handing out promotional scratch cards to encourage new users to visit Vazumo.com. They have visited Leeson Street, Stephen's Green, Sandyford Industrial Estat, Heuston Station, Tara Street Station, O'Connell Street, Grafton Street, the Red Cow roundabout, the Cork Jazz festival, Waterford, Limerick and Galway, just to name a few.
Bridge banners on main roads into Dublin, Cork City and Waterford road let the country's commuters know where to find business and services FASTER AND EASIER.
City Channel's, Monthly Media Show Featured VAZUMO.COM as part of it's program, April 2008
VAZUMO Chief Executive, Chad Gilmer, was guest speaker at the Search Marketing World conference 'Meet the search engines' . April 3rd 2008.
Two articles in Business Plus magazine and a mention on their website bizplus.
Please follow the link below to read the article on Techcentral.ie
http://www.techcentral.ie/article.aspx?id=12071
Three articles in the Sunday Business Post:
Nicola Cooke November 25th 2007*
Emma Kennedy April 13th 2008** and June 22nd 2008***.
Business and Finance Magazine adverts to run for 6 months.
Half page colour ad the Waterford people and Polish Neighbour Magazine.
Print advertising: Half page colour ad in the Munster Express,
Interviews with Vazumo.com Chief Executive, Chad Gilmer have been aired on East Coast FM, Country Mix FM and Dublin FM radio stations.
A banner advertisement on RTE.ie directed internet users to VAZUMO.COM.
Radio ad campaigns have successfully run on News Talk and Beat 102-103FM. VAZUMO the squirrel even joined Beat 102-103FM's crew for a day!
TV Advertisements have gone out on popular channels TV3, Setanta Sports, Channel 6 and City Channel.
The TV ad can be viewed online: VAZUMO.COM, YouTube.com/vazumo, MySpace.com/vazumo and Bebo.com/vazumo.
Gigantic building wraps on 97 and 98 St Stephen's Green advertise VAZUMO.COM on a regular basis.
A permanent, backlit, sign on Grafton Street 2ft high by 6ft long shines down on Dublin's dedicated shoppers 24 hours a day.
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INDEX
*1st Article from The Sunday Business Post
Vazumo attracts 400 firms
Sunday, November 25, 2007 - By Nicola Cooke
The owners of a new Irish internet search engine have signed up more than 400 Irish businesses as advertisers, and believe they can replace the online arm of Golden Pages within three years.
Vazumo.com, whose slogan is ‘search and gather', was designed to allow users to find companies, products and services in a specific location.
Users gets a list of available services - for example - nearest to them, and may also receive a visual image of what is offered.
Advertisers can upload ads and videos for between €600 and €4,800 a year. The company also pays for calls, on landlines or mobiles, between users of the website and businesses which advertise on it.
Vazumo has increased its sales staff from two to ten since September, and plans to break into the British market once it is established in Ireland. Pat McDowell, the former deputy chief executive of Bank of Ireland, is a Vazumo director.
Chad Gilmer, managing director of Vazumo, said every company in Ireland was listed on the site for free, and a base of members was still being built. The business concept of the website was simple, according to Gilmer.
‘‘The idea is to get as many businesses as possible to advertise," Gilmer said. ‘‘The cost of advertising in general is prohibitive for a lot of small and medium-sized businesses, so we are trying to create a level playing field and attract more business as a result.
‘‘The size of our web advertisements is broken into cubes so, for example, a one-cube (smallest) advert would be €50 a month and an eight-cube advert (largest) costs €400 a month.
‘‘That way, no major company gets to dominate and the maximum annual fee is less than €5,000,''Gilmer said. Businesses can include a video advert to showcase their products and services at no extra cost.
Gilmer has run iPlanit graphic design company for the last ten years and has plans to provide separate websites with links for the companies which advertise with Vazumo.
All Vazumo branding would disappear when a user clicked on a business, and that company's own branding and website would appear instead.
‘‘People would then have the opportunity to adapt and adjust the site to add new services as needs be,'' Gilmer said.
Vazumo is sending out brochures to 20,000 businesses nationwide this month, and is running a marketing campaign with scratch cards and competitions for plasma screens,MP3players and other electronic equipment.
**2nd Article from The Sunday Business Post
Vazumo.com to launch new features
13 April 2008 By Emma Kennedy
Irish internet search directory Vazumo.com will launch two new features within the next two months, as it continues to expand its customer base.
The website, which allows users to find companies, products and services in a specific location, has just secured a deal with Limerick-based firm Avvio to allow Vazumo's users to search and reserve hotels.
Avvio provides reservation software and has more than 300 customers in the tourism and hospitality sectors, including a number of high-profile hotels such as Dromoland Castle, Co Clare.
The second partnership agreement with carlister.ie will allow Vazumo users to search for cars through the site. Chad Gilmer, chief executive of Vazumo, said this service was expected to go live within the next month. Vazumo has signed up more than 400 Irish businesses as advertisers since it began operating last year. The company was set up in October 2006, but was in a development phase until last September, when the website went live.
Gilmer said companies paid between €600 and €4,800 per year to advertise on the site. Advertisers can upload video adverts as part of this fee. Vazumo also offers a call service, for landlines or mobiles, which allows users of the website to call a listed business for free. Gilmer said the cost of the calls was assumed by Vazumo and not the advertiser.
One of the most recent additions to Vazumo is a mapping feature for advertisers, which allows users to see exactly where a company is located.
‘‘This new feature makes Vazumo even more useful to our customers enabling them to locate businesses on the web, including those with no web address,'' said Gilmer.
The company employs ten staff at present and Gilmer said the firm was actively recruiting at the moment, with staff numbers likely to increase to 20 in the near future.
The firm has five directors, including Gilmer, his wife and Pat McDowell, the former deputy chief executive of Bank of Ireland. Before setting up Vazumo, Gilmer ran iPlanit graphic design company for ten years and also worked with Kerry Group and Andersen Consulting.
To date Vazumo has been entirely self-funding, with Gilmer saying the firm has had no requirement to look for funding as yet. However he said the firm had received approaches from a number of people interested in investing in it.
Gilmer is keen to break into the British market and said Vazumo's entry in to the British market would be in the imminent future.
He said the company would adopt a targeted approach to entering a new market and would concentrate on a number of British cities at first, rather than attempting to launch nationwide in Britain. He said Manchester, Birmingham and London were likely targets for the firm.
***3rd Article from the Sunday Business Post
Vazumo launches mobile text directory service
22 June 2008
By Emma Kennedy
Irish internet search directory Vazumo.com has launched a mobile text directory service which will work across all Irish mobile phone networks.
The website, which allows users to find companies, products and services in a specific location, has just launched the text version of its service.
‘‘This new service brings some of the power of the internet to a regular mobile phone giving users access to a huge database of knowledge," said Chad Gilmer, chief executive of Vazumo.
He said the text service's search function operated like an internet search engine, using‘ ‘sensible searches''. For example, a user would still retrieve a phone number for a restaurant called La Dolce Vita if they omitted the ‘La'.
Mobile users looking for a phone number or address of any business in Ireland can send a text message to 53118 and receive the required information directly to their phone as a text message.
Gilmer said users could also send a message such as ‘hairdresser Wexford' to receive a listing of matching services via text message.
The service is the latest in a range of new features from Vazumo. In April, the company secured a deal with Limerick-based firm Avvio to allow Vazumo's users to search and reserve hotels. Avvio provides reservation software and has more than 300 customers in the tourism and hospitality sectors, with a number of high-profile hotels, such as Dromoland Castle in Co Clare.
The firm has also reached a partnership agreement with carlister.ie, which will allow Vazumo users to search for cars through the site. This service had been expected to go live in May but was delayed due to work on the text directory. Gilmer said the car search service will be up and running within the next two to three weeks.
Vazumo was set up in October 2006, but was in development until last September, when the website went live. It employs ten staff and has five directors, including Gilmer, his wife and Pat McDowell, former deputy chief executive of Bank of Ireland.
Before setting up Vazumo, Gilmer ran iPlanit graphic design company for ten years and also worked with Kerry Group and Andersen Consulting.
What the Blogs are saying....
Jaxzdesign.com - blog-notes - April 2008
Vazumo - Search and Gather
I seen a TV ad during the week for Vazumo.com so i popped by to have a look. Vazumo seems to offer a similar service to the Golden Pages where a user can search for say a ‘Dentist’ in ‘Dublin’ and the search will return listings from the Vazumo database, there are sub category breakdowns on the left along with location breakdowns like the Golden Pages.
The site seems to be well constructed and the listings are easy to read although in my humble opinion the design is possibly a little over the top with the web 2.0 gradients, reflections and overall shineyness.
By and large Vazumo.com is a well designed website with an interesting choice of name and a smart logo to match. Although it is great to see web applications such as this stem from Ireland my concern would be how well the website will do. Although I do find it easier to use than the Golden Pages, the Golden Pages would still be my first port of call if i was looking for specific info, mainly because there is more of it (info that is).
It will be interesting to see what carrots (or nuts) Vazumo offer to entice new users.
Another day, another mashy-uppy local directory web site for Ireland thingy. Enter Vazumo.com, directly competing with the likes of yourlocal.ie, which we mentioned recently.
Visually, the was-cool-for-10-seconds reflection underneath the logo is unforgivable. That aside, it seems like it could be a worthwhile endeavor, provided it reaches tipping point. They have the capability for videos for individual listings, and nice graphical ads. But it does all seem like the sort of stuff that goldenpages.ie, with its established base, could destroy with a bit of development and a few new features. - the same goes for yourlocal.ie.
They also have a free calling capability, to allow people using the site to call listed companies for free. See the Call section for Quinn Direct Insurance for example. You enter your number, the system then calls you, and when you pick up, you are connected to the company specified.
They have a TV advert from back when they launched in October last year:
With thanks to Rebecca for letting us know.
29th April 2008
Searching and Gathering
April 26, 2008 at 2:28 pm | In Business, Interactive, Multimedia |
Tags: City Channel, Ireland, Journalists, Search Engine, Vazumo.com
I saw a programme on City Channel (www.city.ie) about this new Irish-based internet company, so I thought I’d check them out. They are Vazumo (www.vazumo.com) and they’re an internet search with a difference. They are not like Google, Yahoo! or others - they are a search engine for people looking specifically for companies. I am aware that you can search for companies through the other major search engines, but since this is tailor-made for that purpose it’s probably going to give you more specific results. I searched for “telephone equipment” (since I need to record a thesis interview over the phone in May) & I was quite happy with the results. You type in a search term, and the website creates a ‘drop down list’ of things you might need. It also allows you to search for ‘journalists’; you get some names like Dan White, Barry McCall, the Associated Press, etc. You click into, for example ‘Ireland International’ & you are taken to their contact details and a map of where they’re located.
The tagline for this website is Search and Gather. I’m impressed so far.
http://blog.cjwriting.com/2008/04/09/new-irish-search-engine/
New Irish Search Engine
Calvin posted this on Apr 9th 2008 at 20:34 under Competitions, Digital Marketing, Internet
At the Search Marketing World conference last week I picked up a scratch-card entry to a competition from a new Irish search engine company called Vazumo.com.
Apparently this local search engine will help me to find web sites, companies, goods and services in my local area. I haven't had chance to play with it yet, but it certainly sounds interesting.
I didn't win on the scratch card, but if you click on the link above or the one below to go have a look at the site for yourself I'll be with a chance to win their monthly draw for a , so why not take a look, and while you're there sign up yourself to be in with a chance to win.
It's an obvious link bait strategy, but hey, last time I entered one of these things I won!
Just had a quick look, and the jury's out. The results pages are a bit sparsely populated, and I'm not convinced by the user interface... but you decide for yourself.