Dave sticks his neck out

I've signed on for trials of two industrial directory services this week, Kelly Search and Direct Industry. Here is a little bit about each:

Kelly Search is the English equivalent of Thomas Register/Net, but they are pushing for global coverage on the Internet. Publisher Reed Elsevier owns Kelly and is using its publications, like Test and Measurement World, to reach engineers and marketers like me. I have looked at Kelly before and noted they have a ton of categories. A $300 trial for three months gets me top-level listing and a banner. What they do differently is rotate positions of top-level (sponsored) listings, rather than have you bid for position. A local salesperson visited, which I found surprising... indicating to me serious commitment and high margins.

Direct Industry is also a global concern...the salesperson who called me was from France. Their service is more labor intensive, as they want to publish pictures and basic product descriptions, as well as press releases. They already had us listed and pictures swiped from our website. One advantage for global sales is that they support five different languages. The salesperson offered a three-month trial at no charge.

These guys won by offering trials. But I've been at this a while and will be watching to see what they deliver. The marketplace for such industrial directories has too many players, in my opinion, and without a clear, dominant leader, Google will still trump them all.