The Gateway Creates A Win-Win-Win Situation

With the Chamber Business Gateway, everyone benefits!

Chambers have a great way to give members tangible results and a powerful marketing and business development tool while increasing their own revenue - all at absolutely no cost or maintenance hassle. Members get instant access to thousands of targeted potential customers coming to the Chamber web site, have an easy and quick way to provide and manage the information they want to offer about their business, and have access to many useful and powerful tools that they can use to develop their business online. Visitors have a great no-hassle location through the Chamber web site where they can find out everything they want to know about the Chamber's members, as well as being able to do business with them directly right there on the Chamber's site.

It's a win-win-win situation for everyone!

How The Gateway Benefits Chambers

There are many benefits that the Chamber Business Gateway has for Chambers. Below is an initial list of benefits, and the Gateway is flexible enough that a Chamber may find uses for it that are not listed here.

1. The CBG does not cost Chambers anything to implement on their web site. Unlike other Chamber products, the CBG is completely FREE for participating Chambers. There are never any licensing fees or software purchases needed for a Chamber to use the CBG.
2. The CBG program actually PAYS a Chamber to participate. Because of our innovative revenue sharing model, the Chamber actually makes money off of the CBG! Each month, Trivekta writes participating Chambers a check for a percentage of every subscription fee that the system took in that month. In exchange, the Chamber agrees to promote the CBG as its sole online business member network and allows Trivekta to act as designated representatives of the Chamber in marketing the CBG to its members. The money will ideally be used by the Chamber to market the member gateways both online and offline, but can be used by the Chamber as it sees fit. This revenue model removes any burden on the Chamber that would potentially stop them from making the CBG available to their members, makes the system completely self-sustainable by spreading the promotional cost across all of the participating members, and rewards the Chamber for participating in the program.
3. The CBG requires no extra work from the Chamber. The Chamber's only technical responsibility is to allow Trivekta to access its web site in order to put in our system hooks so that visitors can find business gateways and members can sign up on the system. Once the CBG is installed, Trivekta maintains, supports, markets, sells and promotes the Gateway to the Chamber members and the local community. The only thing that Trivekta requires is an occasional authorization from the Chamber for the marketing and educational materials we send out. CLICK HERE to learn more about Trivekta and our role as your partner.
4. The CBG gives Chambers a tangible way to benefit their members. Many times, Chambers do not have a tangible way to show their members what they are accomplishing for them in terms of business development and marketing. The CBG gives Chambers the ability to give their members a tangible promotional and business development tool that the members can easily see is effective. The CBG also gives Chambers the ability to mine rich statistics on their member Gateways to see what Internet visitors are looking for, how to help their members improve their visibility, how to better promote areas of the business community that aren't getting as much exposure, and so on.
5. The CBG increases Chamber membership. One major goal of every Chamber is growing its membership and retaining current members. As the participation in the CBG grows, the Chamber web site gets more exposure and more visitors, and members will see tangible results from their participation. This means the Chamber has powerful and persuasive data to be able to sell new memberships and increase member participation. The CBG comes with detailed statistics that easily allow Chambers to present compelling data to potential members on why they should become members and take advantage of the CBG.
6. The CBG improves member retention. You must to be a Chamber Member to have a Gateway. If a member lapses on their dues their Gateway will eventually expire. This provides strong incentive for members getting benefits from the CBG to stay current on their membership dues.
7. The CBG increases the value and exposure of the Chamber web site, as well as the member Gateways. Using the CBG, the Chamber site becomes a valuable source of information about the community and a great place for visitors to do business. Individual Gateways are indexed by Google and other search engines, which results in more traffic to the main Chamber web site as well as other member Gateways. And best of all, the Chamber does not have to maintain all this rich information and exposure by hiring additional staff or increasing its web budget because the participating members maintain all the information themselves!
8. The CBG is a powerful cross-promotion, revenue generation and up-selling tool. Once members have entered their information in the CBG and are actively maintaining it, the CBG becomes an invaluable way to tie in with other events, programs, marketing and promotions that the Chamber is doing. Here's a few examples:
   • Bundling. The CBG allows Chambers to create a membership bundle that pays for a yearly membership as well as the initial subscription to the CBG.
   • Highlighting important local industries. Chambers can create special pages on their web site for real estate that aggregate information from real estate gateways and offer the opportunity to realty offices to purchase ad space, making additional revenue for the Chamber.
   • Increase promotional effectiveness. Chambers can take out ad space in national magazines promoting certain types of recreation in their area and pointing readers to a special page on their site that aggregates Gateways from recreational companies in their area.
   • And more! The possibilities are truly endless, and can be customized to a Chamber's particular needs.
9. The CBG benefits the entire community. The revenue that the members put into the Gateway flows back into their Chamber and their community as visitors are able to directly and easily spend money in the community. The additional exposure online also means that communities that may be struggling to attract tourism dollars or business relocation have a way to tell a more compelling story about what's available in their business community.

How The Gateway Benefits Chamber Members

There are also numerous benefits for Chamber members, some of which have been covered above. Here is a quick list of benefits that members get from the CBG:

1. Members get exposure to thousands of potential customers. Any business knows that exposure to the right kind of customers is vital. Many Chamber web sites, even small ones, have thousands of visits to their sites each month, and these visitors are hot leads because they are specifically searching for local information, products and services. The CBG allows these visitors to find the businesses in the community that have the services they need. Members can use the CBG to promote their own valuable web site properties, or get their feet wet on the Internet for the first time by setting up a Gateway in a place where they are much more likely to get customer inquiries.
2. Members get a lot of exposure and functionality for a very low cost. For just dollars per day - much less than most traditional advertising - a business can have access to a worldwide market of customers looking for information that is specific to their area, not only from Chamber visitors but also from Internet users doing searches on Google and the other major search engines. The ROI is extremely high for members who use the CBG.
3. Members can get additional benefits beyond exposure. The CBG is a very flexible system, and is ideal for doing cross-promotion between members, such as offering special deals and coupons and so on for subscribers, offering special advertising deals in local publications and other benefits.
4. Members have full and instantaneous control over their business information. Any member can update, change or even remove their Gateway listing without having any contact with the Chamber. They can make edits to their Gateway from anywhere in the world that they have access to a web browser connected to the Internet, and their changes are instantly available for any Chamber visitor to see.
5. Members get access to sophisticated business tools for one low subscription price. The CBG is infinitely extensible with all kind of tools for businesses to use - from an online coupon builder to photo slideshows to ecommerce to blogs and so on. For instance, real estate agents can optionally subscribe to the Real Estate Package that allows their Gateways to have their MLS listings directly available from the main search tool on the Chamber site, mortgage and loan calculators, listing notification tools and much more. The CBG even has custom programming options for any business that wants to enhance their gateway beyond what the system offers.

Ready to try it out?

Click here to contact us and schedule a demo for your Chamber!