How to attract companies to the site?

Question

Marketing

Good day.
I came up with the idea of ​​a project, sat down, thought, bought a template, and coded it. In general, the project is ready.
The project is similar to prom.ua, but narrowly focused, focused on European countries (UK, Germany, France, Italy), translated into the relevant languages. Registering your company on the site is free, but for a fee, you can connect additional services.
Ordinary users go to the site and look for a suitable company to provide a service.
Question: How to attract companies that register to the site, thereby filling my database with interesting information for users?
It is clear that powerful advertising on TV and other media, billboards, participation as a sponsor in events is the very thing. But as you understand, there is no such big money (everything was done independently, the costs were only for the server, domain, template, beer for a familiar designer for the logo, translated by friends).
There is another option with an investor (there is a person who suggested a few months ago "you get the idea - I get the money"). How can this be useful, and under what conditions do people usually work in such situations?

Answer 1

The cost of developing such projects is negligible compared to the cost of promotion and support if traffic comes.
In fact, you have now made an MVP. Next, make a presentation, write a beautiful business plan, look for an investor.
Since the idea, to put it mildly, is not unique, the conditions can vary greatly: from 20-30% to an investor if he does not understand anything in IT but he liked you, bypassing 50/50 if you have real product advantages and, most importantly, an understandable promotion strategy, and ending with a 90/10 split in favor of the investor if he is ready to invest some serious money there.

Answer 2

Contextual advertising on Google, etc.

Answer 3

As an option.
1. Determine the list of companies that are of interest to you.
2. Take some publicly available database of companies that match your criteria and add it to your database. This is necessary so that your potential newly attracted customers see that the project is alive, and they will not be the first there.
3. Make a small presentation for mailing to companies. From it, the marketer of the client company should clearly understand what benefits the company will receive from placement on your site. Calculate efficiency. The number of inquiries related to this particular company, the number of potential customers. Offer a free trial period or a free period with limited functionality so that people can evaluate the effectiveness.
4. Further in Russia, I would make phone calls to companies in order to compile a database of addresses for mailing and get some kind of personal contact for communication.
5. The mailing itself, if possible, as personalized as possible.
6. Working with results.
And where does the traffic of ordinary users come from, if not a secret.