The Melton Messenger is an independent local business directory which has been running since 2005
Delivered free through the door of residents both in Melton Mowbray and the surrounding villages, it presents the perfect opportunity of putting reliable local businesses in front of thousands of potential local customers.
Designed to be a USEFUL publication and as a “recommended directory” we speak to a business’s past customers to ensure that they would use their services again before we place them in our directory.
I started the Messenger after having a bad experience with a tradesman and thought that there was a need out there for a handy little directory listing local services recommended by real people. All this was well before many of the customer reviewed and rated websites had been formed. I started out by knocking on neighbours’ doors and asking them if they would mind telling me what services they had used and which had done a good job!
Over the years we have endeavoured to maintain the Messenger’s ethos of including businesses and services that have been recommended by previous customers. And thank you to all of you who we have spoken to and who have helped us to do this. We still encourage readers to feedback on the services featured in the directory and we will pass this back to the advertiser concerned. Nine times out of ten this is positive, but if we did get lots of readers complaining about a particular service we do reserve the right to take them out of the directory – thankfully this has only ever happened on a handful of occasions.
Our main aim has always been to provide readers with a handy, interesting and useful publication and to encourage them to use local businesses. I firmly believe that even in this age of changing technology there is still a place for a quality printed local directory.
When we first launched we only distributed to one thousand homes, today it’s over 14,500 and our fantastic distribution team reliably deliver the Messengers through local doors every month.
I am proud to say that lots of our advertisers have been with us many years and there are still some who have been in every single issue since we began.
By using the Messenger to source your local services you are not only supporting the local economy, but “ supporting the Messenger too. We are not run by the Council or part of the local paper, as some people may believe, but an independent company. Please do feel free to contact us if you have any suggestions on improving the Messenger, any feedback for any of our advertisers or recommendations on who we should be including.
Debbie Ross – founder