What you should rather focus on is developing and marketing your own project, going to niche media sites and getting articles posted there and then once your userbase is created, check the listing criteria on the support page like @Maus0728 said. Beyond that is unnecessary.
Since he is already advertising that he provides help with CoinmarketCap listing, his goal is to find out here how the trending works so he can include it in his offers. And indeed some are offering those services.
As much as I don't like Binance's influence over CoinMarketCap, I think that situation improved regarding exchanges rankings compared to the period before Binance took them over. Back then scammy exchanges like P2PB2B and HitBTC were constantly among the top 10 while nowadays that's not the case so in a way their users are more protected than they were.