The Web Design Business Kit Chapter 6 - Market Your Business

Which Promotional Option Suits You?

I can’t tell you the answer to that! However, taking into account the targeted marketing tips I provided earlier, I’ll discuss here a few of the popular options for advertising, promotion and PR efforts.

All of the techniques listed below are perfectly capable of generating new clients in droves. Your challenge is to identify which option suits you, try it, and measure the results so that you can improve your ROI in your future promotional efforts.

Newspaper Advertising

Base your budget on the CPM I mentioned earlier. Newspaper advertising needs to be really well targeted to be successful. As we’ve discussed, it would probably be more cost effective for you to advertise in a business newspaper, rather than the local community newspaper.

Yellow Pages Advertising

This is almost a ‘must have.’ Many people will choose a designer from the Yellow Pages. These ads can be very expensive and, unfortunately, with this medium it’s a case of “the bigger, the better!”

If you do make the commitment to buying a large, prominent (and more expensive) Yellow Pages ad, then make sure you very closely measure which clients find out about you from these ads, and what sort of return you receive on your investment.

Radio Ads

Radio spots are not usually well-targeted. Don’t advertise on radio unless you can try it very cheaply, and be sure to track the results!

On the other hand, a radio appearance can be a great way to boost your profile. For instance, if you're interviewed as a special guest during the computer show on your local radio station, you can attract real attention to yourself and your business.

Writing Articles

If you can get a “Why you might need a Website” article published in a business magazine, it can work very well to generate leads.

Writing articles is a good form of PR, and allows you to “borrow credibility” from the publication in which your article appears. As the only expense involved is the time it takes you to write the article, this form of promotion can be very cost-effective.

Flyers

Flyers are OK, but only because they’re cheap. You can target them a little (for example, by delivering them only to local businesses), and with a little luck you might receive a call or two as a result of your efforts.

Hold A Seminar

Why not hold a seminar titled “Developing a Website for Your Business”? Great idea! It’s beautifully targeted, you have the opportunity to build enormous credibility, and you have a group of hot prospects in a room for a day, learning all about the Web—direct from you!

Spend $1,000 to promote the seminar, fill up a good-sized room, and retire to the Bahamas on the profits! Well… not quite, but you’ll do OK!

The trouble here is that you have to spend a little to make a little. Charge a token fee of, say, $10 per head, so that your audience perceives some value in spending a day with you. Granted, you may not make much of a profit from the event itself, but it’s the lead-generation that will benefit your business in the long run.

Ask For Referrals From People You Know

It didn’t take me too long to realize that the vast majority (and most profitable part) of my business came from prospects who were referred to us by past and current clients.

Know what we do now? We ask everyone we know to please, please, please refer their friends or business contacts to us. If someone refers us a client, we say thanks.

Referrals are perfectly targeted, and don’t require any work on your part. If you’re not asking every man and his dog for referrals to your business, then you aren’t serious about being in business.

Local ISPs And Hosting Companies

Local providers of computer- and Internet-related services can be a rich source of referrals. Contact them to establish a reciprocal arrangement through which you refer hosting clients to them if they refer Web design clients to you. This arrangement can work on a commission basis as well.

Branded Merchandise

T-shirts, stickers, buttons, mouse pads, pens, and mugs with your logo on them? Don’t even think about it!

What influences people to select someone in your line of business? I’ll bet it isn’t how nice your branded coffee mugs are. Prospects won’t initially select you based on merchandise, so don’t do it: it’s a waste of money.

Having said that, I do find these products great as gifts for clients you want to thank for some reason. But this kind of expense can only really be justified when you’re well established and very profitable.