Need Some Ideas To Market My Site

I have owned my own web design company for two years now and lately work has been a bit slow. We redesigned our site and are looking to get some more clients. However, searching forums and sites for customers tends to be quite tedious and almost always results in a competitor offering a job at lower rates. I have business cards coming and I plan on going door to door and talk to business owners, but with 18 credits and a full time schedule it is hard finding time to go door to door. Does anyone have any marketing strategies which are cost efficient?

 

Target your current customers. Create referral system that allows your customers to earn passive income to encourage them to refer some new clients to you. This method does not take away too much time from you and its viral

 

I have been offering that, but have pretty much exhausted that option. Many of the clients have referred people and it is getting to the point where I will have to search out customers.

 

You could try placing your ad somewhere like your local newspaper(s). Just make sure you place it in a section where your potential customers will be reading, such as the business section. Also, to help stand out in the clutter, you could do some sort of unusual graphic that will get readers attention.
In my local paper a car dealership used a picture of the owner with a doodle drawn on his face and out of all the ads on the page that one really stood out and made you remember it. You may want to do something a little more professional but things like that are a good way to get your ad noticed. And it never hurts to make them feel like they are getting a deal so if you make it a "mention this ad and get 10% off" type of thing you may get more of a response plus you will know how well your ad is doing.

 

You can specialize in a particular niche. For example, you can go to various little used car lots/businesses and tell them you specialize in creating websites for car dealerships, etc. Maybe the 1st one you setup could be free, so you can put something on your resume.

 

What you need to do is to get your name out there as much as possible. Marketing is all about exposure, and if you can do a good job of that, you can make a lot of $$$. The best way to get started is by advertising on top sites and blogs. Yes, it does take money to do that, but the rewards are endless.

 

bulk post in craigslist.

 

Google Adwords or PPC might be a good option?

 

Hi

We are offering Article Submissions Services at very cheap rates. Article Submission is another good method to get traffic and better one-way links to your site, and has become standard in website search engine optimization strategies. We will submit your quality article to around 200 best article directories which would give you relevant incoming links to your website.


Regards,
Elites Webservices

 

So they are offering lower prices. Tell the client that your price includes support on for support issues.

 

Do some article marketing targeting your keywords. It works great. If you get a chance, read Travis' Bum Marketing Method, really helpful.

 

With website design you generally need a lot of feedback from your customers on color schemes, wording, et cetera. But, of course you know that.

It sounds like you're handing out cards to your clients, that would make it seem like most of your clients are local.

You might try a personalized video presentation and have it posted on local television or newspaper websites. Most generally offer an advertising section, sometimes free sometimes for a minor cost.

You could explain your business, give some examples of your work right there on your computer, and maybe some anecdotal positive results which were generated due to your website designs.

You might also include one or two of your "best clients" to provide their own testimony on their satisfaction with your work.

I hope this idea helps.

 

It's very difficult to compete in this kind of saturated market, you need to niche yourself down. High-end web design, low budget design, Joomla web design, etc etc. So many niches which would be much easier to compete in.

Social networking would work well but as you say, it does require time. However if you do it right the personal approach and effort put into it does pay off. Just make sure you establish yourself as an expert in your field through the honest advice and help you give.

We have a service which I think would be a perfect solution for your scenario. Drop me a PM to discuss it or just check the link in my signature.

Hope that helps.

 

I started my website just 6 weeks ago. I placed an ad on Kijji, it is a local directory listing company that is free to post on. My ad was on page 2 position 2 within 2 weeks. I guess that was due to the content on Kijji, it must get crawled a lot by Google. I hope this helps get you some extra clicks it worked for me.


Mark Perkins
Ebizwizard's School of Internet marketing

 

You should design a bunch of nice looking generic templates with different themes to showcase your skills and upload them to free website template sites like http://www.oswd.org

The benefit of this is you get to put your link permantely on the website as a requirement of downloading it for free. If thousands of people download it, you will have your links plastered all over the Internet with links pointing back to your web design company.

This is an extremely viral method and also a great way to get backlinks for free and lots of search engine traffic for nothing.

 

What about doing fax broadcasting?

 

use social bookmarking sites and forums, like this one

 

The main problem I am having is the fact that I am a college student who is already broke. This creates quite a bit of problems when trying to bulk advertise. I also don't want to "spam" my link on the web.

 

create web design tutorials or articles, and submit this to article directories or free web design tutorial sites, these will help market your website.

 

Has anyone tried AdWords? I was considering trying it with a budget of $30 a month. I know that isn't the most amount of money to spend a month, but I am quite limited in how much I have.