How many people advertise their site/service/business locally? Like ads in the newpaper or handing out business cards. What do you do? If you do some sort of local advertising are the results you see from it worth the effort and money or would it be better to spend that money on some web advertising like Google AdWords?
I advertise one site in niche specific trade magazines. I do this through a contra, where I provide an article about the industry and they pay me with the ad. It does not have a lot of impact, but when the magazine comes out I sometimes see a bit of a spike in trial subscriptions. I view it as part of my overall marketing effort. Specific content from that website is used regularly by some newspapers, as well as one television and radio network in Saskatchewan. Over the years I have worked hard to get people to associate that market niche with my company and my website and to, some extent, it has worked. I have also tried placing classified ads. I chose the industry publication with the fattest calssified ads section and put the ad in there. My budget was too small to get a really good looking ad, but I think it was moderately effective for the year that I ran it. Whenever I go to conventions, I make sure that I hand out as many business cards as possible. They all have the website on them. I find conventions are a better source of content athan new customers. But, I am not hard sales type of guy. I also run Google AdWords campaigns. The point is, if you want to make a business out of your website, you need to look beyond the box in terms of how you build that business. Also, you need to be committed to your advertising. Other than tweaking it, you need to stick with it for the planned period. Otherwise, it will not work as intended.