Hello. I have a fair deal of experience in marketing, but in the real estate industry. I understand the clientele, I understand the most commonly used mediums. Direct postcard mailers and newspaper advertisements reign king. But I've found myself switching industries. The same tactics I've used in the real estate industry in the past with great success are producing lack luster results. Granted, every scenario is different. But it seems the industries have significantly large differences between them. How does one go about successfully marketing a web design firm? Newspaper? Postcards? Direct mailers? Cold calling (where legal, of course)?
I've used Craig's List pretty well in my area (big city) however on a scale for a real company instead of just a freelancer... that may be different. I would recommend looking into buying the Web Design Business Kit from Sitepoint. I bought it and LOVED it. My first gig after getting the kit more than payed for it... as well as my rent for two months, all my bills, and then some. http://www.sitepoint.com/kits/freelance2/
Hello, former mortgage broker here myself. The techniques you describe do work for that industry but I think you need to do some internet or web marketing. Meaning find some directories and possible affiliates that will help promote your site online. I know of a web design directory that we are in called designfirm.org and check my sig for our font sites that we may be able to work something out with. Hope this helps, good luck!
I have had success marketing for real estate companies and tourism destinations. I know many web design people who just go to real estate websites and do mass emails of those emails they pick up from the websites. Lets say you take all of the emails from a real estate agency in a city and then send them an email and personalize it to that agency. The guy I know who did this usually had many clients but his prices were very low and he also did some basic SEO to start them out. I think the package he had was around $800 which were prepackaged cms/websites with small customizations and then he submitted to 20 top directories for them and made sure they were being indexed properly.