I've been marketing for an IT recruiting company for the last 6 months and while our online presence has dramatically improved, we have yet to secure job orders directly from my marketing efforts. The challenge is that the recruiting industry is a relationship industry, we are hunting big fish clients who have their go-to recruiters. I'm trying to differentiate us by highlighting our personal approach but at the end of the day it comes down to margins. Why would a client choose us over their current vendor list? I've got my company to the top of organic search results for our keywords (looks good but doesn't convert), grown our tech-focused monthly meetup community to 1000 (from 250), built relationships with my city's tech community by attending and cross-promoting their events, grown our LinkedIn from 50 to 2,800, run social media contests with tech focused prizes (tickets to tech events etc.) While all great for brand awareness, this doesn't really make my manager happy. As far as he's concerned, I'm costing the company money as I haven't directly brought revenue in. I would love some advice on what else I can do with a tiny budget, ~$35/week on Google Adwords. I'll be getting cut if I don't bring in direct revenue - despite the other great work I've done - so any help would be appreciated greatly!
Have you tried a PR campaign? I would come up with a news story (the operative word is "news") that is of interest to the local IT community. It could be about the Cloud, security, big data or any other such hot topics. Have a local focus on the story and make sure that it positions your company as an expert. Develop a news release or story pitch and then sell it agressively to the local business media. Another option would be to create a marketing program for either current client or third party referrals. Have a reward structure for someone who refers you to a new client. Then market it aggressively to all of your current clients and partners. All of the above will not cost you any money....just your time and effort. They are not necessarily online activities but can be very effective if executed well.
Your best bet is probably to start making some calls to related but non-competitive businesses and start arranging a kind of referral system (with incentives). You and your boss really need to have clear in your mind how much a client is worth to you in the long run (on the average). So once you know that you can comfortably know how much you can spent to acquire a client. From hearing $35 a week which seems extremely low, I have a feeling your boss doesn't work by this principle and doesn't try to figure a strategy where advertising could be an investment and not an expense. Besides being aware of price competition, you should research why your current clients are staying with you, look at who your longest lasting and highest paying clients are and try to find more people just like them. You can set up arrangements with businesses to offer them referrals if they offer you referrals and once you know how much a client is worth to you in the long run you can offer them a healthy percentage of the first purchase (once you sign them in as a client and they pay). For advertising on the internet, you need to consider how you will qualify people that you want to have their attention. The sooner you qualify the more you can save on advertising expenses on PPC etc. You should have an attractive initial offer, one that could draw them in and get them wanting to know more. If you just say we are a consulting/service company and here's our home page, you probably won't get much results. Draw them in with an attractive offer and put together a short ebook or white paper, etc which will qualify and position them to be ready for your service. And make sure you think of at least one clear advantage of doing business with you over the others, besides being the closest. Thinking the internet is a trick to get clients can be a waste of time and money.. for a business like yours with a longer buying phase, contracts, comparisons, service level agreements, you need to implement some solid strategies.