Advertisement options?

[astinov]

Hello all,

I'm new here and I browsed through the forum, but I couldn't find exactly what I wanted to ask, which is, How do you advertise your web desgin studio properly? What is the best way to go about it, because I tried calling some newspapers to place an ad and most of them didn't even have a section that would fit a "website design" ad.

Although I have been making websites for a long time now, it has always been project through referal and not through advertisement. Now that I want to start my own small web design studio, I'm very much interested in this.

Any eye openers will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[johntabita]

First of all, "advertising" falls under the much broader category of "marketing." Marketing is everything you do to "find and be found" by potential customers. Advertising tends to be expensive, and there are ways to market other than advertising. Cold-calling, cold letters, direct mail, and word-of-mouth referral groups are a few.

To determine what the best market activities are, you must know how your target market typically find people like us. My experience (and that of numerous others in the industry that I've spoken with) is that word-of-mouth referrals is the way most of us get business. When a business professional needs services like ours, he typically will ask another business associate if he knows anyone, or he'll ask "who did your website?"

People often think "word-of-mouth" means telling everyone you know what you do, and the jobs will start rolling in. That's great, if "everyone you know" regularly associate with your typical prospects. If not, it's probably not going to generate much work. A better way is to join a referral network group. This is a group of people whose sole function is to pass quality leads to one another. The best type is the "birds of a feather" -- people who sell to the same types of clients as you. This way, you're not grouped with people who sell to a different client base and are unlikely to give you good referrals.

Joining (or forming) this type of group is also a way to move up into selling to larger clients. Say you typically sell to businesses with gross revenue of 500-750K, but want to break into the million+ range. Then join a group of people who already sell to those clients.

It's not difficult to start your own group, but if you don't have any experience doing this, you may be better off joining an exisiting organization that will provide structure, accountability and other benefits. Check out www.yellow-tie.com for an example of such a group.

Also, don't just pick a single marketing activity and depend exclusively on it. Pick three that will be the most effective and will leverage off of one another.

Hope that helps.

[astinov]

Thank you so much! This is exactly the kind of direction and advice I was hoping to get!