Do you advertise offline?

I give out business cards for my site, and computer business all the time, It costs me hardly nothing and is pretty much free, it doesn't hurt.
 
cold calling

I think cold calling can be good done in the masses. You can land customers from that , especially if they have hosting and are paying a huge amount.
 
Advertising whether online or offline is good for the business. It just that it must be targeted well like for hosting companies, it might be better to advertise on companies rather than individuals.
 
I would suggest marketing locally rather than using advertising services such as adsense. From what we found with adsense is that it felt as we were feeding our money through a paper shredder. It wen't quite fast, and I know we saw a larger outcome with marketing locally.. In the near future we are planning on getting a commercial office which will allow us to have consultations with future clients.

I suppose it also depends where your from and what competition is already there. You must show why your brand is better! :)
 
Advertising offline is still popular. I is even beneficial for those in the hosting industry. You never know what word of mouth is going to do. Never leave home without your business cards.

You may need to weigh the cost and return factors for larger offline markets such as magazines, newspapers and billboards.
 
Believe it or not, I was shocked to find that most of my clients are highschool kids purchasing domains for their college applications and whatnot. On my end, .me addresses are huge and seem to be growing quite a bit.

If you advertise offline, your mostly going to get clients along those lines, personal sites and what-have-you.
 
One of the reasons why offline advertisement, and especially local type of marketing work is because of targeted traffic they will create and after a while, people, companies and business sectors that are located within a few miles from you would be aware of the products you are selling and the potential clients may even visit your office in person to learn more and possibly do shopping.

Although using net-based advertisements can be great and beneficial in most cases, but you would have better chances of selling your products and web services to the small firms that are in your own town and county, rather than trying to find customers living in other continents. You know, it's like saying buying butter and milk from the store in your city or ordering them from abroad by airmail.

If you sponsor local events, use local newspapers that are read by companies nearby and looking for affordable products, you will find great opportunities to sell. Local advertisements usually are followed by phone calls and visits, rather than emails and feedback forms when people find your website over the net, and simply being interested in learning more about the services offered online.
 
XHIServices said:
We do leafleting round the local areas, also approach businesses, telephone calls, door to door and go in.
Click to expand...

Do the calls/door-to-door sales well for you? Do you offer them hosting and/or design services?

We haven't done much local advertising, and I always feel like it's an area we should explore. For being based in AZ, GoDaddy doesn't do much local-based advertising. But they do sponsor local events every so often and get press just for being a larger employer here.

Host Gator bought billboards on the freeway looking for applicants with Linux knowledge, but they weren't direct ads for their services.
 
I must say offline advertising is much more effective if done in the right way. You need to focus on what would prove to be the best way to reach a client. Whether it be a billboard or a flyer. Everything has to be done at right time and at right place.
 
In my view billboards and flyers may not be a good marketing strategy for web hosting. I will tell you a good and simple plan which gave me lot of clients.

1. Go to Yellopages and look for any service. For example dentist.
2. Look for dentists who do not have websites.
3. Contact them and explain them how important it is to have a website to have a profitable services. Be considerate and honest with them. You can show them some examples of websites.
4. Tell them that you can design a website for a very reasonable price.
5. If you get the order, go to some freelance website (guru etc.,) and hire a web designer. You can host the website on your servers.
6. Request the dentist to recommend you to their colleagues and friends.

It is a slow process but when you offer good service then people will come back to you more and more and with new clients.
 
nothing beats a manual advertising lol. i do offline adverting though online matters a lot, this thing works perfectly too. it just consume a lot of effort and time. it can cost money too..
 
trishia said:
nothing beats a manual advertising lol. i do offline adverting though online matters a lot, this thing works perfectly too. it just consume a lot of effort and time. it can cost money too..
Click to expand...

Could you please describe your offline/manual advertising methods? What in particular do you do to promote your business? What kind of conversions are you seeing?
 
I do link wheeling and link spiders.

i also do common avenues like blog commenting, forum posting, profile link building and social bookmarking.

anything that grabs the attention with the readers, i do that promoting my website to w.w.w.
 
Well it totally depends on the market/location you are willing to target.

Well, We are also trying to do this by placing ads in local news paper :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Supporters

Back
Top