What sort of advertising has worked for your business

[CanzDesign]

Hi there everyone.

In this forum people are always asking for Marketing Ideas, and I wondered what types of advertsing have worked for your business approximately how much they costed, who your target marget is, and why you think that particular form of advertising worked for you.
Also if you would like, what hasn't worked, and why it didn't.

I'd be very interested in the comments you make.

I'll get the ball rolling with two businesses.

What has worked:

First web and graphic design:

By far the best advertising is actually getting out and meeting people especially small businesses around town, not to bully them into getting work done, but just as one businessperson to another. Asking and being genuinely interested in their business and exchanging business cards. Cost: just time.

Meeting people on forums, and helping them out with different issues. They get to "know you" and know what you do and tend to come to you when the need something. Cost: Time

Had the car signwritten: $1500. This again worked I believe because people keep seeing the car.

Advertising on Buses(Inside above exit door): The cost was $100 a month and worked really well, I believe becuase we had a capitive audience. We did this twice on different bus routes, the route to the higher class area of town didn't do so well, but the one to the working class areas worked very well. Talking to clients we got from those adverts said their staff had mentioned seeing our ad which was food for thought.

Most of the clients we get through our website, actually found our site thought looking for help with something else, and then came back when they needed our services.

The signature on my emails. Cost nothing. Again I believe because there was no hard sell involved.

What didn't work:

Yellow pages small ad $590: I think yellowpages didn't work because you are listed with all our competitors, I think it could have worked if we had brought a big 1/4 or at least a 1/8 of a page advert. Although I have spoken to many other graphic design businesses, and they all say that personal contact is what people are looking for.

Pamphlets: $300 printing $150 Delievery. I think this didn't work, because at that time we hadn't identified our target markets and deliever half to the "wrong area" If i had of done the bus advertising before this type I would have deliever all to a working class area.

Email advertising: Finding businesses without a website and writing to them, I did this back when we first started, and have now realised that it's nothing more than spam.

That isn't a full list, but it should have you all thinking;

The second business was a computer fixing business.

The one form of advertising that won hands down, was spot colour pamphlets delieveried around the local area and in the poor areas of town, this business was suituated between the poorer area and the local shopping mall, so people had to pass that way to and from shopping. This business teamed up with the local real estate agents, and went halves in the delievery price with them. Cost: $300 delievery and $500 printing.

We tried yellow pages, radio advertising, advertsing on buses, and nothing worked as well as phamphlets.

Well thats what worked for us.

[CanzDesign]

How odd, I really thought that with all the advice that get's posted on this forum, that I would have had heaps od reply's to this thread, yet not a one if a whole week.....

Looking very confused here confused.

[painperdu]

Hi Lynny. It is odd that no one has replied to your great post.

I don't have much to add to the the topic except that through helping my brother market his landscaping business I've come to realize that nothing beats word of mouth for gaining business.

For example, my brother bought 1,000 fliers to be passed out door to door in our neighborhood. The first day he only passed out 30 and gained one new client. About 2 weeks later a new client was referred to my brother from his first client. Today (3 seasons later), we can trace 15 of my brother's landscape clients back to that one initial client.

I think in total he passed out maybe 90 fliers. As of this post my brother has around 70 clients. The only other advertising he's done was with Craigslist.com. Again, he received referrals from a few initial clients from this as well.

[CanzDesign]

Sorry, I posted a reply to the first reply above, it must have gotten lost in cyberspace.

painperdu you are quite correct referrals are by far the best way of advertising.

PintoPotts I'll take a look at your blog, thank you for replying.

[guerrilla]

I think people are always cagey about sharing advertising success. For me I have thrown thousands at lots of different methods of advertising, some worked some didn't. I won't share all my secrets but i do spend alot of money on google adwords as it works well and I can track ROI easily.

Paper advertising also pays off. I suggest compiling a list of all magazines and papers that your target audience would read and calling their marketing team up and asking them to send you a media pack. Look at them and make a few calls and make sure to haggle. Expect to lose money at first, you will need to go into a magazine more than once to get a good guage of how well it works and also need to ask your customers where they heard about you to track it. Some publications will make a return and some wont. If you pay attention to it you can fine tune it to make you a nice ROI. lots of people overlook magazine advertising these days but some of my clients when they approach me are running successful businesses off just 1 or 2 magizine ads.