What is the most effective form of advertising for a small IT business?
Answers:
Your business goals and your target demographic make a big difference in where/how you want to advertise. As a professional marketing consultant, I try to customize my recommendation to the specific company so the best I can do for you here is general advice.
I would suggest alternatives to the standard TV/radio/newspaper since they tend to charge more than the views they get.
If you are targeting local businesses and individuals, you will advertise more offline than you would for say second level support.
My best return on investment has been found on the following sites listed in resources.
Good luck to you.
Word of mouth (most important), IT Groups, Local magazines.
Local press, but most importantly, word of mouth. I know people will say, website, website!, but there is no better recommendation for a business than word of mouth, trust from one customer to another. East to say, hard to achieve! Best of luck to you.
Since it's IT, the best way to advertise, and it's cheap, is viral marketing; essentially hit up all the forums and make your signature your business web address - keep using that same moniker and eventually your name will come up in searches.
I did that with on my blogs and after a year, I became number one on searches - next thing I know, a year after that, there's 100's of listings for my blog and 90% of them are all linked straight to me - worked wonders and didn't cost money, but it did take time.
It depends if you offer a service. If it is a service and you want it free you could try viral communication as this is the fastest way to reach a large target. If you want to pay the cheapest at the moment is a company call miva where you can have a pay for click adverting but for more coverage go for Ask where you would pay nearly 3 times as much for advertising but the results would turn your revenue 10 fold. If you would like to keep your business just ticking over then I would suggest your local paper.
It's also important at your website is up to date and your SEO is up to scratch if you want help with this contact me.
Word of mouth and a mail drop and leaflets in local shops
It depends what you are doing, but if you are providing quite a specialist service (business to business) you should look to direct mail and target carefully the businesses that are likely to use your product/service. If you are providing a more general service to the pubic it depends what your sales channel is. if you are located in one shop in a particular town, you could try handing out flyers (leaflets) in the street. If you are selling through the internet, you could use relevant forums/groups and make sure your site is well represented in search engines. One bit of advice - think about the purchasing process for your product/service, ie. what would you do if you wanted to buy/use it.
For example, I run a guesthouse in France and I know that most people look either in the Gites de France guide, or at their website when then want accommodation, so I am present in both. That is all I pay for - I also list myself on any website directory that is offering free space. Aside from that, I do not pay for advertising.
Try to keep your costs low if you are starting out, use whatever you can that costs nothing. Don't make abug financial comittment to anything without testing it in a small way first. If you are approched by anyone selling ad space, persuade them to give you a trial for no cost so that you can see if it is cost effective first. Tell them you are not buying if not, it usually works.
Whan you do buy advertising, work our how many incremental products/services you will need to seel to pay for it and sense check it. Eg. I know that I make around €25 for each room I let for one night. If someone wanted me to buy advertisign pace for €1000, I would have to sell 40 more room/nights to cover that cost - I can judge according to whats on offer if that is likely. Usually only a very small percentage of the people who see your publcilty will actually buy your product (1 or 2 percent).
Hope that is helpful.
since you are an it company you should advertise online. I know this can be expensive but to get started there are some highly trafficked websites that offer completely free advertising.
there is a website that has the 10 best completely free online websites to advertise. here is the link
http://advertisesmallbusiness.com/free-o.
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