My wife and I run what I would personally term as a "successful" business. I qualify that because we're not dot com millionaires, we don't own fancy cars and we don't eat out every night. With a two mortgages (one on our house and one on our business), two car loans, and a teen-age daughter just starting pre-med in college, we're just staying afloat without having to dip into savings. But we're the happiest we've ever been and if we can help it, we'll never work for anyone else again as long as we live.
In another thread, I touched on a few things which I believe make our business successful. In the hope of helping others out, I'd like to expand and invite others to share their experiences. I firmly believe that there is plenty of room for all of us (unless you live in my home town <grin>).
The company my wife and I started does more than just Web Design, although that is our primary focus. We also do custom application programming, computer repair, IT work, video editing, and just about anything else computer related. If someone comes through our door and asks if we can do something, we say YES and then figure out how to do it. I realize that can be a bit dangerous, but there isn't anything on a computer that I haven't been able to figure out how to do. And if I'm not any good at it, I can always find a subcontractor who can do it right.
In a previous message, I pointed out the three things I felt were most important to our business:
Confidence Communication Punctuality
It's because of those three things that we are able to land new jobs and keep existing customers coming back for more. But you can't use any of those until you get someone to come into your office or give you a call. To do that, you have to market your business.
I have met lots of "web masters" and "web designers" from all over the country at various seminars and trade shows. And one very common theme among most of them was that they "waited" for customers to find "them". They didn't go out and find customers themselves.
In the small town where I live, we had over 30 web designers in the phone book the first year we moved here. Now there are 7 and 3 of those closed up shop this year.
Now, half of them couldn't create a decent web site at gun point. They were "fly-by-night" operations run out of a bedroom closet using Front Page and two or three "how-to" books. But the others advertised in the yellow pages, put up their own web sites and waited for customers to come through their doors. As we all know, anyone with $40 for a decent book can put up a shingle as a web designer these days. You can't just wait for people to come into your office. You have to be more aggressive and go get customers.
You don't need to spend a lot of money on radio ads, TV ads, or expensive newspaper ads. Quite honestly, we tried all three and got very little response. Where we have been successful in "finding" clients has been through direct mail and social events.
** Direct Mail ** Postage can be expensive, but you can do very targeted advertising. For example, I buy those blank Avery postcards from Staples and print ads myself. We mail out about 20 a week to targeted businesses. We then follow up those mailings in 7 to 10 days with a phone call to see if they got our post card and had any questions. In December, I'll print up about 1,000 postcards with a calendar for the next year, our URL and phone number on one side and mail those out. You wouldn't believe how many people tape those to their refrigerator, filing cabinet or pin it to their cubicle wall rather than toss them in the trash.
Occasionally, we do a mailing of brochures. For example, we really got into doing Real Estate web sites earlier this year. So, my wife and I went through the phone book and made address labels for every agent/agency that didn't have a web address in their ad, or whose existing site looked rather amateurish. We offered two fixed price packages and a guaranteed 7 day turn-around (not using ANY templates, all custom designed looks). We mailed out 60 brochures and within 3 months we picked up 19 new web sites directly from that mailing. In each case, we followed up the mailing with a phone call, which makes all the difference. Most of them hung up on us, but many had questions and were thinking of calling us anyway.
Your advertising materials don't need to be elaborate, either. I print ours on a good HP InkJet printer. For brochures I buy the "ready to fold" ones. I print in large, readable fonts and try not to boor them with stuff they won't understand (I do that at the personal meeting <smile>).
** Social Events ** My wife and I joined the local chamber of commerce and we attend meetings as regularly as possible. We also go to high school football games, baseball games, and charity events. At the sporting events I wear a T-shirt I made that says "I helped my customers earn $1 million dollars." I get a LOT of people who ask me about it and I give out a lot of business cards. I tell them that web sites we have built for our customers have earned them over $1 million dollars (cumulatively).
We also try to attend industry events when ever possible. I regularly go to free Microsoft seminars and when ever an ISP, WebMaster, or XML conference comes to the state, we try to go. We've picked up some pretty cool contracts at some of them, including an XML contract last year with Cisco Systems and a small custom programming project earlier this year for NASA.
I'm also one of those bizarre people who gives a lot of stuff away, like pens with our business name, magnetic calendars, and lately... mousepads. I bought 50 blank white mousepads on eBay for $45 and a few packages of those "dark t-shirt transfers" and made up a bunch of mousepads with our company logo, contact info, and a brief description of what we offer. I mailed them to a number of businesses and we picked up several IT contracts as a result.
I also mailed several to a few businesses which "compliment" ours. A couple of local sign making businesses, and some CPA's. Along with a letter of introduction and a request that they recommend us to their customers who are looking for Web and computer related work.
Look for other businesses in your area to do similar "marketing partnerships" with. If you have a local Internet Cafe, a few free mousepads with your logo may bring you in a number of new clients. If you don't do logos or print advertising materials and you have a local graphics company that doesn't do web sites, partner up with them on referrals.
We host one real estate agent's web site as barter for advertising. In the ads she puts on TV (the local "real estate channel"), she includes a URL we created for local community information as well as her own URL. Our local community web site is pretty much self sustaining and brings a lot of traffic our way (we're in the middle of redesigning it at the moment).
We've also created a local business banner exchange program that our clients can elect to participate in. It allows them to advertise on each others sites at little or no cost. It's a value-added item we can pitch to potential customers. And because there is no charge to participate (at level 1), we only require that we host the client's web site <grin>.
This is getting kind of long, so I'll pretty must end it here...
I'd like to here marketing ideas from others as well. And later this week I'll post a message listing some of the ideas I've come up with to generate extra revenue when things are slow.
--Dave
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