What was your most successful marketing approach?

[shutupdan]

So I'm launching my outsourcing IT support and service company in about 5 months and there's no doubt that I'll be bootstrapping at the start, which is why I was wondering what kind of marketing has worked for you guys before? I'm considering putting most of my marketing funds into an event that would get a lot of SMB owners into a place together so that we could explain what we do and how can help etc. It would be marketed as an event that shows you how our company can save you X amount versus hiring your own people. I think this way we could get to the most people the cheapest. Otherwise I may hire a telephone and social media marketer that works on commission, and we could pay upwards of $700 per client that our sales person acquires for us, I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

[Freelancier]

Marketing is everything you do from the way you answer the phone (or don't) to the color of your logo to the price you charge to the way you handle pissed off customers.

What you're really talking about is lead generation.

And the way to look at it is this: who is your best potential client and how will they look for someone like you? Will it be at an event? Will it be through social media? Will it be through specific search keywords? Will it be through word of mouth?

Figure out those answers and you'll know where to put some of your marketing budget.

[anilverma]

Freelancier nailed it. Just to add on to that, the first thing to consider would be if there is a demand for your service or product. If there are any competitors in that space (No competitors means it is a premature or bad market and might take Lots of efforts). Picture your customer, imagine as your customer and now think like a customer. You will have to reverse engineer the answers. Getting the first customer is really really hard, but hang in there, double your efforts every week and you will get there.
And be ready to spend on marketing and branding your company/yourself. Have some budget to hire marketing and sales, business development folks as well as doing Google/Facebook advertising.

[Harold Mansfield]

If lead generation is what you're talking about, the things that made significant difference for me were:

1. The 4th redesign of my websites, and constant improvement of the copy. Creating a video. (Websites are never done)
2. Asking people to leave reviews in places where other people actually see them.
3. Putting some kind of pricing on my website
4. Having set business hours and actually being available during them.
5. Targeting a smaller market.
6. Serving other agencies and service providers.
7. Learning sales and how to close over the phone.
8. Only take jobs that you are absolutely positive that you can knock out of the park. Better money, better reviews. (This also part of targeting)
9. Being flexible. Able to change, recognize mistakes and correct them.
10. Customer service. Customer service. Customer service.

[Owen]

Marketing is everything you do from the way you answer the phone (or don't) to the color of your logo to the price you charge to the way you handle pissed off customers.

What you're really talking about is lead generation.

And the way to look at it is this: who is your best potential client and how will they look for someone like you? Will it be at an event? Will it be through social media? Will it be through specific search keywords? Will it be through word of mouth?

Figure out those answers and you'll know where to put some of your marketing budget.

Indeed. Question: Why don't you put your home for rent on Airbnb? Why Vrbo?

[Freelancier]

Why don't you put your home for rent on Airbnb? Why Vrbo?
Different client base and different business model. Although VRBO is trying to sometimes act like AirBnB, we aren't renting out a room in a house and we want to make sure the guest doesn't cancel (our guests tend to book 4-10 months in advance and pay in full 2 months before arrival). So VRBO is the better choice for us. Unless Expedia (new owner) screws it up and then we'll have to re-look at everything, including whether to be on VRBO at all.

[shutupdan]

Thanks for the help guys.

[Bobjob]

For us I believe it would be trade shows. Thomas Register used to be the Google for industry back in the paperbound days, it was important. I believe my website is important. I don't know how effective my advertising is, I would like to. But when people call I'm not going to ask how they found us.

[Brian Altenhofel]

I don't know how effective my advertising is, I would like to. But when people call I'm not going to ask how they found us.

How you can you determine how effective your advertising is if you don't track referral sources? You don't have to ask every single caller. Only ask those prospects that you've qualified and (at the very least) those who are buying what you're selling. Those are the only two broad segments that you should care about. You can figure out what the total audience was from other sources. (Of course, you do need to have narrower segments to track, but you're really only tracking qualified prospects and actual conversions for those.)

You also don't have to ask directly. You could ask them to mention XYZ for a promotional offer (that's what a lot of "tell them so-and-so sent you" ads on talk radio stations really are). If you're driving them to your website instead of to call first, you could set up landing pages for each marketing campaign.

As for the OP's question...

You need to create an ideal customer profile first. You want to market to that specific customer. You need to figure out where that customer will be looking for your services. Focus on one customer profile at a time, and for a finite amount of time so that you can determine whether it's working and decide whether your profile needs to be updated to more accurately reflect the type of customer that you can attract or if your campaign is broken. Ideal customer profiles are always evolving, but they are not overly broad.

You say you are doing an IT services and outsourcing company. I know that I wouldn't attend an event hosted by an unknown entity on how to save my business money. I would want to attend an event hosted by an organization with a track record and good reputation. You have neither when you're just starting out. An event like you describe would be a shotgun approach, and without a track record you'll likely only attract low value customers and customers that don't fit your profile. Customers that don't fit your profile are typically a no-win scenario - you will likely not be able to deliver their desired outcome (which will leave them unhappy) and you will have a difficult time keeping them long term after pouring resources into trying to support them.

When you develop a profile, use a research tool like Clearbit (https://clearbit.com/) to find prospects that may fit that profile. As an example, I recently decided to focus on migrations from Drupal 6 (which has reached end-of-life) to Drupal 8 for a while. So I looked for organizations within a certain area using Drupal. I wrote a script to go through the results and check for those running Drupal 6. I then used that list to locate likely points of contact that fit my ideal customer profile within that organization (you can also use that information to see if you can find a way to get a referral, too). I also took a brief look at each site to see if there was a design or PR firm credited for the work and added those as possible leads for when I decide it's time to re-focus to agencies.

[shutupdan]

That was actually really helpful, thank you for going into better detail. Even though my company is new, I may be able to partner with some other companies for this that have been around longer(some of the owners know me) and I could offer to pay for the whole event. That way we could have different kinds of companies interested and attract a larger demographic.

[shutupdan]

Also clearbit seems very interesting, I'm gonna look into it more.

[Bobjob]

How you can you determine how effective your advertising is if you don't track referral sources? You don't have to ask every single caller. Only ask those prospects that you've qualified and (at the very least) those who are buying what you're selling.

I don't know how effective it is. The only ways I kinda learn is either to ask the customer (when they call) what material they are using (paper, film, foil, nonwoven, etc). Or if they inquire via my website, I ask that they tell me what material they are using. Depending on material used kinda depends where I should be advertising. I get many different publications and when I look through them whoever features customer names I know I consider advertising with them.

[Fulcrum]

I'll ask when I remember to. The biggest reason I ask is that I don't do any advertising and my marketing is:

Hey, there's a sawmill over there I've never noticed before. I'm going to stick my head in, leave a card, answer any questions they may have, and leave before taking up too much of their time.

[mattcoco]

Strategy before Tactics. Develop a comprehensive strategy before you do any marketing at all.

It will do the following:

- Establish your goals and objectives (what success is)
- Identify who your talking to, and how to talk to them
- Identify your strengths and opportunities in your industry
- Develop a Unique Selling Proposition
- Develop a marketing mix
- Establish a budget

If you do these things, you will have a much higher chance of being successfully with your marketing, than hoping it works.

There's plenty of resources on my website for this, my podcast also focuses on this. If you're interested check it out.

If nothing else, establish success metrics. Otherwise you'll never know if you achieved success or not.

Good Luck!

[Hummer]

Hi,

We have successfully been operating a Private Investigation (PI) or Private Detective business in India for over 2 decades now. Need advice and help from the marketing gurus on how to generate leads using the new age marketing tools available today. How to increase visibility of my brand name globally? I know there is a huge demand for our services, but visibility is the key. TIA

[pencilbox]

Thank you so much! This is where I am in my business as well and don't have a clue where to start! I know that I have no reputation right now, which really stinks but I will take your advice and see where it leads!
Thanks again!

[novaera]

Scope out your market before jumping into anything in regards to marketing.. is there competition? If there's no competition there may be no demand. A quick google search can answer that honestly. If there's competition, how is their market? If you're going against a multi-million dollar franchise the odds are they're spending a pretty penny on their marketing as well, so you might want to check out the quality of the work they've had done to make sure you're able to compete. No matter what marketing company you go to, they'll promise you the moon and stars to get you hooked but more often than not they're not able to deliver. Just make sure you do your research before jumping in :) Lead gen, in my opinion, works the best in starting up though.