Ok, so I had a meeting with my Principles of Marketing Professor the other day to talk about my business and marketing it locally. He said that the newspaper would be a bad Idea (not worth the cost) and that I should focus more on contacting businesses.

He also suggested getting those business cards that are mini cd's. I'm not sure of their exact name, but he said they cost on average about $0.25 each to have made.

Does anyone know what those are called exactly, or where any place is that I can order them online?

Those mini CD's you can get probably at any electronic Store.

In canada i seen that at futureshop and bestbuy.

They're not just mini cd's, they're credit card/business card size/shape. They're kinda rectangular... I'd like to know where I can get them so my business card info is printed on them.

Oh...im sorry i mis-understood you.
As for what you are looking for I am not familiar with.

maybe your Professor may know someone who has one for you to look at or ask where to purchase?

Google is your friend...

http://www.cdrom-businesscard.co.uk/

http://www.businessknowhow.com/store/cdromcard.htm

http://www.cdrom2go.com/optical_media/buscardcdr.asp <-- cheap for the DIY'ers

Hurray - I have been trying to find these in UK for ages, thanks for the links guys!!

compusa had them on a rack in the middle of the store a while back.

oh thanks for that underzen!

I found a pack of 20 for under 20 bucks!

nice for testing them out :D

what exactly are CDR Business Cards?

I guess it depends on your business. Different businesses call for different marketing strategies. If you are a designer or a web developer putting a portfolio on a business card cd probably is a good idea and has a wow factor to the client. Also since you hope to be landing projects in the thousands putting a little time, effort and money into a card cd will probably pay off. On the other hand, business such as hosting wouldnt benefit that much since the account is bringing in less per customer and im not sure if people are interested in watching a flash demo on a cd to see what you offer for hosting.

Originally posted by 1mediahost
I guess it depends on your business. Different businesses call for different marketing strategies. If you are a designer or a web developer putting a portfolio on a business card cd probably is a good idea and has a wow factor to the client. Also since you hope to be landing projects in the thousands putting a little time, effort and money into a card cd will probably pay off. On the other hand, business such as hosting wouldnt benefit that much since the account is bringing in less per customer and im not sure if people are interested in watching a flash demo on a cd to see what you offer for hosting.

I completely agree with that, it's no use for hosting companies, for design though it can make a HUGE difference. I priced these out and for content to be developed and custom printing with your logo on it, it would have been $2 (Canadian) which is a little over a dollar US I belive. And for a hosting business, it's not worth it I don't think.

On the contrary, these will be used to go around to local businesses to sign up new customers, and persuade business that already have websites to switch to us. The local competition is your typical ISP ($50/mo for 5mb disk space, 1gb transfer, 5 email addresses).

I'm going to be marketing myself as a total solutions provider. These will be big customers. I will contact them, and set up meetings where I can go and do a presentation. A couple bucks on cdr cards, and an hour or so of time presenting could land a $50-100/mo customer. I'm talking about getting medium sized companies to outsource things like databases, email, etc.

If you are targeting the medium-large businesses I can see this working, but not for the smaller ones. Good luck with this though.

Don't waste your time with business card CD's ... they're a waste of money and more of them will end up in the trash than in people's CD-ROMs. The novelty of business card CD's wore off years ago.

It's one thing if you're selling something that would require a CD presentation - like a web designer who wanted to showcase their work. But for a HOSTING company, anything you say would be redundant and frankly a waste of the customer's time. If your web address is on a regular business card they can pull it up in their browser.

And another thing you should know - my wife was a marketing major and states that almost nothing she learned in school is relevant to the web hosting market, or for that matter internet services in general.

Originally posted by hlshosting
Hurray - I have been trying to find these in UK for ages, thanks for the links guys!!

Been around for ages, sell them in Staples, Maplin and many other places, I think even WH Smith sells them.

Originally posted by Indy4
And another thing you should know - my wife was a marketing major and states that almost nothing she learned in school is relevant to the web hosting market, or for that matter internet services in general.

So you are saying that I shouldn't go to my marketing professors for advice?

The way I look at it, if these business and marketting lecturers know so much, why do they do a relatively low paid job in the grand scheme of things when they could be out applying their advice and earning much more if their advice/teachings are as good as they tell us it is? :)

Actually, my marketing professor is a PHD in marketing, and has been in charge of marketing for several very large corporations in India. One of them being the beverage king (I can't remember the name) but they would be like Coke in america, only in India.

In order to be a professor, you need to have a PHD. And I have yet to have a professor here at the University of Minnesota Duluth in the School of Business that has not had at least 10 years real world experience. So I feel that all my business professors have a plethora of information that will help me succeed.

If College professors don't know anything, who then is teaching today's business professionals?

So you are saying that I shouldn't go to my marketing professors for advice?

I wouldn't ... traditional marketing concepts were designed long before the Internet, and it's already been PROVEN that they don't work online.

Case in point: pay per impression advertising. Popup advertising.

Those are basically the web's version of traditional marketing ... hit or miss ... the person may be interested, they may not. The difference on the Internet is that people were so ANNOYED they saw your ad in the first place that they'll refuse to buy even if they WOULD HAVE been interested :P

Paying per click is the only way that REALLY works on the Internet. And there is no equivalent to that in the "dirt world".

Traditional advertising also focuses on branding, and frankly it's been my experience that in web hosting branding doesn't mean a damn thing. Ask anyone who is NOT in the industry to name 5 web hosting companies ... just 5. Most people can only name 5 hosts if they've USED 5 hosts. The rest won't be able to name more than one, and even then they would know nothing about it unless they heard about it from BAD publicity.

One of my big mistakes in my early hosting years is that for some reason I thought everyone I talked to knew as much about the hosting industry as I did. I knew about all of the acquisitions that were going on, who offered what plans, what cusotmers were pissed at what companies, etc. It took me a while to realize that they didn't care, they just wanted their freakin website hosted somewhere where the service wasn't going to go down.

Anyway ... like I said, the business card CD thing is cool if you're an architect or have some other award-winning graphical presentation you want to show to people. But for a web host ... you're selling a parking space. It's up to THEM what they park in it.

Indy4 - Very well put, couldn't have put it better myself. People don't really care who they use, just that people can see their site and their email works, email more-so than website, that's all they care about.

I agree with you to a certain extent, the part about onine marketing. But as I had mentioned, I am starting to market myself LOCALLY. To business & individuals I can meet with face to face. This is where the traditional methods work. Branding works locally. Unless you have found that to not be the case... then what is a good Pay per click service for hitting up local businesses? That really doesnt work when advertising in the offline world.

If College professors don't know anything, who then is teaching today's business professionals?

Ever heard the phrase "those who can't do, teach" ? heh. You're opening up a whole can of worms with that question. I'll try to keep this short (I have trouble with that).

Somewhere around 1996 the Internet started to change the way businesses operate. Yet for some reason they're not teaching it in the college business administration courses. Even today, there are some pretty big companies that are going about their Internet presence totally wrong. Here's an example: State Farm Insurance.

State Farm lost about 500 Million bucks last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. I don't recall if these numbers are exclusive to Florida or are the national figures, but I know there has been talk of them pulling out of Florida. They've already pulled out of a couple of other states.

State Farm's failure to properly embrace the Internet is WHY they are failing. They're a traditional company with traditional marketing plans. They've been around for a while and have some people that have been customers for 50 years or more - and will all be DEAD soon. State Farm has failed to attract the young market - the people that are going to BECOME long term customers, and the reason for this is because of the Internet.

State Farm only hires people with degrees for executive positions. Experience isn't necessary as long as you have a degree, that's "good enough" for them. This is where the problem starts. These morons coming out of college today are *CLUELESS* as to how to run a business in the real world. Why are so many new businesses failing? Why are so many existing long term businesses like State Farm having financial trouble? Because the company has been turned over to people who honestly BELIEVE they know how to run a company.

They don't.

State Farm has agents. You go in, sit down, have a cup of bad coffee, and set up your insurance. The agent pretends to be interested in your personal life, etc. BLAH!!! I don't know about you, but that's not how I want to waste my time.

Geico and Progressive are kicking @$$ because of their web presences. People today don't have the time or more importantly the DESIRE to sit around and shoot the sh-- with an agent. They just want their damn car insurance. 15 - 30 minutes on the Geico or Progressive website and I'm solid. I can do it in my underwear at 3:00 in the morning.

The point I'm trying to make is that the Internet changed EVERYTHING. Anyone who fails to see that shouldn't be running a business. I don't think it's the students OR the professors fault - I just think that the Internet is still "so new" that there isn't anyone out there who has successfully "retired" from the Internet yet and has the other degrees, qualifications, and DESIRE to teach a bunch of college students what they know.

The professor doesn't KNOW he's clueless because he doesn't have the hands-on experience with running a business today, and the students don't know they're clueless because that's all they were taught.

Anyway, so much for keeping this short ... "P

Somewhere around 1996 the Internet started to change the way businesses operate. Yet for some reason they're not teaching it in the college business administration courses.

They never taught "real world" in college business courses even before the internet. For most college grads, you toss out just about everything you learned in school, especially if you go into business for yourself. But even for our web design side of the business, we run as far away from "art school" grads as we can get when looking for new talent.

CD-R Business card are not totally bad. The media should be concentrated to the right business segment. Intially it may be bit tough. But in a long run, it will work out.


Regards

Computers are one of the industries where having a degree will hurt you more than it will help you. The rules are different here and technology changes faster than the rest of the world.

I owned a decent sized computer store once before I got into web hosting. If you sent me a resume and were fresh out of college, you had no chance in getting hired. I needed people with RECENT "real world" experience. The "uneducated" techs knew more because they were in the middle of it ... the "educated" guys were too far behind.

My other former business was the COMPLETE opposite, Corvette restorations. Classic cars don't change - certified mechanics who know classic cars are going to be (for the most part) better than guys who like to take stuff apart in their garage.

So for THAT business you wanted the "educated" employee ... and the "by the book" business and marketing tactics worked for that business. Probably because "the book" was written around the same time as the classic cars were built originally :P

I wouldn't say all people involved with computers who are in college/university don't know as much as someone currently in industry. Heck, I've just graduated with a BSc Honours Degree in a computing subject and I'd like to think I can give 98%-99% of people here a run for their money when it comes to knowing about computers.

If you've stayed involved with the industry and learned about things that AREN'T covered in the course you're probably right.

But if you know NOTHING but the course material, your statement wouldn't hold up. Although someone who knows nothing but the course material would probably think that they knew more than everyone else anyway :)

There is also the "company expense" factor which I didn't mention in my last post, but its true. People with degrees want more money. My position as an employer is if you have a degree, great, congratulations - but if that degree isn't backed up with relevant industry experience you're going to get skipped over for someone with experience whether that person has a degree or not. If I'm going to invest in a person, I want to make sure the person I'm hiring already knows what I want them to do. And typically the people with degrees want a higher salary for the same job than someone without.

If I'm paying someone to get a job done, why should I pay one person more because they have an education than the guy next to them that doesn't? If they're both doing the same job and have the same level of performance, they get paid the same.

The value of a degree or certification in a computer field changes over time too. As new technology emerges, the value of the degree falls. That's why many MCSE's go and get "re certified" - if they got their MCSE 5 years ago, I would have no idea as an employer whether they've kept up on the changes to MS products or not over the last 5 years unless I test them. If I'm going to be testing people anyway, it's an open interview - I'll ask questions that I know you'll need to know the answer to in order to do the job I'm hiring for. If you know them, you're hired ... if you don't, you don't. Same pay whether you have a degree or not.

I'm going to start a new thread with an "employee pay" subject since this one is kinda going a different direction and I'm curious how other people feel.