Hi,
I was wondering what would be some good places to advertise/promote a new business?

Thanks

the best way is to get your site listed with webhosting directories, and of course word of mouth. i find most of my clients have actually gotten to me by word of mouth. one other way that i've found to be effective at times is to also approach web design firms, and try to make a deal with them to use your hosting. even if you have to go for a way lower price, usually they will send you at least a few sites a year.

Overture.com (http://overture.com) is a cheap and effective way to drive targeted visitors to your site. Sport clicking occurs, but if you are spending in the neighborhood of $.05 a click. I think the positive well exceeds the negative. Try them out.

Good luck

Originally posted by TeKiZeRo
Hi,
I was wondering what would be some good places to advertise/promote a new business?

Thanks

I assume you are talking about a hosting bussiness but anyways.
The best way to grow your business is to get referrals. If you check with any of the big hosting companies I am sure you will find that most of there business is from word of mouth. Getting and keeping the first few clients is most important. To get these first clients you need to find your own little niche in the market. The best place to do this is near where you live. Look around; do you have any smaller shopping districts/malls around?

These smaller business and shops are a great place to get clients, make up some flyers or cards and go door to door if you have to. This is how I got started about 4 years ago; I started with designing and hosting a small Antique shop. The Antique shop turned into an Antique Mall with over 300 individual dealers. Not long after that I was hosting more then half of those dealers websites.

Look around in your area, there is bound to be an untapped market there somewhere. It still amazes me how many small business owners are scared to death of the Internet. Make up some small presentation for whom ever you target, know who their competitors are and if they have a website, be prepared. You might even consider offering free hosting to a couple of business. If you do a professional job for these clients I am sure they would have no problem referring people to you. While there are no guarantees this approach can have a big pay off down the road.

With these types of clients you will need to make the site for them, I had about 75 templates made for them to choose from. Most of these clients will need only a few pages so it should not be too labor intensive.

If you have an advertising budget it would be best spent locally until you are well established. Look for any local small business or Tech related magazines or newsletters to place ads in. Be creative; the owner of the Antique mall would have people handing out free large plastic bags with their Logo on them at the entrances of flea markets. It work great, flea markets / Antique collectors.... I am sure you will find something to suit your needs.

Here is a good thread where this was discussed. :)
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62815