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  1. #1
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    Nov 2012
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    Do you advertise locally?

    We have been considering placing an advert in our local doorstep booklet (gets sent around to ~20,000) residential and commercial properties every month.

    Does anyone else do anything similar?
    Has it generated much additional interest? (e.g. would you place another ad?)

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by jacent View Post
    We have been considering placing an advert in our local doorstep booklet (gets sent around to ~20,000) residential and commercial properties every month.

    Does anyone else do anything similar?
    Has it generated much additional interest? (e.g. would you place another ad?)
    I'm not sure I would want the average joe to get services with us since we are unmanaged.
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  3. #3
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    We do local but we do computer repair and other such services so we get a big return on that.

    However, if we are talking webhosting, you would really have to fine tune the advertisement or you will come up with a big zero.

  4. #4
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    I advertise on many small, local sites. It's where all my main business for shared and reseller hosting comes from, not your $1 a month for unlimited customer, it's how I get my $10 for 5GB Space and 25GB bandwidth type customer.

    It is inexpensive advertising but very much targetted at the right people.

  5. #5
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    Mar 2012
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    We tried advertising some Webdesign and Hosting etc on our Local county paper but it didn't get any hits, I think people more look online for services that are online.
    Regards,
    Jonathan

  6. #6
    No we do not as we would rather avoid the hassle of accidently targetting and acquiring the wrong customer base.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon N View Post
    No we do not as we would rather avoid the hassle of accidently targetting and acquiring the wrong customer base.
    You are on the wrong site if you worry about attracting the wrong customer base.

  8. #8
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    Mar 2003
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    I ran a ad with a paper based in the Carolina's which gets about 30,000 in circulation for about a month and never got any calls from it.
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  9. #9
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    Ads in local papers are not effective in my experience, it's too general a circulation and not targetted at all.

    If you want brand awareness knowing you wont pick up much if anything then its a good choice if the ad is prominent, if you want customers you need to target specific segments and that is not going to happen going for a 30k circulation that has next to no interest in hosting.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by vHostLayer View Post
    We tried advertising some Webdesign and Hosting etc on our Local county paper but it didn't get any hits, I think people more look online for services that are online.
    Regards,
    Jonathan
    Agree who is looking for hosting is always going to google or from online ads not ofline ones.
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  11. #11
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    Print ads/media, yellow pages, and anything related is all dead. There only good for coupons and weekly grocery specials...and a quick read if your waiting in the doctors office.

    If you have an online service, you need to advertise online.
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  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by vHostLayer View Post
    We tried advertising some Webdesign and Hosting etc on our Local county paper but it didn't get any hits, I think people more look online for services that are online.
    Regards,
    Jonathan
    I would agree with that. The targeting you get online works much better for looking for the right kind of customer, and for the customer, looking online helps them find what they want far better. If you received an advertisement in the mail for web hosting, would you take it seriously? Probably not. I do see a lot of the larger webhosts advertise in magazines. Particularly, computer magazines and business magazines (targeting entrepreneurs and small businesses). That might work better. I've heard that many magazines can run ads in limited geographies so you could, for example, run an ad in say, business week in Los Angeles only. This kind of thing can cut your costs, and you can also use this to your advantage in other marketing by saying things like "as seen in businessweek". Pretty common guerrilla marketing tactics.
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  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by jacent View Post
    Does anyone else do anything similar?
    Has it generated much additional interest? (e.g. would you place another ad?)
    We definitely do, because being local is part of our marketing. We have seen a tremendous response to the fact that we're local, because people like to support a local business. It's been very easy to take business away from cheaper, larger, nationwide providers for this reason. So to that end, we advertise in local publications from time to time. The ROI is good enough that we keep doing it, but the vast majority of our customers are word-of-mouth referrals.
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  14. #14
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    We don't at the moment. Been trying to decide if it's worth it or not.

    Might give it a try soon though.

    Chad
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  15. #15
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    Jun 2012
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    Missouri
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    I think it depends on your target market. If your target market reads the print advertising it might work well. I find it can take several months for print advertising to work. At least that is what I am finding in my local area. Perhaps I am not using the correct keywords though.

  16. #16
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    Jan 2013
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    As many others have stated, it does in fact depend on your target market. In my experience, you need to determine who you are looking for, a specific demographic will definetely reduce your search but will help with getting a response or return on your investement. The kind you are doing is like those annoying tele-marketers, which everyone hangs up on. The best advice is to find companies in the area that are close to your field and approach them about ad placement on their site or go AdSense. I hope this has helped in some way, I look forward to seeing your results!!!!

  17. #17
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by jacent View Post
    We have been considering placing an advert in our local doorstep booklet (gets sent around to ~20,000) residential and commercial properties every month.

    Does anyone else do anything similar?
    Has it generated much additional interest? (e.g. would you place another ad?)
    I find advertising locally much more beneficial than advertising online. People that search online tend to find too many good deals to pass them up, and it leaves the small hosts on the side only to watch the big guys get bigger.

    If you're advertising locally, at least your clients will feel like they have quick access to you and go with your services based on the fact that they're in the same time zone, and that you have a local phone number.

    90% of my business is local.
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  18. #18
    Advertising locally is as important as advertising globally. But the marketing plan has to be very smart and clear. You need to set the targets because not everyone nearby would need hosting, so you need to select the target. Computer shops or web designers can bring lot of referrals through good WOM. All the best

  19. #19
    I think that for a web-hosting business there is no use to advertise on local general newspapers. The publication's target is different from your target audience.
    On the other hand, it might prove to be efficient if you are advertising on a PC or Tech magazine, since the people reading that will be more interested in what you are offering.

  20. #20
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    In my own experience local advertising in newspaper, magazines etc. has poor results. Hosting being an online business I would expect advertising online will delivery better results (even when targeting local customers). What tends to work best for local customers is word of mouth and referrals from existing customers.

  21. #21
    We started our business by providing local hosting, and we usually advertise in different ways, it got us a lot of loyal customers.

  22. #22
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    We find that advertising in the local newspaper to be very efficient, but only for our computer repair side of business. Not too many people are interested in web hosting, even if we try to explain them the benefits of having a website.
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  23. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by firentire View Post
    We find that advertising in the local newspaper to be very efficient, but only for our computer repair side of business. Not too many people are interested in web hosting, even if we try to explain them the benefits of having a website.
    Advertising in the local newspaper sometimes makes little sense, you will need to find the potential customers by face to face introduction, that is our way of business, may not be widely applied.

  24. #24
    Well, there is definitely some types of local advertising that I can agree with are almost completely useless such as Newspapers or Yellow pages. Mostly, because although the web hosting industry is massive most people still don't know what a web hosting provider is or the technical aspects of it all. We have done some local advertising in the form of contacting local businesses and pitching them our managed services.

    If you do advertise local make sure that the solution you are providing is all inclusive, maybe add in some website designing, advertising etc. most of our local clients are really looking for a easy way to get online and by helping them achieve this you usually always end up with a loyal long term client.

    As for paying for print media or even a radio ad, it won't be effective.

    Best regards,
    Sam

  25. #25
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    Jan 2013
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    Australia
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    Quote Originally Posted by SolidShellSecurity View Post
    We do local but we do computer repair and other such services so we get a big return on that.

    However, if we are talking webhosting, you would really have to fine tune the advertisement or you will come up with a big zero.
    As SolidShellSecurity wrote, if you have a larger service offering than hosting, especially if it is "offline" (eg. computer repair, data cabling, mobile phone etc.) then their is no harm in adding hosting to your ads, however to run ads in my area (Australia) is very expensive for the potential return if I had to weigh ROI only on hosting.

    The bonus to running with these "like" services also is that it increases a customers perception of you and allows for value adding.
    For example if I can provide you with data cabling do you also need local server(s), either way do you then also need offsite server(s)/Backup etc.

    We find at least that by bundling our advertising with like services that we offer we get better responses than only displaying one offering (which is different to what we do with a lot of our online stuff).

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