Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Reseller Hosting : Advertising Methods - Yellow Pages?

[MadMax82]

Ok it is that time of the year around here where the yellow pages folks are pounding down our doors trying to sell us ads. This past year we passed on the ads since they were so expensive. My question to y'all is have any of you had good or bad experiences advertising your services this way? They are talking $200-300 per MONTH for an ad. I can't help but wonder if that money could be better spent on the net but we certainly could use the local market as well. Ideas/comments?

[miami_g]

The yellow pages is a waste of money. this is our personal experience and similar for most of my business relations. remember they are comission driven sales-as such they will promise you 'the phone will be ringing', but it wont.
this tactic was recently used on one friend who fell for it. Is the pnone ringing? NO.......and it wont. save your money and spend the 200/month on a good affilaite program like cj etc...

[KDAWebServices]

I know several people with ads in the yellow pages in the UK and they get lots of people phoning them, the only thing is these people are trying to sell them something and not wanting to buy something.

[akashik]

I suppose if we were all a different business it might work better. If I'm looking for a plumber, or an electrician I'll grab the yellow pages before I go looking online. If I'm looking for hosting, or an ISP I'll be online checking them out. I tried a bit of local advertising a while ago to get some design work... Lots of trouble for little result, and the resulting clients I did get proved to be some of the most difficult I've ever had *lol*

Greg Moore

[MadMax82]

I am just trying to find a way to reach the local market. We are located in a city that has a population of almost 100,000 but is quite underdeveloped when it comes to the net. I should mention we are designers who recently got into the hosting market as a result of customer demand. So some of the clients we are trying to reach are not web savvy at all. We do well on the net in terms of clients but the local market seems hit and miss as most people do not know we exist! Course we do not have the time or manpower to send out sales teams either <grin>. We have also considered focused direct mail but that is also expensive even though we can advertise both design and hosting.

[akashik]

*just thinking*

I know a company locally here that put up posters around the CBD in places like the local shopping center etc. It's not too large around here either (around 40 000 or so). I can't say how well it worked but a lot of people must have seen them, and at the very least put the company name into their heads. They went for a nice glossy, colorful look and it was very noticable when you walked past it.

I suppose it despends on the local laws for poster advertising, but there's probably a noticeboard in your local shopping center. Maybe some local computer stores would allow you to put something in their windows.

Don't know how well that grabs you, but it's a pretty cheap altnernative, and very effective in a small area if it's done correctly. If the budget stretches maybe a letterbox drop with flyers?

# I used to do a little monthy nightclub once and our advertising was totally dependant on poster advertising so I know it does work.

Greg Moore

[MadMax82]

Thanks for the thoughts we are using many of those techniques now and will continue to do so. Problem is there seems to be a big jump from those methods to other more traditional methods (Billboard $500 per month, Radio $300-500 per month, Direct Mailing $1000 for one shot, TV (ha! like we could even look at that!)). So we are simply trying to maximize our ROI given this is a significant jump in our advertising budget. I have heard all sorts of stories of people spending $2-5 grand and getting a whopping 3 clients or so which we would really like to avoid! We are willing to spend the money just want to maximize it and hopefully not learn everything the hard way <grin>.

[Martie]

Hi..Not sure if you have them in your community but we do here in San Antonio.
They are small community papers, and ads are next to nothing to run for a week at a time. The community papers are either delivered or can be picked up at the local small stores, such as 7-11 or Stop-N-Go.
Another possibility is to look around online for your own community and see what they have online...you can probably find lots of free sites to run an ad in, or a biz announcement or something.
Good Luck

[miami_g]

akashik

i had to laugh at your line
"Lots of trouble for little result, and the resulting clients I did get proved to be some of the most difficult I've ever had *lol* "

I thought i was the only one with clients fighting over the color of a hover button--i also had requests to set up shopping carts with 200 items for less than 500$ and by the way they wanted it yesterday. Since then if i have problem prospects like that i dont return requests for info, phone calls etc. life is too short.

MadMax82--stay away from goto.com also its a p******
contest with no winner!

[AppleCider]

Network, network, network! Especially if you're looking for local business. I know it's old-fashioned, but it works!

I got my first few web design clients from people I know, who happened to own small businesses, which is my specialty. They in turn told their friends about me, etc. etc. Very soon I was turning DOWN business (and referring it...another great way to network) because of time constraints.

Also, you might want to check with your local chamber of commerce to see if they have any programs for small businesses. And your local paper for business meetings, business-related organizations, etc. Join them, make friends, and talk.

Big advertising bucks don't always mean big results, especially for an online business trying to get local clients.

[ck]

Since we're on the topic of advertising, anyone tried out micro$oft's bcentral.com service for advertising? I'm sort of tempted to try them out for a month but am worried that they might just fill my impressions with remaining inventory from their linkexchange sites...

any advice would be greatly appreciated

[MadMax82]

We have used them and had a clickthrough rate of .2%. Not exactly what I would call overwhelming. Also if you do put a banner on your site in addition to the "business builder" membership you sometimes find competitors banners on your site! It appears some people misclassify themselves on purpose in their system.

[Chicken]

Heh, that is something you have to watch with those banner exchanges. Kinda distracting for your visitor who is looking at your prices to see a big flashing banner that says:

"Unlimited Space, Unlited Transfer - ONLY $3.99/mo!!!"

DOH!

[ck]

Yeah, i'll give them a miss for the meantime
Thanks

[akashik]

Originally posted by miami_g

I thought i was the only one with clients fighting over the color of a hover button

Oh gawd... don't get me started!! *grin* One of the better examples was a site for some packaging product company who *understandably* needed their logo to be the 'exact' color of their IRL letterheads (not even going to get into RGB Vs CMYK colors).

Anyway I has it exact so posted a demo.. No, it turns out it needs to be a little different. Not lighter, darker, pinker, bluer.... different. Ok, I try again tweaking here and there.... still not quite right. Decided to move some text around and repost it exactly the same (colorwise). *Almost* happy now that the colors were better *Sheesh*

As it turned out after two weeks of fighting over the color of the one graphic for the index page I ran out of time (left the country for 3 months), so I had to can the deal. I can only imagine how long it would have taken!

I checked the site a few months ago just to see if anyone else had picked it up. It's been done *badly* by someone and to the best of my knowledge looks to be using the same colors as the ones I'd been using. - In fact I have a sneaking suspicion the are *my* graphics, altered a little bit. I figure if it helped some poor guy get that site over and done with quicker he can have them *lol*.

On a side note, I read a story a while ago where some guy had to design 57 copies of a site (full site I might add), all the same, but using different color combinations so the client could see them and then choose one. Supposedly she chose 'brown and periwinkle' which was such a foul combination he walked out of the deal and didn't even ask to be paid.

Greg Moore