How do you market your business

[Owen wp]

Morning All,

In response o the Business on the Up and Up thread.

I thought I'd enquire as to what marketing techniques people are using.

Personally I rely on word of mouth and some finely targetted direct mail campaigns and find that brings in just enough work (I'm employeed full-time and don't have time for too much freelance). But what other methods are employeed and what kinda success are you getting from them?

Cheers,

O.

[Loyal Rogue]

Mostly word of mouth but we also generate quite a bit of work thru networking with other business owners.
When business was slow last year we did employed a few outside sales associates who worked strictly on commission.
Luckily that isn't the case anymore but only God knows where we'll be as an industry in 6 months time...

[aversion]

We've never done anything active, word of mouth seems to be the only way we get busines. We do have a partnership with a consulting company that actively draws in a lot of clients though, mainly through personal contacts.

[jaybirch]

I'm in no way in favour of designing to win awards, but if you pick up a few awards and get a few mentions on some of the well visited link sites, it can really boost the amount of leads you get. You'd be surpised how many potential clients are lurking around flashkit and other well know flash sites.

Also getting chatting to other designers/design companies can often lead to work and vice versa for them.

[flipshark]

Word of mouth usually proves to be the most successful. I have gotten most of my work from friends of a friend. Or someone who has heard of me from somewhere.

Another idea I have been using is eBay. I do a lot of programming not design. So basically what I do is buy various scripts with resale rights, resell them for next to nothing, than include a "need this script customized or need this script installed go to mywebsite" in the zip file

I sell maybe 200 scripts per month at about $1 each. However I get maybe 30 customization/install jobs at $10-$100 per month from this.

I'd imagine the same thing would work for a designer. Buy templates with resale rights, then include "looking for a custom design job go to Owen wp"

It may work.

[Owen wp]

Originally posted by flipshark
I'd imagine the same thing would work for a designer. Buy templates with resale rights, then include "looking for a custom design job go to Owen wp"

It may work.

That's a really interesting concept. Has anyone else used this approach effectively?

[flipshark]

Originally posted by Owen wp
That's a really interesting concept. Has anyone else used this approach effectively?

Glad you like it. I'd assume if it works for programming it should work for design.

[PCRIDE]

stand on the corner with a sign, with your domain on it, people will be curious and want to visit your site...

word of mouth is very powerful..

don't bother with the paperd



shhh!!

[JabezStone]

PCRIDE,

Please take of your CapsLock... it looks like you're shouting...

Please read... http://www.onlinenetiquette.com/courtesy1.html