Newspaper Advertising.

[PcTek]

Our newspaper has a service index where they list a business card sized ad for $184 that runs for 6 months. So we did that... So far one call, which turned out to be $50.00 service charge. So... maybe newspaper ads work a little bit...
I've gotten so much more in work from just word of mouth... Being nice to people, talking to store owners, passing out cards. (No lie, I actually went to get some pizza for lunch, and saw a new pos system on the floor, I asked the owner who he was getting to install the equipment. I got the job. LOL.)
Amazing...

 

[Bryce W]

The Newspaper is one of my most effective advertising methods. I advertise in the local weekly newspaper that gets handed out/delivered for free which only covers a few suburbs; in the trades or classifieds sections along-side the Lawnmowers, Appliance Repairmen etc...

I have advertised in the statewide newspaper once before and got zero calls from it. I guess the local weekly newspapers are more effective because everyone gets delivered them and being a weekly publication, they sit around the house all week.

 

[tkrabec]

try to find out from people what local adverts they keep around. The longer something is kept around the better chance you have from being called and noticed from that advert.

-- Tim Krabec

 

[Bryce W]

try to find out from people what local adverts they keep around. The longer something is kept around the better chance you have from being called and noticed from that advert.

Yeah, thats probably going to be the best course of action because now that I think of it, I have once advertised in a free monthly publication which gets sent out to a certain community. Never got a single call from it.

I guess that the speed of the publication doesn't guarantee you that people are going to keep it around. Like tkrabec said, ask around and see who keeps what around the house for the longest.

 

[MrMille]

I use Google Ads to get new customers.

I used to pay for a paper (think ebay but hardcopy)
and I ended up spending 1 on advertising and getting 2 dollars back.

 

[Uf-Dah]

Newspapers

I've never had too much luck in the newspapers. There's nothing like meeting people face to face to establish a rapport with them.

 

[greggh]

Ads...

One of the best things for us has been word of mouth from existing customers. Offering discount coupons to existing repeat customers, for every customer they refer to us has been great.

 

[Bryce W]

One of the best things for us has been word of mouth from existing customers. Offering discount coupons to existing repeat customers, for every customer they refer to us has been great.

Excellent tips Greggh. How do you go about tracking this? Do you simply ask the new client who referred them? or is there a specially tagged business card or something?

 

[greggh]

easy...

Excellent tips Greggh. How do you go about tracking this? Do you simply ask the new client who referred them? or is there a specially tagged business card or something?

The last page of our service call paperwork is a page with 2 big coupons on it. That page has the customers # in our CRM system. When they get turned in we can tell who.

 

[Bryce W]

Awsome idea.. Ill have to look into it. What CRM software are you running? Ive been looking for a good one for techies because most of them are very marketing based.

 

[greggh]

Our system is laughable. We are running a highly modified (scripted, macros, custom fields) Goldmine that is still 4.0 from 1996. I am working on replacing it by next year. We will probably end up with Microsoft CRM and Microsofts Accounting GP. So they integrate well.