So you know nearly everything there is to know about fixing computers. You can build a computer in your sleep and have all the BIOS beep codes committed to memory. Great! Now we need to get some clients. In this article we will be covering various different forms of advertising and their effectiveness.

Mailbox Drops

Mailbox-Drops consist of walking around and dropping flyers into the mailboxes of various homes and businesses. This method works well for freelance computer repair technicians but poorly for new computer builders.

Most marketers will tell you that this method is highly ineffective regardless of what you are offering and that are lucky to get 2% of flyers you dropped turning into any sort of work. In my experiences this is pretty much correct however these percentages can be tweaked a bit to give you a much better return.

• Drop them in wealthy areas
  From my own personal experience, for residential clients, I found that dropping them in the wealthy areas was much more effective than dropping them in middle or lower-class areas. The reason why is that they are often more likely to actually have a computer and are more willing to pay someone to come in and fix it than them spending the time trying to fix it themselves. As a nice side-effect, the wealthy are also more likely to own a business and if they like you, will get you to service their computers at the business as well.
• Get them printed cheap
  When using this method it is always a good idea to keep the printing costs down. As mentioned before, the effectiveness of this method is about 2% so fancy color flyers will not be cost effective. Instead, get some cheap black and white ones printed.
  My flyers cost about 8 cents USD each and if I got 100 of them printed it would cost me $8.00. If two percent of these flyers turned into a job at $50 per hour I would have made $100 for my $8 investment.

• Get Walking
  One reason I like this method is all the walking you do while dropping your flyers into letterboxes. Walking around the rich areas can be interesting while you are mailbox dropping looking at all the nice houses. Also, let’s face it, most computer technicians should probably go for a walk anyway.

Don’t be discouraged if this doesn’t return immediate results. I still get calls from mailbox drops I did a year ago.

Local Newspaper

The local free weekly newspapers are a great place for computer businesses to advertise and perform much better than the statewide or regional newspapers. Although the free weekly ones have a smaller circulation, they stay around the house longer than the daily papers and are usually very cheap to advertise in.

• Tweak your ads
  Try changing your ads every few weeks and see what works the best. Try upgrading to a larger sized ad for a week and see if the increase in calls is worth the price of the larger sized ad.

  Try changing the colors of your ad and see which stands out the most. If all the other ads around your ad are white with black text, try making yours with a black background with white text.

• Cycle the Areas your ads go to
  Most local newspapers allow you to specify which group of suburbs your ads will be in so cycle the areas your ads show up in every now and then. You may find that there are more businesses in certain areas and the wealthy home users are more likely to call you than the working class areas.