What "paid" marketing have you done recently?

[David Molnar]

Curious if anyone had success with a paid marketing campaign like either mailers, fb ads, anything else?

 

[Diggs]

I maintain a small ad in the professional section of the local papers around here. I'm rural and some still rely on the paper. I do get customers that mention they saw my ad in the paper. Else it's all about SEO.

 

[Joep]

Define paid. I did not invest money, but I invest time. I visit a couple of forums on a regular basis, tweet a bit, post a bit on FB and do a video every now and then. YT drives about 10% of traffic to my website, so that's more than any add ever got me. Videos are simple screen recordings with captions + music from the free YT library. Takes an hour to 2 from recording to actual upload.

In my experience it's results are better than paid adds and all that. Years ago I did spent money on ad-sense, yes it got me visitors (some), not sales. I even advertised in real paper magazines, with coupons and all that, coupons were used zero times.

 

[Big Jim]

Define paid. I did not invest money, but I invest time. I visit a couple of forums on a regular basis, tweet a bit, post a bit on FB and do a video every now and then. YT drives about 10% of traffic to my website, so that's more than any add ever got me. Videos are simple screen recordings with captions + music from the free YT library. Takes an hour to 2 from recording to actual upload.

In my experience it's results are better than paid adds and all that. Years ago I did spent money on ad-sense, yes it got me visitors (some), not sales. I even advertised in real paper magazines, with coupons and all that, coupons were used zero times.

yeh I had no interest with coupons either.

I have even been asked for a raffle prize donation in the past, I donated a full PC service which we charge £85 for and it was never redeemed. Just recently done the same, will see if that gets redeemed.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I haven't paid for marketing of any sort in a decade, every attempt I made before that ended in failure. I've lost 10s of thousands of dollars and gotten zero clients out of it.

But I'm going to have to do something again, because my sales pipeline is drying up.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Direct targeted mailers to business parks/professional centers/business corridors.
BNI (quite successful, my colleague has been in his chapters for over 15 years. I belonged to another chapter for about 10 years, my last year was as president of the chapter). I know BNI may not be under the category you intend in the post..but to me it is direct, targeted, paid. (as well as manual effort).
Chamber events..also IMO paid and direct/targeted...granted..manual effort too.
You know those ball league fields some towns have? Little league/soft ball? Many of them allow paid sponsorship business signs to be made and hung on the fences. Did that for many years. I think it's good to help with getting the name out in the community, brand recognition. Takes time...but helps your name become recognized around town.

 

[Nathan Igo]

I recently had some business cards printed up on poker chips by a client to be handed out by another clients golf course and that brought a ton of business. The chips were handed out to everyone at the clubhouse when they arrived to be use as ball markers. I got the chips printed cheap because they are a client and the chips in the clubhouse basically free, but that may be something to look into to bring in some higher end clients.

 

[PBComputer]

Done a bit adverts is local magazines. Prizes in local events. Nothing at all from it