Marketing Strategies

[cayden9598]

Hello,
I'm building a web development business plan and I'm starting to think about the marketing it. That is, in order to get my business up and running, I'm going to have to market myself. So I've got questions:

What kind of agencies should I be looking for?
What's the most cost effective way to marketing myself?
How can I research marketing agents to see who's got the best success records?
Does anybody have any good answers to these questions, or just addition advice?

[harry]

A short and sweet answer "SEO" concentrate on Search Engine Optimization, thats all....

What kind of agencies should I be looking for?

*) No agency, you are the only agent for your success.

What's the most cost effective way to marketing myself?

*) Most cost effective way but requires hard work and some patience.

All the best.....

[Administrator]

Its really difficult to get big contracts by online marketing as the online customer has many many cheap options available while searching on google so your best option would be to advertise in local market.

Get some sales agents on commission basis and ask them to move in local industries to get some contracts. Pay some commission to them per sale. Advertise in local newspapers or magazines and distribute hard copies of Brochures describing your service and etc...

Its better to focus on local market initially as online inquiries that will start coming will make you work with very less profit margin and once you get stuck with those then you wont get any time to focus on taking your business on a better level with high profit margin.

[paul]

Yes the local marketing can be right approach for testing markets and products for potential, choose a niche, and promote the targeted customers, you can also go on for affiliate marketing for your few leading product/services depending on market response you get.

[kev woodman]

Getting Web design or development business via search engines is really hard these days. There's no shortage of people claiming to be designers and you tend ot find that smaller clients go for someone they know while larger clients go for established agencies.

It's important to play to your strengths so first off get a good portfolio of your work and then if you specialise in design try approaching some established Web design firms and see if you can get some contract work, if you're more into development then try appraoching designers who may be able to extend their own services by working with you. It's a lot easier to build up a client base working for/with others than on your own. Then when you are ready to go solo you'll have a nice group of contacts to take with you.

[harry]

I second Mr kev,
If your are newbie and don't have much contacts and references then you should work with a reputed firm for nuts, try to build contact from their and study ups and downs of market, once you are confident and have handful of supporters then you can go for independent business...

[paul]

Kev,
Also, Web designing doesn’t pay well what I would suggest they should look ways for earning from various sources ( for example a designer can start earning through ad network, reselling hosting, domain name etc ) or you should make your site perpetual.
However no one can ensure you a positive online experience from the end users coz the multifaceted nature of the Internet, for example what work for some one may or may not work for you.

[kev woodman]

Web designing pays ok here Paul

It depends on the client/job obviously but as a firm we charge a decent whack and I can't complain about my wages (well I can - and do but realistically they aren't too shabby ).

[Administrator]

Yours is an established firm but would you think of starting a new firm now ?

I don't think its as easy now as it use to be before 4 - 5 years. Now every boy getting out of school starts his own company ( one man army ) so one should know that at least few of those are working hard and they have better luck as well

[kev woodman]

I wouldn't personally no which was my origianl point - it's best to try working with an established firm first.

On the plus side we get quite a few redesigns from the victims...err I mean customers of the 'got-a-pirated-copy-of-dreamweaver-look-at-me-I'm-a-web-designer' crowd.

[ouahabix]

You can try the OLD-NEW methods like PTC sites and PTP , and there are full of sites that sent you thouasands of visitors just signing up with them , that's their job , the Paid To Promote , and to have additional visitors , you have two options either you surf their links to get credited and I don't recommend that because you'll get plenty of worms and adwares , and the second option is to pay them a very low rates to have may be a 20000 visitor , and here is just one that I've tried :
dxptp.com/ptp.php?usr=the_netvoice //followed with my ref
and here is a second good one:
paypromote.com/ads.php?usr=the_netvoice
And just google and , you'll find hundreds or thousands of them , this way be sure that your name will be mentioned sooner or later , and this way you avoid sending spamms without knowing you do! Since the visitors will choose to visit your links because they'll get paid for.

A good strategy too is to contact, site's ADMINs and exchange with them banners and links , just gain friends and enjoy your online JOB.