How Do You Market Your Website Design Service to the local Business

Well, on the low end (cost-wise), you have hand-delivered business cards, small mailings, cold calls, bench advertising, seo for local search, flyers in local businesses, community bulletin boards, youth league sponsorships, small newspaper ads, restaurant placemat advertising, etc.

On the high end, you have large mailings, billboards, television, radio, large newspaper ads, etc.

There are many other ways to market to local businesses, but hopefully this will point you in the right direction.

Locally, I only market mine by attending the local Chamber of Commerce meetings. Normally, you first have to be a member of your local Chamber of Commerce but once you are then you can attend meetings where other local business owners attend.

Local business is all about networking. People like to meet you face-to-face so they can get a better impression of your talents, abilities, etc.

Firstly, you have to attend as many local networking events as possible. meetup.com and biznik.com are good resources that offer several local events, depending on your location. Note that with local networking, it is very important to keep at it. You should not expect any clients during the first few meetings. You have to keep coming back to a variety of events, and sometimes see people multiple times, before you will become trustworthy. A successful networker from the real estate business told me that it took him 14 months before getting the first customer from a networking event. For web design, it shouldn't take that long, but it definitely takes a bit of time.

Because web design is relatively competitive, it might be easier to start if you target a certain segment, e.g. web design for real estate professionals, finance professionals, health professionals, etc. You might be able to get a targeted customer base faster that way locally.

If you are simply doing web design services, you also don't need to be restricted to only local advertising. It is just as easy to do web design for others across the world. In those cases, you want to ensure you have good SEO for landing pages and show a variety of portfolio on your website.

Go after ones that don't have a website. Brand new businesses are a good target but there are establish businesses that also don't have a web presence.

I was lucky in my local area. Everyone who was selling "website services" had outdated portfolios. I put on a Chamber meeting and talked about stuff they had no clue about. It piqued their interest because I was an "expert" in their minds. I showed a simple flash site that literally drew an "oooo" from the small audience.

I damn near took over every site in my small town (less than 10,000 citizens) and had them rocking with simple wordpress sites... Offer a solution for those who are seeking one and you will make a sale.