I need help marketing my computer repair service

My dad runs a computer repair business in a small town (under 20K in population) and he asked me the same question a couple of years ago. First, don't stop with Facebook Marketing. It may not bring in a massive amount of people, but many of the 45+ age group are joining every day and using it quite a bit. You will get new customers from it and it's very cost effective.

Some of the things that worked for my dad included:

An ad/listing in the yellow pages - Yes, it's an out-dated strategy, but many retirees and older people just getting started with computers still use the yellow pages to find things they need. My dad gets a handful of new customers every month from this advertisement alone.

Local newspaper - Put an ad in the small biz section of your local newspaper. Same thought process as the yellow pages and quite successful for my dad. Usually, just one paying customer will take care of the cost of this for about a year.

Craigslist/Backpage - You can place regular ads in the small biz section on Craigslist and Backpage for the areas you serve. One or two ads a week is plenty.

Blog - Add a blog to your website and blog daily about ANYTHING. It doesn't have to be computer related. Your customers, their friends and potential customers will start following what you write and when they run into computer issues, you will be fresh in their mind. This won't bring in leads immediately, but will help bring in leads for the long term.

Contact small businesses - Many small businesses cannot afford to keep someone on staff to deal with their computer issues. If you can get a few local businesses to give you a regular contract with a monthly retainer for maintenance, you can get a ton of work from this. It will lead to you doing work for their employees and handling all their computer issues. My dad did this and gets a free golf membership every summer on trade, along with a ton of business from a few other local businesses.

Chamber of Commerce Meetings - Attend your local Chamber of Commerce meetings monthly. This is a great time to network and you never know who might need your services.

Get involved in the community - If you go to church, you can start attending regular social events for networking. If not, pick something like a golf league, bowling league or anything else you enjoy and get involved. As people get to know you, they will come to you for their computer repair work and send you referrals, as well.

Hope these ideas help.

Benjamin Ehinger

Create a few videos and publish them on YouTube or similar sites.
Take a look over : .

Yes, it sounds like you can probably reach them better by sending them a Telegram, because we all know that those ancient 45 year old seniors don't use Facebook.

:rolleyes:

But seriously, if you truly believe your assumption, then maybe you can commission someone to make phone calls locally in exchange for a percentage of sales.

I recommend creating and branding at least ten (10) authority websites and then geo-targeting them to the location(s) that you are targeting. Then go to Fiverr and find a gig to provide some backlinks to your web properties. Even low quality links work.

I posted a list on another thread of the authority sites that I have been having success with:

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...e-traffic.html

I have been able to get these ranked on the 1st page of Google in less than two weeks with blog commenting backlinks.

45+ year olds use Google and will find your business.

Start listing building.

Send out postcards or go door to door with fliers.

Offer tips/tricks via your newsletter and you'll be top of mind when they need a "computer expert". Be sure you're not giving the farm away but offer good info and specials like "$45 computer tune-ups", etc....


Start building your list.

Do they have to come to you or do you do home visits? I think
that your approach would change accordingly. I did this business
for a couple years and I used flyers and you'll find that if you are
good at what you do word of mouth would eventually take over.

The irony of advertising your services online is that when their
computers are down they may not be able to go online.

-Ray Edwards

Facebook ads - target only your local area
Facebook fan page - use facebook ads to drive local traffic to your page. Provide free advice on the fan page and see how much new business you will get.
Twitter - do a search to find local tweets in your area speaking of computer problems. Tweet them back, tell them that you can help them!
Back page - post your ad daily in your local area
Craigslist - same as above
Create a top 10 tips ebook to make your PC run faster. Give it away for free and grow your list, then promote to them with special offers etc..

Good luck!

I would run ads in local publications, with the premise of:

"Is Your Computer Slow, Dumb, Or Even... Dead? Get This Free Report On How To Fix It!"

Offer the free report, do direct mail to them, follow up on them each month, and offer your services in each follow up letter.

If that's your website in your contact info, then it could use more visual cues. Add images that show your repair space so people will be assured that a) their computers are safe, and b) that customers are safe dealing with you.

Your website appears unfinished. You still have Wordpress titles on your home page widgets! "Home Page Widget," etc. Your site could have a bit more graphical information, like the logos of products you can work on - anything to demonstrate that you'll still be in business tomorrow.

After all, if you get the eyes on your site, you need to show them something that assures them. Not just random clip art (though granted, a lot of Computer Repair sites do this).

Is there anything you can do to drum up business besides waiting for customers computer's to fail? Teach free computer classes at the library, or offer a free introductory service for small businesses? Then if they want to call on you in the future, offer 2 discount packages or coupons - one for them and one for anyone they may know who might need computer repair.

Good luck!

You say that you're 45-year-old+ age group isn't on Facebook, however I have a client who runs a very similar business to yourself and get substantial business from facebook group interactions. (Not so good on the paid facebook advertising site however).

It comes down to marketing 101, go to where your target market hang out and become a voice that they can hear. Ask yourself what groups your ideal prospect would be involved with (on Facebook as well). Don't go in there pitching, become a trusted adviser with valuable knowledge (and let them know what you do as part of the interaction)

Lots of good stuff here - I should however clarify a few things.

First of all - I know 45 year old people are also using Facebook.. It's just that I've done quite a lot of Facebook marketing and my experience is that people that are 45-50 years old and older tend to click away not knowing what they're doing, or they don't click at all. Off course, some do, but a lot of the don't. I'm not even joking, 99% of my customers have no idea what they are doing, they even ask me if the will lose their Facebook friends when I reinstall Windows for them..

I live in Norway, so Craigslist/similar sites are out of the question.

My business is very local, so videos wouldn't give much of a result, I'm afraid, and people are simply not using the search engines to find services like mine. "computer help [town]" - the volume is simply not there. Ehinger wrote about a small town with 20K in population- that's not exactly big here in Norway either, but I cover 3 towns and they have a total population of about 40K, and the geographical area is huge. I do home visits so sometimes it's a half an hour drive or even more one way. I to charge for it though.

I'm running an ad in a local newspaper but without result, but that's probably because the paper only have about 4500 readers. Newspaper ads are very expensive in Norway; the paper with 4500 readers charge me about $100 for each print and tax on top of that. I have the only ad on the back page though. To run an ad in a newspaper with 30K readers would cost thousands of dollars a month.

The blog idea was a good one, I'll be sure to try that. I don't have time to sit around and write every day, but it would probably be possible to use some kind of script or plugin to do postings automatically (but off course written by me). Scheduled postings. Not sure if it would do a lot for my local business, but I also provide other services like webdesign etc, and that doesn't have to be local. I already have a website anyway, so wouldn't be too much of a job to implement a blog in there. (I also have a business page on Facebook)

I've actually just started contacting small businesses, but the problem here is that most of the "businesses" around here are farms.. Haha But I'm gonna keep calling and then we'll see what happens.

The social event thing was a good one too - too bad I'm not too social myself, but I'll work on that one too (not being a social guy is my main reason for working on my own)

Oh, the idea to make someone do calls for me is briliant! I've actually contacted several affiliate networks to get affiliates working for me but they didn't want me as their customer because my company is too small. 1 km from me there's a school with 1500 students - I'm sure I can get some of them to work for me. Hmm what an awesome idea. I can see loads and loads of uses for this one..

The fliers thing I've already tried. It's very inefficient and time consuming. Scaling up would probably work though, putting fliers in thousands of mailboxes, but that costs a *lot*, I've checked. The Norwegian postal service actually offers this as a service - just pay them, and they will print AND send out the fliers. Costs over a dollar a piece though.

About my site - that's not the main site for my business, I have another one that looks a little better.. I'll be sure to add more images and graphical info, though. Good idea!

The coupon thing for businesses is a good idea too - when I started cold calling I actually offered 30% discount on the first job, so coupons would be a good idea!

Technically, I didn't say 45-year-olds aren't on Facebook, I only said that my customers aren't - or at least a lot of them.


Lotsa good stuff here! I'll get to work as soon as I get up tomorrow morning. (It's 1:30 in the morning here.. )

Thanks everyone!

Your press release will probably stink. Too many really bad writers write them and expect good results, chances are you will just write a crappy article, submit it and get 0 results. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news there. I get a retired journo to write mine and 90% of the time they go viral, and just blow my mind the results.

I would go with local flyers, but your headline should be strong and this will cost anywhere form $300 to a few grand to distribute. Or even try a bit of local PPC or do deals with companies in niches that need your service and pay them to advertise you stuff. Good luck.

I haven't made a press release yet, and I happen to be a decent writer.

Don't forget business cards. If you eat out then leave the card with the tip. Make it entertaining and impressionable. I wound create some funny repair videos along with the serious ones.

I don't know if this would be legal BUT if I lived near an active volcano like Hawaii I would have a hard drive destruction business where I would show video proof of the hard drive being cast into lake of fire. LOL

you may just need to think outside of the box a bit.

I mean you could just do every keyword available, and give it time.

But you could also rank a site for say your cities weather, etc and advertise your services on it.

There would be a lot more traffic for terms like that and you know these people live in your area, it's like a billboard by the highway.

Look for where conversations are taking place in your market! When you find a conversation you can politely step in and share your value! Keep posting links with your value and soon you will start to develop an everyday traffic supply PLUS a lot of your content will start to get indexed and you will get a extra bonus of traffic.

If you can help provide value in each of the networks below say at least a couple of post a day in about 30 to 60 days you should be in a sweet spot!

YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, Craigslist, Blogs, Forums, Amazon, Pinterest, Flickr, eHow, Redit, Yahoo Answers, Quora, LinkedIn, Dailymotion, MySpace, Scribd, HubPAges, Squidoo, Tumblr