Market computer company with low/no budget

Why not try youtube videos? You can do those for free if you make them yourself, there are plenty of threads on the WF regarding youtube marketing and even how to rank them!

Essentially, do your KW research for the keywords you want to target using the Google Keyword Planner

If there are no keywords that match your business with decent search volume, try related keywords that might also be searched for by people in need of your services

Use Traffic Travis Free (If you have a PC) to determine the difficulty of RANKING that keyword either for the US, or for norway if you're geotargetting - that will give you a decent idea

Put together a youtube video, include your keyword in your title, description and tags section - also make sure your video FILE NAME matches your keyword. For example, USB-data-recovery.mp4 or recover-lost-usb-data.flv

There's SO much more I could go into, but i'm not going to write a novel in this thread - i'd suggest youtube personally. It's free, and gets a TON of quality relevant traffic

Good luck

Jeff Lenney

Try offering your service for 50% off in return for 3 warm referrals. Satisfied clients and testimonials can be your sales team. Align yourself with related businesses such as local computer stores where people go once their laptop dies and are in need of a service like yours. Find them at the pain point.

Good information about marketing in this post.
Thx

I have owned and run several IT/computer companies in the last decade. So, I'll take a shot at this one..

1.) Try to go "offline" to promote your business as much as possible. I can tell you from experience that marketing a computer company online is VERY, VERY competitive. It's very easy to get lost in the crowd. Here's what worked for me:

Flyers - go to Fiverr and get some good flyers made of your services. Include a discount on the flyer, that requires them hanging on to the flyer to get a discount. Either hit the pavement and pass these flyers around in your local area to as many people as you can, or pay someone to do it for you.

Set a goal to how many flyers you want to pass out per day/week, etc. Soon, you will be able to predict how many service calls you will get in a certain time, based on how many flyers you passed out.

Leave your business cards in local business nearby. Ask them if you can leave some biz cards in exchange for a discount on their computer repairs (if possible). Choose places with lots of "foot traffic so that you get more "hits."

2.) Classified ads. There are TONS of classified sites out there; Craigslist being one. You should list your services and contact info on as many of these sites as you can, that actually get decent traffic (local to you). It may take some time but you can get a few calls if you do it consistently.

3.) Set up a Google Places page for your business, if you haven't already. That was one of the #1 sources of my company's clients before people began to call from referrals. If there aren't a lot of computer repair companies in your local area, that will help increase your visibility in Google's local search.

4.) Hire a SEO company to do the SEO for your website, so that you'll eventually start to pull organic traffic, which will only help increase your possible prospects, some of which will become customers.

5.) Check out Bing/Yahoo ads. Run an ad displaying your services. DON'T USE GOOGLE! Adwords is very, very expensive, and you'll be easily paying $5-$8+ per click for computer repair-related terms. Research the main keywords that describe what you do in your company.

I.e., "computer repair your city," "laptop repair your city," "virus removal your city,", etc.

Then, create an ad using those terms and see how much it costs per click. Play around in there until you can get a decent ad at a low CPC. *Bing/Yahoo usually has $50 in free advertising offers for first timers, which you can find online usually!

6.) Offer your customers a "cash referral bonus" to refer you customers. If you invoice your customers or give them receipts, note on the receipt that they will get $X paid in CASH for every 1 paying customer they refer. That will slowly but surely boost your sales if you satisfy your customers!

7.) Under-promise and over-deliver. I promise this will get you a nice flow of customers, as long as you are reaching enough people and repairing enough computers. When it comes to PC repair, people would rather do business with those whom were referred as trustworthy, because you are dealing with machines that hold a persons' entire private life, in most cases.

Go out of the way to blow your customers expectations out of the water, and you'll be rewarded with a good reputation--that goes a looooooong way.

Hope that helps!

I had a wealthy friend once, and he told me to literally hit the streets to make crazy money.

It worked for him, he's successful, and he gives that advice.

What he said to do:
1) Make a formal list of services you offer on a piece of paper.
2) Visit local businesses. Introduce yourself. Tell them you're a local business who offers XYZ services, and give them the paper. Don't be too long winded, just make sure to deliver your paper of offered services and leave a good impression.



I never took him up on the advice, but I hope SOMEBODY does. (Guy had lots of money, and was a very successful entrepreneur).

PS: Normally I hate leaving just third hand advice, but I know the guy was legit and knew how to make money with business. Also, I think this method might work particularly well for your business model...

And at the end of the day, what do you have to lose?

A few hours of your time to hit up some prospects?



Food for thought.

Some awesome info here!

I should mention that I've tried the flyers thing before, and it have worked well for my computer repair company. Not so well for my data recovery company, though. I should keep doing it, and doing it more, though.. I kinda suck at keeping at things.

Oh, several of those services I haven't even thought of offering, I've just offered computer services in general. I should make a list or something..