Website Design Offline Marketing Strategies

Hey there Stephan,

When I first got into web design years ago I started with talking to family and friends and passing out a good deal of business cards, and I was also active online in a few forums and managed to do a small project for someone which lead to referrals and then more referrals.

(Actually, I should backup a bit and say I did a few small jobs for free to start building a portfolio.)

One of the best things I think you can do to promote just about any business, is to first ask yourself "Who do I know that already does business with my ideal customer?"

Now of course you need to know who your ideal customer is before you can do this, but lets say for example you want to work only with small business owners in your town (as opposed to say designing only for restaurants across the country). Who else can you think of that already does business with these small business owners?

How about local accountants or office supply companies? These folks already have established relationships with local business owners, so if you can talk to them about promoting you to their clients, maybe an endorsed mailing or something of the sort, this can be a great way to get your business started fast. At this point you don't have a list of your own otherwise you could offer to do a j/v and promote them to your list while they promote you to theirs, but you could offer them a commission or finders fee for each client they send your way.

I probably would stay away from advertising in a newspaper, because unless it's a business newspaper with qualified prospects reading it, a lot of uninterested eyeballs will be seeing it in just the local daily news. I'd also suggest promoting a free offer of some kind (ebook, dvd, online video) in order to get them to your website and ideally, signed up for your mailing list. Placing an ad where you just list your services and contact info will most likely be a waste of time.

Hope this helps some!

Steve

Happy to help some Stephen, and kudos to Andrea for the excellent suggestions too!

So very true and something almost all web designers overlook!

Remember that 99% of business owners don't care about what programs or technologies you use to create a site, what they care about is getting more business and increasing their profitability. Show them how you can help them with these things and you're already much more valuable to them than someone who can just code a pretty, standards compliant website for them.

Cheers,

Steve