Online/Offline

[GavinR]

Which do you think will get me more work ?. As you know I am a graphic design for logo's ect so I was wondering should I market myself online or offline. I want to spend my money on setting up in one specific feild to begin with so Online that could be by adding myself to Yell.com Ect offline It can be with what we actually supply lol Business cards Ect.

While With BlueJayDesigns we did it all online and we were rather busy but I think offline would be better as I can actually meet them Face to Face. Although ATM i am getting 3-4 Emails a day asking about our services only 1-2 of them will actually go ahead and order. I am also looking to get a website created but have bought the domain Design-Right.co.uk
Any Help will be very welcome:001_rolleyes:

 

[Kasumi]

I think you should be looking to market both online and offline, as their is benefits for both.

Think carefully about any form of advertsing, SEO or online marketing that you undertake and write a marketing plan including budget before you begin any of them.

 

[stuarty]

1. Which do you think will get me more work ?.
2. As you know I am a graphic design for logo's ect so I was wondering should I market myself online or offline.
3. I want to spend my money on ...Yell.com
4. I can actually meet them Face to Face. Although ATM i am getting 3-4 Emails a day asking about our services only
5. 1-2 of them will actually go ahead and order.

1. Online without question
2. Do both - spend more online though
3. Please do not use yell.com it is a complete waste of money. See this thread post number 9 (link below) For what you spend on Yell.com you could get a new website. Total rip off is yell.

http://www.scottishbusinessforums.c...rch-engine-optimization-check-my-website.html

4. You can meet people face to face too.
5. That's 50% success so run with it mate.That's a great conversion.

We have logo design services but I'm phasing them out. I could pass work your way. We held the #1 position for logo design for years and the business was great from the web. Much more than offline ever got us. Approx 65-70% of business came from online based on the same spend.

Strangely enough we linked to our old archive site just last week and Google indexed our logo pages again and we're getting 4-5 enquiries a day for logos. We're just passing them on to folk.

 

[GavinR]

Hi

That would be great drop me a email or a phone call and we can have a better chat email is in Sig and I have pm'd you my Number :001_cool:

Thanks for all your tips also

 

[StevenAitchison]

Hi Gavin

Just wanted to chip in here if I may.

Without question I would concentrate 90% of your marketing efforts online.

Make sure you have a marketing plan and budget in place before you start doing anything or speaking to anyone.

There are some great ways to market yourself online and most of them you can do for the cost of your time or pay someone else to do them quite cheaply for you. Here is what I would recommend for you:

A website: You will need a website to showcase some of your work. You can do this yourself using a template and customise it yourself, or get someone else to customise it.

Email Marketing: Whenever you set up your website, have an email capture system in place and offer prospective subscribers to your site something of value in exchange for their email address. I would recommend Aweber as a service for this.

Video Marketing: Get a video put together of some of your work, put some music in the background and have a link to your website inside the video. Very easy to do with software like Camtasia Studio or a free tool like Animoto (you can make a 30 second video for free). The post your video with links etc to Youtube and other video sharing sites, it's surprising how much traffic you can get through youtube. Check out this video I made Power of Binaural Beats

A Blog: I would say this is a must nowadays, not only to get you known but because Google loves wordpress blogs and you will be ranked very quickly with any post you make. You can outsource the writing to someone else if you don't want to do it yourself, someplace to look would be www.elance.com

Social Media Marketing: There are too many sites to mention here but the main ones would be to get a Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon account and use sites like hubpages, squiddo, blogger, wordpress for linking back to your main site.

This may all seem like a lot of hard work but as I said you can outsource it all for a few hundred pounds per month plus set up fees etc. Or you can spend a few weeks getting to learn everything above and then spending a few hours per week working on your marketing.

I would say you will get great results from online marketing and all of it is measureable. You will be able to track your ROI much better than putting an ad in Yellow Pages or your Local papers and it will be a hell of a lot cheaper.

Hope this helps

Steve