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Best Ways to Advertise or Marketing Online

signsvisual

New Member
Hello all. I have a small sign company in NYC and we do a lot of online advertising and digital marketing to acquire new leads. I am trying to gauge if google adwords is still worth it because the costs have increased greatly and the competition is very stiff. What are some recommendations you may have for alternate marketing methods other than google advertising?>
 

CanuckSigns

Active Member
It depends on what you are trying to sell and to whom. We created a website and found completely by accident that one of our products is a bit of a niche market, and we get 6-8 quote requests a day for it without spending a cent in marketing.

However, be warned, selling custom products online is a double edged sword, one one had the extra income is nice, bit dealing with the assault of dumb questions and endless emails is very taxing on your sanity.
 

signsvisual

New Member
Thanks for the reply. Well mostly trying to advertise for corporate interior signs as that is a big market here in NYC. But it is challenging as everything in terms of advertising is consolidated to google. Gone are yellowpages, msn, yahoo, even yelp. So how to best navigate these unpredictable waters?
 

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
I did a decent amount of Google Adwords ads. The platform can be quite complicated to use and setup target audience and times. I only showed my ads during business hours...I didn't want some buffoon clicking my ad on a Saturday and costing me $10 for some lame lead. The ads DO generate calls but from best I can tell, the calls I was getting wouldn't turn as well as organic calls. The side effect of my spending was that it bumped up my local free Google Business Listing higher in ranks which was a HUGE help. I have 5 different business listings / names covering my service area, and this outcome pretty much played out the same for each location.

So the $$ I spend didn't directly give me good leads but in the end helped me indirectly with a higher ranking.
 

CanuckSigns

Active Member
Thanks for the reply. Well mostly trying to advertise for corporate interior signs as that is a big market here in NYC. But it is challenging as everything in terms of advertising is consolidated to google. Gone are yellowpages, msn, yahoo, even yelp. So how to best navigate these unpredictable waters?

If you are looking to market a single product, I would put some money into SEO on your website, find out what terms people use when searching for that item and tune your site to cater to those terms. AdWords have their place, but most people skip right over the AdWords results in a search, myself included.
 

Saturn

Aging Member
This may not apply as well to your specific market/service, but for any clients that may have an Instagram presence you definitely should be following, liking, and commenting positively on their posts/feed. Where else can you give a "handshake and business card" to an unlimited number of prospective customers before even crawling out of bed. Aside from the rich and famous, most small, or even larger, businesses and business owners pay close attention to any Facebook/Instagram activity, and it can really make it easier for them to choose which printer/sign shop to go with.

Make an Instagram "business" account and post a few photos of your recent projects, then just start liking and following every possible potential local client. You would be shocked how many people make a decision based on what they saw on there. You don't need to follow anyone except leads, that's the beauty of it I think people overlook when coming at it from a business perspective.

Great way to have a dead simple portfolio of projects available online, while potentially grabbing a captive audience at the same time.

No I don't work for Instagram... :p

I will also give a big thumbs-up to taking a few months or a year to run Google ads. It really is the new yellow pages, so any way you can scramble ahead of everyone else will only help in the long term. I don't use it all the time, but I do feel that it's important that a small business do it a few times, especially when initially trying to build initial visibility.
 
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