Okay, so I haven’t had a whole lot of luck attracting new clients lately, so I was thinking about creating a Flyer, and mailing it out to businesses in the area… there are lots of small, DBAs, and Mom & Pop type stores all around me, who might be able to use a website, or some graphics designed or something…
Before I do that, I’m going to re-vamp my website, try to make it more exciting, and show off more of my abilities… which has been kind of hard, since, while its easy for me to create something for someone else, based on what they say they are looking for, I’ve had trouble creating things for myself, since, I guess, I’m not sure what I want (I’m a lousy Client 
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My Site is at http://www.bahamutsoft.com
What I was hoping for (and I may be in the wrong section), is for some tips, thoughts, ideas, examples, or anything that can help get me going… Has anyone tried this technique before? The whole flyer thing? If so, is it a good idea? Did/Does it work? What can/should I do to bring my site to life? And how can I tie it in to the flyer I want to make…
If anyone hs anything that they’d like to share, I’m all ears 
Thanks guys!
I’m thinking of doing some advertising locally too. I’d also be interested to hear what other success people have had advertising. Whether it be online, mail, TV, or any other ads. I have actually been thinking about getting a billboard maybe, but i think it may be too expensive.
Yeldarb I’ve been thinking of getting a billboard too. Cost all depends on where you live. I’m in a fairly small city 80,000 so I could probably put one up on the hwy for $2,000 plus a monthly fee, but if you’re in the big city you’re looking $25,000 + and $800 a month.
SeiferTim, it really isn’t what you know but rather who you know. Open the yellow pages, starting at A and start cold calling. If you know anyone with a business go to them first and have something for them to look at. To this day I’ll still do up layouts with a potential clients logo on them and have a bunch of ideas of how their site will increase their bottom line. If you don’t know anything about sales then go pick up some books.
As for flyers I’ve never done them myself but I have done fax broadcasts and they’ve been pretty successful. The benefit of this is that you’re only contacting businesses and you’ll usually get a 50-100 phone calls for every 1000 faxes granted you have some sort of special and your flyer looks good.Thereare a lot of marketing business that offer these services and prices will vary from one to another.
most of all you should never focus on a single way to advertise, like just dropping flyers around your whole city, that’s not gonna work. the keyword is impact ([size=1]at least thats the term at my unversity, but i guess you know what i mean[/size])
what you have to do is to get that impact as high as possible. If you go for the flyers, do CanandianGuy’s (good) fax broadcast idea as well, plus have some small ads in your local business magazines. let the whole bundle be around for at least a month and then after a little while redo one or two things, repeat the faxing for instance, and a few weeks after that repeat the flyers…([size=1]consider that people will remeber you for the stratgies you used most[/size])
you might think this is too expensive, but the ([size=1]statistically proven[/size]) truth is that any one-track advertising campaign would be the real waste of money, because it rarely even scratches the surface of the consumers attention.
hope you forgive this childish example, but it’s pretty much like you want to impress the girl you love at her birthday: if you hand her a single gift, you’ll be just like everyone else, if you’d be rich you could of course buy her a porsche, that would make a difference, but if you really want to impress her you might simply give her an average gift but also take her out to diner, visit some romantic place and call her the next day…
I am kind of weary about doing a fax broadcast. I hear people complaining about them all the time, because if they don’t want the product, they still have to pay for the paper and ink of the fax that they didn’t ask for. The other ideas are good though.
Yeldarb you have to think that the people complaining about the paper and the ink aren’t the people who are going to call you. Also, you definitely have to cater your flyer for a fax so you don’t use a lot of their ink.
I think protaganist is on the money in terms of trying to advertise on a regular basis.