[P&R]

No form of advertising has ever worked for me.

I think the main problem for me is that I live in a technological backwater. This is the North Midlands. It's the pits, literally! Nothing happens here, nothing ever will. It's doom and gloom. As Alexei Sayle used to say, even the rainbows are in black and white around here!

The city of Nottingham, a much more technologically advanced location, is probably just a little too far from home to be of any practical use.

I recently placed a series of ads in the Nottingham Evening Post, all of which brought ZERO telephone enquiries.

My biggest advertising success has been the Yellow Pages. My regular free one-line entry has produced three telephone enquiries in the last few years.

What little work I have had has been all down to word of mouth.

What the **** can I do? I'm almost out on the streets.

Oh - btw, I'm no good at phone sales so please don't suggest that.

[sub]

Network.

However, advertising can and does work, it's how you go about it and who your target market is. Identify your key services and who you think will benefit from them. An ad in the local rag will usually only drum up business from start-ups or wasters. Cold calling is simply not the way to go. Think of inventive ways of getting your company name 'out there'.

Do a bit of P&R! Magazine article contributions, press stunts or anything gimmicky. I've found that a lot of energy and commitment to a chosen concept will reach and impress the right people.

Personally, I'd ditch the advertising for now and work on your business structure and image. What's your USP? Any prospective client that visits your site will lose interest if they can't identify what it is that you do - which I couldn't (didn't want to) on first inspection.

[P&R]

Thanks Sub.

Sorry, you "couldn't" and "didn't want to" what? Can you explain a little more?

I do budget websites for small businesses. Please don't get high-tech on me. You've got to start somewhere! :0)

Thanks

John

[sub]

I meant that your USP (unique selling point) wasn't clear.
And your site didn't make me want to find out more about you.

Not that mine is much better of course, and it is seriously out of date - so you will need to work on getting people to know about you and the best time to do that is when you have a marketable website.

I don't know the North Midlands very well but I can't believe you can't find one of the hundreds of successful creative agencies around. ie You could build relationships with other local agencies to take on the work they don't have the resources to do.

[cjgraphix]

Originally Posted by P&R

I do budget websites

That's the issue right there... You have to work twice as hard for half as much.

As for advertising, I've never done anything but networking, and word of mouth. I would lose the ads, and focus on 'what you do'... make that ever more specific and those jobs will come.

Good luck, keep at it.

[P&R]

Thank you again Sub. I see your points clearly.

For your information, my own website has been redesigned and rebuilt three times this year because my business has changed from solely music production, to video production and then back to building websites. I have spent more time developing other things than concentrating on my own site. Don't we all do that though?

I used to build websites back in the nineties, before I joined the Music Factory and Mastermix Records. I was also involved with printing and graphic design back then. Web design has evolved and I have had to learn a lot of new coding this year Thankfully there are some great tutorials on the web now and CSS is saving the day. There is always much to learn in this job, so I am just trying not to do the proverbial "run before I walk" trick.

I have been doing a lot of experimentation with CSS positioning and Photoshop Slicing for the last few days in preparation for another site I have to do. All has gone much better than expected too so I feel i have made good progress recently. But as you can see from my website, I don't have any real portfolio in this department so I am working my way up the ladder very slowly.

Regarding "Networking", this is not the first time I have it said that this is the key. By 'networking' though I presume you mean business networking and those breakfast/lunch meets.

Perhaps I should also spread my wings and join a few other forums like this too. In fact, one of my jobs this year was acquired on the strength of being a member of another forum and mentioning that I built websites. It works!

I would also like to get more into video production. I have achieved much success over the last few years with my audio production and video production seems like a natural progression.

It's been a frustrating week. The website jobs I have been asked to do have largley been put on hold because of the festive season (grrrr!). "Oh I want to get Christmas out of the way first", etc.

Hopefully things will snowball soon.

[illvibe]

This might sound harsh, but it seems as though you're putting the cart before the horse here. If you're still learning the ropes with photoshop and web design, and don't yet have a portfolio maybe it's too early to be putting ads around for your business.

Also, don't limit yourself to your physical location. That's the whole beauty of the internet - you can be reached by clients anywhere. Almost all of my clients I've never met in person (sometimes this is a good thing!

My advice is to scour the web for sites that look like they'd be fun to redesign and look like they could do with one and offer to do it pro bono. As well as instantly growing your portfolio with jobs that you've had free reign on (i.e. stuff you're really into), great things happen when you give without expecting anything in return.

[P&R]

Point taken illvibe. I think we are all still learning though. There is so much to know about web design, the coding, the latest technologies, the latest 'fashions' in web design. It's not as straight forward like it was in the nineties. In those days, to a point, it didn't matter too much if your website didn't look particularly appealing, as long as you had one. These days they have to sing and dance. I think I have sufficient skills to design a respectable website. Like I said, I am starting small and working my way up. The day when I have a portfolio of 100 websites will be the day when I can finally say "I've cracked it - I am a web designer". What I don't want to do is run before I can walk, as I have stated elsewhere. As long as I can deliver the goods to the required standard for the job then that's fine. I make no claims to be an expert, not even to the customer, to whom I'm always honest and give a little detail about my background in multimedia before I take on any job.

Call me a jack of all trades if you wish. My speciality is with audio production but there's no work in that anymore. I think my websites are 'getting there'. Anybody who thinks differently is a web snob. ;0)

Excellent point about the redesigning of existing sites for the purpose of building a portfolio. I am onto that as I type.