4 Innovative Ways to Market Your Computer Business On the Cheap

As a fellow small computer business owner, I am always on the prowl for new and exciting ways to market my company that don’t break the bank. Don’t get me wrong: word of mouth referrals are still my #1 source of new business. But there are times of the year when I need to branch out of my comfort zone because as we all know, dry seasons hit and this is when we wish that some recurring marketing was going on to keep a customer load flowing. My company FireLogic is no exception to this rule of economics, which is why this topic has become a special interest of mine as of late.

I frequent many forums where discussions are going on about how to advertise & market on the cheap, and while some of them are good ideas that work, some were complete flops for me. I won’t bother covering the dead-ends of cheap marketing in order to spare you the wasted money and time. Here are my top 4 inexpensive ways that have been a worthwhile investment and a majority of them are either low cost or even completely free.

What do most waiting rooms have in common? Magazine reading selections. While I can’t put an exact number how many eyes are laid upon each magazine in any given waiting room, we can all agree that it’s likely more than enough to consider it an excellent advertising opportunity. I learned about this technique from another fellow computer repair business owner online and have been utilizing it for about a year now with some decent success. How exactly do you advertise with magazines in a waiting room, outside of actually placing ads with the titles themselves? There’s a far cheaper method than the former, and will get you a LOT more eyes.

It involves simply collecting a a decent selection of relatively current periodicals that you or your family may read, and creating advertising address labels for them. The labels serve a dual purpose: they cover up the original address that the magazine was sent to (which may not always be your own) and they also give you a nice portion of advertising space for potential readers to see.

Since anyone that picks up a magazine generally judges if they want to read it from the front cover, what better place to put your company logo and contact information? I can’t think of a better one than the front cover! My sticker entails my full logo, contact information, some of the services I provide, and also a nice large “Reading Material Provided by FireLogic” promo at the top, so the sticker doesn’t look entirely foreign or misplaced.

When I have a stack of about 40-60 magazines in my possession across 5-6 months, I have one of workers deliver them to about 4-8 different establishments with waiting rooms in the area. Most waiting rooms are always hungry for new reading material, and this is a perfect exchange of wants for wants. I’ve only been rejected at a handful of places, and a few have even asked me what services I provide… which led to none other than more business from an unsuspecting lead.

My only direct cost for this advertising method was a pack of Avery White Shipping Labels in the 2” x 4” size variety. The actual Avery # is 5263, and this size fits perfectly over 99% of pre-printed address label areas on magazines. It cost me about $12 USD for a 250 pack of labels. Worth every penny if you ask me.

Most towns of a decent size have some sort of local fest or gathering that brings the community together. For my community, this is called the yearly Taste of Park Ridge. While there are “traditional” routes for getting advertising and booth space, I decided to try something not so foreign to some on here: I merely contacted the management and worked out a deal. I will admit up front that while I had done work for someone on the executive board years ago, and he fondly remembered me, this doesn’t have to be the case for your experience to be just as excellent.

We worked out an agreement where I would get some premium ad space on the Taste website, banner space by the music stage for the event, and also a booth at the expo area they set up. In exchange, I offered a direct exchange of service credit for the value of the advertising package they gave me. In all, I gave them a credit of $1500 of service which is being depleted, and in the end I would say it was 100% worth it. Here is why:

1) None of service requests from them have been for time sensitive emergencies which couldn’t be easily scheduled around.
2) The amount of new business and referrals I got from the Taste of Park Ridge directly have already paid for the service credit I gave away.
3) I have gotten referrals from those on the executive committee who are recipients of the free service credits, so I’m gaining customers from an alternative word of mouth.

There are also many intagible benefits which I got from the event that can’t have any direct numbers attached to them. I got some nice marketing material for my FireLogic Facebook page, such as photos from those who I gave shirts out to at the event. My company had a blurb about it placed into the local newspaper for a promo section that the Taste was getting every week leading up to the event. And the number of people who wore our shirts around at the Taste itself, giving us more free marketing, was another great opportunity we otherwise wouldn’t have had.

While I spent some money paying for shirts to be made and giving away service credits to the Taste committee, it was money well spent and I’m going to do it every year from this point forward. Go hunt down your own local event of similar nature and see what connections you can make.

If you’ve moved recently, or recall your last move, you may note that your mailbox was flooded with promotional deals from local establishments that you never even gave your mailing information to. This happened to me after a move about 6 months ago, and I was curious how they all got my information. After some research, I found that, at least in my area within Illinois in the United States, information is freely published about property deed transfers.

You can see where I am going with this. Local companies seem to be culling this information for their own marketing purposes, and flooded my mailbox with offers for about 3-4 months after my move, targeting me because I was “new to the neighborhood.” Great idea for them, but a perfect opportunity for me as well.

I took the same approach to find out who was moving into my neighborhood and created a simple mailing that included a letter written and signed by me, a few business cards, and a company magnet. I attached a 10% discount for any first service call within the lower portion of the letter, and sent this out to the 30 most current new residents I found in this property transfer database online.

It didn’t cost me very much outside of a few envelopes, some decent paper stock, and postage totalling perhaps $14 USD. In the end, I raked in two new customers a referral from one of those, so a total of 3 new customers. They paid for the marketing expense many times over.

You’ve likely been leveraging Google search to build new business organically over the last few years, but it’s baby brother that is not as widely discovered yet is Google Places (a subset of Google Maps). This tool is completely free and all you have to do is claim your computer business on the service using this website. It’s not like the bevy of third party mapping and rating services that do not take Google Results into account directly.

This is the only service which actually ties right into any Google search someone may be doing to find your company in the area they are searching within. Google Places ties business listings right into the top area of any Google search and the possibilities here are endless. Not only do I have FireLogic on Google Places already, but I link to the service off my website and also actively promote it so customers can leave reviews on there for new leads to find.

I started building my Google Place profile in earnest earlier this year (asking customers to rate me on the service, etc) and within the last few months have gotten more than a few new clients that claim they saw my excellent reviews on the service and decided to give me a try. How much did this marketing test cost me? Nothing.

It’s proven to be a solid avenue for positive views off Google, and seems to also build a better Google Pagerank in the process. I won’t get into SEO on this article, but the better pagerank you have, the higher you end up coming in on Google results for your desired search results, hopefully leading to new customers more easily.

I have recently also gotten a FireLogic Yelp page going with not as hot results, but I’ve only been sculpting my presence on the service for less than two months. The way that Yelp handles client reviews is a bit unfortunate, as they have this hidden formula for determining what kind of reviewer is considered less “valuable” on their site. When they mark someone as not as credible, they place their review into a hidden category on your page which effectively makes the review they posted invisible until they raise their credibility ranking.

I guess this helps head off one time reviewers that do not use the service as it was meant to be used, but for a company like mine that pushes clients towards posting reviews, it really is a downer to see so many positive reviews pushed into invisible mode. It didn’t cost me a dime so I am not concerned. Hopefully those great reviews will make it onto my page once some of these clients use Yelp more and more. While I wouldn’t consider Yelp an excellent lead source yet, it may become hotter as more people find out about it.

I hope the above 4 example of how I market my company inexpensively can give you some neat new ideas, and not only applying directly what I described, but getting creative and thinking outside the box as well. If you have anything that you want to share for cheap, inexpensive marketing, go ahead and post it in the comments section!

I am by no means a marketing expert but love trying new things, and sharing those which I find to bring in some new leads with relatively low direct expenses tied to them. Marketing a small business is 80% art and 20% science, which means we must always keep innovating and reaching out for innovative concepts to stay ahead of the “big boys” in the computer repair field.

What are your ways to market your business on the cheap?