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How to Advertise your Computer Business
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If you are in the Yellow Pages or in the Local Papers you can be sure to get phone calls from other companies asking you to advertise with them. There are other forms of advertising such as a smaller, third party versions of the Yellow Pages, coupon books, business papers etc.. The can be very hit-and-miss.
If the publication that contacts you is not well known ask them to send you a copy, find the section which suits your business most and give some of the businesses listed a call telling them you are a plumber and ask them how it is working for them.
Most people are willing to tell you how it works for them and often with colorful results. About a year ago I had a salesman from a local business directory visit my office trying to get me to advertise in the publication. He was a great salesman with a great angle, had a folder full of testimonials from happy customers and I was almost about to buy. It was a great deal, but first I decided to call five of the computer businesses listed and asked them how it worked for them.
The first business said they hadn’t received any calls from it.
The second business said they will not be re-advertising with them next year.
The third didn’t even know they were in it.
The fourth said they won’t be re-advertising either.
And the fifth went absolutely crazy when I mentioned their name saying “don’t do it! It’s a scam! If it’s not working they will tell you it’s because you haven’t got a large enough ad and scam more money out of you! Don’t do it!”
Five out of five businesses weren’t saying anything good about it so I sent the salesman on his way. He would have had a sale if I hadn’t called those businesses.
Conclusion
There are many external variables which will change the effectiveness of your advertising such as the income level of the area you are marketing in, the size of the area you are covering, the amount of publications in your area and the amount of competition advertising along side you. You will have to try a few different forms of advertising before you know what works best for your business. With every phone call you receive, be sure to ask where people heard about you from so you can track it!
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In the U.S., it is illegal to put flyers in or on mailboxes.:
Here is the answer from the United States Code at 18 USC §1725:
“Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits any mailable matter such as statements of ccounts, circulars, sale bills, or other like matter,
on which no postage has been paid, in any letter box established, approved, or accepted by the Postal Service for the receipt or
delivery of mail matter on any mail route with intent to avoid payment of lawful postage thereon, shall for each such offense be fined under this title.” (CFR TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 83 > Sec. 1725.)
Rich, is that America wide or only applies to certain states?
that is country wide.
Really great article, thanks for writing it! I started a computer repair service company a few months ago and we are definitely having some trouble building new business up. We’ve advertised in the Yellow Book which has been ok, but nowhere near enough business as we need. We did try a local paper by purchasing a bigger ad, and got 0 calls from it. We’ll be doing some door hangar advertising next, hoping that helps! I do like the idea of the smaller line ads in the paper though, and will probably be giving that a shot.
One thing you didn’t mention was press releases…did you have any experience with that?
Dave, I havent tried it with my Computer Repair business but I use them frequently for Technibble. I found that you need to send your release to ALOT of locations/emails for it to be effective. Only about 5% will pick you up, but those 5% can be worth it.
As for your advertising with bigger ads, you might be interested in this:
https://www.technibble.com/advertising-bigger-is-not-always-better/
[…] are still many cheap ways to advertise your business mentioned in one of our past articles “how to advertise your computer business“. Print This Post Del.icio.us Article By […]
Yeah I’ve tried the mailbox drop before. Got a strongly worded letter from the USPS.
Great information. Thank you, love your whole site…
My question is, for flyers, is it better to use my own name or use my company name that I have set-up? Which will return more results?
This is an interesting read. I wish I came across it before committing to yellowpages.com, I would have gone with the printed Yellow Pages ad instead. But I will see how that turns out when the ad starts appearing online. At least the package I bought will give me first page results on Yellowpages.com and their partner yellow page directories like yahoo yellow pages, mapquest etc…
Do you think this will work at all? I live in a fairly heavily populated area, at least a few 100,000 people within my service area. My business is on site Mac, Windows and network repairs. It needs to generate 35+ hours per week as I have no employees and have no shop.
I have been struggling to get hits on adwords because of the price I can not afford the front page adwords hit. Craigslist gets some calls but those people expect repairs to cost practically nothing.
At least most of my customers have more than one computer in the house. So they can check online if there main computer fails.
if you time it right , by this I mean follow a few blocks behind the mail carrier, you can get away with it for a long time, because most times its the carrier that finds your flyer in the mailbox. but if you distribute right behind the mail carrier most times your flyer will get picked up before the next day! ;-) but as soon as you get a call, STOP! they don’t play the three strikes your out game.
iPhone and other smartphones still work to search on google. Keep that in mind. Make sure your company is listed on google.com/local/add
That is free advertisement that can be very effective
Good post, Thanks for sharing your advice.
To circumvent the mailbox drop, just put it in the door frame. It’s inconvenient for you, but you’re not breaking the USPS law! Here in PR, the post office ignores it. It’s so difficult since everything from a pizza parlor to tax preparers do mail drops, they can’t keep up!
The “going behind the mail carrier” idea is good. You could leave a couple of flyers in a library (or other such place). You might get a couple of clients that way. Just ask.
i get 5000 flyers for £100. the labour to get them delivered is about £250.
for my £350. its very hard to work out what i get back, but i can bill at least £350 in labour within the week.
we perform all computer shop services, but specalist in laptop repair
Since i started my business I had to try different ways to advertise it and due a low budget I had to print my own flyers in black and white and then buying a small space with 10 words limited in a local newspaper named “La Subasta” located in the Houston, TX area for $26.00 dollars weekly but now since 2 months ago I see that the service calls are going down due the crisis I think so I am still looking for the best advertising way for a low budget business all my services are in the Computer Repair area so if you know a good way to advertise and get more customers in this hard crisis.
As an Aussie, I find it amazing that the USPS is allowed to prevent people using flyers in letterboxes!! My marketing campaign would be ruined if that was illegal here.
Just about to start really marketing my services. Wish me luck!
hi ur computer is repair dont worry call me only in bangalore my no. 9538547985 desktop or laptop
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RSCET (Research & Studies in communication Education & Technology Cooperative Ltd) Govt. Regd. [A computer solution to all unregd computer Institute) (Mission Computer Literacy to every nuk and corner of India)
RSCET (Research & Studies in communication Education & Technology Cooperative Ltd) Govt. Regd. [A computer solution to all unregd computer Institute) (Mission Computer Literacy to every nuk and corner of India)
Contact No.918803599156