Day 19: Ideas for Marketing

I have been working on ideas for marketing my consulting services for the last week. Since there are a lot of options I have to narrow down the list to the most cost effective solutions. The great part is, I can do a lot of it myself. That will eliminate a lot of the costs. Here are my ideas so far:

Main Tasks

1. Pay Per Click. I have about $750 saved up to launch a PPC campaign. I'm going to mainly focus on the less expensive keywords and build a custom landing page to go with it. I will run this during the first month I am on my own and see what happens. I don't want to run this just yet because I don't want to get in an awkward situation where I am getting leads and not following up with them because of my regular job. Another problem would be that I land a few deals but not enough to sustain me but too much to hold my regular job. So this is going to launch June 1st.

2. SEO. This is already in play. I took a lot of these factors in while I was building the site. So, out of the box it is already SEO Friendly, now I just need to optimize with keywords. The space is pretty compeitive so I will have to really focus my efforts here.

3. Listing potential targets. I've decided to focus specifically on small business to start. So I am going to start out by finding local businesses who do not have a website or internet presence.This is one task that I am not really good at in any sense. I am also still thinking about how I should approach them once I know that they have a need.

4. Enlisting a sales force. This is an idea that I think will work better once I have obtained a short list of clients. This person can work on a commission basis to bring in new deals.

Other Tasks
These are still important but will be for the longer term.

1. Email Marketing. I have a lot of calls to action that entice visitors to sign up for email newsletter. I think this will be monthly and aside from useful info it will also have calls to action.

2. Blogging. Having an informative blog on the topic will help draw in clients in the long term. I plan to update the blog 2-4 times per month.

3. Word of Mouth/referrals. Doing a good job for clients will bring me more. Simple idea but it goes a long way in this business.

More to come soon.