provided by Star2Billing S.L.

Out of curiosity - how do you guys advertise your services?

I gave Google AdWords a quick spin but even after countless hours of optimization the results are not coming. I suspect there's WAY too much competition from services like Vonage who give customers double-priced service to be able to afford their advertising budget... (ok, rant stops now)

My most effective way of advertising is actually in person - by talking to friends and telling them about the services I'm offering. Word of mouth is nice too and I do plan on running some paper ads and brochures concentrating on niche markets and see how that goes.

But as far as online marketing goes, I guess I'm a bit rusty as the results are definitely not there.

Anyone has any good ideas? :)

Oh yeah- if you'd like to share links and such, let me know.

Online ads is difficult since companies like Pingo have saturated the market. When advertising online try to hit a niche market and niche websites. There is a good book by Robert Scoble "The New Rules of Marketing & PR" ISBN 9780470113455, Its has some good ideas on how to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly.

Will look for it. Thanks!

Totally agreed about market oversaturation... Google AdWords is a great example, you need to offer $5 per click to even think of getting any sort of traffic from AdWords. with players like Vonage and other big guys having their own bid wars, there's no way for economy providers to compete there.

We did one niche site a try, which is looking to be far more expensive than I would have liked it to be, but they're redesigning their system in a way that will give us more visibility so it might work out later on. We'll see...

But yeah, just putting ads out there ain't gonna cut it apparently.

I started customer referral program with my customers and works like a charm. They get $5.00 if they refer someone. Thats another marketing method and works better because they're being reffered by someone they trust.

Sounds good - thanks - I just ordered a copy of it.

I'm also planning to work on setting up a referral program on my installs.

My problem with referrals is that unless it's automated it's going to be a real PITA to keep track of...