Advertise Your Web Design Business

The Web design industry is an increasingly popular career choice, and competition could be fierce in your area due to a high volume of freelancers in the industry. Whether you are the owner of a firm with multiple employees or a lone freelancer, learning how to advertise your web design business is critical to your success. Since many freelance web designers and firms market locally and nationally, if not globally, advertising web design must be approached seriously and creatively to reach your segment of the market.

Steps

You can use paid advertising, free advertising, social media, and a variety of other techniques to spread the word about your business.

  1. Work on your own website. Websites are important for any business to have as the Internet continues to pull in consumers in nearly every industry, but since websites are your business, your company definitely needs one. How you structure your website is up to you, but you should have a clear focus on what your skill is while providing the information potential customers need. Your website doesn't have to include your rates, but it should include your services, examples of previous work, contact information, and supporting educational information such as if you attended a web design degree program of any kind.
  2. Pay for online advertising. You could ad listings on high-traffic websites, or do a pay-per-click campaign with the large search engines. Pay for listings in business directories for web designers.
  3. Become active in social media and in other online communities. These are places you may find your customers. Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and other social networking websites give you another avenue to connect to both current and prospective clients while also giving them a way to connect with and learn about you before, during, and after the sale. Become active in places where you know your target market is and in industry-related communities to establish yourself as an expert.
  4. Focus on search engine optimization (SEO). Let the search engines do some of the work for you naturally at all hours of the day. If you are not familiar with SEO, you can either research and try your hand at it or hire someone to help you. Clients want to know their website is going to be seen, so if you can offer SEO services to your customers, then you have more value.

You can do this via newspaper ads, business cards and fliers, radio and/or TV spots, and through general face-to-face interaction.

  1. Attend industry-related conferences. This may not bring in more customers unless some of the attendees are looking for services, but you may find other people to network with. Networking may help you offer more to customers or may help you handle e a higher customer volume. Industry conferences will also have valuable information to keep you on top of the latest trends and technology in the field, enabling you to provide more value to customers.
  2. Read industry-related magazines. One of the magazines is Website Magazine, which has a free and paid edition, and offers valuable information to designers and others who run online businesses. The magazine also offers ad spots, and since it targets Internet marketers and other online professionals, advertising web design services there could prove profitable.
  3. Reach out to small businesses in your area and suggest helping each other. Offer to help them grow their business if they use your services. Offer them a free consultation to show them where they can improve and how you can help.
  4. Print fliers and business cards. Pass these out at local events you attend, as long as you are allowed to do so. Hang fliers up at local businesses with permission. Leave business cards with other local businesses. Always have these on hand so if you strike up a conversation with someone while you are away from your office, your contact information is readily available to hand out.
  5. Run a client referral incentive program both online and off. Advertising and marketing go hand-in-hand. By marketing a web design business to existing customers and offering an incentive to them for bringing in more customers, you have an advertising team working for you.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

Retrieved from "https://kipkis.com/index.php?title=Advertise_Your_Web_Design_Business&oldid=295373"