Last month we ran our first newspaper ad for Tri Megatech in order to generate some new business. Unfortunately I have some bad news to report…we had zero leads from our ad! Basically $200 down the drain other than potentially some branding opportunity for anybody that did see the ad.

I spoke with a few people to get their opinions on this, and they said that in the newspaper, you have to advertise day after day so people will see and trust the brand. Unfortunately for us, we don’t have the budget for this right now. Although the ROI may pay off over time, we need results now. I would much rather spend our advertising dollars on things that will provide more direct results.

We now have another thing to worry about…Many of our little jobs have been coming from our ads in the Yellow Book. Verizon just released their Yellow Book (which we did not advertise in) in the same area, and we’re afraid people will be throwing the old books (with our ad) away. We spent over $2,000 in advertising in the Yellow Book, so this would be horrible if the little amount of jobs we get from it now go away.

We’re already doing little advertising in Craigslist and AdWords, and we’ve tried a couple of local door-to-door flyer promotions. We’re also doing some services through OnForce, but it normally works out to substantially lower hourly rates. The next idea will be using something called “Rip Hangars”, which are door hangars that have a rippable business card on the bottom of them. We’ll be using this as a 50% off grand opening sale coupon. I’m hoping that since they are door hangars, people will be forced to see at least the front of it, and hopefully it’s enough to entice them to look further. Even if they don’t have computer problems now, they may rip the coupon off and save it for later. I’ll be posting the design (it will be full color both sides) as soon as I’m finished to get your thoughts.

Do you have any other suggestions for generating some more business? Do you think I’m being too impatient with the newspaper? Was the ad not good enough?

For those of you who don’t know, I own a few different businesses, both online and offline. One of those is Tri Megatech Technology Solutions, a company that offers technology support and solutions to home users, home offices, and small-mid sized businesses. We do things like coming to your house and removing viruses to setting up an intricate network for a company moving into a new office.

The majority of our business is very localized, meaning most of the money comes from people and businesses within a certain mile range of our location in Maryland. We do offer web design and development services, which can be done for anybody anywhere, but most of our money does not come from this. This means we have to do a lot of local advertising in order to get our name out there and generate enough business to cover our expenses and make a profit. We are a new business, so getting our name out there is very important at this stage because it’s also one that can generate much of its business through word-of-mouth…the most powerful type of advertising there is. In order to get new clients and customers through word-of-mouth, we have to get the work in the first place to leave a good impression.

This Sunday we’ll be running our first advertisement in the newspaper. We purchased a spot called a 2×3 (3.7″x3″) that will run through a few local papers here in Maryland this Sunday. The circulation for the paper is about 60,000, so we really hope to generate a decent amount of business out of this.

When it comes to advertising, it’s all about ROI (return on investment). I don’t care if I spend $1,000,000 on an advertisement, as long as I can make money (in a specified amount of time), I’m happy. This ad costed us about $200, so just getting a few simple jobs will make up for it. The jackpot would be to get some contracts with businesses out of it though. While lots of little jobs adds up, the direction we’re trying to move our company into is supporting small-large businesses as well as IT government contracting. Here’s the ad I created:

We’re offering 50% off of our prices because it’s important to us right now to generate a client list that will spread the word about our company. Word-of-mouth advertising is the most valuable type out there, and generates the most business…for free. We also wanted to target some businesses, so we’re offering free consultations. It was pretty hard to fit everything we wanted in one ad, and maybe it would have made more sense to actually get a few ads, make different creatives that target different services, then see how the results are for each. Just like online advertising, it’s most optimal when you tweak your ads every time in order to see what gets the best response (unfortunately in the offline world it’s much more expensive and time consuming to do this).

Hopefully I’ll be reporting back in the next week or two with some good news in regards to the newspaper ad. Stay tuned for a followup.