Our current discussion of overbranding prompted me to think about this more.

What are the best Ad and Marketing techniques you've found work for your business?

Mine would have to be making deals with game server companies by offering them discounted plans to give away free with their servers but i charge them a small price per month for each account setup.

Game server companies are definitely a good resource to tap into. What kind of servers do you normally sell them Simon? The game server clients that I have tend to lean towards Dual Opteron 244's. Just so happens the game server clients tend to request the more powerful servers.

if I told you that I'd have to kill you

ONE TIP: Burst adverising. $10 once every few months is a waste, go mad in your first two months, then minium for the rest...you should gain enough customers in the first few months to cover the costs and gain a nice little sum!

Advertising is always difficult. Adwords has never seemed to yield much for me. Approaching local business and distributing fliers and cards has been my biggest success.

Paladin do you have a sample of the fliers you pass out?

Sure...here is a link to one of my fliers for distribution:

Click here for Word document

EDIT: Seems I can't post a link...oh well, follow this address:

http: //www.palsys.ca/advertising/ad_dist_102805.doc

* Delete the space following http:

That's a great idea, Paladin! Where do you hand your fliers out?

Personally, I find success in advertising my webhost in all the forums I can, but it's a hard job indeed.

Anywhere and everywhere...I know people in just about every major city in Canada, so the fliers are dropped on buses, trains, commuter stations, tacked up on every bulletin board seen, etc. I also have a very dedicated fiance who has agreed to spend some time making formal introductions in local businesses, etc. A stay at home mom, and my slave!!! lol

Really, I'm persistant. I don't have a ton to spend on advertising, so I work hard at it.

Paladin

Word of mouth is effective but to start with I mainly concentrate my efforts on SEO and adwords... not in web hosting btw but my sites run okay like this.

Text links are great. Banners are cheesy and hurt your credibility. Because visitors simply arrive feeling ?pitched? rather than informed. This is why text links are visitor friendly.

i have to say that placing a targerted add in a forum that is related to your topic is the best.

I agree with the view on image links in comparison to text links. Text links have always provided a far better CTR then banners for us.

SEO is a good but hard thing to do, and you need to optimize for changes almost every week to keep a top position in search engines.

Word of mouth is the most effective one i believe. But to achieve this you must stay in business for a few years. (I mean it is not available for newly established hosting companies)

This is something I've been thinking about. Any tips?