Imagine you have $5000 to promote your web hosting company. How exactly would you spend your budget? (Its a nice little exercise).

I would invest it in local advertising spots. Be it newspaper, billboards, TV or Radio. First would probably be radio ads, followed up by newspaper and billboard ads. We would do TV last as something would have to be developed and more people would have to be paid which would use less of the 5grand mark.

1. Start a contest giving $1000 to the person with the best/more innovative idea for advertising a hosting company (only after say 50+ ideas are shared). Spend the other $4000 putting the best ideas into action.

Rinse and repeat.

2. Give $5000 worth of free hosting (real costs) to active members on hosting forums. Pray that this creates a buzz and pays off in the long term. On a second though, why pray: ask them to write a review every 1 month or so in order to keep hosting them for free.

3. Buy a hosting directory/resources website/forum with decent traffic and plaster the host's name all over it as banners, text link etc. Even better, buy a "top hosts" site , create 3 alises for my company using slighly different prices and put them as top 3. Change their order every month -- I want the branding to be spead over equally.

4. Put fliers in everyone's mail box in my town. The beauty of living in a coutry with few regulations I guess.

5. Pay someone (a woman) $3000 to climb the tallest building in the country wearing only a T-shirt (with my company's name on it) or create an adhoc $3000 prize wet T-shirts contest in the middle of the busiest avenue in the capital. All T-shirts shall have the company's URL on them.

I'll have someone tip off the media. They're always hungry for a story -- at least this one would be fun. That should give me some serious media coverage. Maybe even international!

Spend the remaining $2000 partying in jail.

Sorry Art, I just couldn't resist sharing the knowledge.

I like LD's first and second ideas, I could see my company doing those...else with the others people might get a negative view on said company, but it sure would be interesting to hear the mixed reviews of the campaigns

Well, my only aim was to find ways to get the name out there, disregading all other aspects! Obvisously, I wouldn't actually do most of what I said. I started writing in a half serious way and then simply got carried off.

$5000

Sponsor a local hockey team and get my URL on their jerseys and programs.

Rent a blimp. People look at blimps. I know I do.

Banners on the side of cars. Buy banner space on big hosting-talk websites (such as this one). Maybe a radio ad or two...

I like Blue's idea as well

Would $5000 be enough for that?

Depends on the town. Small town, probably.

In most cases yes.
You would pay for jerseys and ice time for the season. $5000 should cover it at most levels.

Interesting. I had no idea $5000 are that powerful.

Maybe I should qualify my response Dan. The reason I offer this advice to Art is because I know he lives in Canada.
In Canada hockey is so popular and common you would find that the price of playing is quite reasonable, not including the equipment of course, but equipment is only supplied by sponsors at the upper levels.

If I were in the US I would suggest the same thing only with a baseball team rather than a hockey team.

Thank you for the further explanation. It does make things a bit more clear.

Blue I'd say it depends on your immediate local area. Hockey is pretty big in the "Cedar Valley" - which is about a 60 mile radius around me. So maybe not just a broad "Baseball" across the US, but perhaps a sport that is in your immediate area, local to said company.