New business - need advice

[savi0r]

I have a facebook company page. I have a warehouse were i keep machines, parts, toners, etc. I have suppliers for parts and machines. Most of my clients say that i have good prices. I have a company logo established. What i do not have is a website. That is a good ideea. Anyway, even if it's a small town, my business is new here. How would you penetrate a market like that? Very low prices until you get a cusomer base or maybe free first calls or estimates? I have the majority of tools i need to establish a good business here and i know i can help a lot of people. I just don't know the method to enter a new market.

[theengel]

I didn't do any advertising. All I did was put up a website and do some follow-up SEO work.

But I've always had some good publicity ideas--I just never followed through on them. For example:

Run a local contest. You might employ a web person to set part of it up. Tell users whoever submits the best video of "Office Spacing" their printer will get a new machine. You'd have to have a way for people to submit their videos online, and for other people to view the videos (and maybe vote on them). You could probably get some spots with local radio personalities to talk about it (make sure you have some interesting anecdotes to talk about). Every person who submits a video will be giving you their contact info (they've now become a prospect).

[pbbsinc]

We had a local competitor do something similar once... They had a radio campaign where they asked people to write in (before internet was big, so I'm sure it would now be a website page) & tell them why their copier was the biggest & worst piece of crap out there. They hired a local crane company & set up right near the highway with banners for the radio station, the copier dealer, & the crane company flying from the arm of the crane. The winner got a brand new copier, & their old machine was hoisted & dropped in the parking lot.

I'm sure, like you said, that they had a big pile of leads out of it, not to mention an enormous amount of exposure.