Tell me more ×
Answers OnStartups is a question and answer site for entrepreneurs looking to start or run a new business. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 1 down vote favorite

Hi Jason / Dharmesh / James & Team,

We are a start-up company and about to complete 1 year by next month. Our first year target was to have decent portfolio. We have achieved this by subscribing to lead portals i.e. Elance.com, GURU.COM & others.

Our Target Audience: IT Small companies (1-20)

Location: USA

Services: Custom Web Design & Development, Free Mock-up designs for their prospect leads and you know we have succeed with 90% by offering free designs and eventually converted prospects into customer.

Till now our marketing efforts were only on the portals mentioned above. We have retained our customer's from day 1 by giving Quality and competitive pricing model as our pricing model is simple you define the realistic budget and we will work on your budget. From here on now we want to go on next milestone How can we reach to more target audience with more success. What business strategy do you suggest?

We don't want to try Organic SEO since there is long term investment required for our competitive business which we can not afford in present situation.

Please give your suggestion. Thanks.

share|improve this question

6 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

You are asking about business strategy, but at the same time you don't want to put any long term efforts into marketing. This sounds tactic, not strategy.

Create a hugely popular Flash game or a web site demonstrating your skill. You will start receiving a lot of requests to do some work. Not sure this will take less resources than SEO, but at least it's much more fun.

share|improve this answer
We are in the requirement phase to create a largely size e-commerce portal, I think that would be good demonstration of the skills. However what do you suggest for our business marketing strategy, the strategy should give us good ROI and lesser cost/lead. Please suggest. – Dev Mar 1 '10 at 10:07
Agree with Oleg. Consider this . When you want to someone to do SEO, you would ask them how does your site rank. Sites/Content speak louder than marketing pitch – skillguru Jun 7 '10 at 4:29
up vote 1 down vote

You could of course try to create a solution that actually creates value for the end-customer, meaning the customers of your present customers (or maybe even their customers). For achieving this you need to, as Oleg mentioned, think a bit longer-term. An easier way to achieve this is to ask your current employers for a shared rights of usage of the software you are currently creating. This could give you a more easy start on reaching your end customers.

If you could mention the kind of technology you are into, it would be easier you give you advice.

share|improve this answer
Shared rights we can not ask since the IPR belongs to the End customers. Can you give us top 5 marketing efforts we should put up where our investment returns with good customers on our profile? Please suggest. – Dev Mar 1 '10 at 10:11
You can share IPR with the End custom by simply suggesting it to your customer. I have shared the IPR with people who have developed software for me over Guru.com – David Mar 1 '10 at 15:40
David, What do you suggest on business marketing strategy? – Dev Mar 2 '10 at 16:41
up vote 0 down vote

Dev,

If you are on eLance or Guru.com, you will always be competing on price. That's not necessarily a good thing to do because you will not be able to charge a premium for quality services, if actually it is quality of service you are trying to sell.

I think you should develop your own website, much like a prototype of what you can offer, make it sticky and let it speak for itself. Invest in business cards, URL swapping, maybe an affiliate service. Get people to actually come to your website and see what you are all about.

My $0.02...

Leonard

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

  1. The real growth happens when you start getting repeat business. So while Guru, elance might be a good way to start the business but they cannot be the means to grow the business. You need to assess if you are getting repeat business or not. Because many a times startups bidding in a crowded marketplace forget that the real gem in hiding is the repeat customer and not the new customer (who everyone is trying to win over).

  2. While you do the projects, you will realize that you have attained mastery in a certain niche area. That becomes yours life-line and you need to expand on the Niche. For example - if you do lot many web design projects you would realize you get more business from real-estate companies. So why not mold your business offering to focus on that niche.

  3. The most important element you should try is - Referrals. In the business you are in there is not better free marketing available than the referrals provided by your happy customers. Go ahead ask for it!

Best of luck!

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

Another approach - become a master of a CMS - Drupal, Joomla. Create several GPL'd modules / components / plugins that meet the specific needs of your target base. Consider freeimum / paid support approaches - including customized versions. promote complete solution development as well - but become more of a contributing member to the ecosystem(s) of cms communities you belong to.

If your aspirations are more aligned towards a gem / ruby approach, then try to git involved over there.

share|improve this answer
We have enough jobs I would say for next few months w/o doing any marketing. Actually me question was what business marketing strategy someone should define for the next milestone? – Dev Mar 2 '10 at 16:46
I thought I was answering that question - "what next marketing strategy". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_strategy defines this "[company]..to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities" My suggestion was to focus on a specific market vs. the general web dev outsourcing - my belief is that the greatest opportunities are not at the elance / guru marketplaces (I could be wrong). If your question is how gain more prominence on elance / guru, then sorry - I don't have anything specific. Its difficult to stand out in marketplaces that commoditizes creative work. – jimg Mar 2 '10 at 17:08
up vote 0 down vote

Organic SEO makes up to a 1/3 of our traffic so I wouldn't rule it out, sure it take a lot of time and effort, but it is worth it in the long run.

We're a rails development company, and focused all our seo on the term ruby on rails development london we're now No. 1 and while not a term that gets masses of traffic, it's exactly what we want.

I would say start blogging get relevant links to your content to boost your pagerank and maybe even take out paid ads for your skillset in your target area.

We're finding traditional marketing techniques not as effective when it comes to web development. So try using social media like twitter to connect with potential clients informally before hand.

+1 For referrals, most of our best leads are through ex clients or word of mouth.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.