A year and a half ago (March 2017), I began to actively implement a content marketing strategy to promote a web studio. The results of long and painstaking work will be described in the post. I will confirm each of my statements, each number with screenshots from Yandex.Metrica and other website monitoring systems. I will talk about the content marketing methods that I used, show examples of articles that collected the most traffic and brought the most clients. The case will be detailed, visual and interesting.

The benefits of content marketing or why they abandoned links

We (me and the studio owner Igor Filipenko) decided to promote the site with content for several reasons:

The web112 website is the basis for implementing our content marketing strategy

Here I would like to immediately note that one detailed case study on promoting web112.biz using content has already been published. I wrote it too. Only it was written from the point of view of an employee (or rather a partner) of a web studio and for the web studio’s blog. This case is different. It is written for the blog of a specialist who primarily focuses on optimized content. Here I highlight other points. Plus, there is information here about how the implementation of our strategy continued after November 2017 (when the first case was published).

However, some of the data in these two posts coincides (for example, information about the technical condition of the web112.biz site, which will be located just below). If you have read the first case (and I highly recommend reading it), keep in mind that there is not much repetition. This page has about 90% different information. The data here is more recent, covers a larger period of time and the main emphasis is placed on other points.

So the web112 studio website:

1. Adequate mobile layout (from the point of view of Google, Yandex and the user)
2. No technical errors
3. Good download speed
4. Secure HTTPS protocol
5. Pages describing services are beautifully designed as landing pages

And now the important question...

Would we have achieved the results that will be discussed later in the article if the site had not been optimized from a technical point of view?

I'm sure not. It is possible to optimize an information article on a crooked website (I myself proved this in an article about). But the results are much more noticeable if the site meets all the requirements of search engines.

What problems was content marketing supposed to solve?

The main task is only one - increasing the number of clients of the web studio.

I note that a potential client of Web112 is a business owner (often a large one). For this reason, our content marketing was aimed primarily at the b2b segment. Longreads and short texts were supposed to attract attention and convince people who own factories and large trading companies. Many of these businessmen have already contacted the developers and were dissatisfied with the results. They know what they want and understand the difference between a site built on a website builder and a large multifunctional portal.

The content we planned to create had to influence the studio's orders:

• Directly - a representative of the target audience gets to the site from an organic search, reads the post and immediately places an order using the form at the bottom of the page.
• Indirectly – articles attract traffic for information queries, earn the trust of search engines, which leads to an increase in positions for commercial queries. Another option: a potential client follows a link from an informational article to a landing page with a description of the service and only then makes an order.

At the same time, it is important to comply with the condition - content marketing pays off the funds invested in it. Orders are good. But if there are very few of them (and there are a lot of articles), the strategy needs to be changed.

What has been done in a year and a half of work on promoting the web studio website with articles?

Volume of content

The first article was published on March 3, 2017, the last one at the moment is on July 16, 2018. Over the entire period of time, I personally wrote 32 longreads with a total volume of 357,860 characters without spaces. Yes, I did. When I was preparing to write the case, I reviewed all the blog posts and copied all my articles into a separate file (not all blog posts are my work; some of the content was created by studio head Igor Filipenko).

Here I want to point out this. Today everyone is involved in internet marketing. Literally everything. Some work all day, some create “unique content that sells” when they have free time in the office at their main job, others think that “I can do copywriting until I find something normal.” All these people who treat content marketing the same way as banal handing out leaflets on the street (you don’t have to think much, but they pay) are not capable of leading long-term projects. They cannot and do not want to work for a long time, constantly, continuously, study someone else’s business for a year and a half and care primarily about its promotion, and not about their own earnings.

I believe that 18 months of work on one website and almost 360 thousand characters for one client are good indicators that demonstrate the difference between those who just temporarily earn money and real specialists who have been promoting on the Internet for years, take care of their reputation and know how to achieve results.

What other content marketing work have I done?

• I thought through and created internal linking.
• I took all the screenshots and selected pictures for the articles. I didn’t count the number of all the pictures, but I can say that in one post about landing pages there are as many as 29 illustrations (of which 2 are GIF animations that I created myself).
• Some articles were published by the content manager, but most of the posts were posted on the site by me. The content manager might have missed something (a picture or a link). I wanted everything to be exactly as I intended. 100% of the pictures and links that I prepared for a particular article must be on the site.
• I also put links on sites for which I wrote guest posts or simply used them for communication. Please note that I was not paid for the links. I installed them not because I am a saint, but because I have an ordinary human desire to see the results of my work. The higher these results, the more enjoyable it is. It is important that I can demonstrate the effectiveness of my links (screenshot below). I doubt they brought in a single studio client (although anything is possible). In this case, it is not the clients that are important, but the bonus to behavioral factors. It is also important that the links will remain on these sites for a very long time (and all the time they will bring targeted traffic to the studio’s website). Please note: the most grateful readers came from Medium.com.

The most important part of the case: content review

How the articles were written and what results they brought

You can write a separate article about the work on almost every post for web112: tell how the topic was chosen, how the semantics were collected, where the data came from, how the text was optimized, etc. I spent 2 or more days writing, designing and publishing some longreads.

Once again, I can and want to recommend a case that I published on web112.biz - there is a fairly detailed description of working on the most popular posts.

Here I want to focus on relatively recent longreads that have already shown good results.

Article length: 9970 characters without spaces.

Number of illustrations: 14

Number of keywords for which the post is optimized: 17 (below are some of them)

This and other illustrations with a lot of data are clickable. Click to take a closer look.

As you can see, I collected the keys using SerpStat. For 2 years now this has been the most convenient SEO tool for me.

I looked for materials for the article on CIS and foreign resources. I saved a file in Word with the main facts and theses on the topic, which I copied from various sources because I considered them important to one degree or another. This file is 5 pages and 8 thousand characters. I didn’t use all the information from there, but a lot of it was useful.

I will note a few of the most important sources with useful facts and figures:

1. A Different Kind of SEO: 5 Big Challenges One Niche Faces in Google with moz.com
2. Analytical review of the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems “The legal services market in Russia: what statistics say” (this is not an article, but a pdf report that can be found in the public domain)
3. Analysis: which website is better for lawyers and law firms to open? from lextext.ru

Please note that among the keys that made it to the TOP there are such important ones as “development of a legal website” and “creation of a website for a lawyer.”

Above is a screenshot of the results for the Moscow region.

Article length: 14325 characters without spaces.

Number of illustrations: 12

Number of keywords for which the post is optimized: 9

Some of the requests that brought (and still bring) potential clients to the web studio’s website can be seen below.

Important details for creating a longread:

1. In preparation for writing this article, I created a simple WordPress site on a subdomain of one of my resources. I did this in order to provide the post with the latest and most relevant tips and screenshots. WordPress is a very convenient content management system for creating simple using it takes no more than an hour to complete a website. However, I don't know many authors who can do and do what they write about. A good, thoughtful rewrite of other people’s instructions – yes. Writing a detailed manual from scratch, based solely on your own experience - in 99 cases out of 100, NO. I am very glad that readers of the Web112 blog receive not bare theory, but proven, up-to-date advice from a practitioner.
2. In the meta tags and the text of this article itself, I used a deadly SEO weapon - the date. I have spoken about this more than once in my posts and speeches– in a huge number of niches, date is a simple but effective way to collect additional traffic.

Volume: 12846 characters without spaces

Number of illustrations: 16 (including 2 GIF animations, which I also created to better demonstrate the advantages of certain sites - screenshots were not enough).

Number of keywords for which the post is optimized: 15

Some of the requests that brought (and still bring) potential clients to the web studio’s website can be seen below.

Important nuance! Below you see beautiful (with a bulleted list and a picture) snippets in Yandex results with links to the post in question. I assure you: this is not an accident. How did I do this? Everything is simple there. You have a link to the article: read, study, I think you will understand.

A few other useful facts about working on content

Last year (2017), the article about popular CMSs collected the most traffic. This was not least due to the presence of a date in the text and meta tags. I wanted the longread to continue to attract readers in 2018, some of whom would convert into clients. To do this, I changed the date in the meta tags and added an additional block where I talked about the latest data about content management systems. Thus, I not only adjusted to the search engines, but also to the users (I really gave them information from 2018).

I did the same with the article about the structure of a selling landing page (changed the dates and added a fresh, relevant block). What did this lead to? You will find out very soon.

Results of promoting a web studio using content marketing

Sales

The main result is that we (I remind you that the merit is not only mine, but also the head of the studio, who worked closely with me all this time) achieved our goal. There were more clients, and their orders recouped the investment in content approximately several times over. Why approximately?

Because it is not always possible to say exactly what brought the client to the site and what motivated him to place an order. Sometimes this is obvious because the client himself reports it:

Sometimes you can guess by indirect signs. We open Yandex.Metrica, we see that someone visited the site using the request “website development for a lawyer” and stayed there for 30 minutes. On the same day, a call comes in: a businessman wants a cool resource for his law firm.

In any case, if we take into account only the orders of those clients who directly said that they contacted the studio because they liked this or that article, it turns out that content marketing brought orders worth more than 800 thousand rubles.

There are two important nuances here.

1. The case, which was published on web112.biz, deals with orders worth 200 thousand rubles. At the time of publication of that case, the amount was exactly that. You understand that a lot of time has passed since then, during which the content was useful.
2. An order is not pure profit. It cannot be said that content marketing brought the studio 800 thousand in income. Net profit is significantly lower.

Traffic and other SEO results

That's how I grew up search traffic since I started working:

You can double-check with one of dozens of SEO tools. Unlike some, I do not hide the name of the site I worked on, because of a contract, or because of competitors, or because (insert a plausible excuse that allows you to PR without any risks). Although I understand that I probably made mistakes for which they will be criticized.

Here's how much targeted traffic the 5 most popular posts at the moment brought:

In first place is an article about CMS (which means that the trick with “refreshing posts” worked).

In third place is an article about the structure of a selling landing page (which once again means that the trick with “refreshing posts” worked).

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in the TOP 5 there is not a single post written by the head of the studio. It’s not because he created bad content (Igor published some very cool cases and wrote other useful articles). The fact is that (here I repeat) there is a noticeable difference between a person who simply writes well and a specialist who has been professionally engaged in content for several years.

It’s funny, but in 6th place in terms of traffic is a post about website promotion using posts. I checked the results, hoping that we would surpass Texterra, but alas:

Anything else worth mentioning?

A few points.

1. I wanted to put a lot more data into the article. Still, I understand that if you add information for each keyword and attach all possible reports from Yandex.Metrica, Yandex.Webmaster, Search Console, SerpStat (and I can do this), almost no one will want to read the longread to the end. The case should be not only informative, but also interesting.
2. I will repeat once again: I did not want to duplicate the facts from the case that I published on the studio’s website. If you are missing any information, look there. I think you will find the missing links.
3. In 2017, for the title pictures we used stock images (which, by the way, we paid for) and screenshots from films. In 2018, after my active requests, a template for branded illustrations was created. I am extremely happy about this fact. With them, the post attracts more attention (the number of refusals decreases) and inspires more confidence in the studio.

Eighteen months of work on a web studio website: conclusions

The first few months of implementing a content marketing strategy showed zero results. Not a single person from the search. But now, after a year and a half, it is clear that many posts have been generating traffic for more than a year and, apparently, will continue to generate it for a long time. The results are not immediate, but long-term and stable. Previously, after contextual advertising was turned off, the influx of customers practically stopped. Now they are turning it off, but clients still come.

Personally, I'm pleased with the results. Doing content marketing in the b2b segment in such a competitive field as web development is easy. Achieving results that can be posted like this and proven with screenshots is much more difficult. However, I succeeded. I think a huge role in this was that I was creating SEO content for good studios. I knew for sure that no one was being deceived there, I knew for sure that web112’s sites were of high quality (it seems that this is not quite the right word, but that’s what I want to use). I was sure that the studio would work for many more years (which means there was a lot to be done).

Update 2019: how content marketing works 6 months after the case is published

When I wrote this case in August 2018, I said that my longreads have been bringing traffic for more than a year and I’m sure that they will continue to do so for a long time (and you don’t have to invest a penny in their promotion).

It is now February 2019. Is my content marketing strategy working? Look at the screenshot below. There are the most traffic articles at the moment. These are the same longreads as six months ago.

As you can see, the content is still working. No investment in advertising or links.

A couple of days ago, a guy wrote to me in a personal message asking for advice. He said that he had assembled a team of developers, and they were all ready to make websites. But, there was a question about finding clients that needed to be resolved before starting a business. It’s stupid to believe that it’s enough to start a business and clients will follow.

Do you need a sales manager for a web studio?

I did not ask him about the work experience of the team members, about the portfolio and other things to which the answer is obvious. I wondered what kind of specialists he had assembled and who he was going to work with. As it turned out, the guy in his team has 2 layout designers, one designer, several copywriters (this number always alarms me), a specialist in setting up targeted advertising, an SEO specialist and a project manager. He himself is involved in organizing the process. Who do you think is missing here?

But the team is missing a person who will sell services. These guys are artisans. I hope they do a good job, but you have to be able to sell it. And for this, the team simply needs a sales manager. And if there is no such thing, the search for a client often falls on the shoulders of the organizer of the entire party.

I will try to talk about existing channels for attracting clients for a web studio, and will show several creative approaches that we have personally tested.

Where and how to find clients for a start-up web studio

1. Word of mouth

There is no more loyal and ardent client than one who came on the recommendation of friends (acquaintances, partners, etc.). Just don't lose their trust! To do this, always work for results and think about the future, and not about how to make money today.

One of the best options for spreading your reputation through word of mouth is recommending your client to their friends or partners. Clients will only recommend you if they themselves are satisfied with the cooperation. Accordingly, concluding a new deal in this case will be much easier.

2. Social activity: forums, chats, communities

Participating in discussions on forums, communities, chats, etc. helps increase your recognition as a developer or your brand. Someone will read the comment and move on, someone will discuss with you, and someone will write in a personal message and order a service.

Also, if you competently influence the discussion, you will show your professionalism, increasing interest in yourself.

I had a case when I was just starting to communicate on forums. I came across a request from one travel company to evaluate their website and make suggestions for improving it.

I wrote down all the ideas and thoughts. What I said was far from true, and some of the statements can be disputed. But the result is obvious. The company was interested in my comment, after which we made a good deal.

3. Thematic webinars, conferences and events

This method allows you to express yourself in the professional market. Share with colleagues, make connections, or speak at a conference for entrepreneurs to gather contacts of potential clients.

To obtain the expected result, it is necessary to be as accurate as possible. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to correctly draw up her portrait. And only then prepare and send out invitations to the event.

4. Studio blog

A great tool that makes you recognizable, shows your expertise and, of course, sells. One of our subscribers read a case study on website promotion on our blog and after a couple of days became our client.

‒ What should a studio blog be like?

‒ Ideal in terms of content usefulness!

- It needs to be constantly developed.

A blog needs to provide value to readers. Only in this case will they subscribe to you, add some pages to bookmarks and come back for more. You will receive your own database of email addresses, which you can use in the future to organize mailings about promotions, unique offers, etc.

Stop! There has already been talk about another channel for attracting clients.

5. Email marketing and newsletters

They say email is dying... Perhaps in the future this may become true, but not now. Sending out promotional offers also bears fruit. It is important to correctly compose a commercial offer and the subject line of the letter in order to increase the percentage of its reading.

Don't forget about your old clients! They are still alive! :)

6. Contextual advertising and targeting

This is the standard way to find clients online. The first thing that comes to mind after creating a website is .

Clients from search come interested. All that remains is to offer them something radically new. You have to be different from other studios. Breaking templates, non-standard presentation, that is, everything that catches your eye works well.

If you make a typical landing page and run advertising on it, the visitor will scroll through the site automatically without noticing either your experience or your achievements. He simply seeks only what excites him the most.

Draw the visitor's attention to your offer and he will remember you much better. This can have a positive impact at the time of making a decision to cooperate with you.

7. Freelance exchanges

I think this channel is more suitable for a beginner freelancer and artisan. Here he can develop a portfolio, reviews and grow to a more serious level. In addition, on exchanges, freelancers learn to conduct a dialogue with a potential customer, estimate the amount of work, adequately assess the cost of services, etc.

Many freelance exchanges protect your transactions, which is also very important for both the client and the developer.

Among the most popular I can mention:

• Weblancer;
• Freelancehunt;
• Kwork;
• Workzilla.

There are others who are worthy, but we are talking about what we have tried ourselves.

8. Registrars of individual entrepreneurs and LLCs

There are organizations that provide assistance in registering new LLCs and individual entrepreneurs. New entrepreneurs turn to them for help. One might assume that they need a website.

Visit several of these companies and agree with them that they will recommend you to new entrepreneurs for a certain percentage of the transaction amount.

9. Partnership

Partnerships with business incubators work great. Today there are quite a lot of incubators such as “Make Money”, “Business Youth”, “Genius marketing” and others, less known, but also more accessible. Their graduates, who have just received the “take and do” attitude, are ready to act and there is a high probability that they will order from you. After all, the mentors themselves recommend you.

Be careful when collaborating with students. Many of them are now looking for part-time work and are ready to perform different tasks. Are you ready for this person to represent your studio among potential clients?

10. Walking tour of the offices

It is believed that a personal meeting with a potential client provides more opportunities to present your service in full color. Indeed, many sales managers prefer a personal meeting and sell successfully.

But such an approach may turn out to be not only wrong, but even impolite. Incorrect, because the decision maker is often absent from the workplace, so you waste a lot of time. And your appearance at a third-party company without prior agreement and without warning will be considered impolite.

To successfully reach clients, it is good to use cold calls first. Otherwise, you have to be a unique salesperson to sell straight away like that.

11. Cold calling

This customer acquisition channel remains one of the most effective. Thanks to the proper organization of the sales process, every day managers make great deals with large companies.

The main thing in cold sales is experienced employees who work for results. How to become like this? There is a lot of educational information. I am ready to recommend you the book “45 Tattoos Sold” by Maxim Batyrev. In it you will find at least 45 ways to sell your services, spending less effort and nerves on it. This book teaches you how to overcome customer objections, make them offers you can't refuse, and issue invoices for payment.

12. Office flyers

Unlike a personal visit to a company’s office, delivering leaflets is a completely harmless event. Leaving a leaflet in the office should attract attention. Therefore, the designer should work on it. The one who opens it must make sure that he needs your services. Even if he thought differently before that!

Where web studios find clients - 12 channels for attracting clients

Hello everyone, my name is Stanislav Kungurov, I am 25 years old and I live in the city of Izhevsk.

In the past I was involved, probably like many of you, with links. In particular, I sold links in posts (kept a blog), then in Sape, then in Google and Mirka, then I started working on context. This path took me 5 years and gave me a lot of experience.

How it all began

In 2012, I found my first SEO client and started doing client SEO. Before that, I only had experience promoting informational sites, but as it turned out, promoting client sites is even easier. At the same time, I sold links in Gogetlinks, but over time this income faded into the background.

My first client is a furniture factory, which I found through a friend who bought furniture from her for his store. As a result, we managed to reach the director and offer them SEO in exchange for a sofa J) Then there was SEO in exchange for visits to the sauna, in exchange for a bed and again for a sofa)). By the way, you can sell sofas on Avito.

Over time, my sites were banned, and my clients became more and more numerous. Around the beginning of 2013, I practically stopped selling links, outsourcing the work 100%.

1 year of studio life

As I already said, for the first year of the studio’s life, “my studio” consisted of one person – me. But this did not stop me from promoting 5-10 client sites, going to meetings with clients in the office or production. This is even more convenient for them.

Literally a year after my first client, I rented an office. I didn’t have a company name, I didn’t have an individual entrepreneur or LLC, I didn’t even have my own website. All calculations were carried out in cash, I entered all the results into Excel.

2nd year of studio life

In August 2013, I rented a place in the office of an advertising agency, and thus moved from home to work in the office. This was the first important decision.

The first important decision is to move to an office to work, this will increase productivity. I doubted it for a long time, but now I don’t regret it.

Registered as an individual entrepreneur. Then we teamed up with the guys - they sold context, and I sold SEO. We rented a separate office. Within six months I had my first employee - an SEO specialist who helped me in various matters. This helped me relieve myself a little.

Thanks to my partners, I gained experience and was no longer afraid to sell my services at a high price.

3rd year of studio life

If previously everything was not systematized, then already in the 3rd year everything began to make some sense. I started an LLC, we raised prices to a level slightly below the city average, and began to improve the quality of services.

An accounting department, a second SEO specialist and a sales manager appeared. We began to take orders for development for about 100 thousand rubles, and SEO clients with budgets of 10-20, or even 40 thousand rubles began to appear. per month. We began to study ways to attract clients, ways to retain them, I began to conduct financial planning (to pay salaries on time). We started actively using landing pages to attract customers. They raised prices again to the market average or even a little higher.

In general, something serious seemed to have begun, but at the same time, more severe problems began for everyone, for example, with wages, accounts receivable, and so on. It's a little depressing. But if you take care of such problems in advance, you can avoid them, I already know how.

Now there are many plans for the future for the development of the studio. I began to understand which channels bring the most profitable clients, and which clients eat up the maximum amount of time.

I tried to briefly tell you about the life of our studio; now there are 4 people working with us, including me. By the standards of Izhevsk we are a small studio, by the standards of the Russian Federation we do not exist at all. The studio's average revenue from SEO is approximately 200 rubles. per month is not enough. Our goal is to make 300 tr by the end of 2015. per month, increase the average bill.

4 Major decisions that I made and did not regret:

1. Move to the office from home, this is important.
2. Hire the next employee when you can pay his salary from the company’s revenue without consequences.
3. Raise your prices. Constantly raise your prices to reasonable limits, first study all your competitors in the city. We raised prices 2 times for new clients, first by 30%, then by 50%, and both times nothing changed.
4. Conduct financial planning. This is something monthly, only they are compiled at the beginning of the month. Helps you not get caught with a salary.

5 Main mistakes I made:

1. Use the services of accountants for registration and reporting. When registering an individual entrepreneur, I ended up with 70 pieces, only missing 1 sheet to the tax office. Let me remind you that an accountant would charge 1000 rubles for this.
2. Don't buy an expensive office. Take a convenient office so that it is convenient for employees to travel by public transport.
3. Do not hire employees on the condition that they earn their salary. This applies to the sales department, when the company has no money, they hire employees in the hope that they will bring new clients in 1 month. Approximate adaptation in the company is 1-2 months minimum (this is the experience of my partners).
4. Draw up agreements with everyone, even if the payment is small, 3-5 tr. Otherwise, it will be difficult to prove later that you are owed something.
5. Always correspond by email or other messenger. Customers are poorly literate in SEO, so they may not remember your information over the phone, and then you will not be able to show them what was agreed upon.

Conclusion

They also asked me to write about investments - there were none. All funds were taken from profits; I served my first clients on my work computer. And so, in fact, little investment is needed - 1 working computer is approximately 10 tr, 1 workplace is 2.5 tr. per month + key collector for SEO specialists 1.2 t.r. Total 13,700 rubles per 1 employee in the first month. Was the post helpful?

Many people start a business, especially if it is related to development, already having some kind of portfolio and current projects for which there is work and without forming a legal entity. It happens that someone has an excellent base of contacts, in the person of acquaintances or from a previous job, someone is even more lucky and the doors of some offices open for him when he calls, but there are other cases where there will be absolutely no advertising. impossible to make a start.

I had just that case...I was 20 years old, I had no projects, no necessary contacts, much less any experience, including in web development. I mastered the computer at the age of 18, and that was 2 years of working with hardware and networks. With only desire and a small amount of savings, I started work. At the same time, I quickly went into a financial disadvantage, since I could not use my labor to start and complete the first orders. There was a classic scheme - first SRL registration, then the office, equipment, employee search, etc.

Naturally, there was no management experience, much less promotion. There were very good assistants and logic. Then, in a logical way, I made my first “media plan”, guided by the principle that the web studio’s customers are not on the Internet, but offline. It so happened that my reasoning was justified and very soon we began to receive our first orders.

Web studio promotion

If today I were writing a plan for promoting a web studio, this would be the order in which the priorities for promotion would be:

It’s not clear how to earn recommendations from scratch. But for the most part, web studios are opened by people from the industry who already have work experience and some contacts and recommendations. This is how it snowballs, with each project this effect will grow. For this you need . If you have excellent social connections and the right contacts, this will be a big plus, but this does not negate the condition that in order to be recommended you must good, work hard and hard.

2. Tenders

Monitoring and participating in tenders can add a lot of experience, large clients and projects to the portfolio. We need to do this not just anyhow, but seriously monitor and carefully think through tender applications. Well, get acquainted with all the intricacies of tenders.

We only participated in tenders a couple of times and even unexpectedly won once, but participating in tenders was just for fun, we wanted to make sure that not everything was so bad and that we could actually win the tender. But in my value judgment, in order to receive tender orders on the flow, you need to give up conversations with an inner sense of justice and honesty, and catch a wave of orders.

3. Portfolio/Developed sites

You don’t even need to mention the portfolio; this is the first thing that interests customers. But the developed sites, and especially if you good, worked hard and hard can work great for you. Client sites usually receive good traffic and are often contacted by potential clients who like some of your work. Therefore, the more projects developed and the more popular they are on the Internet, the greater the chance of converting this traffic into new sites.

The portfolio is the studio website itself. My opinion is that it should not show the full extent of the web studio’s knowledge in web development and be an example of current technologies, no matter how strange it may seem. It should be simple and convenient for potential clients, the most important thing is the texts, a lot depends on them on the website of the web studio, even if it is not indicative in comparison with competitors who put their whole soul and modern technologies into the site.

4. Google

Just as from the point of view of the web studio, the customer is offline, from the point of view of the customer, the web studio is online. This one of the easiest ways to find a web studio is popular. You need to be in the TOP5, better yet in the TOP1, and not let your portfolio down - for most visitors to a web studio’s website, this is the second page after the main (or target) page.

5. External activities

I don’t think that this activity will bring more clients than advertising, but it has some kind of social impact. We don’t have many thematic events, but you need to participate in them, as well as be active on the network, for example, a blog with useful tips, etc.

And already my experience, how it turned out.

- Cold calls

I didn’t even know the term “cold calling” at that time. I made the first calls myself so that I could clearly set the task for the sales manager (who at that time also had no work experience) and give specific recommendations.

Every day there are at least 50 calls, from which almost every day there were some kind of meetings or negotiations. Thus, we called about 3,000 companies from the database we collected from yp.md and allmoldova.com and received about 10 orders using this promotion method. Monstrously low CTR :). But the experience was worth it! Some companies from this base returned to us after 1-1.5 years (!), there were very few of them, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Interesting experience. It was before the New Year holidays, when the shopping centers are crowded with people looking for gifts for the New Year. This advertising is completely inexpensive and completely ineffective for a web studio)).

True, there was not a single order or call from her. But oddly enough, many people heard it, firstly, it was noticed by my friends, who once again got it into their heads that I started working on websites, and secondly, our current clients noticed it. Although I myself tried to listen while walking around the shopping center to my advertisement and it was very hard to hear.

- Leaflets

In total we had 3 options for leaflets. The first leaflet was the most effective. The leaflets were distributed through the Office newspaper, i.e. they came directly to company offices and at several exhibitions at Moldexpo.

From the first leaflet we received quite a lot of orders; in just a week, the amount of advances received far exceeded the money spent on their distribution and printing. Subsequently, the effectiveness was much lower, since the leaflet was distributed through the same sources.

The email newsletter brought in a significant number of orders. Moreover, these were not the smallest contracts, but mostly medium and large orders, including those with long-term cooperation. Several times, having used this method of promotion, I stopped it completely and forever, I already wrote about this in the material "". This is the easiest way to get new orders and at the same time kill the company's image.

Radio advertising was an addition to all promotional methods, without any special expectations. She helped create the image that we were not only sending out flyers, soliciting orders through cold calling and email campaigns, but that we were also open to other advertising activities. The commercial influenced contracts already signed, those who were reached by this commercial from the past or current clients, against the background of this advertising, they ordered improvements to projects, promotion on the Internet, etc.

- Direct marketing

Of all the methods, I thought this was the most effective, because if you organize everything well, you can send a letter, fax or call directly to the person making the decision in the company about website development. But this method turned out to be the least effective - not a single order and the development of one contact takes a lot of time.

Not everyone keeps information about themselves and their contacts in the public domain, at least that’s what they think, and when you have studied a potential client and approach him with some kind of commercial offer tailored specifically to him, this greatly annoys such a client . Although he understands that all the information is “in the air”, and he is still not on a desert island and shines everywhere, since these are the rules of business... But when you call him and know everything about him, and he hears about you for the first time, It can sometimes be difficult to break through prejudice.

Of course, with personal connections or at least a small acquaintance, I think it works, but alas, I did not have such contacts. Perhaps there was little experience and insufficient qualifications for direct marketing, because we did everything based on logic and intuition, and only later found out that it was “direct marketing”.

- YellowPages

I don't know if this will work for a web studio in 2013. But in 2008 and 2009, we had orders from this directory. I've talked to clients who came from YellowPages and that's what they said. I decided to make a website, opened the directory, saw your phone number there in a beautiful frame and ordered a website. It’s strange, I would never buy any service or product, but someone acts this way.

Then came the next period:

Recommendations, Google and portfolio. There was simply no need to conduct advertising campaigns; in the first year we were able to make about 100 projects that came to us from the above advertising, and then clients simply came to us through recommendations, through links on the sites we made, or found them on Google and contacted us.

Other texts on this topic.

The web studio develops business card websites, information portals, online stores, forums, thematic websites, and dynamic flash websites. The development of any business requires having your own website, with which you can promote goods and services. To advertise a web studio, you need to develop a client base. First of all, you should leave information about yourself on various resources. These could be portals, forums, message boards, directories of sites that are available in your region. You can make active calls, offering your services to newly opened organizations. You need to look for groups on social media. networks that are dedicated to certain areas of business, participate in discussions, take part in disputes to demonstrate your knowledge and skills. You can also create video presentations and short films that talk about your activities and demonstrate your achievements.

Creating a portfolio for a web studio

One of the most important stages in advertising a web studio is creating a portfolio that will show examples of your work. Even if your studio has just begun to develop, be sure to create your own website where your examples will be clearly shown. Publish interesting, useful articles here, write selling texts, fill the site with unique content. You can create a forum on the site in which techniques for creating different sites and ways to promote them on the Internet will be discussed. It is best to present your own portfolio in the form of a set of case-studies, not only photos of the site design or code examples, but a detailed explanation of the problems that this particular design or interface solution solves.

Networking as an effective way of development

It is very useful to make new useful contacts, for which you need to participate in city events, conferences, communicate with businessmen and individual entrepreneurs who can become your potential clients. Participation in specialized conferences strengthens your status as an expert in the field of website promotion and development of comprehensive web solutions. Try to touch on pressing market problems or review new trends, rather than retell old cases and other people's theoretical research. Even if you do not have the opportunity to send an employee as a speaker, there is still the option of information sponsorship, publishing an announcement and post-release on your organization’s blog

Outdoor advertising of website creation and promotion services

It is important to produce high-quality printed products, such as business cards, booklets, leaflets, which can be presented at such events. This way, those who need this information will know about your web studio. “Cold” calls, as mentioned above, will not attract new clients if for them you are an unfamiliar company offering the same CP options that they receive by email and in incoming messages every day. But if a manager sees the name of your company in his news feed on his social network, if he sees your billboards on the street and ads in a search engine, then there is a chance that the offer will not be missed amid the flurry of information noise.

Posting information on specialized websites and portals

Often, public websites are created to cover city events, for example, this could be the site of the city administration, sites of cinemas and theaters of the city. Try to take part in the development of such resources. Even if you don’t earn anything, your work will become known to other businessmen who may become your customers. Take part in meetings with colleagues, for example, you can organize online clubs, business development seminars, where all interested parties will be invited. This is where you can demonstrate a film about your capabilities and achievements, distribute advertising brochures, business cards, make proposals for creating business card websites, etc.

It will be useful to place your company’s card on rating sites of studios and SEO companies. Firstly, this is free advertising of services and comparison of quality and price with competitors, and secondly, the opportunity to publish a specific case with a mention of the client’s website on a well-known resource.

Review of sites for publishing portfolios and cases: