Marketing Strategies

Hello,
I'm building a web development business plan and I'm starting to think about the marketing it. That is, in order to get my business up and running, I'm going to have to market myself. So I've got questions:

What kind of agencies should I be looking for?
What's the most cost effective way to marketing myself?
How can I research marketing agents to see who's got the best success records?
Does anybody have any good answers to these questions, or just addition advice?

[Laura Lynne]

Originally Posted by ismael9467@yahoo.com

What's the most cost effective way to marketing myself?

That maybe is the web, free marketing and if you get the search engines pegged you're on a winner

(welcome by the way)

[Redfern]

Well ill tell you my plan. Im a small new web dev from chester and sheffield in the uk. How ive got business's is either via word of mouth through family and friends and aswell ive put an anvert in my local chester newspaper (was about £30 for 7 weeks and i got 1 call back from it). The best way really is to go to business's without websites and ask them if thay want one, some of the time thell either say no or there thiking about it but the odd few will say yeyh and they was free marketing on your side. I wolud say start out small and go for little business's thay want small static websites and when the websites come in that need to be database run start doing them etc... Er let me sumirize your questions incase you didnt get it from that random **** ive said there.

(What type of .... ) Small ones that dont have websites to start with that dont know much about the web then work up from that. Depends on your skill level really..

(Marketing for cheap .... ) Get on search engings, local papers, word of mouth and actually going to the business's.

And i dont know how to answer your next qustion sorry.

Probably was just me talking aload of **** but i hope it helped someway. let me know if you need anything else.

[tommylogic]

Try workin with charitable groups. You may end up doing some freebies, but nothing will build your reputation like the desire to help those in need.
Start calling around and just asking, offer your services as "anything I can do to help" point them in the direction of your business. Worse case scenario, you get hits on your site. For me, I equate the time I devote to that as money more than well spent. If your time=money, then nothing pays back more than good kharma.
Good Luck,
Tommy

[cayden9598]

Your question is very confusing because you say you want to market yourself but want to look for an agency. My sincere advice is to take help from wantedpronto the single source to provide you all support.
Hope this helps.

[tommylogic]

I believe he meant that he wanted to do "sub-contractor" work for various agencies... not that he wanted to be a direct reseller of advertising products. A lot of freelance designers want to represent themselves TO agencies.

Like i said before, look for direct work at charitable organizations and build a portfolio to present to the PR Firms and Agencies.