There are a lot of businesses, and or niches who have problems promoting a new website business locally for cheap to free, and I say have fun because it is hard. Having a specific target market is also harder!
Buying a magnetic sticker to put on your car or bumper stickers doesn’t help since you cant stop the person and ask them “Hey can I buy some Mary Kay lipstick?” when they are doing 65 down a main road can you?
Well what a lot of people don’t know and I didn’t know until recently was newspapers have leftover ad space each edition, or almost each addition that they need to fill up and they will sell at dirt dirt cheap. It gets your name in the paper and saves you some money.
Putting flyers around the neighborhood is all fine and dandy and going through the phone book from A-Z is good too but its harder. Going to local businesses such as a real estate company and saying hey, you can offer your listings to be a little more creative then the regular website. I can design a few templates for you and do a whole website set up and they can have a more customized feel to the site, or each house could get its own website
123cherrylane.com
For people wanting more information, some real estate agents will bite at the chance. I know I was offered this option in the long run from a agency who wanted to do something similar.
But you need an actual working portfolio. Even if you setup basic “faux” sites just to run into it and take screen captures, but you really need working models in your portfolio. So make up a few fake companies and put them up even if they are subdomains off your site people are more apt to buy if they can see how it works.
Soho Quest is a great new resource for people!