Where to advertise to IT sales/marketing people?

June 15, 2005 8:25 AM

We need to do some online advertising and PR, on a just-above-shoestring budget, directed at people responsible for selling new information technology products. The minimum for a text ad from publishers like Ziff-Davis and CMP's TechWeb seems to be well over $2,000 per insertion. We'd like to spend less than that, so maybe we're looking for more obscure publications.
posted by bmckenzie to work & money (2 comments total)

That's not a lot to work with. On such a limited budget, you might want to consider Google AdWords. If you choose your keywords carefully, these little ads have great a great bang:buck (and, conversion) ratio.

You might also want to do the DIY approach, and start commenting like crazy (please not annoyingly) in blogs and online communities related to your product/service. Just link your URL. This works better if you have something interesting to say. Doing this can also improve your Google ranking (sometimes, depending on the sites' configurations).
posted by CaptApollo at 8:39 AM on June 15, 2005

I second the google adwords thing. You can get started with just a credit card and just a few bucks and can play around with it. You can also get a good idea of what terms are working and what your competitors are spending. Very little risk and you can up the $$$ or kill the program pretty much instantly.

When I was working on a member acquisition program with a small budget, I was going to check out www.industrybrains.com . It sells text ads in some very targeted sites. The program I was working on got killed before I had a chance to try them.

Depending on your products, be cautious with CaptApollo's DIY approach. You don't want to come across as a shill for your product or someone who is spamming discussion lists with ad-like copy. All hell breaks loose if the online communities think you're pimping your company. [like you've probably seen on Metafilter before].

Another low cost thing to try is if there are community websites discussing the types of goods/services your company sells, you may be able to strike a deal with the person that runs the site. I had moderate success getting acquiring members taking that route [example: I'll give you $x.xx for every person you send that signs up for more information coming from your site]. Or you may be able to buy cost per click ads from the sites as well.
posted by birdherder at 5:16 PM on June 15, 2005