Friday, October 26, 2012

Still using Yellow Pages

Well we have been settled in Oxford, MS for nearly 3 months now, but it seems like an eternity. Trying to get a small start up off the ground in this community is proving to be a challenge to say the least. I thought the knowledge of marketing in the big city could at least scratch up some results here in cotton country. In Dallas, I managed a successful commercial air conditioning company. I transitioned the established company into the modern age of technology, both in operations and marketing. The skills that I acquired after four years in big D ....I brought with me to Mississippi with the hopes of starting a small sized computer repair business. Before Oxford we were in Hernando, which is a town about 60 miles north of Oxford. I played around in my spare time, creating a couple of websites for local businesses. Boy was it hard trying to sell the concept of a company website and internet marketing. I was trying to sell the idea to individuals who had a hard copy of the yellow pages in every vehicle that they owned. Well it paid off for both the companies and myself. Sales calls increased but not like I had expected.
We moved to Oxford in August. I had decided that I would try my best to break into the computer repair market. I offered very low prices due to the fact that I was operating out of my home office. Ole Miss is located here in town and therefore I reasoned that every student had a computer. After searching for local companies I was shocked to find at least 9 computer repair businesses. I asked myself how I could break into the market. I decided to try to get my website listed above the other companies on the major search engines. After an entire month of tedious work, often annoying my fiance at the hours I worked overnight, I managed to surpass the majority of the companies for the search criteria that I thought would bring business. On Google I was listed about 4 spots down on the front page. The same for Bing and Yahoo. I taught myself  HTML and SEO methods, how to use social media, and bookmarks to increase search results.
But now it has been about one week since my magic was applied and the only calls I am getting is from vendors and advertisers  What The f^%*! Was my assumption that even though this is still Mississippi...college kids here should be somewhat techie  Well the only thing I can do is find other avenues of advertising. I have decided to infiltrate the college scene and see what pearls I can find. To be continued....

www.techsolutionz.org


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