[marisa]

Hi everyone,
My husband and I have a business that is catered to work at home women and mothers. I haven't been online much in the last 6 months or so, and I'm kind of behind on where the best places to advertise to those with small businesses. I really need to get the best bang for my buck and want to make sure any place I advertise is getting good traffic. I'm thinking maybe a front page ad here in this section, and maybe something on mymommybiz.com.(does anyone go there?) Banner ad on diaperpin? I know they have WAHM forums too.
So, can anyone help me figure out where the WAHMs and other small business women hang out? It's not a crunchy business or anything that needs to reach a general retail audience. Thanks!

 

[HeatherSanders]

Well MDC is definitely a great place to catch the attention of WAHMs. WAHMs are varied in their businesses and their needs though - is there a particular niche of WAHMs you cater more to than others? For instance, Diaper Pin and The Diaper Hyena will have a lot of cloth diaper sewers and retailers, but ChildAvenue.com is a broader base.

I would recommend doing a search online using keywords like 'work at home moms' and 'WAHM' as well as any niche that you may be trying to reach and see what comes up. This will show you what some of the top sites are for those particular keywords and likely, you will want to be THERE if it meets your budget.

 

[marisa]

Thanks for your suggestions!

Generally speaking, we offer products in the marketing/business visibility category so I'm hoping to reach as broad of base as possible. I'll look around, thanks again!

 

[HeatherSanders]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marisa Thanks for your suggestions! Generally speaking, we offer products in the marketing/business visibility category so I'm hoping to reach as broad of base as possible. I'll look around, thanks again!

If it is business marketing and search engine optimization then you would have a pretty targeted niche to find in the SEs, and you may want to consider contacting some of the more informational sites to see if you can be an 'expert' for their site or offer some sort of free article writing, etc... in exchange for text links and/or banner rotations on their pages.

There are plenty of sites looking for content for the purpose of SEO. Seems like a good trade and a way to exchange 'time' for exposure.

 

[marisa]

Well, it's not internet marketing we do - but products for actual physical business visibility. (Being vague so I don't get into trouble is quite difficult!) We do alot of business locally, and are hoping to expand our efforts online. I'm hoping that it transfers easily as a web business, but I'm pretty unsure of how to get the word out!
Maybe if I knew more about SEO I wouldn't be having this problem, LOL!
Thanks again!

 

[HeatherSanders]

Hey, you are in Fort Worth!

I'm in Huntsville, but my dh grew up in FW.

Okay, so you sell items that help business visibility. Really, the online world is hard to break into. It can take a couple of years to really build up a solid, returning, referring client base, BUT my experience is that no matter how much advertising we do, our largest base comes from word-of-mouth. A few sales here and there from the beginning, when serviced well, do their own work.

You can also try to build up a local 'online' clientele. They access you online by seeing your business cards or advertisements in your specific community. For instance, we have cards at our print shops. People come in, get printing jobs done, see our cards and call us about our services. That can grow our online sales, but with local clients.

The key, it seems, is to find a niche - recognize it when you are there - and then not try to necessarily get outside of the niche, but work within it to expand the business.

Wouldn't we all love to have a ceiling-less budget for advertising? heh heh

 

[marisa]

Wow, Huntsville! Not too far.

Okay, I see. Well, thinking about it, maybe a good niche that might work for online would be women who are in direct sales or MLM since they usually have more of a need for promotional products because they really rely on getting new leads and such. Online retail stores seem to depend more on web advertising, as opposed to getting out and about to find the customers. So, now I shall contemplate this and do my research.