Posted by brianV on December 8, 2008 at 10:03pm
Hello.
I run a small Drupal shop a little ways out of Ottawa, ON. To date, I haven't had any local clients; all the projects I've picked up have been through the Drupal forums, and word of mouth.
However, I want to begin expanding into the local market. I live in a small city with a few web development shops. I really think I can offer better value for the money than any of the local competitors.
In my opinion, there are some fairly clear benefits to having a local clientelle:
- Focused Branding - that is, it is easier to push my 'brand' to saturation in a smaller local market than across the whole web.
- Face-to-Face meetings - I would really like the opportunity to meet my clients face-to-face before beginning a job. It can be difficult to judge a character over the phone; I think I could avoid 'problem' clients easier if I can meet them face-to-face.
Does anyone have any 'local promotion' tips they would mind sharing? Does having a largely local client base introduce any special challenges to your business?
Thanks in advance for any replies!
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My first projects were initially done online, outside Europe (I live in France), and that did not prove to be a problem.
However, during the last few weeks, I've worked for a customer 1 mile away from my office, and there are indeed advantages to working locally: there is time and misunderstandings to be spared by being able to just meet face to face (instead of online) in just a few minutes. But the advantage fades fast: one hour on the road is often considered "local", but it is not that different from being really far away.
IMHO, the biggest plus is at the beginning of the project, when more actual meetings are needed.
There was a great
There was a great presentation from DrupalCon Sveged from someone (can't remember her name, maybe Emma) out of a small town in Canada. She talked about joining the chamber of commerce, offering free training classes, etc...
Sorry I can't offer more detail, but there's a video on the Drupalcon site. Look it up, might be helpful.
Open for (small) business
Indeed that was me! (Thanks for mentioning the presentation, cachilupi. I'm glad you enjoyed it!) I'll be giving a variation on this talk in Brussels as well. It'll be more the hands-on-technical stuff of how to set up multi-site. The presentation is online from Szeged if you're interested in watching it:
http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/open-small-business
I'm actually not a fan of the local Chamber of Commerce, there is too much emphasis on B2B discounting. But I like the idea of businesses getting together to talk about things that affect their business (parking is a hot topic with our group). The free tech support also allows me to pitch new ideas to clients without having to arrange for a meeting or show up in fancy work clothes (we meet after hours in one of my client's cafes that has wireless).