Best Method Of Advertising For 2014?

Besides word of mouth, which of these marketing models has brought you the most success?

As someone who just made the transition from a day job and side work to full time working for myself hands down the best has been facebook.

Honorable mention to yard signs and local lumber yard referrals.

List is very incomplete missing many of the best methods. This question has been asked numerous times. Try using the search feature.

I'm going to take the high road, be the bigger man and say "Maybe I'm wrong. Let's examine the facts."

It seems as though that 2 individuals have discredited my question as being irrelevant. I guess further explanation is needed...

This question is identical to one that was asked back in 2009 (during the recession). Five years and many out-of-business contractors later, things have changed...

SEO does not work anymore for smaller contractors. Why? Because EVERYONE is doing it. I have not gotten 1 call from my SEO in recent months and I'm on the bottom of the first page of Google. It does work, though, in general. Who shows up on the top page of Google? Home Advisor. I know of many contractors that are successful because of Home Advisor, yet 5 years ago, most of the contractors that I knew had no idea what Home Advisor was.

Flyers seem to work if you target them right, but I wanted to see how they compare to postcards and door hangers.

The newspaper doesn't work anymore. Four of the six top contractors that I know of don't use the newspaper anymore. No one reads it. The newspaper in my area had to double its price to survive. And there is much less content. Everything is online and everyone seems to go on Craigslist for the classifieds. In the recent years, I've seen many contractors put an ad in the newspaper and a year later, the ad is not there. In the past few years, my ad had stopped generating calls, except for a bunch of tire kickers. At my local newspaper company, there used to be four salespeople before the recession. Last time I checked, it was only 2 and I was told it was because more people are doing their reading online.

Now that I wrote this, I feel that I have to apologize. My question was being dismissed as irrelevant. Hopefully, I have given the information that is needed to answer the poll. If you need any additional information, please let me know.

I guess I can't vote then.

You need to give a little more information because not every trade or area is the same. I have a friend who does windows and he ranks second down on google's first page. Gets lots of work from this. But he has to do a lot of volume of work compared to me. So SEO works better than anything for him. I work by word of mouth because i dont need a lot of volume of work to stay busy. I can pick and choose the money makers and not have to advertise at all. I have a website but do zero SEO.

There's no one size fits all.

Good reviews on Yelp have been good for me. I don't pay them anything and I get plenty of leads from them.

As crazy as this sounds I actually have very good results from the free newspapers that are sent to homeowners..Im in about 4 and 3 of them are the types of communities where people look forward to reading that little free paper..Guess depends on the area

Yes seo is a waste of time.

Yelp and Google Places isn't on there. They are what land me the most leads.

Hand out business cards in anger management class

I'm pretty sure you just made the naughty list.

Post up your website link... I'm interested to see that.

There's a lot of people that can make page one in rank but if the site is lousy, I can see where there would not be an inquiry. Being relevant is more important than just showing up once. If you show up anywhere from 2 - 9 times in one search, people become interested...

No one could even do that Dawg , you would have to be a magician or something.

I've done that in quite a few search terms.

So it's possible then, I thought seo was dead.

Far from it at this point. Closed another one this afternoon from a google search/web inquiry.
In the initial contact the homeowner said she was dealing with Lowes for her first quote but they couldnt perform all the services she wanted. After speaking with her, she claimed that she didn't want to waste my time... I went on a limb and tried something new so I had her send me pictures and I gave her a general price of starting at $6,500.

Went today and wrote a contract for $8,700... (thanks Google search...)

That's great Todd!

SEO is generating leads for us, real leads. It has quickly become a solid part of our planning and marketing strategies. People claiming SEO is dead make me wonder if there is something going wrong with their endeavors.

SEO may be a waste of time if you're investing low, but if you can get your company on the top five first page of google you'll be getting calls. It's hard to compete with big lead companies such as homeadvisor, networkx, towncontractors, etc... it's why buying good leads may be the best option. I have been successful with www.towncontractors.com buying exclusive painting leads in my area.