Advertising: What Has Worked And What Hasn't

I thought I would just reflect on how much money I have spent on advertising, and consider for a moment what has worked and what hasn't.

Flyers
I had thousands of flyers printed up last year and distributed in local newspapers.
Reponse: 0

Yellow Pages & Thomson Directory
I thought it was be good for my company image to have a presence in these high profile directories. Unfortunately it generated only a few enquiries and they were mostly from nut cases.

Google Adwords
This keyword advertising has worked a treat in generating leads as and when I want them. The only draw back is that its easy to create lots of campaigns with their own budgets and before you know it, you've spent quite a lot of money. But it does get results.

Local Newspaper
I tried a couple of local newspapers and the ads came out nicely but the response was very disappointing.

Ads I didn't, and wouldn't, touch with a barge pole

Anyone from a "charity business directory". They mostly all seems dodgy and I've heard of people being invoiced for entries they never consented too.

Anyone from a really pushy sales outfit like UFindus. They called me up and started the conversation by telling me that people weren't using Google any more to find stuff. I knew from that point that this conversation wasn't going anywhere so I just had to spend a few minutes trying to get off the phone which the guy really didn't want to let me do. Note to self: just hang up in future.