I spent £600 in one year on 2 publications and got £75 worth of work, they quoted 100's of searches etc. I also have a degree in Marketing and unless you can spend £millions and cover all bases it can be useless.
Signs on van is a good one, if its plain then vistaprint do magnetic panels quite cheap. If your not busy go in tesco's for a coffee and do your shopping leaving van prominent. Otherwise its always there and this has brought in at least 6 jobs in the last year.
Make friends with self employed kitchen fitters and plumbers, a couple of guys who like your work and you like theirs and cross promote.
Do a good job, if it takes an extra hour even though its not budgetted for that lost revenue of £20 can be worth £1000 on recommendation. It's not who you know its who your customers know!
In the name of the advertiser, 90% of my marketing budget is waste I just don't know which 10% does!
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