I live in New Orleans. there is a lot of construction going on. Some work still related to Katrina... elevating houses and new buildings. I have some of the best prices and experience, but I am not getting enough work. 

Has anyone ever tried billboards? 

Google is expensive and I really didn't see and customers from it. I visit dispatch offices and talk to a lot of concrete ready mix salesmen. I also am aggressive in stopping and handing out cards and putting signs at jobs. 

I can advertise on 5 electronic billboards throughout town for $1000 a month. Do you think it is a good idea?

If you are operating on a 25% profit margin, you will have to increase your business $4000 a month just to break even on the advertising costs.  I do not think billboards will do that for you.  Local association magazines, direct marketing, facebook with targeted marketing. Passing out lots of business cards.

got my friend into the gutter business, he bought a half page in the phone book days and ended up with half the new construction in the good times. those contacts have carried him over to doing excavation type of work in bad times. he is kind of a high rolling gambler. some prductive and time takes  a financial hit.

so if there is billboards in a nice location and you have the bucks with no plan B involved. toss it out there, its like name branding. down the road when people are shopping they might recognize you from last years advertising.  

Hey, I've been out of the business for about 12 years. When I wanted work I used call and hang around the Redi Mix suppliers. Sometimes I would park my boom Pump where there dispatcher could see it and I would go in and talk to them. Bring them stuff they liked food, soda, tobacco, ect.

Good luck - word of mouth is what carried me through..

yellow pages , google, white pages , etc. it just depends on what you are willing to spend.

Have you tried creating a Google my business account yet? That's a great way to get exposure. All you do is create an account with Google and you can create business account with them. You put in your business name, business address, and business phone number. You can put up some pics too which is helpful because google likes when businesses do that.

After you fill everything out, they will mail you a post card (like in 5 to 7 business days) with a code that you need to input into your Google account to confirm that you're the business owner. Once you do that you're in!

They will place you into their Google "map pack" what they call their local listings. They will put your phone number there too. The cool thing about that is that you will always come up on page one of their results for the city that you serve. It's really quite simple!

What works best is if you got a website too, nothing fancy really, that has your phone number so contractors can click on and call right there and then off of their smart phones.  

I have my pumping business set up this way and I have already got some calls from it! My concrete pumping business is in a smaller town in California. So whenever someone looks for concrete pumping in San Luis Obispo, CA & my business comes up on page one of the results on their Google "map pack". 

Oh...by the way. All of this is free!

I put a pic here to see what the "map pack" looks like.