Absolutely. So I'm not really running any ads (I did throw away $100 on an ad on clientsfromhell.net and got virtually zero results).

My search strategy follows a lot of what patio11 covers here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/

Write relevant content for your audience (educational content: how they can better their lives or work) and promote where possible. I'll sometimes to go message boards for freelancers, see what questions they're asking, spend some time on a post, and then cycle back to them.

Long term strategy is having a healthy amount of crawlable content that my audience might search for.