Hello there

I would like to know about the results of your latest campaigns, and some comments on that issue, best campaigns, costs budgets etc.

Am running an ad now on a hosting directory. It's basically a bust. Click thru rate is very good, ~8%, but the number of viewings is abysmal, and haven't made a sell from it. My sponsored link at Yahoo brings me far better results.

I think that our campain is the worse investment we have made so far :/

We did some advertising on host directory sites and didn't see much in the way of anything. Our best referral is hostsearch.com which is fabulous. Other than that, not much...word of mouth is working for us well (Viral)

For those that have done sponsored links on Yahoo, googlewords and the like, what kind of results did you get? We ran a googleword campaign and received a .25 click through with no sales, we only did about $250 worth, but was just wondering if anyone had any insight, ideas, etc.

Originally posted by smartbackups
For those that have done sponsored links on Yahoo, googlewords and the like, what kind of results did you get? We ran a googleword campaign and received a .25 click through with no sales, we only did about $250 worth, but was just wondering if anyone had any insight, ideas, etc.

We ran google for $100 and had an excellent click through, but no sales.

Yeah I spent close to $300 with google and had about a %40 click through but not a single legit sale. I got a lot of people signing up with fake credit cards.

I have not had much luck with hosting directories either. My best luck has been with domain registrar partnerships.

:eek: So; what actually 'works' ??

It really depends how do you define works, if you're after branding a low CTR doesn't really matter, but if you are after clients, well, than it's a completely different story.

Clients :D

got to say we have not seen a significant result from any online advertising, we get click throughs but not sales.

We stopped all banner ads and our sales have grown at the same rate - I'm not against advertising but 'I' certainly haven't found the magic formula - so where do we spend our advertising budget?

We view advertising as branding your name.... Where you can get people to know your name instead of aiming for customer base increments.

It may help to target a bit more. Go for local events... Even simple things such as sponsoring a little league team and adding your name to their uniforms. Most high schools have multiple groups working on a fund raiser for one thing or another as well as churches etc. Getting your company involved in these types of things helps to get your name out. If they have the opportunity to get their fund raiser online your name will spread there as well. The beauty of it is the feeling you'll get in the process.

Helping to educate school children about the Internet is also a need throughout many cities in America and abroad. If you were able to sponsor something that would help them to accomplish the task your name would land in the hands of the parents via the children that bring the notices home about "their classes web site project"....

As was noted, "Word of Mouth" is what brings clients and advertising brings name recognition. So if your going for clients it's probably best to go for Word of Mouth and projects similar to the above are a huge help in accomplishing that task.

Just a small thought that undoubtedly has already been brought up elsewhere many times but one that I think is worth a great deal when put into action. Be creative and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I would say that trying to build brand through advertsing takes big bucks and continuous big bucks at that - can't imagine you'd get much return on $500 or $1000 a month.

Plus the cost of determining the effectiveness of a brand campaign can be very costly and if you cannot determine that then how do you know if your branding bucks are working? So you could be throwing money down the same drain.

added to this I cannot say I have seen that many branding ads for hosting companies - most are the usual, php, mysql dedicated servers, shared hosting for $9.99 etc etc - these arn't building brands but building awareness at best

My personal feeling is that at best these adds build awareness of the company and if you are competing against the big boys who can buy more spots and more frequency than the smaller companies then you probably don't even get that result.

So, even if you are building awareness it gets over-shadowed by the the guys who advertise on every single hosting directory etc if a potential customer hops from 6 or 10 hosting directories and they see your advert on every one then I can imagine they will become aware of you, especially if next month when they do the same you are still there.

However if they see you on one then I doubt you will be remembered. I would also think you need to back this with hard copy adverts and press releases etc on a continuous basis to keep momentum. I have to say a serious awareness campaign is above our budget for marketing right now

Rackspace.com Webhosting.com and Addr are doing excellent branding campaigns in my opinion... I see them everywhere... I really liked the evolution campaign by rackspace.com have you seen it? :)

Very Funny!

Originally posted by FindSP.Com
I really liked the evolution campaign by rackspace.com have you seen it? :)
Very Funny!

We liked them so much we switched providers from Verio to Rackspace :)

How's their support?

professional as they tell?

So far they have been very impressive. We only completed our move on the 19th of September, so cant say we've given them a real trial yet.

Deb and BlueBox: I couldn't agree more. A few hundred dollars thrown at a hosting directory won't get you much in return. A few click-throughs, perhaps, but I haven't seen or read about stellar results from such a meager investment. A successful ad campaign requires lots of homework, a serious investment and careful targeting.

My best and most loyal customers are those that have come by word of mouth.

I dont think its quite as clear cut as that. Companies like interland, pair networks, valueweb etc, didnt build their businesses on referrals alone.

Advertising online or off, works if you do your research first. If it was as simple as buying a banner and waiting for the orders to come flooding in, everyone would be the size of verio.

I dont think its quite as clear cut as that. Companies like interland, pair networks, valueweb etc, didnt build their businesses on referrals alone.

I think you are right, but they didn't build it by spending $500 to $1000 a month on advertising either - these guys probably spent more a month than some hosts have in income.

Advertising online or off, works if you do your research first. If it was as simple as buying a banner and waiting for the orders to come flooding in, everyone would be the size of verio

Again I agree, and if hosts do a ratio of click throughs to sales for both banners on directories and standard free entries the differences are amazing. But if hosting co's are looking to build awareness how do they research this? The cost to discover how many people are aware of you both before and after the advert would cost thousands more than the advert.

I would also suggest that an advertiser should at least work out how many packages they need to sell to cover the cost of the advert and after each month calculate your cost per sale from that advert

If we are going to spend money on advertsing we always set an objective as to what we want as a return and at present we measure that return by sales not click throughs.

I think a certain myth has grown around advertising (in some respects to protect those selling advertsing) in that 'advertising isn't about getting sales' - well why isn't it? or why shouldn't it be?

The problem is that there are major differences between those people who click on your free web hosting directory entry and those that click on the banners - that difference is that a much larger percentage of the first type buy your products than the second - why is that? Its because they have clicked before finding out what you do or provide, where as the first group have 'hunted' you out, they are your real 'targets' - so if the people who click our banners are not our targets why have the banner?

I don't think small hosting companies can afford not to get a return on their advertising investment, because thats how we see it, it's an investment and investments should show a return, or at least have the objective of showing a return.

Originally posted by BlueBox
I think you are right, but they didn't build it by spending $500 to $1000 a month on advertising either - these guys probably spent more a month than some hosts have in income.


I agree, its not a cheap process. But cost is only part of the story. A consistent image is perhaps more important. If you take the example quoted earlier by findsp. Addr have a very strong image which they have consistently conveyed for several years.

Originally posted by BlueBox
I would also suggest that an advertiser should at least work out how many packages they need to sell to cover the cost of the advert and after each month calculate your cost per sale from that advert

If we are going to spend money on advertising we always set an objective as to what we want as a return and at present we measure that return by sales not click throughs.


Again true, but not quite as straight forward as you proposed. Unfortunately sales don't generally result from the first visit to your web site. Selling hosting isn't like Amazon selling books. Firstly, there's such a difference between providers, that buyers often check out several companies before making their purchase. Secondly the decision to build a web site is generally made weeks or months in advance of selecting a suitable package. This lead time means that although a potential buyer may have visited your site in week one of their search, they might not return for several weeks.

Originally posted by BlueBox
I think a certain myth has grown around advertising (in some respects to protect those selling advertising) in that 'advertising isn't about getting sales' - well why isn't it? or why shouldn't it be?

I disagree. In the last couple of years the opposite has been the case. With the ability to track with an element of certainty the success of a campaign, many companies are now questioning advertising in ways they would never have done before. How accountable are magazines or newspapers, when it comes to delivering results? A lot of the time the reasons for not making a sale are a little deeper than the source of your site traffic. How about pricing, reputation, support, billing, site navigation, reputation etc etc etc.

How many times have you sold a car through the local paper or auto trader, to get little or no response? Do you stop advertising? No you change the wording in your ad, alter the photo, or even change the price, until you get the results you wanted. Hosting is no different. The larger companies recognised that years ago, and have spend their recent months developing their eCommerce models. Check out the new Addr and Rackspace and hostpro sites, to see what I mean.

Originally posted by BlueBox
The problem is that there are major differences between those people who click on your free web hosting directory entry and those that click on the banners - that difference is that a much larger percentage of the first type buy your products than the second - why is that? Its because they have clicked before finding out what you do or provide, where as the first group have 'hunted' you out, they are your real 'targets' - so if the people who click our banners are not our targets why have the banner?

I agree with you here to a degree. banners are to a large degree a medium for building brand in addition to clicks. for that reason you will generally pay a premium for them. High rankings in a directory, spotlight listings and higher search engine placement are going to have a more immediate effect for those companies on a budget.

I agree, its not a cheap process. But cost is only part of the story. A consistent image is perhaps more important. If you take the example quoted earlier by findsp. Addr have a very strong image which they have consistently conveyed for several years.

So whats your reasoning? If the cost is above what can be afforded or if what can be afforded is not enough to achieve a worthwhile result

This lead time means that although a potential buyer may have visited your site in week one of their search, they might not return for several weeks.

we are well aware of this - this doesn't answer the question that the percentage who click on a free hosting directory insertion and buy is vastly higher than from banners on the same directory

? A lot of the time the reasons for not making a sale are a little deeper than the source of your site traffic. How about pricing, reputation, support, billing, site navigation, reputation etc etc etc.

But you are missing the point - the source is the same - the only difference is one may be from a banner and the other from the free directory listing - both clicks come from the same site

The old saying in advertising that "I know half my advertising dollars are wasted - I just don't know which half!" well with the tracking we use we can say which is wasted.

My strong belief is that web advertising should be valued by the amount of new business it creates and I would disagree to some degree that brand can be successfully built using web advertising, as it is mainly cognitive not emotional and it is emotions that build brands - these emotions are built during interaction/relationships with a customer, it is why word of mouth is so successful because the person 'spreading the word' has a possitive image of the company built from interaction/experience (not because they saw your banner every day for 12 months) . A brand can be built using TV or hard print much more easily beacuse the buyer is passive and not involved as they are when surfing the net and it gives time to get subtle meassages across.

The only people I have met who say advertising on the web is successful are the same people who are trying to take my money for an advert ;)

Originally posted by BlueBox
The old saying in advertising that "I know half my advertising dollars are wasted - I just don't know which half!" well with the tracking we use we can say which is wasted.


Sorry but this just isn't possible. You don't know that someone who clicked on your ad three months didn't ultimately buy your product online yesterday. Tracking doesn't work effectively. If it did no-one would waste their advertising dollars. And if you have found the secret, you'd be well on your way to your first million. ;)

As for clicks from a directory being better quality than a banner click I didn't disagree. A person who has already defined their requirement via a directory search engine is of course higher quality than one who simply clicked on a banner because he liked the tag line.

your comments on brand building are an excellent example of my original point. All I can say to this is check out pair networks. they have over 100,000 accounts a multimillion dollar turnover, make a sizable profit and have never advertised anywhere but online! Maybe you should let them know they've got it all wrong..... ;)

you're selling advertising I'm buying and you ain't going to convince me web adverts work unless you have thousands of dollars to throw at them and keep throwing at them - we have periods of web advertising and periods of not and we know what the results were.

Pair networks didn't get 100,000 accounts spending $500 to $1000 a month on web adverts, which is what we are talking about

And hiding behind the unkown
You don't know that someone who clicked on your ad three months didn't ultimately buy your product online yesterday
is exactly what I am meaning, we have a good idea where our customers come from because we do that old fashioned thing - we ask them, how do you think we know the ratio between banners and directory entries to sales?

But you are proposing that hosts with limited budgets should spend that on a form of advertising which produces no measurable results?

Originally posted by BlueBox
But you are proposing that hosts with limited budgets should spend that on a form of advertising which produces no measurable results?

If this was the case why have the vast majority of my clients been with us for over 2 years? Maybe 15-20% of our advertisers are what you would probably describe as large scale hosts, the other 80 - 85% are small businesses. If web advertising didn't work why are they still around?

You should remember that the larger hosts were all small once upon a time...... Their growth didn't come just from VC funding during the 1999-2000 boom. Some actually built their businesses the traditional way. Advertising = Sales = Revenue - Less costs = Profit!

The way your attacking the online advertising business suggests that you haven't had much success. Please don't apply that logic to everyone, I could give you a examples of a 100+ companies that would argue your views.

Finally to say that smaller hosts can only build their businesses through traditional word of mouth, referrals and a little free promotion, is a little restricting in terms of their growth prospects.

I couldn't agree with you more James, we had many advertisers with different results. They hosting companies were offering the same packages - some got overwhelming response, and some got a bad response.

The results of the campaign depend on so many factors, which start with the ad design and end with the hosting company's web site...

Finally to say that smaller hosts can only build their businesses through traditional word of mouth, referrals and a little free promotion, is a little restricting in terms of their growth prospects

Firstly I'm not saying this - I'm saying spending a small amount on web advertising is a waste especially if you cannot measure the results, there are many other ways to market a business, but this thread is about web advertising results

[QUOTE]The results of the campaign depend on so many factors, which start with the ad design and end with the hosting company's web site...[QUOTE]

I don't think this argument stands up to close inspection, if a host gets a good conversion rate from free entries but not from a banner on the same site then surely the factor in question is the quality of the traffic from the banner, not the other factors?

Originally posted by BlueBox
I don't think this argument stands up to close inspection, if a host gets a good conversion rate from free entries but not from a banner on the same site then surely the factor in question is the quality of the traffic from the banner, not the other factors?

What I mean is that the conversion rate often depends on the host itself...

heh, never mind :)

Originally posted by BlueBox
I don't think this argument stands up to close inspection, if a host gets a good conversion rate from free entries but not from a banner on the same site then surely the factor in question is the quality of the traffic from the banner, not the other factors?

OK, this is the second time I've said......I agree with you! My point was you are always going to get a higher conversion rate from a pre-qualified source. i.e a directory listing and not a banner. A banner generally informs the prospect of little more than the lowest price of your services. In an attempt to draw in potential buyers. In contrast someone who has already defined their requirements from doing a search within a directory, already knows you offer the service that suits your needs. so naturally the banner sales conversion rate is going to be lower.

Originally posted by BlueBox
I'm saying spending a small amount on web advertising is a waste especially if you cannot measure the results, there are many other ways to market a business, but this thread is about web advertising results

It might be simpler if you defined small amount. If your talking about a marketing budget of above $200 per month, I'd disagree. You could drive between 200 - 400 prospects to your site for that much per month. An ad in the yellow pages would cost more and deliver less.

Originally posted by BlueBox
[B]
I'm saying spending a small amount on web advertising is a waste especially if you cannot measure the results


I would go as far to say that spending any amounts on advertising is a waste UNLESS you measure the results.

But referring to your statement, it is possible to measure results for advertising campaigns online unlike offline marketing.

You can use third party audited ad delivery solutions, session id's and cookies to track the visitor from clicking the advert through to your website. Other options are Web Trends Live. So, it is possible to measure small campaigns, you just have to do it!

anyone tried advertising in webhostingtalk?

is it worth the money you gave clickthrough rate
and sales?

thanks

Originally posted by zagadka
anyone tried advertising in webhostingtalk?

I'll just mention that this is a new thing, and if you refresh the pages a few times and take note of the banners up there, you'll be able to see who has 'tried advertising on WHT'. Unfortunately, since it is new (less than a month old I believe), it will be hard to get any useful numbers just yet.

How much does it cost to advertise at WHT in the first place?

The rules of the forums dont allow advertising quotes outside the advertising forums. You should try posting a question there.

IMO I think a trend starts developing after 10,000 impressions of an advert and with the sheer volume of traffice here, I would have thought some of the advertisiers would have easily acheived that by now, so you should be able to get a picture of the performance.
:)

Here is another dilemma, as a web hosting directory owner - my job is to get the users from our site to the company's site, so what happens if you have 2 companies, both of them got 500 clicks but the conversion rate is different, one got 70 clients and the other only 15, so you have a great campaign and a lousy campaign, but who's fault is it? the users weren't targeted enough or the site wasn't attractive, or what?

Just something to think about...

A definition of the success of some campaign should match the goal you have at the beginning of it.

(Makes sense?)

I think you've got to look deeper than that Lonny. Two advertisers with the same marketing spend and the same number of ad clicks would tend to suggest they both had pretty effective advertising creatives.

On the subject of conversions, if one of them is reporting 75 clients from 500 clicks they must be giving their hosting packages away. That conversion rate equates to a sale for every 7 clicks! I think that could put them in the Guinness book of records ;-)

Seriously though, in the online advertising industry much of the poor sales conversions is blamed on the medium the ads are running on, rather than the products being advertised. Their are so many additional factors to consider in determining the reason for poor conversions. Industry reputation, internal sales expertise (or lack of it), pricing, product specifications, web site design, URL, etc etc. To get the best return on your investment you need to focus on getting all these factors working in harmony with each other and not in isolation.

The best way of advertising is imho doing it explosively. We did the last year some compains, not 500.000 bannerviews on 1 or 2 site, but better is 20.000 bannerviews on 25 sites. We did something like that for the first time, normally we just advertised on 2 or 3 sites for 2 or 3 months. That did take a result, but not that good at all, the first 2 weeks where good, but the rest sucked. The new thing we tryed had a real good effect.

An example is that i called a business that absolutely had nothing to do with webhosting and i said my biz name and he directly said: "Ahh the one with that offer on whateversiteitwas.nl". I really notice that people just know our name -> thats VERY good :)

The sideeffect is that advertising that way is a bit more expensive since you can't get a big deal out of it. And i don't like to use the massadvertising business that has banners on all kind of sites, the're WAY to expensive. So you have to make a deal to every single site you want to advertise on, that cost you at least a few days...

With advertising, just like everything else, you get what you put and you get what you pay for.

This is how my boss Shiekron does it:

He gets his big big clients that use over 60GB Transfer a month that recieve about 4 million hits a month or more that we host in our servers and offer them a discount if they agree to put a banner of ours in their sites, and well it seems to be working fine with us, also Hostsearch.com :)

Originally posted by HostInspect
This is how my boss Shiekron does it:

He gets his big big clients that use over 60GB Transfer a month that recieve about 4 million hits a month or more that we host in our servers and offer them a discount if they agree to put a banner of ours in their sites, and well it seems to be working fine with us, also Hostsearch.com :)

that what geocities is doing isn't it? :)

REMOVED

<linked to an advertising forum>

My theory on Advertising is go all out or don't even go.

Its like posting an ad on yahoo but only able to afford 1 keyword which is your company name. (Who is going to know your company name if the only way they can find it is by knowing it :eek3:)

Get my drift? :D