I have a small web hosting company (400 clients)and i typically sign up 3-5 new per day. i am now looking to explore some cost effective advertising opportunies in an effort to increase my sign up rate.

-what advertising methods work best for you
-is 3-5 clients per day pretty good for just starting out
-do you think goto.com, bay9.com, etc are worth it
-where are the best place to advertise
-how much do you spend per month on ads


thanks in advance for your input/advice

I think the most cost effective is getting a add on a PC Magazine or on a Bill Board In a CITY where there is traffic jams in rush hours, this guarantees people to look at your ad.

Personally, I'd say that's a quite respectable growth rate for a 400-client company. As a matter of fact, I'm sure others here would appreciate it if you'd share what marketing methods you're using so far. Those are quite decent results.

The crucial factors when considering advertising are:

- The cost of a lead
- How many of those leads sign-up when they hit your site

It seems to me like whether banner advertising or "pay per click" services like GoTo, you're going to pay about $1 to $3 per lead. How well they convert beyond that is probably mostly a factor of how well your web site sells, but it sounds like you're doing fine.

I'll echo the experiences of some others when it comes to GoTo - I get a lot of leads there, but the conversion rates are terrible. It's an expensive way to get customers.

I've all but given up on banner ads. Click-through rates even on targeted advertising are abysmal these days. People are so used to seeing them that they skip right over most without even looking at them.

More interesting are these RFQ, or request for quote, services. You'll typically pay $3 to submit a response to a customer requesting a quote on web hosting services. The cost per lead isn't much more, and it seems to me like I get much more qualified people with these services. Of course, it isn't a passive activity like ads - it requires a fair bit of time.

Anyway, if we can all share a few secrets of success in here, we'll all be a little better off for it. I'm sure everybody has their own wisdom to ad. Actually, this question comes up enough, maybe we should make some kind of FAQ out of it...

I have a couple of suggestions:

1) Create an effective affiliate program. Ideally, you would have two, one for your existing clients, and another for the outside world. For the later, through CJ.com, for example.

2) Offer to host for free demography attractive and/or popular (ie: webmaster related) sites in return for promotion. Let's say you strike a deal to host a site with just 100 uniques/day. Instantly, you gain access to over 3000 potential clients/ month, depending on how you negotiated the deal. The cost for this would be, what, $15.95/month? :)

George

I think affiliate programs are a great idea. QWK.Net has one for our customers that's been expanded to the "outside" recently. The only trouble with affiliate programs is you really have to pay to advertise them. My stomach turns at the thought of advertising to sell advertising. I guess you do what you have to do, though.

CJ seems great, but they want about $1000 to get started for your first year, and something like $600 a year beyond that. That's one thing by itself, but when you throw their 20% commission on top of affiliate payouts, things start getting expensive. I'd have to be pretty assured of their quality before shelling out for it.

Then again, they have to be better than ClickTrade. I wrote an affiliate program skeleton in about 20 minutes in PHP that works better than ClickTrade ever did.

travis...
you mentioned RFQ services....i am unaware of such companies. could you give me a few examples so that i can check them out.

all: thanks a lot so far on your comments -->

Nate,

I'm talking about services like bizbuyer.com and onvia.com.

Basically, you sign up as a service provider in one or more categories, including web hosting. Potential customers can then submit an RFQ, or request for quote, outlining what they need. Service providers that feel like they can provide that service respond to the RFQ with a quote, which is sent on to the client. If the client decides they like your offer, they can contact you to sign up or get more information.

Most of these services will charge you $3 or so to submit a quote in response to an RFQ. I'd consider that cheap for a very qualified lead.

travis,

that is an excellent idea and i never heard of this before. I have about 400 clients right now but i am putting up a new box shortly and i am trying to look for new ways to advertise for targeted traffic.

this could definately do the trick. :)

-are these the only two that you know of?
-do you get pretty good conversion or like 1 in 20?

thanks a lot for everyone's help!

I haven't paid much attention to the RFQ services until recently. (I've been so busy writing software that I haven't been marketing in a while.) Those are the two services I know of that get the most traffic.

I'll keep an eye on conversions; I expect it to be pretty good. Users have to create an account to request quotes, so that keeps the "Casual GoTo Clickers" out right there. $3 doesn't seem so bad to get your message out to somebody that's directly asking for it.

Travis - I think your right. Because they have to register the RFQ's you get are more "qualified".

Any other sites besides Onvia and Bizbuy?

Travis - you are getting good responses with the RFQs? We tried a couple of services like that a while back for both web design and web hosting and it appeared that someone was always willing to lowball the quote to get the deal. We kept getting people wanting 3 grand web sites for $199! Perhaps with hosting plans the response rate is better?

It's a little easier with hosting plans, since the prices ranges are pretty standard.

Pricing for web design and other work like that is so variable, it's real easy get lowballed... and in the typical RFQ service, you don't have a way to explain how you offer better quality, or you can do it in half the time as the lowballer, etc.