We have established since this month, start getting customers last week, some day got 2 or 3 clients, some day got no client, average only 1 client per day...

We spend around $2200 in advertising but getting these results...

Advertising in 2 pay per lead network: no results so far... :(
Email advertising with CPM basis: few results so far... :(
Advertising in a web hosting directory: no results so far... :(
Place some advertisement in WHT Advertising Forum: some results so far... :(


How do you guys do advertising? How many clients you guys got from those Web Hosting directories? Do you guys advertising in newspaper and magazines?

I believe our website aren't sucks...but we're getting too little clients on this starting period, how to improve?

Best Regards,
Kevin
HostPacket.net

Kevin,

My best words of advice is to stick in there, and take extra special care of your first few clients. Your web site is amazing, I love it! That is not your problem.

I think that you are just on the new side and need to get some reputation going is. Give it some time, and hang in there, good times come to those who wait.

Dan

Thats not bad at all actually, you should be happy with that for starting off.

I would like to have some suggestions from those hosts getting around 5 clients daily, how do they advertising?

Originally posted by SplashHost.com
Thats not bad at all actually, you should be happy with that for starting off.

They probably dont even do any advertising, you need to do advertising to start off with then once you have a good customer base you shouldnt need to any more.

The large majority of our customers come from referrals or word of mouth. Almost 70% actually. So we really try hard to maintain good relationships with our existing customers and reward them for their loyalty and for their great taste. :)

Finally, we don't really focus on the webhosting directories, most are over advertised and way too expensive. Our best ratio or lowest customer acquisition price was finding out where your typical customer reads/sits/walksby and plastering those places with ads.

Grow slow, it is a good thing. We average about 25 signups and we can handle it now, 7 months ago no way.

Stick it out and it will happen, don't get in to petty bidding wars, there are plenty of hosting clients out there. And DON'T GIVE AWAY THE FARM.

We made a special offer in Customer Support Center that we cut $3 off client's web hosting bill for each friends they referred to join our hosting service, but it seem don't work to our first group of customers :(

is that a cyberpixels design?

it's designed by www.MaRay.net

I am not in the web hosting business, but i hope my advice still counts :)

LOCALIZE - this is the best way to start things out, most people would rather go with a local company for web related services. If the competetion in your area is non-existant get on the prowl. Here are some methods that I, and the people I know who run companies get the word out.

1: at local dinners, inquire about having your advertisement on their placemats, should be very resonable. I payed $75 month to have an add at a big dinner in my town.

2: Advertise in your towns "newsletter", most towns have these now, advertising is DIRT cheap. And there is a great chance almost all readers will see your advertisement, as these newsletters are only 5-8 pages. (Estimated cost $10 per issue)

3: Local Bullentin boards(offline ones lol), posting a simple peice of paper with your companies information, will spread the word. This is the cheapest means of local advertising (Estimated cost Free-$10 month).

4: FREE, every see telephone polls with advertisements? Dont go crazy, but post a few of these at popular intersections.

5: Visit local business conventions, pass out business cards, flyers or whatever you can get your hands on.

6: Advertise in the "Dial-A-Professional"/"Internet Services" part of the local newspaper, cost depends on how many words your add is.

7: Talk about your business with others, and hand them your business card. (WORD OF MOUTH) works best :)

8: Connect with web based local business's, and see if you can each reffer customers.

9: co-sponsor an event, its really not all that expensive, be sure its for a good cause though lol. Most likely the event organizers will accept whatever you offer them(as long as its resonable). In return your company name will be on hand-outs, banners etc.

10: Pay for ads on google that target local users... Example if you live in weeblah, NJ. Select that as your keyword on google, hosting keywords on google are tough. Localizing will bring better benefits.

And most importantly, keep your first customers totally satisfyed to the fullest extent. They will continiously bring more customers to you, if you do the job right.


WOW: sorry for the long typage, i haved used ALL of this to some extent, and or know somebody who has. It works


HTH
Anthony :)

nice tips!

Kill the music. I thought I was about to play a video game. Then when I clicked on links I heard explosions. Crazy.

People will click off sites with noice. Your site is nice, I think it would be better with no music.

Originally posted by SplashHost.com
They probably dont even do any advertising, you need to do advertising to start off with then once you have a good customer base you shouldnt need to any more.
I did about $50.00/$100.00 worth of Overture advertising and that's it. All clients now come through referral from clients. I don't have a referral program either. There's nothing wrong with 1 client per day too. Although that depends on how much you spent to acquire that 1 client/day. :)

Let me just say that you've got a great web site and it's good to know that some other designers are capable of these things other than pixelbrick.com :)

Anyways, n my opinion you should start writing more press releases, because at the moment the only thing you have on your sites says you're new in the business so that might scare some clients away - I wouldn't want to host with a new company who doesn't have any experience with the hosting industry - so you may want to put that press release somewhere far far away from the customers eyes.

You should put some testimonials on your site and on the support section of your site get some buttons from the web hosting directories and place them there so you could get some feedback and reviews on web hosting dirs regarding your company.

Let's see what else - well don't start flaming me but obviously I support the fact that you advertise and I don't think you should stop - maybe remove some ads that aren't bringing any results in terms of traffic but since you're new awareness is very important, so try not to spend all you got on advertising but keep doing it on places where your name is shown - avoid any PPC engines at the moment, because of the bidding issue and the quality of the click through rates, it has been discussed many times before that some people just click on the text link in order to waste money for the owners and sometimes the owner of the PPC engine himself is doing that to 'show the great results of his search engine'. And as far as Overture concern, well, what can I tell you the bids there are just unbelievable - since you don't have any money to waste yet I would avoid that site as well.

add some link to us banners - something your users can place on their site saying: Hosted by..... that would be a good idea since it will get you some bring advertising from some nice people who don't mind placing your link there.

Try adding your company to every directory available, it might not bring you so much traffic and clients but the effect is free branding, seeing your name here and there might help someone to decide.

And finally, be good to your customers - after all you may have an amazing advertising budget but eventually you will run out of money and when that happen you should have word of mouth advertising which is more important in terms of marketing than anything else in this business :)

Good luck!

I thought I would jump in.

At first ... our affiliate program basically drove us completely. $20 per sale ... and about a customer every two days. Now that we have built up a nice customer base, people referring us kicks in ... we just get people that visit our page, go straight to the order page, and order! Cant beat that! :)

You said you spent $2200. Wow. Have you considered joining CJ/ShareASale/FineClicks, and then offering like $15-$25 a sale? You should be able to get some affiliates that will churn out what you require.

Furthermore ... try hosting a techie site. In exchange, ask for a simple 'hosted by' image on their nav bar, and some rankings on the popular hosting directories. Personally, I find findmyhosting.com the best and cleanest of all the hosting directories, and focus exclusively on that website.

Continuing on ... become a real member of forums. I am part of forums that when people ask for hosting, others refer them to me [and they know cuz of my sig]. Just remember to become part of the community, and not a spammer/advertiser.

Lastly ... for straight up advertising, try 'sponsoring' a webmaster site. The CPM might run high, but if you do the math right, and pick a nice website, it could all work out.

HTH! :)

Originally posted by AhmedF
we just get people that visit our page, go straight to the order page, and order! Cant beat that! :)
hehe, me thinks it doesn't happen as quick as that. ;)

But nice wishful thinking there. :D

Its actually surprising!

Both Bob and Bill have used other hosts before.

Bob> Im looking for hosting
Bill> Im using LoadedWeb ... they are great .. [essentially customer does a sales pitch]

Bob> Goes to loadedweb.com, clicks on 'order', and then signs up


Its beautiful! :D

very nice tips ;)

I don't have large budget to advertise on Linkshare/Befree/CJ, and ShareASale and Fineclicks are too small, so I chosen the middle-size pay per lead firm, Leadhound and CPABank, both of them got around 100 offers running, the top performer of web hosting company in Leadhound got 70 confirmed leads last month, but I got only clicks but no leads for 2 weeks so far... :( I'm offering $8 per leads but only 4 subscribers so far :(

Thanks for the advertising advises from you guys, but I wonder how many people looking at the newspaper, Local Bullentin boards etc... are online people and interested in making their personal or corporate website? May be they even don't know what is web hosting service and how it works...?

Originally posted by AhmedF
I thought I would jump in.

At first ... our affiliate program basically drove us completely. $20 per sale ... and about a customer every two days. Now that we have built up a nice customer base, people referring us kicks in ... we just get people that visit our page, go straight to the order page, and order! Cant beat that! :)

You said you spent $2200. Wow. Have you considered joining CJ/ShareASale/FineClicks, and then offering like $15-$25 a sale? You should be able to get some affiliates that will churn out what you require.

Furthermore ... try hosting a techie site. In exchange, ask for a simple 'hosted by' image on their nav bar, and some rankings on the popular hosting directories. Personally, I find findmyhosting.com the best and cleanest of all the hosting directories, and focus exclusively on that website.

Continuing on ... become a real member of forums. I am part of forums that when people ask for hosting, others refer them to me [and they know cuz of my sig]. Just remember to become part of the community, and not a spammer/advertiser.

Lastly ... for straight up advertising, try 'sponsoring' a webmaster site. The CPM might run high, but if you do the math right, and pick a nice website, it could all work out.

HTH! :)

I agree, selected sponsorship can be good. Try to keep away from high bandwidth-low hit sites, and make sure you select an audience that would be in the right consumer market.

Originally posted by AhmedF
Its actually surprising!

Both Bob and Bill have used other hosts before.

Bob> Im looking for hosting
Bill> Im using LoadedWeb ... they are great .. [essentially customer does a sales pitch]

Bob> Goes to loadedweb.com, clicks on 'order', and then signs up


Its beautiful! :D
Yep. :D Word of mouth is beautiful. Treat your clients well and deliver an excellent product to them and they will talk about you everywhere. I actually picked up a new client last week when he overheard a conversation in a bus on his way to work. :)

Lead? LEAD?

I think you meant sale :-p

You would be surprised about ShareASale and FineClicks ... and since shareasale has such a low startup fee, and fineClicks has NO startup fee, you have nothing to lose!

Its not about the number of affiliates ... i am part of all the affilates networks u mentioned ... and only use ShareASale and CJ. Its about the quality ... and FC has some pretty decent webmaster sites ... which would be the best audience imo.