bwb
06-09-2007, 12:26 AM
This has to be the most popular hosting topic for this forum and I wanted to give my thoughts and some ideas. Marketing is the hardest part of the web hosting industry or really any business. In interviews I have done or read with hosting company owners including the founder of webhosting.com they all remarked that having good marketing knowledge was way more important than technical expertise to run the hosting.
So here are some ideas/thougths for small hosts with a limited budget.
1. Don't focus on the general hosting market, I don't care if you start 10 hosting companies aim them at providing hosting services to niches on the internet and offer more than a typical hosting company (niche marketing). So start one for hosting wordpress blogs, one for mambo, one for gaming clans etc. Offer more than just cpanel, offer free themes, free counters, free coupons to other products that correlate with that topic. This all makes getting customers easier, makes them happy, and makes supporting them easier. Plus you can charge more when you specilize, don't get dragged down in the pricing game.
2. Branding - a lot of hosting ads work because they are combined with branding. IE a host advertises in the tech and webmaster sites and thus signups increase through those as well as awareness, so that 5 months down the road a webmaster having a bad time a host is looking at hosts and lands on X big host and says oh ya, i remember there ads. And signups. Branding is expensive and hard to justify when you are small, if a small host chooses a niche its much easier. If you choose a small niche as a host you can push your branding ads to those type of sites, lets say you start a hosting company aimed at lovers of pets, so you are aiming at people who love their pets and need an internet host. You focus branding ads on pet forums, pet web sites, your design your site to be pet friendly, you offer free templates and some have a variety of pets invovled, you also show how you are not just a pet host and host serious sites but its run by pet lovers. This gives pet lovers a friendly feeling and is an easier market to permeate with branding.
3. Hosting directories and hosting advertising - branding helps on these but it depends on visitors. Small hosts don't realize how much advertising costs in the general hosting market. Hosts might be paying 100 to 200 to get one customer with ads on a hosting directory or so on. You can't afford that. If you do waht to try a directory choose one that offers PPC or a small focus, like you only advertise in their wordpress section or blog section or whatever correleates with you. And make sure to use a landing page so when the person lands they see what they were looking for.
4. PPC like adwords - Its expensive but not if you focus on a niche once again. If you choose to focus on wordpress hosting buy those keywords, focus on stuff that isn't worth the time for big hosts. A big host is not going to have time to spend finding all the long tail keywords, you can! So spend a few days learning PPC, "Winning Results With Adwords" is a good book to start on. Figure out every possible wordpress search and figure out which searches are done by someone looking for hosting, researching wordpress hosting, and searching for wordpress stuff. You would pay more for the people looking to buy obviously and view those researching wordpress hosting as high volume and low cost oppertunities and branding.
6 Ideas For Cheap Ways To Get Customers - Doesn't mean there isn't any work :)
1. Pure grunt work - keep a huge RSS list of popular bloggers, become involved no about 50 popular sites in the comments section and sign you sig everytime. Provide good comments that help people and start building a name for yourself. Ditto with forums, get active in design forums or wherever your niche is and keep working. It might take a while but the effor pays off. We didn't say it was going to be easy.
2. Sponser popular sites or blogs - offer free hosting to popular blogs or sites and get a link back from them. Slow but good branding and the more you do the more you will get out there. Choose sites that have lots of hits and not much file downloads, pamper them and check in with them weekly.
3. Create sites that help people or write articles that do, start building the popularity of your hosting blog or any website. Help people with tech problems, how to backup, etc, those are the peple you want to remember you.
4. Emails to People Who Contact You - keep a detaield database using highrise of anyone you email about your product or so on, keep todos and check in with them every so often to see how they are doing and so on. If you are focusing on small busienss clients who are willing to pay 50 a month for high end managed web hosting you want to be personal.
5. Write articles for hosting directories or any web site and get your site some publicity. Establish yourself as an expert in your field, if you know ruby really well and focus your hosting company there then provide that focus.
Imp one
6. Since your volume is low you need to convert as many as possible to clients, start learning all you can about landing pages, web site design and split testing. Do everything you can to increase conversions and constantly test. Live chat is imp when you are online to help increase conversions and get more contacts. The huge bonus is that as you increase your conversions on smaller traffic you will get even more customers as your traffic increases. Too many big hosting companies get lazy and don't focus on improving their site, testing landing pages etc, as you get bigger don't make that mistake. Every new customer that is happy can generate revenue for years.
So here are some ideas/thougths for small hosts with a limited budget.
1. Don't focus on the general hosting market, I don't care if you start 10 hosting companies aim them at providing hosting services to niches on the internet and offer more than a typical hosting company (niche marketing). So start one for hosting wordpress blogs, one for mambo, one for gaming clans etc. Offer more than just cpanel, offer free themes, free counters, free coupons to other products that correlate with that topic. This all makes getting customers easier, makes them happy, and makes supporting them easier. Plus you can charge more when you specilize, don't get dragged down in the pricing game.
2. Branding - a lot of hosting ads work because they are combined with branding. IE a host advertises in the tech and webmaster sites and thus signups increase through those as well as awareness, so that 5 months down the road a webmaster having a bad time a host is looking at hosts and lands on X big host and says oh ya, i remember there ads. And signups. Branding is expensive and hard to justify when you are small, if a small host chooses a niche its much easier. If you choose a small niche as a host you can push your branding ads to those type of sites, lets say you start a hosting company aimed at lovers of pets, so you are aiming at people who love their pets and need an internet host. You focus branding ads on pet forums, pet web sites, your design your site to be pet friendly, you offer free templates and some have a variety of pets invovled, you also show how you are not just a pet host and host serious sites but its run by pet lovers. This gives pet lovers a friendly feeling and is an easier market to permeate with branding.
3. Hosting directories and hosting advertising - branding helps on these but it depends on visitors. Small hosts don't realize how much advertising costs in the general hosting market. Hosts might be paying 100 to 200 to get one customer with ads on a hosting directory or so on. You can't afford that. If you do waht to try a directory choose one that offers PPC or a small focus, like you only advertise in their wordpress section or blog section or whatever correleates with you. And make sure to use a landing page so when the person lands they see what they were looking for.
4. PPC like adwords - Its expensive but not if you focus on a niche once again. If you choose to focus on wordpress hosting buy those keywords, focus on stuff that isn't worth the time for big hosts. A big host is not going to have time to spend finding all the long tail keywords, you can! So spend a few days learning PPC, "Winning Results With Adwords" is a good book to start on. Figure out every possible wordpress search and figure out which searches are done by someone looking for hosting, researching wordpress hosting, and searching for wordpress stuff. You would pay more for the people looking to buy obviously and view those researching wordpress hosting as high volume and low cost oppertunities and branding.
6 Ideas For Cheap Ways To Get Customers - Doesn't mean there isn't any work :)
1. Pure grunt work - keep a huge RSS list of popular bloggers, become involved no about 50 popular sites in the comments section and sign you sig everytime. Provide good comments that help people and start building a name for yourself. Ditto with forums, get active in design forums or wherever your niche is and keep working. It might take a while but the effor pays off. We didn't say it was going to be easy.
2. Sponser popular sites or blogs - offer free hosting to popular blogs or sites and get a link back from them. Slow but good branding and the more you do the more you will get out there. Choose sites that have lots of hits and not much file downloads, pamper them and check in with them weekly.
3. Create sites that help people or write articles that do, start building the popularity of your hosting blog or any website. Help people with tech problems, how to backup, etc, those are the peple you want to remember you.
4. Emails to People Who Contact You - keep a detaield database using highrise of anyone you email about your product or so on, keep todos and check in with them every so often to see how they are doing and so on. If you are focusing on small busienss clients who are willing to pay 50 a month for high end managed web hosting you want to be personal.
5. Write articles for hosting directories or any web site and get your site some publicity. Establish yourself as an expert in your field, if you know ruby really well and focus your hosting company there then provide that focus.
Imp one
6. Since your volume is low you need to convert as many as possible to clients, start learning all you can about landing pages, web site design and split testing. Do everything you can to increase conversions and constantly test. Live chat is imp when you are online to help increase conversions and get more contacts. The huge bonus is that as you increase your conversions on smaller traffic you will get even more customers as your traffic increases. Too many big hosting companies get lazy and don't focus on improving their site, testing landing pages etc, as you get bigger don't make that mistake. Every new customer that is happy can generate revenue for years.