Having abstained from advertising since Google changed to PPC, we have been relying on word-of-mouth for new customers. So, we decided to invest part of that unspent advertising budget and get a showcase in one of the major web hosting directories. The lady we spoke with was very professional and helpful in explaining the various options, costs and expected clickthrough range.

Today, two months later, I finished a pretty detailed analysis of the results:

321 visitors
0 sales
6 fraudulent orders (4 with spoofed IP's)
Total investment: $500

We sell shared hosting at very reasonable prices and we've run ad campaigns before in Google (CPM, before PPC) and a few other places and our targeted conversion ratio was around 4%. Our overall conversion ratio of visitors to our web site is about 1%. Considering that hosting directories supposedly deliver targeted traffic, I expected a conversion ratio of no less than 3% or at least 10 new accounts. Based on the above dismal results, naturally I stopped the campaign.

What gives? Is this typical? Why did Google work and the directory didn't? They both delivered targeted traffic. The only explanation I have come up with is that visitors associate a hosting company's ad size and placement with its size, something that was not obvious in Google. If the above stands, seems to me there is no reason wasting money in hosting directories unless one invests heavilly for a prime spot, a la Affinity, Ci*ost, Hostway, etc. The peripheral spots seem to be decorative.

Any thoughts on this based on your experience?

I think hosting directories work for branding and brand recognition than actual signups....

Our results have been similiar to yours even though we were listed for about 3 months with a major web directory

One of the things that targetted advertising deliveres is (hopefully) predefined potential customers who are interested in your product/service.

There are a number of reasons why the 300 or so potentials werent converted to customers, primarily.

1 - The leads aren't infact as qualified as you were lead to believe, i.e these people werent infact shopping for a host.

2 - Your plans/products/website design etc etc wasn't what customers wanted, sometimes the hard reality of advertising is that even the best marketed plan won't deliver the results because you're speaking to the wrong people.

As someone who is involved in the advertising industry the harsh reality is that Advertising does infact work when you have a measured, targetted campaign delivering the right message, at the right time to the right people. If you get one or more wrong it's quite likely you won't experience the desired results and to be quite honest it's usually the customers issue not the medium.

Matt

Originally posted by mattonline

As someone who is involved in the advertising industry the harsh reality is that Advertising does infact work when you have a measured, targetted campaign delivering the right message, at the right time to the right people. If you get one or more wrong it's quite likely you won't experience the desired results and to be quite honest it's usually the customers issue not the medium.I do agree that advertising works, I have experienced the results of national tv campaigns firsthand and I am a firm believer.

In this case, we were listed under Shared Hosting, which is what we sell. Our creative and copy were certainly up to par and our web site is attractive and professional enough to have been copied about 15 times. Our message had been tested beforehand and it worked in delivering the clicks. They just didn't convert. This is why I posted here to get some feeling about other hosts' experience with directories.

As you mentioned, maybe the quality of traffic wasn't what it was supposed to be, or maybe, they were simply other hosts checking us out.