Hi guys,

I was hoping to find some suggestions for advertising locally in a cost-effective manner. Brochures, flyers, and business cards all seem like great ideas. For those who use these tools: who designs them? Companies like vistaprint.com?

Once you create the promo materials, how do you get them into the hands of potential clients?

Cheers! :)

Me being a reseller I have tryed differant advertising way from google ad word to emailing and I found out that I have better luck on twitter I had to learn a little bite but you can find other tweeter to advertis for you by just asking I did and It has been work just fine [@innerclick] twitter name

Hi guys,

I was hoping to find some suggestions for advertising locally in a cost-effective manner. Brochures, flyers, and business cards all seem like great ideas. For those who use these tools: who designs them? Companies like vistaprint.com?

Once you create the promo materials, how do you get them into the hands of potential clients?

Cheers! :)

The first advertising campaign we ever did was a bulk mailing and it worked out fairly well.

We supplied the printer, hotcards.com here in Ohio, with a .csv file of small businesses in the market we wanted to target (certain zip codes and by number of employees) from jigsaw.com and they handled the rest (printing, inkjet labeling and mailing). It was somewhere around 300 dollars total for 1,000 cards with 500 of them being mailed.

The first advertising campaign we ever did was a bulk mailing and it worked out fairly well.

We supplied the printer, hotcards.com here in Ohio, with a .csv file of small businesses in the market we wanted to target (certain zip codes and by number of employees) from jigsaw.com and they handled the rest (printing, inkjet labeling and mailing). It was somewhere around 300 dollars total for 1,000 cards with 500 of them being mailed.

Cool. Any idea what the response and conversion rate was from the mail out?

Besides Brochures, flyers, and business cards find a specific community in the local market to target. Word of mouth referrals are worth more then anything else you could ever do.

Well I am hopefully hiring some commission based sales people in the next week or so to do some cold calling. It seems to work well around here for other hosting firms (estimates are 1 in 6 sign up after the call).

Any other tips? :)

You had asked about the success of our mailing. We got somehwere in the neighborhood of 75 interested parties which resulted in around 50 sales. Out of 500 cards mailed that may not seem like a lot but it recouped the cost of the mailing based on first-month sales alone so it was essentially successful for being a small campaign. We knew we had a strong product that was able to retain business on its own and after a year's time we had around 45 of those clients still on the books so it more than paid for itself.

We found two types of people who responded - Those who were ready to buy (from us or otherwise) and had an immediate need and what we called window shoppers - people who are possibly interested for the future but were currently just researching and shopping around. It's not difficult to gauge interest by asking open-ended questions and paying close attention to their tone, pace, their responses to your questions (open or closed?) and hopefully the types of questions they ask you.

You mentioned making cold calls as well. From my experience, cold calls are an extremely ineffective and risky way to market and sell a product or service. If you call Bill's Fish Market out of nowhere and say "Hey, Bill. Do you need a website?", chances are Bill is going to tell you to get lost. There's also the risk of Bill not even answering the phone, requiring you to leave a message where it is virtually impossible to add any sort of value to your service because you only have 15 or 20 seconds before your message becomes long-winded and annoying. Bill is probably just going to delete the message because he doesn't have time right then to listen to someone ramble on about megabytes and 24/7 customer support.

You will need one hell of a sales team to pull a 1 in 6 closing ratio on flat-out cold calls. Hiring non-captive commission-based telemarketers in and of itself is a crapshoot. Telemarketing jobs are easy to come by because the turnover rate is huge. You might get one guy who is good and 5 guys who just can't find a job anywhere else so they are going to ride out making their 9 or 10 dollars an hour until they don't make their goals and have to move on to something else. You have no idea what and who you are hiring.


If I had to choose between telephone marketing or mail marketing for hosting, I would definitely choose mail marketing. It is inexpensive and does not put pressure on the lead to get a heavy sales pitch right away. Phone calls are a more effective way to make immediate first contact with someone but there are enough small businesses out there that don't have web sites to allow you to extend an open, more casual line of communication to instead of forcing it on them.

If you can do both, even better. If you send a mailer then call a week or so later, you have the opportunity to remind them about your service while they have something tangible and memorable (the mailer) that they can refer back to. The person on the other end is likely now familiar with the name of your company and what you do and it allows you to add value in the calls you make and messages that you leave instead of seeming like a random, impersonal and often annoying call out of nowhere. The best part is, depending on the size of your mailing, you can do this yourself instead of having to depend on scrubs and stoners to respectfully represent your company.

You had asked about the success of our mailing. We got somehwere in the neighborhood of 75 interested parties which resulted in around 50 sales. Out of 500 cards mailed that may not seem like a lot but it recouped the cost of the mailing based on first-month sales alone so it was essentially successful for being a small campaign. We knew we had a strong product that was able to retain business on its own and after a year's time we had around 45 of those clients still on the books so it more than paid for itself.

We found two types of people who responded - Those who were ready to buy (from us or otherwise) and had an immediate need and what we called window shoppers - people who are possibly interested for the future but were currently just researching and shopping around. It's not difficult to gauge interest by asking open-ended questions and paying close attention to their tone, pace, their responses to your questions (open or closed?) and hopefully the types of questions they ask you.

You mentioned making cold calls as well. From my experience, cold calls are an extremely ineffective and risky way to market and sell a product or service. If you call Bill's Fish Market out of nowhere and say "Hey, Bill. Do you need a website?", chances are Bill is going to tell you to get lost. There's also the risk of Bill not even answering the phone, requiring you to leave a message where it is virtually impossible to add any sort of value to your service because you only have 15 or 20 seconds before your message becomes long-winded and annoying. Bill is probably just going to delete the message because he doesn't have time right then to listen to someone ramble on about megabytes and 24/7 customer support.

You will need one hell of a sales team to pull a 1 in 6 closing ratio on flat-out cold calls. Hiring non-captive commission-based telemarketers in and of itself is a crapshoot. Telemarketing jobs are easy to come by because the turnover rate is huge. You might get one guy who is good and 5 guys who just can't find a job anywhere else so they are going to ride out making their 9 or 10 dollars an hour until they don't make their goals and have to move on to something else. You have no idea what and who you are hiring.


If I had to choose between telephone marketing or mail marketing for hosting, I would definitely choose mail marketing. It is inexpensive and does not put pressure on the lead to get a heavy sales pitch right away. Phone calls are a more effective way to make immediate first contact with someone but there are enough small businesses out there that don't have web sites to allow you to extend an open, more casual line of communication to instead of forcing it on them.

If you can do both, even better. If you send a mailer then call a week or so later, you have the opportunity to remind them about your service while they have something tangible and memorable (the mailer) that they can refer back to. The person on the other end is likely now familiar with the name of your company and what you do and it allows you to add value in the calls you make and messages that you leave instead of seeming like a random, impersonal and often annoying call out of nowhere. The best part is, depending on the size of your mailing, you can do this yourself instead of having to depend on scrubs and stoners to respectfully represent your company.

All good advice.

So you supplied the company with a .csv of all the companies you wished to contact, with contact info, and they did the rest?

I assume they wrote the copy and such? and they suggested the fonts and graphics?

I am eager to learn more :)

We did the design and copy. Check around with local graphic designers or maybe even make a request here on the forums in the Design Request (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=142)section. I searched and it looks like the average price for a nice design is less than a hundred dollars.

Other than that, yes. We sent them the design files and the .csv and they took care of everything else. :)

We did the design and copy. Check around with local graphic designers or maybe even make a request here on the forums in the Design Request (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=142)section. I searched and it looks like the average price for a nice design is less than a hundred dollars.

Other than that, yes. We sent them the design files and the .csv and they took care of everything else. :)

Cool. Would you mind sharing a copy of your design and copy? No intentions of copying it, just want to get an understanding of the general content and layout.

Cheers!

I will check on my external to see if I still have it there but I have a feeling it was gone 3 or 4 re-formats ago. :(

I will check on my external to see if I still have it there but I have a feeling it was gone 3 or 4 re-formats ago. :(

******. I assume such a mailing would talk about the solutions you could offer to their business, rather than features, bandwidth and such.

Any further thoughts from someone who has done this before?

I was thinking about attempting to compile a list of businesses by industry from our local Yellow Pages, and build mailouts specific to their industry. Could do decently with that I think.

Just my opinion, but DO NOT advertise locally with your prices. $2/mo? I could stand next to you and offer the exact same service for $20/mo and they will take me seriously and not you. Also, advertising locally and online are two separate entities that many people don't truly understand. Locally, people will have no clue about space and bandwidth. Online they do. Since you have 3 packages, your local businesses are already confused and don't know what they should go with.

Just my opinion, but DO NOT advertise locally with your prices. $2/mo? I could stand next to you and offer the exact same service for $20/mo and they will take me seriously and not you. Also, advertising locally and online are two separate entities that many people don't truly understand. Locally, people will have no clue about space and bandwidth. Online they do. Since you have 3 packages, your local businesses are already confused and don't know what they should go with.

Well then, what do you suggest doing? Simplify down to one package with a higher price?

Well then, what do you suggest doing? Simplify down to one package with a higher price?
Sell it like you would not know what hosting is!

Ask a graphic/web designers these questions they deal with these people like this all the time...

Sell it like you would not know what hosting is!

Ask a graphic/web designers these questions they deal with these people like this all the time...

I was thinking of putting a brief explanation of which plan is best for which type of site. Example

Budget Web Hosting: Ideal for beginners
Silver Web Hosting: Perfect for small business
Gold Web Hosting: High-performance for e-commerce

I was thinking of putting a brief explanation of which plan is best for which type of site. Example

Budget Web Hosting: Ideal for beginners
Silver Web Hosting: Perfect for small business
Gold Web Hosting: High-performance for e-commerce

That's still not simple as nearly everyone local will be a beginner.

I would set a base price for hosting and do add-ons.

Hosting = $10/mo.
Email + $5
Emailed backups + $10
Installed Stats package + $5

ETC.

My best advice is to use your mom as your guinea pig. Most moms have no clue about hosting, but they do know what it is and what email is. Try and sell to her and take her reactions create a new plan. Then go back to her again and see if the new package makes sense. THEN, goto someone else and try the new package on them. If they understand it, your in business.

That's still not simple as nearly everyone local will be a beginner.

I would set a base price for hosting and do add-ons.

Hosting = $10/mo.
Email + $5
Emailed backups + $10
Installed Stats package + $5

ETC.

My best advice is to use your mom as your guinea pig. Most moms have no clue about hosting, but they do know what it is and what email is. Try and sell to her and take her reactions create a new plan. Then go back to her again and see if the new package makes sense. THEN, goto someone else and try the new package on them. If they understand it, your in business.

All good advice. Thank again.

The main issue now is what to say on a letter to potential clients. Any suggestions? That is more or less what I originally created this thread to discuss.

That's still not simple as nearly everyone local will be a beginner.

I would set a base price for hosting and do add-ons.

Hosting = $10/mo.
Email + $5
Emailed backups + $10
Installed Stats package + $5

ETC.

My best advice is to use your mom as your guinea pig. Most moms have no clue about hosting, but they do know what it is and what email is. Try and sell to her and take her reactions create a new plan. Then go back to her again and see if the new package makes sense. THEN, goto someone else and try the new package on them. If they understand it, your in business.


Good idea, 5 years ago, everyone knows what e-mail is today, and 95% of the population knows what e-mail is, and that you can get it free. They start seeing you nickel and diming them, especially in this economy, you'll lose the clients instantly.

All good advice. Thank again.

The main issue now is what to say on a letter to potential clients. Any suggestions? That is more or less what I originally created this thread to discuss.

Tell them what they WANT to hear. If you don't know how, or don't know how to make sales, two options: hire someone or get out of the business. Find someone locally whos sole job is to sell stuff, give them $20 and ask them what to put on the paper.

No one can tell you how to be creative, we can only point you in the mere direction, and that's exactly what this post did.

Remember, in a sales flier, the bigger the better. You want to have what your message is as BIG as possible, while not overpowering everything else.

Hope this helped

All good advice. Thank again.

The main issue now is what to say on a letter to potential clients. Any suggestions? That is more or less what I originally created this thread to discuss.

Just be honest and show them the potential money savings. Also, business owners enjoy doing business locally. Stress that you are local.

Just be honest and show them the potential money savings. Also, business owners enjoy doing business locally. Stress that you are local.


That's also true, it's like buying something on the internet, all your buying is a picture until it gets there.

When you can meet someone in person, shake their hand, and hear the confidence in their voice, it really does help you write a check or hand over a small sum of money.

Just be honest and show them the potential money savings. Also, business owners enjoy doing business locally. Stress that you are local.

You know what? I have noticed that works well. You would not believe the prices some other companies are charging around here (it's like looking back to 1998 LOL) and getting away with offering just bare minimums.

The market here is just one of those situations where someone with a good plan and confidence could do quite well. That's why I am thinking that a good promo letter, coupled with some good sales reps, could be just the thing we need.

Have you checked out Google adwords?

You can now target specific local areas. Simply upload your banner ads and text ads - and you're away! :)

Have you checked out Google adwords?

You can now target specific local areas. Simply upload your banner ads and text ads - and you're away! :)

Unfortunately, our potential clients are not that tech-savvy, so Google Adwords would be a complete waste of time and money.

Adwords itself, in our experience, is the above as well. Too much fraud going on with it right now.

I've left stacks of business cards in random places, and have no evidence that I've received any new customers. I've used Craigslist to some success, though (and it's free).

I sent about 300 letters to local business but I didn't get any reply. The letter was a welcome one, as I sent to new business, and a special offer for host their website with us. I aslo sent a few to a companies with website, but nothing, 0 replies.

Local advertise for places with low internet adopters it's really complicated. Now I'm going to try with the telmarketing approach...