Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Acquiring customers

[WLHosting]

I was wondering what the best way to get customers is? If you have any other suggestions please let us know here in a post.

1. Local adverstising, going face to face with small buisnesses and placing buisness cards all over the place.

2. Give away free hosting in exchange for banners on their site.

3. Post lots of offers here on wht.

4. More space, bandwidth, or stuff like that.

Please let me know. Thanks!

[eddy2099]

1) Local Advertising

Yes, that should be the way to go. It is best because you could work with people you know. But the thing is that some may not be versed about creating their web sites and so on, so if you can provide a full service, ie create their website and host them. You should do fine.

2) Give free hosting in exchange with banners

You might want to evaluate each request and not to just give up free hosting without consideration. Only consider those which would not be in competition with you and also be to your advantage. The one you provide hosting for especially free hosting, you are sort of signifying that you endorse their contents.

3) Offer at WHT

WHT is known to be a place where people wants everything for nothing. There are good requests out there too. But what is important is not to be too desperate and work to your disadvantage.

4) more space, bandwidth and stuffs

Actually, as a customer what I am looking at is not too much the space, price and bandwidth as first priority but your level of technical support, your responsiveness, if you say 24/7 support, you would have to mean it. Uptime and so on is vital too. And not overselling. Knowledge and experience in the business are vital too.

All the best in your business.

[hekwu]

Originally posted by WLHosting
I was wondering what the best way to get customers is?

SPAM like h_ell! that works well!

No, just kidding. I would say asking your current customers to bring people would work well. Word of mouth works well on the internet as well. Maybe giving a free month of hosting to a current customer who brings a new customer (make sure the new customer stays for at least one month before giving free hosting to current customer or at least pay for a month).

Advertising works well. Being on these forums is great. Get a following on here and you can't go wrong. Find two or three forums like this one and get a following and you will be in great business. Just ensure your servers and customer support is great... this board can be good or bad for a company. I would also look to advertise in places you don't find "regular" website hosting, unless you offer something "special" in your package. Low rates alone will not do it....

Whatever you do: DO NOT RESORT TO SPAMMING FOR CUSTOMERS!

[vito]

Well, as usual, Edwin has chimed in with a very well thought out reply. I'd have to agree with him 100%.

I would like to emphasize the importance of getting local business. Generally, if you concentrate your efforts locally, you will end up with a customer base that pays well, is not interested in "rock bottom prices", does not spam, does not use up much of your server resources, does not ask for much tech support, is loyal, and refers new customers to you.

What else could you ask for??

Vito

[intellec]

It really depends on you business plan. You have to match your target market with the revenue generation medium.

If you want to be the lowest price producer, you can answer those $2 / $3 / $4 requests in WHT threads all day long.

If you really want to provide some one-to-one service, then check out you local businesses. Advertise in the business journal or chamber of commerce media.

I looked at your plans and they appear a bit lopsided. The bandwidth is light in relation to the hard drive space. You may need to increase the bandwidth but not at the current prices. You need to jack your price up a bit. Use bandwidth rounded in 1000s those numbers look odd (the cuurent scale not that appealing to bring in new clients).

Also phase Plan 1 out because, people can get that for free elsewhere. Plan 2 and Plan 3 are too close on hard drive space (difference of only 50 mb). Merge these and make it your new lower range plan. You may want to have Plan 4 (after tweaking it) as your mid-range plan. You need a new larger plan to take you to around $20 to $25.

I also notice that your annual discounting is not consistent across all plans. Its is at 5% on the lower plan to 8% on the higher plan. You may want to have a flat discount rate for all plans.

On your terms of service, do something about that Cancellation and Refunds section. 14 days is too short. DNS could take up to 7 days. The standard money back refund period is 30 days. Also that $5 processing fee is tough for a client to swallow if their account never got activated and setup properly in the first place.

[Coach]

I'll just go with the chorus here and say think locally. If you're new to the market, don't get lured into the thought that you're going to make yourself an overnight success by being a hosting provider.

Here's some numbers for you. Some are random, some are not.

WHT members: 31,074
WHT Members that are not actually webhosts: 3

That part is a joke, but the point is that the market nationally is pretty saturated when it comes to hosting providers. Here is a real number:

Google return of sites on "web hosting": About 3,820,000 sites

It's not likely you'll ever break into the top 10 sites for that.

Now, look at "Kentucky Web Hosting": About 223,000 sites.

It gets much smaller eh?

We could continue to narrow it down. However, once you get into my particular state's webhosting companies, I'm actually doign better on pricing and service than most other outfits in this state, which is why I am comfortable with local and regional marketing.

Compare plans with a "competitor" here in town.

Them: 350 MB of space and 25 GB of transfer for $30 a month with $50 setup fee and three month prepaid contract. No service what-so-ever. I've tried calling them and emailing them several times and never got an answer.
Us: 400 MB of space 25 Gigs of tranfer, no setup and many more features with no contracts. $24.95 a month.

I've seen plans like this go for $100 a month in this area and people actually pay for it and get lousy service.

If you offer good services and affordable prices (while not being CHEAP) and target your local markets, then you'll be around for the long haul. What I see is your site going after doesn't look like one with a sustainable business plan. Of course, you also have to be able to offer the support to be able to back up your prices.

[matriarchy]

Find a regional niche or a local niche and join their message boards and email lists. Be the guy that posts answers to everyone's tech questions. Don't sell... just be the expert. Use a good email signature that doesn't sound like a used car sales ad. Write helpful articles once in a while and post them on your boards and in "free content" places. After a while, you are Your City's Hosting Expert... or the Plumbing Wholesalers' Hosting Specialist. Then go after a new niche. Just like porn sites.... market the same product over and over by re-pitching it to different niches with a new splash page.

[sprintserve]

Local works best. Most of my clients are local. The problem with a board like this is that everything is open field, and you are always at a risk of price undercutting.

In business, you are after profits and not customers acquisition (although it can be argued that without customers you would have no profits, but I think you get my point)

Locally, I can charge about a few times higher than normal even, get zero complains, and such.

Offers on here doesn't work anymore, simply because there will always be others who "seem" to offer more for less. So don't get caught in the trap. You are in business for the long-haul, and not for just a quick bang. (though some probably think otherwise)

So in summary, local is the way to go. They are likely to be comfortable too that there's someone they can talk to, or call (or send someone to rough you up if something goes wrong) and such.

[DarktidesNET]

We have utilized the local market. We are currently developing websites for a few local clients. It wasn't planned, but my friend owns a printing shop where we are getting all of our business cards done, in exchange for a good deal, we are making their website and helping them get online.

To top that off, my partner (martial artist & instructor locally) is talking to his master (he's almost black belt, she's 6th degree) who runs a Trophy supply store. This is great because he has 3 years in the class and seniority in the class, as he instructs the white/yellow belts. He's most likely going to land the deal, which is a plus.

We're also working with a company catholic related in St. Louis (not local to my town, but local to state) and working on buying out and accuring 650 clients from the company my brother in law (and future partner when we turn LLC). I've personally teleconferenced with him about it and we're continusouly talking about it. The problem right now with that is they have colo'd machines and we're working on just dropping them (600mhz pieces of crap) and providing the servers for them.. hopefully that goes!

So I recommend the local market. There's more money to be made, and more clients out there. No one other then Charter (cable), and a local ISP offers hosting solutions, and trust me, they charge you not only your right arm, but your left too.

Sponorships are benifical sometimes. We take them on often, but not small people. We sponsor big sites that are ranked in google and what not; however, we do have a seperate TOS for sponsorships. If the sponsorship does not generate us atleast 1 sale a month we will can them. Harsh, but when you're sponsoring people ranging from 1GB space - 10 GB space and 10 GB bandwidth - 75GB bandwidth you will do the same if there's no gaurented sales. Just have stipulations and you'll be fine ...

We post on WHT, but, there's not much success. We're not the cheapest which basically eliminates you from a lot of offers. However, we've gotten a few based on the replies I make in here to help people. I've calmed down a lot since my earleir days (try not to flame, or get defensive, etc) and this has proved most valuable to our bid offers.

Finally, as Edwin said, it's about service. All of our tickets are anwsered with 20 minutes (at this time) which is why we get recommendations (I coded the system and it has all kinds of duration trackings). Emails are slower, but most do not email, it's more AIM, and then tickets.

You provide A+ service and you will have no problems getting clients. You might not get as many as quick, but you will get loyal ones, and in my opinion, these are the ones you want.

Finally, get additional staff members and get them into circulation on good forums. My partner (who is in the martial arts) will be soon coming on WHT to help users and also bid on requests. He'll also add in the support area which will improve responses even quicker, which in turn, means better service = more recommendations.

Bottom line, if you present yourself professionally, and you conduct a sound business (do not lie to your clients, do not scam them, etc) you will survive in this market. While you must be competitve with pricing and resources you alott in your packages, you do not need to settle for what 80% of the community here does. I believe Rackspace, and many others who are most definitly NOT the cheapest are living examples that service and reliability outweigh features.

Thank you.

[Knogle]

That's an awesome piece of advice Bryan -- best of luck with your business!