Are you unable to tap hosting clients in your local market? Have you tried every possible advertisement medium you can think of but still don’t see ROI? You are not alone! There are a vast majority of web hosting companies, or say webmasters who shares your frustation.
I have been researching through various webhosting forums and communities to see if there are any success stories that I could share with you and help you grow your hosting business in the local market. I found few such stories that might just work for you. I will share with you what these companies have been doing and also add few tips of my own. Go ahead, read these tips and see if you can leverage them to grow your hosting business.
1. Mass advertisement does not always work – The very first advertisement medium that comes to anyone’s mind is the local newspaper to reach a very large population of people. This can sometimes be pure waste of money and time. Why? – Simple to say, you are not getting the attention of those who are really interested in hosting. Whom are you reaching – companies or individuals. There’s a lot of difference there. Are you with me? So, what should you do?
If you are targeting companies, find out and prepare a list of companies in your locality and send them a detailed profile of your company and the solutions you offer. This is a good example of highly targeted marketing that works better than advertisement. I prefer targeted marketing over advertisement as you are atleast sure that your profile reaches the IT department of the companies and the chances of someone making a decision will be much higher than just advertising your business in the newspapers. But if you are targeting inviduals, advertising in the local newspapers is the way to go.
2. Use the phone book and local newspaper – Scan through various sections of the phone book and newspapers and spot the listings/entries that do not have a website address mentioned or display a free email address such as gmail.com, yahoo.com or anything else. These are the people and companies that most likely do not have a website at all. They are your potential customers. Tip – In the phone book, focus more on the section that lists non-technical people such as real estate agents, doctors, lawyers etc. Now that you have a list ready, call them and tell them the positive impact of having a website and potential business they could do with their website. Tip – Talk about some free tools such as appointment managers, calendars etc etc. This could be time consuming activity but pays off very well as you are reaching highly targeted and potential customers.
3. Harness the power of PPC advertisement – This is one medium that can quickly bring in thousands of potential customers in almost no time. Although, many webmasters refrain from using PPC as the cost of keywords related to hosting industry is very high, but if you use PPC to show your ads to only those people who are from your city and also only on those websites that are very popular in your area, the cost of PPC could be down dramatically. Google Adwords is what you should get started with.
4. Target local schools and colleges – Offer free hosting accounts for a month or two to students, tell them what can they do with websites and how can they make money from it. You may want to approach local educational institues and talk to the management. Ensure that you offer special pricing, should I say cheap, to students who wants to continue hosting with you. This is where overselling will help you to a great extent.
Ok, I think the tips mentioned above are good enough for you to get started for now. I will make another post with more tips.
Meanwhile, if you have some interesting tips that you want to share with our readers, please post them in the comments sections below and help others grow too.
