hey guys i recently started up my own hosting company called Cheap Host 4 You and ive designed the site,made the plans, and done all that i knew, can any1 help me on what to do next like were to advertise, is ebay a good idea?? does anybody have any tips for what i should an shouldnt do???

take a look at my site an tell me what you think http://www.cheaphost4you.com

would be very gratefull for some help,
Paul

I wouldn't suggest E-bay... I've tried it a couple of times but its not worth it for a couple of reasons...

1. You have to offer the price extremely cheap! Too cheap in fact to be worth your wild!
2. Most of the companies on there are offering "unlimited bandwidth" and "unlimited web space". We all know this is a lye and a bad ploy! Most of the people that are using E-bay dont have a very good reputation.
3. There are hundreds of these on E-bay. It will be very hard for you to get noticed over the hundreds of others that are on there!

Just my suggestion... Do a bunch of local marketing. Try getting local businesses in your area. They are usually willing to pay more and they are more likely to stay with you longer!

This is originally posted by Boris on the WHT forums, hope you can use it..


Greetings,

Targeting the local market for hosting companies is nothing new. In fact, we have these kind of threads on WHT every week or so. I figured it might be an interesting idea to combine and discuss some new ideas on local marketing alone. If this sounds like it's been covered before - it probably has been. However, I hope that we might be able to get some new thoughts flowing in this thread.

While we don't run a hosting company per se, we do target the same market - small to mid-size businesses (preferably with existing websites) and have been involved in the hosting industry for years.

To start off the thread, I’d like to introduce some of the ideas that we’re implementing ourselves:

1) Radio Advertising – there a nice list of business-related radio stations in US in a Yahoo Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/news_and_media...nd_economy/?o=a).

There is a specific one that caught my attention: http://businesstalkradio.net.

After getting in touch with them, I found out that the rates range from $200 to $300 per a 60-second slot during, what I think is the best time, commuter timeframe (6am-12pm; 4pm-8pm). Now, there are two things that are pretty attractive about their station:

a) They do the commercial for free – you just send them the text and they take care of the rest.
b) If they are interested in your industry, you might be able to get a 4-5 minute interview out of them. They do charge you for that (around $500), but a 5 minute interview with you on the air can be VERY effective, in my opinion.

I believe that the most effective thing to do would be to run two commercials per day (preferably during the same show) for about 5 days (Mon-Fri). This will get you exposed to the regular listeners at least a couple of times.

Keep in mind, that one week is simply meant to gauge the approximate response. A week isn’t really enough for a successful radio campaign, but it will show you if there is any potential. Something like this would wind up costing you around $2,000-$3,000 depending on the frequency and timeslots

We’ll be starting our own radio ad campaign in April, so I’ll keep you posted on the results.

2) It seems to me that the best way to reach out to the local business community is through educating them first and selling later. In the summer, we are organizing to hold several live workshops in the New York area on online advertising (the industry we’re in) for small businesses.

The way we plan to do this is by:

We plan to limit the attendance to up to 30-50 people per session and hold around 4 sessions in one week (2 on a weekend day and 2 on two weekdays). The reason why we want to keep the attendance low is so that business owners would feel more involved and would get more out of this.

Where to hold the workshop? You can try the following ideas:

a) Approaching local colleges about renting a classroom or an auditorium. Most of them are usually well-equipped with computer stations and projectors, if you need them.
b) Approaching local hotels about renting a conference hall.
c) If you have an office with a large enough conference room, you might be able to host it right there.

In terms of marketing, you can do it either through:

a) Purchasing leads of businesses in the local area through something like infousa.com and sending them postcards informing them of the event. This would be the a somewhat expensive solution due to the low response rates and high cost of printing and postage.

b) Advertising the event on the radio (if you have a business related station in your area) - also will be somewhat expensive, but will reach a broader audience at a lower cost than postcards.

c) Advertising the event in your local Chamber of Commerce – rules and regulations on that vary, so you’ll need to do your own research on that.

Keep in mind that you can hold more than 4 workshops and you can accept more than 30-50 people per session.

I think that it would be an excellent thing to do on a regular basis as the word would eventually spread and if you’re the first company doing this in your town, you might be able to get free publicity from the local media.

Of course, this won’t work for those offering $2.99/mo plans, but should work out well for companies who want to target the local market and charge $30-60/mo per hosting account), as well as offer additional services (ranging from design to marketing solutions and so on)

3) Quarterly Newsletter – in previous WHT threads, postcards are often brought up as effective means of reaching out to the local clientele.

However, I think that a more effective way of getting your company known and respected in your area can be achieved by sending out a quarterly newsletter (physical snail-mail newsletter, not eMail) to local businesses filled with information, tips, ideas, etc. on getting the most out of their existing (or potential) Internet presence?

One way to go about it would be to:

1) Purchase a list of leads of local businesses (or gather them up yourself)
2) Hire a freelance writer through guru.com or any other source that will either write or assist you with writing the newsletter on a regular basis. Keep in mind, it doesn’t need to be large – a couple of pages should suffice.
3) Get in touch with a local printer to see what kind of options they have in terms of printing and mailing.
4) If you choose to mail yourself, make sure to get a permit from a post office – that will save you a whole bunch of money and will make it easier for you (no stamps)
5) … and send out the newsletter on a regular, consistent schedule.

Now, something that I do want to stress in this is that you shouldn’t sell and push your services on every single page. It really shows and has a damaging affect on your credibility. There is nothing wrong with mentioning your company and what you offer clearly – but don’t overdo it.

By the way, if you do decide to do the newsletter, it can serve as excellent means of promoting your workshops, as you’ll already have an audience that knows and respects you.

I’ll wrap it up for the night. I hope you found this at least somewhat useful and we will get more responses, suggestions, and comments in this thread.

Boris

This is a GREAT article ( or should I say write up )!!!!

Thanks for sharing it coolweb!