If you have ever though about looking in to reseller hosting, selling web hosting is a great way to profit from a high margin product and recurring revenue stream. Here are 6 ideas to help attract more customers and convert more traffic as well. If you have any tip or ideas you’d like to share, leave a comment below.
1. Clearly define your audience
This is one of those bits of advice that’s sounds blindingly obvious, but so few people actually do. I’ve worked at very big companies that couldn’t tell you who their core target audience are, or you’d get a different answer depending on who you spoke to. Ask yourself these questions…
• Who is our ideal customer?
• What do they want?
• Why should they choose me?
• Where do they go?
• How do I let them know I exist?
Life is so much easier once you have a clearly defined target market. You know what type of product to create, how much to charge for it, how to position your brand and where to advertise your services. Make the product fit the customer, not the customer fi the product.
2. Be creative with your marketing budget
You can’t compete with the large web hosting company’s marketing budgets; it’s a simple as that. They spend £1m+ per year and if you try to go toe to toe with them, you’ll probably go bust. I’ve seen it happen a couple of times over the years I’ve been working in the industry. For example, the most competitive keywords advertising on Google are off limits to all but the biggest spenders with the average cost per click for “web hosting” currently running at £8. Some ideas you could pursue include:
• A lot of web hosts haven’t really got their head around social media. They have twitter accounts and pages on Facebook, but I’d argue 85% of them are poorly thought out or token efforts. That’s a gap for you to fill.
• Online press releases are great ways to announce news to a large audience, establish authority and build quality incoming links. At only £100 per release through a distribution service, this is great value for money.
• I personally would not go near the most competitive keywords through Google AdWords if I was on a limited budget but I would still use the Google Display Network. Put together a tight list of target sites and advertise your service there using graphical banners.
3. Mobilise your customers
Excellent customer support and product performance will lead to customers spreading the word without much encouragement. However, you can be more proactive than that and get even more customers to refer you to other people who are looking for web hosting. A refer a friend program with a financial incentive is a tried and tested way of getting customers to refer people. This can be in the shape of cash, credit or vouchers. Review sites are a big part of a customer’s journey. Unfortunately the reviews being left on these sites tend to be from customers who have had a bad experience, certainly much more than those who are happy. Companies are becoming wise to this and starting to counter the negativity by asking their customers to review them, and there is no reason why you can’t do the same.
4. Get to the know the web hosting industry
You are not competing in a vacuum and the more you know about the industry you are operating in, the more successful you will be. Who are your competitors, where do people go to research web hosts and who are the major web hosting news outlets with the most authority? If you can answer all those questions, you can relax. If not, here are some links to get you started…
• http://uk.webhostdir.com
• www.thewhir.com
• http://uk.tophosts.com
• www.webhosting.info
5. Sell the core products
Shared hosting, domain names, dedicated servers email solutions are the bedrock of non-managed web hosting companies. They also offer huge cross sell and up sell opportunities. For example:
• Domains: More domains, email, shared web hosting, domain privacy
• Shared web hosting: Dedicated servers, Hosted Exchange, search engine submission, SSL certificates, higher spec hosting
• Dedicated servers: Server back up, higher spec servers, cpanel, MS SQL, Hosted Exchange, SS certificates
6. Get visitors to trust you
If you are asking a customer to essentially look after their web site and make sure it is secure and always accessible, there has to be an element of trust on the part of the customer. The challenge is to make them trust you enough to hand over their money. You can reduce the level of perceived risk through an attractive and modern website. Nothing screams “Stay away” more than a website that looks like it escaped from the 90’s.
Beyond being sexy to look at, all but the most carefree of people like to know they are part of a group, it makes them feel more comfortable. Positive customer reviews and testimonials go a long way to relaxing potential customers. If you can source them, case studies are a great way of showing visitors their peers are already your customers.
Tags: Reseller Hosting
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