Few years back creating a web hosting company is really a tough job for normal people because of its expensiveness. But now, lot of things had changed. Purchasing a dedicated space from any hosting providers is enough to kick start your web hosting business.
To help you out I had compiled some viral ideas that will work for your business to bring up your sales curve.
Banner Advertisements
This is the highly used method to advertise a business. Contact bloggers (or) website owners and offer them some price to place banner ads in their blog sidebar or in header area where people like to click more.
Placing the banner in a blog doesn’t affect the SEO value of that site so probability of accepting the offer is high.
Research
If you do not know who you’re selling to, how will you know they’re going to buy what you’re offering? Research your own business and your customers and make sure what you offer or plan to offer is going to be of benefit to them.
Planning
I know, it’s boring, it can be tedious and sometimes it’s discouraging because you feel like it’s not actually doing anything. You have everything planned out in your head anyway so surely we can just skip the step? Wrong… Planning is often overlooked too easily and it’s one of the most crucial aspects. Without careful planning, everything you do will be virtually pointless. Plan your new Sales strategy – don’t go in guns blazing and hope it just sticks.. By planning, you can do away with methods that just won’t work and focus your energy on the aspects that do work. Find out when your Sales peak, learn about the behavior of your shoppers and use your existing statistics to your advantage (we’ll go into further details about the power of statistics in another blog post).. Write things out in paper and make sure you follow it through..
Publish Guest Posts
Most of the SEO experts are preferring this type of promotion rather than paying money for spammy directory submission and buying sidebar links.
Hire any writer and make them to write article related to your industry and post them to high PR and authority blogs. If you find difficulty in hiring a writer then contact blogger directly and ask them to write a short review about your web hosting company.
Learn how to take advantage of guest blogging ? this helps to understand the purpose of your guest post + how to arm your site before going for a guest blogging campaign.
Web Hosting Directory Listing
I’m not a big fan of submitting a site to directory sites but having your site listed in some popular web hosting directories will help you in rankings because those sites may rank well for many hosting related keywords so getting a place in those site will bring huge exposure back to your business that enhance your blog SEO performance in all ways.
Testimonial Review From Customers
If you got a decent amount of users for your hosting company then ask them to write a testimonial reviews in their blog or make them to place a banners ads in their blog sidebar or in header section.
If a visitor visit their blog chances are there to become your customers by seeing the reviews written in their blog. Don’t forget to reward the users who referred you the most number of customers.
Host any Competition
This is the trump card to increase your hosting sales, you can host the competition in your own blog or you can contact the bloggers and make them to host the contest with their readers.
Make them to share the article in social media sites or write a short review about your company in their blog as a part of competition. This will bring you lots of traffic and good exposure in their circles as results you can increase the sales.
Release Infographics
This is the no.1 link building techniques in this Pinterest world. Create a good designed infographics about your hosting industry or something interesting which users like to share. Then submit the infographics in all infographics submission sites and blogs.
Don’t forget to share it on Pinterest, and try to get the initial start by getting more pins from the users. Once it started to go viral you will get huge amount of links pointing to your site which will be a ranking boost for your business.
Upsell
Don’t neglect your existing client base. Many don’t realize how often your existing customers are on the hunt to purchase a complimenting product.. Find out what that is and make sure you offer it.
10. Make it noticeable!
Do what you need to do to ensure your new strategy is visible. If it’s a new promotion, make sure you get the word out, if it’s a new service, make sure you dedicate enough website real-estate to describe the positive points and why your visitors need it – and also why they should buy it from you.
Keep the offer Special
Don’t overdo your special offer, otherwise, it isn’t really a special offer. Set a time limit and stick to it.. Offer a “reserve” or “notify me” list so that the next time the offer is available, you can send a mail shot out to those interested and get a flurry of sign ups quickly. Don’t expect everyone to sign up however, some will have moved on.
Setup PPC – Per Click Campaign
Create a list of long tail converting keywords about your hosting industry and kick start a PPC campaign using Google adwords. The key in creating PPC campaign is choosing the right converting keywords and making the title clickable by the users because hosting industry is much crowded and competitive one so to withstand in this competition you must do something different from others.
Check this free Adwords course for beginners and more useful articles on Adwords.
Get Affiliates Help
A very old but golden technique to promote a product on web. Create an affiliate campaign using software like zferral.com that allows anyone to become your affiliates to promote your product. Reward the users by giving highest affiliate commission among your competitors. More affiliates = More sales.
This will surely create a magic in your sales. Bloggers and marketers will start to promote your hosting with their reader base, as a results you can see a huge spike in your sale at the end of the month.
Bonus Viral Techniques
At last, you can also make a promotional video related to your hosting company and publish it on Youtube. Not only the promotional video, you can also publish videos that are related (to your market) and useful to your audience, this way you can quickly attract new customers to your business.
Similarly, using Slideshare also you can quickly find new customers by releasing presentations that are related and useful to your audience.
Summary
Web Hosting is a very competitive industry, but it doesn’t have to be. Hardwork and dedication will take you far but it won’t overcome every hurdle. Careful planning and a good sales strategy will play an important part in boosting your sales.. Don’t be disheartened if the first few tries yield no results..It just means you need to go back to the draw boarding, input what you have learnt into your research, make a few tweaks and try again.. With good research and planning, you significantly increase your chances of something working first time round but it is important that you are realistic.
These are the different techniques that definitely takes your business viral and increases sales. There are no magic formula to know what really works well for your business, so you have to experiment and hence don’t just stick to one method…do more viral experiments !