Best form of advertising?

[bjdea1]

What guys do you do for advertising? What give you the best return on both your time and money?

[Naeem|THB]

What guys do you do for advertising? What give you the best return on both your time and money?
I dont know who would agree but id say its whats best for you and what approach to bussiness your talking. Your budget will obviously count too. The Best form of advertising is WOM- Word of Mouth. I dont think no form of advertising can get you immediate results.

[Tamranda]

Naeem is right ... The best form of advertising is the one which works out best for you. It all depends on multiple factors like the market you are targeting, budget etc.

As for our Company, Advertising in the Newspaper & Word of mouth work the most.

[Naeem|THB]

Thats why they all say the first customers are the hardest alot of the bigger companies will get most of there sales from WOM from people telling there friends etc etc. Obviously if you had $1000's of dollars to blow then obiously u could affoard to advertise in glossy magazines and the rest of it.
Regards,

[GordonH]

I was spending $25,000 a month on advertising.
I stopped 2 months ago.
Sales dropped $15,000.
Profits went up $10,000.

I am now doing a small amount ($500) to help relaunch one of our brands but I don't think I will bother with large scale advertising again.
It just creates extra work and doesn't make enough money.
The business is still growing, at about half the rate it was before, but I get to spend the $10k :)

[Chrysalis]

Advertising is a diffilcult one, I think it is very much a trial and error game and you learn with experience.

The most efficient way is word of mouth but of course you need a good customer base to benefit from that, so like Gordan says it comes down to if you happy with slow steady growth with better profit or faster growth with less profit in order to gain a customer base. I have found untargeted advertising is a way of throwing money away.

[Chicken]

Also consider that all advertisements are not created equal, plus some products and services sell better on some sites than others. Gordon (from memory) has run some pretty creative campaigns, and has a pretty good handle on what works where (or at least I've always thought so after reading his posts).

In other words, a crappy ad is a crappy ad (one that doesn't get the attention of the viewer and induce anyone to click), and no matter how much you spend on the campaign, no matter where you or how many sites you advertise on, no matter what you do, the crappy ad isn't going to produce the results you want (and may not even produce any results at all).

Also, Chrysalis mentioned untargeted advertising. A site like this might work for you in terms of dedicated servers, but may not work for shared plans (or vice versa). So there's targetted (web hosting) and beyond targetted (what type of product would the people at the web hosting forum buy).

There are so many variables as to why a campaign could fail or be successful. This is, of course, why some companies spend gobs of money on market research and marketing companies who specialize in their product area. If you're tryting to do all of that by yourself, and run the business, it can be very time consuming (as Gordon mentioned).

Of course sometimes doing something is better than doing no marketing (this site is an example of that, sadly enough), however that would be more of an issue if I was trying to make money from this site (which I'm not) instead of just providing a free web hosting resource for providers who want to use it. Granted, it would be more interesting if there was more action here, and to do an advertising campaign, money would be helpful, thus I will be running ads and having some contests to make things a tad more interesting around here.

After I get back, and after I solve a few major issues at work that have to come first (though something always seems to crop up, which is really annoying).

[MBagent]

It really depends on what you sell, on the popularity of the exact good. For most e-commerce sites usually link exchanges and SEO are used to increase traffic and sales. Sometimes some offline advert may also be useful, it really depend you know..

[ALLiNET]

sell service via partners works great.

[GordonH]

The cheapest and quickest way to grow is through acquisition.
Look for people with one server and a few hundred customers.
Assume that you will lose half the customers pretty quickly and work out a value for it.

[Unix]

Acquisitions have been working well for us.

[snowstar]

:whythis:

It depends~
But try to find the relative place for advertisement~

Here is a place for some information about advertisment
<<ADMIN NOTE: Portions of this post were removed and/or edited.>>

For example, relative web sites or magazines~
Narrow the the persons seeing your advertisement will lower your advertisement cost~

<<ADMIN NOTE: Links to sites you own or operate or are associated with are not permitted. Please see this page (http://hosthideout.com/faq.php?faq=new_guidelines#faq_new_faq_item)..>>

[cashinhand]

yes, it is really difficult field.

[Chrysalis]

I would assume you need a fair bit of cash on hand to pay for thes acquisitions. Not something someone with half a dozen customers probably has.

[asp-hosting.ca]

1. Word of Mouth
2. Your own affiliate program
3. Acquisitions

[Q151]

It surprised me, but we recently started using Google AdWords and had a great amount of success. Even more puzzling, our budget was not very large and we used very generic keywords. But, in the past month our business has grown about 100%, and it can be attributed to AdWords! So I would definitely recommend going this route, if you have the $$$ for it.

[ALLiNET]

We use a few local radio stations, and local news papers. So far from our reports we find out that from our promotion companion we got more clients from radio advertisement. And it was a great price for 3 weeks, 6 times per day commercial for $1500, we had it for almost 3 month… A lot of local small hosting providers was calling us and we where filling like we special. Also the finest part was after like 2 weeks of adverting on one of radio stations a local computer store comes out with they commercial as well… What I would recommend u to do it is to find local company who does adverting with flyers… create some hot looking flyer with good deal on for shared hosting and email hosting and send it local businesses. Also try to look in yellow page find a web design studios make a meetings with them and try to signup some kind agreement that they will send u they clients and you will pay them for each refer like $250 or what you have feel like to pay them… If you will go with low commissions not to many will work with you… For example some of web designers referring you a client for 100 MB of space and 1 GB of data transfer with 5 email accounts for $75 per month. So you would have to give to this designer at lease $250. Because it is a guaranty client for you… And believe me those prices still exist what I just showed you an example… A lot of old fusion people who don’t know nothing about computers but they want to have for they business a web site they are willing to pay like this money. My best recommendations would be for you hire a few good people with skills of Local and Internet Marketing. Always remember in order to get returns you will have to make investments. Don’t save money on marketing programs saved on something different… for example drive less your car and save gas money… good look to you with your advertising.

[kiwiactionhero]

I am very surprise that not more have you mentioned adwords. I am not hosting so maybe this should offer some insight what a hosting seeking is looking for.

I currently use 7 different hosting companies, 3 of which are winners and I use them as my main hosting providers, depending on which region we hosts are sites.

I have found 5 out 7 of them through google adwords. I was very specific with what I was looking for - and ready to buy (I suppose thats the client you want eh?)

The 'natural' search results are very spammy, lets face it - hosting is a very competive field. I seldom found anything without having to go to the fifth page. However, adwords to right of the screen often contained keywords that i was looking based on cpanel, bandwidth, price, region, and hostingspace. Being ready to buy, if i saw these keywords I definately clicked to see what they were about.

SEO 'spam' amongst hosting companies is notorious. For instance today I typed in "ireland dedicated host 100mbps" (w/o quotes). The 7th result was a hosting company in toronto - they coded their website in such a way to hide hundreds of keywords from users but feed them to search engine results. Its this type of behaviour why search that hurts both legitimate hosting companies and users.

Users still use search to find hosting, but are much more savvy - adwords to me seems quite a good option for finding new clientele. It can be very targeted and easy to run. I honestly scrolled through the entire adword hosters and successfully found the better hosting companies I use today.

Now I may not be the hosting seeker, but I did find what I was looking for with adwords. Just food for thought :D

[blue27]

I am very surprise that not more have you mentioned adwords.


If you knew what it costs to bid on decent "hosting" adwords you wouldn't be suprised.

[kiwiactionhero]

If you knew what it costs to bid on decent "hosting" adwords you wouldn't be suprised.

It may depend what you keywords you use. If volume doesn't mean decent, keywords 'hosting', 'web hosting', and in your even 'canada web hosting' may get you oodles of traffic... but that doesn't necessarily mean that its quality traffic, most of that sort of traffic is just passing through and not 'ready to buy' customers.

I am not saying that this is your case, but perhaps you are thinking to broad?

Like I said, i may not be the typical web surfer, but i when I am ready to buy I know what I want, and i won't type 'web hosting' because thats far too generic.

some typical searches:
cpanel hosting belfast ireland
cheap linux hosting cpanel toronto
uk domain name + cpanel hosting package
cpanel hosting shared ssl uk

My own trick to found hosts that I need was to include the word 'cpanel' in the results because it filtered the dross out. Like I said many other searchers may not be on to this- but i think many will soon be on to this and narrow their choices down. Once that is done, its easy to convert them :)

[Serverextreme]

I would have to agree WOM is the best form for promoting
your site if your service is good to can bet that client will tell the next.

Also post in forums like this one is a good way also
not only can you promote but you can learns alot from members like this...

[adil]

Well, I am trying to compile the list of Advertising forms that need $0 investment.

1. word of mouth
2. posting on forums
3. Email
4. Instant Messengers

can you guys please contribute to this list ?

[Serverextreme]

Hello I am not sure (Instant Messengers) is a good form for promoting
I can only advise you to interact in as many groups as you can
people have to get to know you and your service...

[etechdesigns]

I agree with serverextreme. IM will not be the option for advertising. It will be the best way to discuss your services, pre-sales and sales communication. If email marketing is done in a right way, then it will give good result, otherwise IMO, people are thinking about this as spam. :)
I would suggest Word of mouth is the best way to deal for promotion at zero cost. You should encourage people to pass on information about your services. Reffrals and affiliate marketing is also good option. You should also use SEO techiniques for search enigne marketing by improving search engine ranking. :)

[Q151]

Ok, here's something: Is it Ok to ask your clients to give word-of-mouth, if they have already expressed their happiness with your service? Also, how would you go about doing this without offending them, or looking like you are trying to force them to market for you for free?

[adil]

Well, Usually word-of-mouth is given by the friends and the relatives. And naturally by those customers as well, who are fully satisfied with your service.
But if you still doubtful about customers world-of-mouth in favour of your company, you can ask him for that in a friendly way at a personal level. But i would not at all recommend of sending him an official email for that as it could create some problems that you just hinted in your post.

[Q151]

I know the word-of-mouth is favorable. Most of our clients approach us after they've had a problem and tell us how happy they are with the service. In fact, many of our current clients are switching over to our services at our new partner because they are so happy with our customer service, even though our new prices are double the old ones. The problem is, not too many of them are actually telling their friends about our service. :)

Exactly what I meant was asking personally, not just sending out a form email to all of our clients.

Anyone with experience with this have any input?

[5star]

pretty muuch very hard to get customers now adays

[Q151]

Not if you have a good service. I know of many Web hosts that are growing very fast because they have one thing or another that stands out about them - above and beyond their great service. That's what we're shooting for - but we have not yet found our niche!

[Serverextreme]

You Guys all have good pionts,
Your clients will pass on the good word if your service is a good one
I don't see any harm for any host to ask there members
to promote there service as long as it's done the right way.

And yes the hardest thing is getting clients and keeping them
the more your out there promoting the more people will see your name...:pimp2:

[john826]

The best free form of advertising that I know of is:

SEO
Writing Articles
Writing Press Releases
Contacting the Press
etc...

[HeadNucleon]

Adwords can be useful if you know how to use it. It can be quite targeted...

[Dediwebhost]

Adwords can be useful if you know how to use it. It can be quite targeted...

I agree but some adwords are just insanely expensive and are way out of the budget of small businesses.

[icestorm]

Adwords can be useful if you know how to use it. It can be quite targeted...

Adwords has worked well for us, but word of mouth is still king.

[usbhosting]

go with the forum, I think it's the best


What guys do you do for advertising? What give you the best return on both your time and money?

[Pizza Ads]

We at PizzaAds.com specialize in Pizza Box Advertising and this is one form of effective advertising guaranteeing your ads to get in your potential customers homes. 187PizzaAds

[Profithost]

Good SEO is the best method to advertise. Really.

[cyberls]

Free advertising works for you to an extend.
But to get customers in the beginning you need to spend on advertising. I dont believe in Word of mouth . We know many big names in hosting business. And they still stick on heavy advertising. Why is that? If word of mouth is the best?

[Steve-Hostirian]

Word of mouth is absolutely the best - and networking your local market can reap huge rewards. For online marketing, Google AdWords works great for us followed by forum advertising - I'd say 3 to 1 in favor of Google AdWords, but both have great ROI's. :D