How Do I Acquire Local Customers For My Web Hosting Service?

[Curious George]

Hello All,

Can you please provide an insight on how I can acquire new local customers for my web hosting service?

I plan on advertising in the weekly newspaper that serves my area. The advertisement initiative would target small businesses and professional services in the area.

My major concern is that my campaign in the local weekly newspaper may not generate enough customer response. Advertising in the major daily newspaper that serves my metro area may not guarantee would a lot of response either.

Does anyone has suggestion on how I can stretch my limited advertising dollar and still be able to acquire new customers.

Thanks!

Curious George

[kevan]

Hi,
If it is local customers, why not look at what other forms of advertising there are in the local area, e.g. church newsletters, local (not too) political leaflet drops, eg Residents Associations, etc.
Local Free newspapers are usually quite expensive, and often get binned, whereas these forms of newsletters usually get read; and you get some acumen for supporting their newsletters by the readers.
Kevan

[TrafficProducer]

advertising in the weekly newspaper that serves my area. The advertisement initiative would target small businesses and professional services

small businesses and professional service: Check for any local Business Mazazines.

[Weedy Lady]

Don't forget a camaign of radio spots, and/or even the very inexpensive TV spots you can get.

We live in a teeny town that is 70 miles from the closest city, but can still buy TV spots from the most popular channel in that city that will be shown in our area for very little cost per spot.

Only 30 per cent of people read newspapers. About 70 percent of people will hear you on a popular radio show or see your spots on shows like "Wheel of Fortune".

If you have an extremely small advertising budget try to line up an appearance as a guest on a local talk show. It's free.

[SoloSEO]

You might try going to local meetings for groups that own or create websites, like Internet Marketing, design and development groups, or local meetings for national or international groups like www.refresh.org or www.barcamp.org.

[davidredwine]

The ROI (Return on Investment) for Newspaper advertising absolutely stinks. Radio is not much better, but it definitely gets better results than newsprint. When it comes right down to it, there is one inescapable fact, "quality" (high value items) sales is a face to face event. It always has been and always will be. Big Ticket item (>$1000) sales are best accomplished by having a comprehensive plan and strategy.

So what do I mean by that?

You have 3 sales tools that I can see that would allow you to target 3 vertical markets, Art Galleries, Real Estate and Real Estate service(s) like siding, landscaping, painting, remodeling, etc. and finally Network Equipment suppliers or actually the broader horizontal market "Equipment suppliers".

Get a legal pad or pull up your favorite word processor.

Get out your Yellow pages and a map of the Washington D.C. area (or whatever city you are in).

Start by looking up your first business in the yellow pages (for example AA Art Gallery) and put a #1 by it. Then go to the Map and find the location where AA Art Gallery is and put a #1 on the map at that location (a MAPSCO works best for this type of sales research).

NOW go to your pad or word processor and enter the #1 - Company name, address, phone number, and any other details that will help you with conversation starters or talking points. (i.e. I am visiting Art Galleries in the Blah area or Art Galleries dealing in blah type of artistry to help them establish greater patronage and increase clientele and sales).

Go do some research on the company on the internet, see if they already have a web presence. Can you improve it? Can you find recent events or press releases, upcoming events or other information. Owners, managers names, artists showing there, etc?

Now be sure to leave space between those notes and the next company (#2), so that when you visit that location, you can write down what you find out, and what you discusses with the proprietor(s). Be sure and take sales tools. That means a Business card, and a Brochure, and examples of what kind(s) of quality work you can do

Try to only concentrate on that niche of business, otherwise you dilute your message, i.e. don't show an automotive magazine to a Dental Association publisher trying to get them to buy publishing services from you.

Now for the most important part of all. Map at least 100 businesses. Don't skip any. You can start with the ABCDEF art galleries, then get a new map, and new pad and (after you have visited the first one hundred) and repeat the exercise for GHIJK Art Galleries and so on for all three market segments.

Now make a driving/travel plan starting with the nearest business and spiraling outward from your home base. You will learn what the busy times and the slack times are and when important people are there or not there, and you will learn that in the first 10 business you visit (the first 2 days). You probably won't get to more than 5 per day. Simply ask for an appointment with the decision makers. If you are talking with the decision maker ask for an appointment to talk about bringing him more customers. Do not be lured into giving your sales pitch right then. Explain that you would like the courtesy of a private appointment for 30 minutes to discuss the ways you bring more traffic to your clients. If they do not want to give you the professional courtesy of an appointment, move on (go to next lead on your list) and make a note on your pad ( Talked to X, X refused appointment, Probably not the real decision maker). Then visit them again in 30 days. X will probably not be there.

Do not get discouraged after the first 10-20 visits....you are learning the craft, the businesses and culture you are selling into, and learning how to read people and getting more fluid in your presentation. Be sure to spend at least an hour eachc day updating your prospect list and notes for the re-visits, and reviewing what you learned and what you did.

Goldmine (from frontrange.com) is an excellent CRM application that will help you track your client leads and notes. Outlook is OK but it is not near as good as Goldmine for Sales.

Good Luck, and don't waste a dime on newspaper or radio ads until you have visited 100 clients. Then compare your results, you will probably never need to advertise in those mediums after you find out that face to face is the only way to sell big ticket items!

[gowilkes]

I'm with David. In my area, ads in the newspaper are just a waste of time and money. Radio and TV aren't much better.

When I first started my business, I made 2 good investments: a billboard, and joining the Chamber of Commerce. Locally, we have an active Chamber, so it was a cheap, easy way to meet local business owners of all sizes.

I also spent more than $10,000 on newspaper ads over a 6-month period, giving a specific discount code for each ad so that I could track my results. I think I had a total of 4 customers come from those ads.

Door-to-door doesn't work out too well in my area, but that's because we're saturated with out-salesmen. People are too used to slamming doors in faces for this to be worthwhile, but it might be different in your area.

The trick is to figure out your demographic, then be where they are. My suggestion would be to advertise online first (especially if you have an online local newspaper), then later you might resort to direct mail. But joining the Chamber might get you face-to-face with the people without coming across as a salesman.

[jeffreyasolochek]

I consider myself as somewhat of an expert in this arena and I have several ideas that would help you.
1. Align yourself with a charity like Red Cross, for every new hosting account a certain dollar amount will go to Red Cross. Now when you advertise the newspaper or radio or whatever will get a tax write off.

2. What if for everybody who signs up and pays yearly you could give them a vacation or some sort of outing? The cost to you would be very inexpensive yet the perceived value to your customers will be great. I did a search once for the keyword phrase "travel incentives" and found a lot of companies. If you look at the 'directories' link on my blog I have posted the results of this search.

3. When doing any kind of radio or TV advertising, never pay for a single show. instead ask for a certain amount of spots per 24 hour period. When you specify a certain show you could pay several thousand per spot but when you pay for a certain amount during a 24 hour period you cost goes way down. i used to pay only $5 per 60 second spot on a Talk radio AM station. The city where my retail business was located fined me and ordered me to move to a location with better parking. At first I only had six parking spots but after I moved had several hundred.
4. whatever type of advertising you do make sure that you are not limiting yourself to only one medium at a time. Like when you have radio spots also do some newspaper advertising to the same target market.

5. A place to get a local membership is BNI.org which has all these networking groups of other bisuness owners, you would meet maybe once a week and exchange ideas with them.

[bj]

Um, why do you care where your customers come from? Seems a bit shortsighted to spend all that ad dough just to put your business in front of locals when a website puts you in front of the world.

I think your time and your money would be better spent on making your website work harder for you.

[edhan]

Cheaper methods of advertising like flyers and printing calendar with added contest will help to improve sales. It is quite common locally.

[jeffreyasolochek]

Yes, with the web there are no boundaries but all i meant wasif you are targeting for example Internet marketers don't just advertise on one forum. If you are doing a JV with someone why not JV with others?

My wife and I will be doing local hosting in East Georgia and will target just thse people when we do our marketing. if we went after the entire world then we would be competing with a lot of other companies but by targeting a niche we have a larger chance of success.

[davidredwine]

gowilkes makes an important point.

Getting into mixers and meetings where your customers are is one of the most important ways to achieve successful door opening into your target clients businesses.

Your Chamber of Commerce should have a complete list of the meetings of assocations and organizations (state and local) in all the convention centers, halls, hotels, etc that are planned for the year in your area.

You could look through that list and see if there are any that you might be able to attend that might prove fruitfull. Usually the meeting planner or company meeting contact will be listed along with the event.

I have never tried this, but I am wondering if you could contact the convention centers and meeting halls and hotels and request a list of their meeting bookings for each room or hall to be able to match availability.

You might explain that you are a freelance meeting planner (somewhat true in that you want to meet prospective clients) and want to make sure that you don't for example book a High School Cheerleading clinic in their hotel when there might be a a wet T-Shirt contest or Exxon Oilfield RoughNeck appreciation ceremony on the same night. (I know this sounds hokey, but forgive me, I am really stretching it here.)

I do agree that the Chamber of Commerce is one of the most valuable resources for knowing inside information on events in those 3 vertical industries that I talked about (I looked at one of your web sites to arrive at those 3 target markets)
dr

[Orion]

Here's a great one...

Contact your local economic development department (city or town government office). 90% of them have a business directory on CD which you can purchase some even have them online and you can pay a fee for access.

Once you have the database you can sort by those businesses which have web addresses.

Then go ahead and do a direct mailing campaign, or email campaign, or telemarketing campaign.

You already know they're paying someone for the service!

Market to those businesses without webaddresses a little differently if you like also (eventually they'll need a site right!).

A fantastic networking option is the local chamber of commerce. Join, and participate in all the meet and greets they have. They often have searchable databases of members too.

Get involved in the community and charity events goes a LONG way too. Joining a toast masters group is good too.

[sdrury]

Any reason why you are limiting your customer base to local ?

You might be as well to get your site analysed then re-optimised ?

[TrafficProducer]

Cheaper methods of advertising like flyers and printing calendar with added contest will help to improve sales. It is quite common locally.

And.. Some Local shops may allow Posters, display cards, etc..

[edhan]

Oh yes, I forget to mention that printing credit card size membership card with discounts given by some vendors like food joints, hotels, etc will boost your sales locally.

[juliemarg]

yellow pages. even a small ad in the phone company phone book will get you results every month. make sure you are in the big book that has the most ads, because the cheap independent little phone books attract cheap clients and that's not your target maket.

[juliemarg]

what about online advertising on some local sites

[syndee.d.e.rn]

flyers seems cheap

[Pascal77]

My host won me with a flyer in the mailbox together with some actions they did in combination with the flyer.
Otherwise i went to another but when i received the flyer i thought why not supporting a local host?

And they did really good actions ...

[Tubby]

Quote
"Can you please provide an insight on how I can acquire new local customers for my web hosting service? "

If you are looking for local customers. A thorough search of your local newspapers will supply you with a list of local business that are currently spending money on advertising. Create a list and then remove those that have websites, and business that would be a hard sell. (fish n chip shops etc)

create a pamphlet - and a letter to the business owner. and start posting. (do not post a crap pamphlet - or a half hearted offer)
Keep sending them a new pamphlets every eight weeks.

Local business will favour you if you have a local business premises.

Local Business will favour you If they see other local business using your service.

Local businesses will expect to find your business name in all the local phone books

be around town, shake hands, hand out business cards,
Join the Golf Club, the Car Club, The Rotary Club. Give Blood, be in everything. Shake hands and hand out business cards. be known by your first name by everyone. Be Nice, and know everyone by their first name - then you can sell anything locally .