Looking for some advise.

My company have been running servers for big blue chip clients for about 2 or 3 years (the likes of IBM, QinetiQ, UK Ministry of Defense, Marconi, etc.. etc..) so we have lots of experience in the 100% uptime industry.

Now advertising for this kind of thing is pointless, all our work for the big corporate clients come through word of mouth and so on.

We are trying to break out into the SME hosting market, I was just wondering if you guys could recommend some tried, tested, and succesful ways of marketing online.

Obviously we are doing local advertising, flyers to businesses, mailshots, and as part of our marketing plan we are going to be running a few magazine adverts.

What online advertising has worked best for you?

Small forums believe it or not.

I own and operate a fresh new forum and from there, over the past month or so there have been 4 new clients sign-up for a hosting package from my company. Not because I'm the forum owner, or because the site design is cool....It's because I'm a part of the community.

If you can break into that lock then you should do quite well, once you have your shared client base then you're set to go into the full on banner and SEO marketing spree. Without people to back up your services (no matter what services they are) you won't succeed.

The SME market is very broad. You may want to start by targetting a specific segment of the SME market. Once you decide on our SME segment, then you can figure out how to market to them.

*pats his Marketing plan*

Ah the 6 P's... what fun!

Never really valued these plan things much when I started out, they really are very clever things

That they are Hamlesh.

Yes, you can pretty much buy out a small communities sole very cheaply, make some posts and al members are appeciative, and want to help you.

We have found that this has been the best form. Advertising locally is the best way to target the SME market. The industry is a bit oversaturated online.

With online marketing, you'll find yourself in frustration trying to compete with the smaller 7yr old child, who finds it necessary to run a hobby (also known by them as a business). They generally rape the industry with their 20GB space/900GB transfer, $0.50/mo plans.

While we don't handle big businesses generally, we do target the SME, and Celebrity market. We have never advertised online, and we are enjoying a pretty nice growth.

This year, will be our first year of actual online advertising. We have relied on local ads, and viral marketing from the beginning.

Launch an e-business workshop and offer it free to SME's in your neighbourhood. Give them an incentive to attend - i.e. giveaways (win a digital camera) or, if you want to be 'cost effective' give away free domain registration to all who attend.

Get their contact information - have them sign up for a newsletter. Give away a neat little package of 'stuff' for them to carry back to their office, as a reminder of your service.

Follow-up -- build customer relationships from there.

With your blue chip background, SME's should be more than impressed.


JP