How do you guys compete for customers?

M

monaghan

New member
Without giving away all your secrets, how do you guys compete for your customers ?

If you look through the big / popular hosting forums, then the place is full of kiddies offering obviously oversold packages at stupidly low prices, the support forums then contain posts from the same kiddies asking the most basic of support questions.

My customers are few in number, but don't book many support issues. I have had new customers via word of mouth. I may even venture to suggest I have near perfect customers !

I've recently migrated from reseller account to dedicated server and ideally need a few more customers to balance the web hosting side of the books (although the business won't go under if I don't as I have my own products / services on my server as well)

Obviously there's no way to compete with the mega budget kiddies. I was thinking of a simple leaflet drop to (perhaps targeted ?) local businesses.

Any other suggestions ?
 
Try not to compete with them. Customers who are only hunting for the lowest possible price, will get burned by these kid hosts. They either move to the next low-level host or they realize that they need to pay a little more for quality - and that is where you should position yourself in the market.

Chris
 
Im with nsusa,

Those are not the customers you want - They have a strategy - and good on them for it.

Basically - they keep local copies - their business or site doesnt need to be up all the time. They go for the best deal they can, and when the host goes under, screws up too bad or disappears, they just upload to the next best deal they find, wait the 24-48 hours for their domain name to resolve and presto - cheap hosting again.

This will only last for so long, eventually - they will settle on a good host.

Recently - I took some serious time and thought about this myself. Which customers do we want. Well - we made our decision - moved to a high end DC (Time Warner Network - sorry, had to brag) - and jacked up our prices.

People who want reliable hosting, on a reliable network - and are willing to pay for it - Call Me - Otherwise - I can give you the number of various hosts that will give you 50 GB for $5 and give me a call in a year when youre sick of it.

Sorry for the long post - but - I seriously spent the last 2 months thinking about this and taking the direction we did....

So, my advise - dont get into a price war - provide a premier service and charge appropriately for it. Less headaches, better margins and most importantly - better and happier customers !
 
Great thread everyone and I agree with all of you. I like to get the more mature customer as well, they don't have to be old they just need to know that they want a good host and good support. I think that is why so many go after the reseller market now, those tend to be more mature and know that they have to be their for the clients or they will be out of a business. Where as those with one or two page sites don't really care.
 
Ok - This is a tough subject to answer. It may seem easy at first, however by no means is it.

Firstly - as some others have said, find your place in the industry. You cannot by any means take on the whole market, you have to find your sector where you fit and try to win over that firstly; you can later on try and go for more if you think you can handle it.

You shouldn't try to compete with all other hosting companies there are, since there are simply too many to do that.

With my company, for example, on the consultancy services - I don't try to find as many clients as possible, I instead try to find a few long-term clients whom I'd be happy serving. It's much better to have a few clients whom will stay with you for a long time than a lot of clients whom will stay with you for a few months (Long-term in this case being a few years). Personally, I'd much rather have a few long-term consultancy clients than a lot of clients whom each all only book one hour sessions.
This really goes with any service, it's best to have a few long-term clients than plenty of short period clients.


To "compete" for other clients, my company simply offers the best service it can. You cannot worry all the time about being better than another company, as there are always other companies that are better than you - and these companies usually tend to be large international corporations; which you obviously cannot compete with.

You really need to just try your best - and eventually the clients will come. Obviously any 'general Joe' can tell you this, but it really is the truth. I've not done a lot of advertising for my company at all - and now looking at the clients I have, I must say I'm very pleased that I have not advertised a lot. The reason being - I now have clients whom I'm happy with. Obviously my company falls into a "special case" since it offers various services (all really at different ends of the scale), but I'd much rather be as I am, than say be like HostRocket or EV1Servers.

I hope this helps. :)
 
Me again. :)

Have you tried targetting people where you live? They may not want to pay much, but it's a starting point. That way you've got yourself a niche market.

Then once you've got yourself established, go after other clients further afield. Add more plans to suit those with a bigger budget.

That way you are not competing with the bargain basement kiddies.
 
:D Well we have a load of good word of mouth, support is prime and appreciated, and loads of kiddies trying to make pocket money do hit. But again all their clients usually get 'released to the market' quickly.

Targeting an area isn't a bad idea, but can land you with loads of tech support that has nothing to do with the hosting you offer :rolleyes:
 
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