Web hosting business is fairly different from other businesses like website design, development, and social media marketing, where you can generate a few dozen orders every month, and enjoy healthy profit margins.
It’s all about customer satisfaction and retention here, because the profitability mainly relies on the renewal rates, and customer retention rates in case you’ve your own setup. If you’re
working as a reseller, things could be quite different, and you may have good margins from the very first year, but even in that case, your annual revenues will heavily depend upon the percentage of existing customers renewing your services.
So, here are 4 key elements of devising a successful marketing strategy to promote your hosting business.
Connect to Your Customers Through Facebook and Other Social Media Platforms: It’s a well-known fact that most of the Internet users are connected through Facebook all the time, and there’s no better way to connect to your customers than social media platforms. Once you’re connected to all your existing customers, you can keep rolling out enticing offers, discounts on renewals, and timely promotions to keep them engaged all the time. And, the chances of renewal would increase manifolds if you’re well connected to your customers.
Minimize the Money Spent on PPC and Focus on Organic SEO – If you’ve been spending heavily on PPC marketing, it’s time to change your approach and focus on organic SEO, and decrease your budget on PPC progressively. Usually, the results of organic SEO are long-lasting, and a good deal of money can be saved in the process. Just make sure that you don’t aim at very competitive keywords, and rather target the long-tail keywords with very little competition to get the best results.
Strong Focus on Retention: Analysing previous year’s retention rates can greatly help in discovering certain valuable facts that you may not have otherwise discovered. So, if you really want to bump up the retention rates, you should not only make it a point to offer unmatched customer support, but also spend some quality time digging deep into the data analytics of your existing customer-base. Offering enticing discounts on renewals, and offering value added services can also help the cause.
Focus on Mobile Interface of Your Website – It’s a known fact that people love to do things on-the-move. And, when they can order a pair of sunglasses, a diamond ring, and even a laptop through their smartphone, there’s no reason why they won’t buy a hosting package too. However, if the mobile interface of your website is not-so-friendly, then the chances are high that you’d lose such customers. And, it’s important to note that almost 50% of Internet users are now using their tablets and smartphones to shop online. So, you may lose out on a really large chunk of customers if your mobile version is not user friendly. Developing exclusive mobile apps for Android and iOS platforms can be a great idea too, so that your customers may be able to place orders in a seamless manner.