romes said:
ok, a buddy of mine opened a hosting company. hes new at it, and hes kinda finding it hard to get customers. anyone got ne tips on how to improve on that.
As with any business, patience is the virtue. Before you start a business, you must do a proper research into the business, its prospects, its potential and demand in the market.
Web hosting is not an easy nut to crack. Eversince great buble, net business has boomranged and so has the number of users. If you go by market analysis, nearly 10% web hosting companies die every month. let that not push your friend off because there is influx of greater number of web hosting companies every month. Reseller hosting has in a way been a major factor responsible. Now people need not spend humdreds of dollars or have that huge investments to start a company, but then web hosting business is all about investment and public relations.
Competition is tough and you need to be ready for a bumpy ride. Your friend needs customers but then why should people become his client? Your friends needs to introspect and find answer to this question. Take it like i am a customer, so obvius question is when there are so many web hosts today, what makes your friend's hosting company special? What makes his company stand out from the rest? What does he provide that is not available from competition? Its all about value added services besides a stable network. Few companies throw in offers of free templates or scripts or similar. Still others would tempt with domain names. But then as a customer, i would always want to go with some one who has been there for significant amount of time, has reputation in market, is easy to approach, reliable and has economical hosting packages where i can derive more than i would otherwise if i were with some other equally capable company. So, you got the answer? Your friend needs to project his business on these lines and promote it as much as he can. Do press releases, hire an agency, advertise in local newspapers, do whatever you can, may be roll in radio boradcasters. Project features where customers feel they are getting more for their spending and i am sure he will start having customers sooner or later. Once custoemrs start flowing in, thats the time to impress the clientage. Have meaningful, courteous and quick support. believe me, word of mouth sells and if your current clientage is happy, they will bring more customers for you.
In nutshell, there is no short cut to success. You need to understand what is that others would be interested in and accordingly project those assets or features.
