How Long Should It Take

[HostMarket]

Hey Everyone,

I am wondering how long it should take before you get your first client? I am asking because I have been using google ads, and facebook ads for about two weeks and still have not gotten any interest. My website from what I am told is professional enough and my prices and plans are very fair.

So what am I doing wrong??? :help::crash:

 

[Artashes]

Without knowing who your customer is and how you are using the targeting of ads (keywords, etc), it will be exceptionally difficult to answer this question.

In very general terms, targeting highly competitive keywords such as "shared hosting" or "VPS hosting" is not only going to burn your budget, but won't yield amazing results. However, if you are focusing on specialized and local keywords such as "shared hosting town name" or "wordpress VPS hosting town name", you increase your chances of attaining cheaper traffic.

Also, think about creating specialized/custom landing pages. When someone clicks on an ad selling wordpress hosting, they expect to see something that ensures them that they are in the right place. Have some in-depth information about how your service delivers what it says.

 

[HostMarket]

Amazing Points Artashes.

However I am just trying to get my first customer LOL. I feel like :crash: every day because I get people on the site but no one is click that sign up now button. I understand it takes time and that I should target an crowd but its hard when I want to serve so many.

Hope that makes sense and if does not I am sorry. I just don't want to fail and feel like I am.

 

[Artashes]

Your local customers are your best bet to kick-start your company with. Participate in local events, walk into businesses, introduce yourself and what you do ⏤ a lot of the times you'll find that smaller businesses are prone to working with someone local as they see it more of a safety net.

As you do this, you'd probably be shocked how many people still don't have any web presence, so you can go the extra mile and help them build a simple website.

 

[HostMarket]

Artashes Again your making a solid point. However, what if the owner of the business has anxiety issues and does not like being in public?

 

[bigredseo]

If you're running ads, then an ad should work very quickly. As Artashes said, it's going to depend who you're targeting and what you're saying in your ad to convince the user that you're the host to go with.

Keep in mind, if you're targeting savvy users, they're going to go look at places for hosting reviews etc, so definitely do not target generic terms like "shared hosting".

What you'll want to check up on is how many people are seeing your ad, and how many of those people are clicking to go to your site. Getting 1,000 views on an ad doesn't mean anything if nobody is clicking the ad.

Targeting a niche, is going to be a heavy requirement when starting out. Then making the signup process as easy as possible and evaluating the Goal path of a user to see where they fall off is going to be something to review too.

To make things cheaper on your end, you'll want to take advantage of the Facebook Pixel and Google Pixel and retarget users based on if they visited your site. You can also setup "look-alike" type marketing where the ads are setup so that if a user looks as "godaddy" for example, then your ad should show to that person. (DO NOT use the entire site of godaddy as a look-alike target, you would want to target specific pages in their site, and then have your ads show - for example, targeting the "cancellation policy" or specific "user help" sections of their site might be a good target)

There's a lot to the marketing end of things. A pretty site and competitive pricing is only half the battle. You'll want to build a persona of who it is you're trying to target, then as Artashes said, build a specific landing page dealing directly with that issue.

 

[Artashes]

^ this is the best advice you'll get anywhere.

 

[HostMarket]

If you're running ads, then an ad should work very quickly. As Artashes said, it's going to depend who you're targeting and what you're saying in your ad to convince the user that you're the host to go with.

Keep in mind, if you're targeting savvy users, they're going to go look at places for hosting reviews etc, so definitely do not target generic terms like "shared hosting".

What you'll want to check up on is how many people are seeing your ad, and how many of those people are clicking to go to your site. Getting 1,000 views on an ad doesn't mean anything if nobody is clicking the ad.

Targeting a niche, is going to be a heavy requirement when starting out. Then making the signup process as easy as possible and evaluating the Goal path of a user to see where they fall off is going to be something to review too.

To make things cheaper on your end, you'll want to take advantage of the Facebook Pixel and Google Pixel and retarget users based on if they visited your site. You can also setup "look-alike" type marketing where the ads are setup so that if a user looks as "godaddy" for example, then your ad should show to that person. (DO NOT use the entire site of godaddy as a look-alike target, you would want to target specific pages in their site, and then have your ads show - for example, targeting the "cancellation policy" or specific "user help" sections of their site might be a good target)

There's a lot to the marketing end of things. A pretty site and competitive pricing is only half the battle. You'll want to build a persona of who it is you're trying to target, then as Artashes said, build a specific landing page dealing directly with that issue.

Thank you, I will relook into my ads and try to make them more targeted towards local market

 

[TheBoss]

I am also a developer, so I have a few clients I was able to persuade to let me host their website. I'm still well into the red tho!

I am looking into ways to increase my business too. If you know a developer, you may offer he/she a discount, or a good price on a reseller package. Just a thought.

 

[PeterShene]

Ads should work you should be looking at a minimum of a 2% conversion rate so 100 clicks at least two conversions ( niche dependent ), if that's not happening then maybe your target audience is wrong, maybe your offer isnt good enough, content is not good enough can be many things.

I can tell you how to find the start of the problem. Google analytics ( probably the most underrated seo tool of all time ) will give you a breakdown of everything paid social and organic channels user flow page metrics so you would be able to identify issues quite easily if you know how to read the data.( make sure you have conversion tracking set up )

Another thing you can do get hotjar, Hotjar is a screen recording software, free plan lets you store 100 recording and you can literally see what is happening on your website which may give you some obvious pointers on where issues may lie.

As for organic and non ads this may take some time.You would need to work on seo and keep a keen eye on webmaster tools to see traffic queries and ranking changes it will take time. In the meantime just because you are selling a online service doents mean you cant use offline marketing.

Talk to people that are in a similar business make deals one that i did when i first started was this established website directory so i contacted them and made a deal - offer people signing up to their directory for a listing 15% off any website made by us. So they get more listings we get more business. It wasnt a crazy amount off people but it kep the ball rolling

PS make sure you have a gmb listing too as for organic in all honesty wouldn't spend too much time in it unless you are very local google is putting directories ontop to push people into ads *( just my opinion but thats where we are headed with the search engine.)

 

[CyberSasu]

Facebook or google ads will not work instant, need some time. In my personal opinion, facebook is good for brand building, not sales. Google ads can be an option but you have to build your website more catchy. Check your visitor timing how much they spend avg on your website. If more than 1 minute then something you have to do with your pricing. If not more than 30 sec then you have to do more work with your website.
Also, add a live chat option. Running live chat addon now days is easy. Many mobile applications available too so that you can chat with them via mobile in your off time.

 

[bigredseo]

Facebook or google ads will not work instant, need some time.

We have clients that turn ads on in the morning and within a few hours need them turned off. It just depends on the niche you're targeting.

If you target your ads correctly, they are instant conversions. The offer must be right, and you must have the right end user looking at the ad.

If I run an ad on Google offering Analytics Support for $200/hr, there are definitely fewer "bites" than if I offered it for $10 - or FREE.

That said, if FREE was the ad, and it's a loss-leader on purpose, the ad DID work.

 

[DigitalBS]

I wouldn't bother with AdWords unless you know what you are doing.

But some advice is to screw AdWords for now and focus that money and attention on building trust and stronger pages.

Be active on forums so people know your active in your community etc.

 

[HostMarket]

Hello,
Once again thank you for all your guy's advice. I have been working hard on my business. I have grown a bit and got some very good customers.

I would be willing to offer a developer a reseller plan if they were willing to bring clients in for sure. However, that seems odd to give them a reseller account if they want to host there own clients.

Thanks Again

 

[bigredseo]

I would be willing to offer a developer a reseller plan if they were willing to bring clients in for sure. However, that seems odd to give them a reseller account if they want to host there own clients.

I'd be very hesitant offering it for free - there's no money in that.

You can look to offer discounted plans, or affiliate program, but I wouldn't offer it for free.

What many places do is that they'll have an affiliate program and part of the affiliate program is that the developer will get a free account. Their users would be paying you directly however, and the reseller would get a portion of the sale as an affiliate.

Giving the account for free wouldn't make much sense.

I personally (and this is a personal opinion) don't think there should be any reseller account on normal shared hosting. A person can purchase a VPS and become their own independent reseller in their own environment. (yes, I know the VPS is technically a reseller account, but it's not a WHM Reseller like most people would use).

Standard shared accounts with an affiliate program - that's how we operated and never had an issue.
VPS and Dedicated - users manage it on their own, or can pay a management fee.

 

[HostMarket]

BigRedSeo,
Thanks for the feedback. I currently have two dedicated servers in which I am running on my own. One server for shared accounts and one server for reseller accounts.

I am hoping this will take some of the load off each server, thus allowing more resources for each website.

 

[bigredseo]

As long as you're limiting your reseller account as to how many accounts they can create, and you're restricting disk/CPU usage, then you should be fine in that regard. The more accounts, the slower the server - so if you have 7 resellers with 50+ accounts, you can bog down others - especially if those accounts get traffic etc.

For your DNS, you'll likely want those separate from your reseller also - again, speed on lookup queries etc.