We all talked about sky-rocketing sales with server hosting. Nobody talked about how hosting companies can snowball their revenue. Ever. Until now
Like all the businesses, hosting has its own tricks, tips, and very often ‘cheats’ that lure clients into buying from you.
There’s slit-throat competition today that compels companies to sell cheap dedicated servers in Australia. In the long run, the low selling price starts to pinch so much that companies tend to squeeze in any extra money they can from their customers. Evidently, today, there is no dearth of providers that promise something different at the start and later cheat their customers with hidden costs. If you can do as much as not being one of them, a positive outlook towards your brand will become word of mouth, and your clientele will grow naturally. However, this technique is more of long-term insurance than a chit-fund scheme that starts yielding returns in no time. Providers want a more solid-proof plan, one that gives back almost immediately post its implementation.
Let’s start from scratch….
Why start with server hosting business?
Ever wondered how many websites are there on the internet?
Over 1.7 billion. Yes, billion.
And 380 new websites are created every minute. Multiply that number with 1440 – the number of minutes in a day. We get 547,200 new websites each day. Imagine you run a big server company with a total of, say, 10%, market share. So, out of these many websites launched per day, 1/10th are those that you service.
Be a bit skeptic, estimate yourself a profit of only $20 per website launched. Do the math and evaluate the profit you would make. Our calculation says its $ 1.09 million.
If you haven’t noticed yet, the profit we have worked is for a single day. Cross it by 365 to calculate your earnings for the year. This is as far as we can go.
My point?
The server hosting business is extremely profitable and blooming at present. When it comes to providing IT services, there are few businesses more profitable than a hosting company.
Already into hosting. How can I multiply my sales?
These tricks worked well for us back when we were struggling. They will hopefully work for you as well.
Specialize – to craft a niche
There is no shortage of vendors when it comes to hosting. To stand out from the crowd, you need to look different. One of the ways to look different is to excel in specific services. Carefully curate a list of services that are underemphasized but demand attention. You need not boast of the specialized services in your tag line. A neat plan providing extra features to these businesses would do a great job.
You can offer industry-specific solutions: for example, VPS hosting solution for supply chains.
Servicing specific-clients is also an area you can start with initially. Offer complete expertise building them a website from scratch absolutely.
It makes sense to specialize in a domain, become known for that domain, and then broaden your reach to other spheres. When we started into hosting, we catered small clients and it was only after we grew into a sustainable business that we started reaching out to a more diverse clientele.
Market your brand
Many fail to understand why there are a plethora of customers nestled around the popular brand stores despite knowing how marketing works.
Whether you are a home-run business of 20 people or a fifty-storeyed IT giant, you cannot keep away from marketing for long. Marketing isn’t always about advertising in new places, but about advertising in new ways. Dangling advertisements at bus stops are obvious to catch more attention that those inside elevators of a residential building.
There is a whole arsenal of tools that you can deploy with marketing. Social media, for example, is another such tool you can make use of while campaigning. Email marketing, known to have the highest Return on Investment (ROI), has been a go-to for companies for decades.
How rigorously should your market depends upon the brand-recognition you are planning to achieve, given the time you have in your hand. Timely and successive campaigning usually concludes in some of the most sought-after products in the industry.
Adequate marketing is, therefore, important.
Optimize your page
Your blog alone is not sufficient to get you a page one ranking in search engines. Ally with other blogs – even across industries – and exchange articles and links to these blogs. When more and more external websites link to yours, the search algorithm has reasons to trust you as a reliable source of information and eventually rank you higher. While links from similar websites (as yours) are deemed more valuable, off-business links would not do any harm either.
Optimization is not biased to off-page link building and sharing. On-page contents can undergo a revamp too. Optimized contents tend to load faster and better and provide an immersive experience to the visitors. Besides, is it very likely that your page-load speed will up your ranking on search engines?
Google, for example, has almost always prioritized reliable pages while ranking relevant results.
Customer support
We draw a bottom line to this list with customer support.
Little heed is paid to the support at the provider’s end but it often is the segregating factor between a good and a bad host.
Ever since day one, our management focused on client satisfaction and we were at our toes while servicing customers. Higher retention rate exemplifies better support, low retention is indicative of improvements.
Snowballing revenues are not always about inflating sales figures. Cutting costs also add to the profit. It is easier – and cost-effective – to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. So, it does no harm in squeezing in a few pennies extra for every dollar you spend on support; especially when those extra pennies will pay you back with better customer retention.