By David A Dunlap If you are a Web Host you have a lot of competition, more so if you are a new Host. The sheer amount of Hosts and resellers are, as yet, incalculable. Their audience is the billions of people across the globe who want to run a Web site, whether for personal or business reasons. You may say, "Well there are billions of people I can reach, I can be successful just by starting up a Web host service and saying here, I am." Well think again.
There maybe be millions of Web Hosts out there, but there are a vast number of hosts who fail. The difference between success and failure is not up to chance, but up to you in identifying how you will fight for those customers. At the end of the day, there are those who have successfully fought this war of commerce and those who are causalities. If you apply the following principles, you too will be in the list of the former and not in the latter.
Building a Niche for your Company
When marketers say you need to create a niche or build a niche for your company it is not just throwing marketing jargon at you, hoping you will think that they are smart. It's the fundamental principle of being successful. It involves knowing your company, your service, and clientele. If there are one hundred thousand Web Hosts out there that provide the same service you do, then you must compete against a one-hundred thousand Hosts, all things being equal, you will fail.
Specializing is the key to developing a niche. What can you do that the others cannot do? Or, even more simply, what can you do that few Hosts can? The more you specialize the more the target audience you cater too decreases, but the more your competition melts away. Let us look at the previous scenario, adding in this key principle.
You are a Budget Host who has one hundred thousand competitors. Now you decide that you understand how to help SMBs (small to mid-sized businesses) and you found a way to add database management services into your hosting packages. Instead of simply catering to their Web site you can help them put their human resources databases online.
Now instead of having one hundred thousand competitors you have ten thousand, which is more manageable, but still daunting. Since your new target audience is SMBs, what else can help them succeed? How about we add in collaboration services, product and service planning management tools, and maybe giving them a good email tool that works with mobile devices and is Web accessible to your list of services. These things do not come cheap so you increase the plan cost or allow your clients to opt- in these new services. Now your audience is SMBs who require tools that will help them with freelance employees, employees who work a lot on the road, or employees who work out of the home.
Your audience has decreased slightly, but the amount of competitors you face is now an easy hundred instead of the original one hundred thousand. That is what we mean when we say specialize and building a niche. By adding targeted services, you specialize your company, decreasing your competition, and you create a focus niche for your service.
Creating a Brand
Another catch phrase used in marketing is creating a brand. Like building a niche, creating a brand has many useful applications. For this, we will look to Layered Technologies. Layered has an excellent brand name that conveys a specific meaning to the customer. Layered means several abstract places conveying differing levels of depth. Technologies means a system of applied knowledge used to bring about aid and utility in a specific field. Layered Technologies provides their customers a series of levels that aids them in their endeavors. Now the cool part. By adding the term layer to the brand names, Layered Technologies can give the customer a system with a specific purpose. GridLayer and LayeredX being too examples of solutions targeted at a market that imparts the purpose of the brand and identifies it with the company.
A brand is merely a focus for the customer to identify with. It is a name, a motto, a logo, anything that imparts meaning to a product or service for the purposes of the customer to look at it at a glance and say I know what that is. Brand names should imply benefits and impart meaning.
When we need something to clean our ears we don't say, "I need a cotton swab." We say, "I need a Q-Tip." The cotton swab could be a generic Wal-Mart type, but it will always be a Q-Tip in our minds. When we do a search for a site, we do not say, "I am going to use a search engine and find what I am looking for." We say, "I am going to google it." That is the pinnacle of branding. When the name of a brand circumvents the actual name of the product, then you know you have achieved greatness.
You do not have to circumvent a product's name to achieve success. What you do need to do is get the name of your service into the customer's head.
It starts with a single focus, the company. Our SMB hosting company is doing good so far, but it needs a good motto so when we look at the name we can get a micro version of what it means. Since it is targeted at businesses, the motto should be too. SMB Hosting means business. This motto has two definitions. It states that our host company is for businesses and the phrase "means business" has the connotation that our company does not fool around.
Now the services we off need to follow suit. Naming them A, B, and C hosting plans is nice and all, but if a customer looks at that they will scratch their heads saying what's the difference. So we give them a name that helps the customer connect. A hosting plan is the ground floor plan. It has the lowest price, but an excellent array of features. So to brand it, we will call it Startup. A customer will now say, "I have a startup company that must be the plan I need." This is how branding works it gives meaning to something for proper identification at a glance. Plan B was designed for companies who have an active group of employees who work far from the office. To further push that message we will call it the Road Warrior. It defines the plan as being for those who have employees on the road away from the front office. Warrior can be plugged back into the motto. We mean business, and warriors do not come to play tiddley winks. Plan C was designed for brick and mortar stores to have an online store. We will call that B&M Online. A brick and mortar store that is online.
With a few words, we convey a paragraph worth of meaning to potential customers allowing them to say, "Hey I know what I need." That is the benefits of branding, a world of meaning in a tiny space.
Position yourself as an expert in your field
You have found your niche market, you have created a brand, now comes the question; "why should I Host with you?" It's fine that you think yourself to be an expert, but to the customer you must prove that you are. Once you establish yourself as an expert you shoot past your competitors as far as a "ranking" system goes. Instead of having one hundred competitors you are now lumped into the experts of your field were you enjoy only ten or twenty competitors, possibly less.
Why is Yahoo Hosting, Verio, and 1&1 Hosting so popular? Why do they get clients when you believe you offer better services? It is because the customer already knows them as experts. Yahoo has been doing this whole Internet thing for years obviously, they know what they are doing. Verio has been catering to business for years they must know what they are doing. 1&1 is a large company, they advertise in the top magazines, so they must be doing something right and therefore they are experts. Success is a means to become an expert, but there are other ways:
Write useful articles. An article is a means to convey data and your interpretation of that data. In other words, you have knowledge about a subject and through that knowledge; you explain how it will help the audience. Writing articles is the basis for developing an expert persona. Make sure the articles you write are informative and accurate. Have your employees weigh in on the articles too. Someone may know something you are missing or they may give you a key element that helps present the information more effectively. Start posting these articles on your site, information sites, blogs (guest blogging is all the rage now), and in forums. Alternatively, use these articles for the basis of a discussion.
Help communities reach their goals. Going back to our example, if you want SMBs to buy your services go to them and help them attain their goals. If a business wants to understand how they can transition from brick and mortar to an online presence, then tell them how. If there is any lessons we have learned from Web 2.0 it is this; branding is a two way street. On the one end, we tell the customer what the brand is and on the other end customers tell each other what the brand is. By helping potential customers without selling them your service, (a simple signature for a forum post with your company's name, URL, and motto is sufficient) you have the customers telling each other how good you are. Visit forums, blogs, community hubs that focus on your niche and help in any way you can. Put your name out there and you will be rewarded. Not only will you present that you are an expert to the audience, but that audience will talk to each other about how helpful and knowledgeable you are.
Advertise in places were experts hang out. Riding coat tails has worked for decades in many fields, advertising is no different. 1&1 Hosting advertises in the major computer magazines and web sites. By doing so, a potential customer links them with those magazines and sites. PC Magazine has a great reputation and by proxy, their advertisers share in that reputation. Even if you do not have the money for advertising with big names you can still use this principle. Forums, blogs, niche print magazines, niche web sites, places were the experts go can be a place to advertise and you will find that these areas will be a lot cheaper than advertising with the big businesses. To get more bang for your buck, advertise on those places where you don't have a huge presence (forums you do not post in, blogs that you do not have guest articles at).
Host events that highlight knowledge. Events that bring in other experts shows the audience your pull in the industry. They don't have to be large events, they don't even have to cost more than the bandwidth to Host, in fact they might not even cost that much. To make an event you could build a trade show like HostingCon (which would cost you a ton of money) or you can make something much simpler. You have all the information you need if you have been writing useful articles; you have the experts you need if you have been helping communities. All you need is a good web cam, a good audio recording system, and one room with your logo display prominently in the background. Web conferences and podcasting can be your ticket to becoming an expert. Do a little research, practice within your company, and soon you will be hosting your own events that can be broadcast to a large audience, from your Web site or from a site such as YouTube.
Make evangelists of your service. Take a page out of the Microsoft playbook. Microsoft has a group of employees that do nothing but talk about the positives of their company. They are called evangelists and for good reason. These employees know the service in and out and have a very upbeat and positive attitude that is infectious. They praise their company, but do not disparage the competition. They aid the company by positioning it as an industry leader and spread the good news about that company across the Net and throughout trade shows. Now you are probably saying, "I don't have the money to spend on employees who simply talk and are happy all the time." But you do. At first, you will be the evangelist for your company. Take Aussie Bob as an example. The guy is a great figurehead for Dotable, when he is on the forums everyone knows him and he is always happy and willing to help. Make inroads with bloggers. If you can convince several bloggers that your services are the best (and can prove it) they will become your evangelists. This is a grassroots effort at its very heart. It costs no money only time.
These principles can be applied to any industry. Just because I am writing them on the Web Host industry does not mean that are only specific to Web Hosts. In any commercial endeavor you do all of these rules apply with equal meaning. Look at your successful competitors and take note of what they do to succeed. Take that information, applying to what we have discussed here and some day, your competitors will look at how you achieved your success.
David Dunlap has been both a Web host industry analyst and commentator for the past eight years. Prior to his active writing career, David was a network and communications technician for four years. He currently is the Editor-in-Chief for http://www.WebHostMagazine.com |
