Business Advice

m3ltdown · 2nd January 2009

Hello,

I have secured an investment of £15,000 to grow my hosting business.

I am just wondering what the best way are to spend £4,000 would be on advertising for 6 months.

Ive just wasted £179 on thomsonlocal and 118 188 directory.

Is google adwords useful? Forum advertising? Banner link?

What types of sites should i be looking to advertise on?

All information is greatful.

Thanks,
Adam

JSamuel · 2nd January 2009

Depends on what you do,
Without reading through your other threads/posts, I'll lazily assume domains and/or webhosting.

There are probably 34557467 other people out there doing the exact same thing, so I would do more local/niche advertising instead, and build a solid brand based on customer service. You'd be surprised how many local businesses/individuals there are in some places.

Some may be more than willing to throw their money at you, they just havn't been asked by someone local before.

dazmanultra · 2nd January 2009

Didn't you have to justify where the money was to be spent before securing the investment?

FH - Tim · 2nd January 2009

I'd actually be concerned if someone gave me money without wanting to know what it's going to be spent on.

Unless of course you robbed a bank, in which case you should have gotten more.

Just be carefulf of blowing it on adwords or expensive ads on here or webhostingtalk.

Schumie · 2nd January 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by FH - Tim

Unless of course you robbed a bank, in which case you should have gotten more

Totally OT - but I thought the average for robbing a bank was only around £1k

M8INTERNET · 2nd January 2009

I consider google adwords as expensive now
Most keywords relating to website hosting will cost between £2.00 and £5.00
That is rather a lot to be paying for one click

I have managed to find ways round that though, but it wastes a lot of time!

You can still get the impression based advertising, but you have very little control over it

I recently ran a very small advert in a well known computer magazine
Given the response it works out at about a quarter of the cost of google adwords

administrator · 2nd January 2009

frontpage bids for uk colocation were at £37 per click the other day on google adwords :P

M8INTERNET · 2nd January 2009

This is where google adwords falls flat on its face, as it prices the words, not their context and use

frontpage is probably so high due to the online magazines and newspapers using that word also

I accidently included map once and noticed this also went to a ridiculously high bid price

The method I use is to add a list of keyword phrases instead
The bid price for these is far lower, and is more realistic to what people may search
examples :
cheap hosting
cheap tickets
rather than having them separate as :
cheap, hosting, tickets

FH - Tim · 2nd January 2009

I think Neil meant to be on the frontpage rather than the soft ?

Or I'm mistaken.

AdamC · 2nd January 2009

Quote:

Ive just wasted £179 on thomsonlocal and 118 188 directory.

ThomsonLocal is certainly a waste IMO. Also, I doubt people will use TL to find hosting.

alexcf · 3rd January 2009

If I'm honest, £4k from what I've seen and experienced isn't going to take you that far. I would probably get yourself a decent customer who is semi-well known, or has a popularish site and do a press release, if you do it right they don't really have to be that costly, but try and pretend to agencies you know what you're talking about otherwise they'll rip you off

.

alexcf · 3rd January 2009

Oh, and probably try and find someone to work on the content of your site, as generally (I'm sure Neil will agree, and albeit, this isn't my field) content is key... (especially with Google).

administrator · 3rd January 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexcf

Oh, and probably try and find someone to work on the content of your site, as generally (I'm sure Neil will agree, and albeit, this isn't my field) content is key... (especially with Google).

I would imagine the content is still key with a hosting website, as this will vastly effect your conversion rates.

We normally try 3 layouts with a website for 3 days each while under heavy advertising, and the difference in signup rates can be amazing.

Try and make things clear, with just enough information but not too much, and nice big links to Feedback, Order pages, About pages so that people will not get lost.

And above all, do not make your website apear cluttered (or have too much content therefore)

And example is one ad spot on another website.
We changed just the ad text slightly in the ad, and it went from $7000 a month to $17000 a month.