THS Articles

Cornering a Market Might Be Easier Than You Think

By Thomas Leo

Pay-per-click advertising -- that used to be the best way to grow a shiny new hosting business. A few years ago, spending around $1,000 per month in search engine pay-per-click (PPC) advertising always returned as much in sales. As the years have passed, however, everyone has gotten into the PPC ad space, and many are willing to bid ridiculous amounts. What business model can remain profitable at $10 per click? With so many hosts out there, what's the owner of a small hosting company to do?

A majority of small hosting companies have fewer than 1,000 hosted sites, with no employees other than the owner (and perhaps a spouse). Hosting is not their only source of income, the advertising budget is not very big, growth is very slow, and they absolutely hate trying to gain new clients through cold calling and other typical sales pitch techniques. If any of the above describes you, then read on.

A friendly competitor, Larry Dozier, gives this advice: "Lazy people are the best people for the worst jobs, because they tend to find innovative ways to make the job easier." When it comes to "doing sales," many hosts are lazy. They don't like schmoozing and pushing business cards because it makes them feel like used-car salesmen. They find the aggressive sales process demeaning to both them and their clients. They care about clients too much to try to sell them something they don't want, and perhaps don't need. In these respects, PPC looks like the ideal marketing tool. But with PPC not performing as well as it used to, a new strategy is needed.

When it comes to "doing sales," many hosts are lazy. They don't like schmoozing and pushing business cards because it makes them feel like used-car salesmen.

A Strategy That Works
What if you could...

• Have a sales force of entrepreneurs like yourself?
• Get people to talk about your business regularly?
• Find potential clients without advertising, cold calling, PPC?
• What if the solution were easy and inexpensive? What is this new magic bullet for getting sales? It's not new, it's not magic, but it does get sales. It's network marketing.

Networking marketing is a technique that works well in spite of a limited budget and small company size. In fact, it probably works better for smaller hosts that for larger ones. It has proven itself to be lucrative, rewarding -- even easy.

The term "network marketing" conjures up some negative impressions, in spite of its proven success. Perhaps you associate it with multi-level marketing (MLM), those times when distant acquaintances - with whom you've not been in contact for months - call you up and ask to introduce you to "this new business opportunity to make unlimited income in you spare time." Don't worry. Network marketing is not an MLM scheme; there are no up-lines, down-lines, or secret handshakes.

Block Out The Competition
One of the best advantages for small businesses in joining a network marketing group is that, unlike most Chambers of Commerce, only one representative from each industry is allowed to join. Once you join a group, your competitors are then blocked from joining the same group. So even if you're in the backyard of one of the largest hosting companies in the world, once you join a particular networking group, you and only you will have the opportunity to market your services to the business leaders in that group. Some companies join multiple groups, sending different representatives to different groups in order to corner the local market.