5 Promoting your service

 

Promoting your service is an important part of becoming a successful reseller. Of course, how you go about doing this is entirely up to you, but included here are some tips to get you started.

• KangaWeb will periodically offer "specials" such as lowered prices or additional features. Incorporating these specials into your service is a great opportunity to attract new customers. We offer these specials because we believe that the reduction in price or addition of features will lead to an overall profit increase and have found that resellers who pass on our specials tend to do better in the long run than resellers who do not.

• The web hosting industry is very price sensitive. We strongly recommend that you match our prices. Higher prices will lower sales and will ultimately result in less profit for you.

• Distinguish your service by promoting the aspects that make it unique. For example, our comprehensive email facilities are hard to beat and our combination of SMS, anti-spam and anti-virus tools is quite unique.

• It is a good idea to carefully research methods of promotion. Before advertising with a particular service, try to gain as much specific information as possible. Information such as the number of click-throughs you can expect to achieve and the success rate of other advertisers is useful in deciding whether or not an advertising service is suitable for your needs. Asking the right questions can help to disclose this kind of information.

• Make sure your site is clear and easy to navigate. Be sure to provide prominent links to your Customer HQ demo to make your site more interactive.

5.1 Choosing where to promote your service

When promoting your service, it is worth considering the sort of customer at whom your services are targeted. Being aware of this will help to give you a better idea of the sort of promotion that is likely to be successful. To get you started, we have listed a number of resources which you may be interested in exploring.

5.1.1 Online promotion

StickBoy says...

Because the majority of your target audience will already have access to the Internet, advertising your services online makes sense. Below is a list of sites which provide more information on online promotion.

• Web Marketing Info Center
  http://www.wilsonweb.com/webmarket/

  Wilson Internet's Web Marketing Info Center is one of the most comprehensive web marketing resources we have encountered. Here you will find links to thousands of useful articles, covering a large range of web marketing issues.

• 29 Ways To Promote Your Site
  http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/checklist.htm

  The ultimate checklist. This page is also a part of the Wilson Web Marketing Center, and gives a quick but comprehensive list of the essentials of web site promotion.

• Adbility
  http://www.adbility.com

  Adbility.com is the online resource for everything there is to know about advertising online. It was originally created by Mark Welch, an authority on online advertising.

• Search Engine Watch
  http://www.searchenginewatch.com

  A useful site containing information on search engines - getting your site listed, how search engines actually work, which engines are the most popular and so forth.

• WebMonkey
  http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/e-business/marketing/index.html

  This site is part of the Lycos network and contains many informative articles on all aspects of web site promotion.

• Secrets of Searching the Web & Promoting Your Web site
  http://www.gocee.com/eureka/e_howtms.htm

  A straight forward and informative guide to the why?, what?, where? and how? of search engines.

• Apromotionguide
  http://www.apromotionguide.com

  Apromotionguide.com is a promotional site that focuses mainly on search engines and directories. This site is well maintained and articles are updated regularly.

Banner exchange programs are a great way to generate traffic to your web site and many of them are free to join. These generally work by another site displaying your banner advertisement in return for you displaying theirs. One example is the Banner Exchange Network at http://www.bpath.com

Pay-Per click advertising is another effective way to attract visitors to your web site, and you only pay when somebody actually visits your site.

• ClickThru http://www.clickthru.com
• GoClick http://www.goclick.com
• GoToast http://www.gotoast.com
• Google http://www.google.com/ads

5.1.2 Offline promotion

Not all of your promotion need be done online. Advertising in the traditional media helps to increase public awareness of your brand, which is beneficial as web users are increasingly seeking out known brands and are relying less on search engines. For a web host who is just starting up, an advertisement placed in an Internet magazine or the technology section of a local newspaper can certainly get results. Such advertisements are often cheaper and more effective then broader based advertising campaigns.