Starting a Reseller Hosting Company
It is not easy to start a Reseller Hosting Company or a one man operation to remain successful in a highly competitive industry like web hosting. While it is hard to acquire new customers, it is harder to keep them. Your competitors are always looking to poach your unsatisfied customers. Remaining competitive and pleasing customers at the same time is a tough balance you’ll perfect with experience.
As your business grows, your priority should be to stay true to your philosophy and relentlessly pursue your goals. Today, we take a look at the 5 main strategies a small business or a one man operation should focus on to improve the success rate of a reseller hosting company.
Target a specific group of customers: While the common approach is to serve the whole world, successful reseller businesses start by focusing their energy on a very specific group of customers. You may want to focus on groups within your areas of interest. While big brands with deep coffers can start big and target the whole world, for a small business, it is best to start with a specific target audience. Just like you address a big problem by nipping away at smaller issues in real life, you have to narrow down and focusing all your attention on to a very specific group of customers. You don’t always have to remain concentrated within this group, as your business grows, you can start focusing on other groups.
Engage with your target audience: Show up on websites frequented by your probable customers. Identify blogs, forums and social media pages and participate in discussions. You can also create a content strategy for social networks that resonates with your target audience. Engagement helps build trust and lays down the basis of long lasting business partnerships. Engaging with users that have similar interests as you helps, as you’ll have knowledge and a genuine interest going into a conversation. When you appear genuine with your approach and opinions, it goes a long way in building completely authentic connections. The business will follow.
Address your customer’s needs: Exceptional customer service goes a long way in winning customers but go beyond offering great customer service. Be proactive and identify possible issues and address them before they become a problem. In terms of what you are offering, do not stay focused on what you believe your customers need. Understand and address your customer’s needs. Focus on the unresolved pain points of your target audience and take steps to resolve them. For example, if you are focusing on bloggers, optimize you web server and resource allocations to address the needs of blogging platforms. You can go a step further by providing high value services like Managed Hosting. Or you can partner with developers and designers to offer unique solutions to your customers. You can also create a resource center with a collection of handpicked themes, plugins, add-ons, etc.
Stand out: Do not follow the norm, give your hosting company it’s very your own unique style. Rock bottom and discounted prices sound like a great idea but they do not always look good for your image. In a service industry like web hosting, customers are often willing to pay premium prices if they are offered a higher value per dollar. As a web hosting reseller, you can offer high value services by offering the best combination of features, convenience, reliability and extras. However, you cannot break the bank in trying to add value to your hosting packages. A balance between value addition and costs is important. To be successful, you have to determine the right combination of high value services and pricing.
Hire expert help: You cannot be an expert at everything. Free tutorials are great, but do not follow them blindly to make changes to your code or design, it could be disastrous. To get it right at the very first attempt, hire freelance experts. It is easy to find freelancers within your budget. When you hire freelancers, if you are satisfied with their service, negotiate long term deals for lower prices. You can also hire a customer service outsourcing company to offer 24X7X365 customer support with a response time on par with industry leaders. After all, the time you take to respond to a support ticket is just as important as resolving the issue to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.
Starting your own Reseller Hosting Company is not easy but if you follow some of the tips mentioned in this blog you can stay competitive and generate high profit margins.
