One of the best ways you can stand out as a reseller is by creating themed niche hosting packages, such as a WordPress hosting plan or a Small Business hosting plan. In addition to helping to attract particular types of customer to your website, it?s also an easy way to target less competitive keywords and phrases in the search engines, saving you time and money and increasing your success rate.
Niche hosting packages can be aimed at a select group of people, based around a particular application, or targeted at a certain type of website or industry. It?s up to you how you choose to approach it, but remember that the web is always in flux (a ?Responsive Design? themed hosting package may sell well now but isn?t necessarily future proof, for example) and it?s a good idea to think ahead as much as possible.
Ideas for niche hosting packages
Popular types of niche hosting plans include:
? Ecommerce
? SEO
? Small Business (particularly local websites not selling online, for example restaurants)
? Blogging (adaptable to a wide range of CMS)
? WordPress (specific and frequently searched)
When brainstorming niche hosting packages, your end result should:
? Solve a problem for your customer (e.g. remove the need for them to figure out the various products and services they need on their own by bundling complementary ones for them).
? Target an area you?re comfortable with and understand ? play to your strengths.
? Find the balance between being too broad (diluting the effectiveness of your approach) and too narrow (not appealing to enough people to be worthwhile). You can always adapt to narrow your approach if you find you?re attracting a particular type of customer or business, e.g. florists.
? Offer something different (two key areas to consider here are convenience for your customer and discounting bundled services).
? Clearly display to your target customer that you understand their market and needs.
Back up your ideas with numbers ? use the Google Keyword Tool or a similar service to look up the exact number of searches for the type of web hosting you?ve decided to specialise in. You?ll want to target terms related to building websites as well as specific hosting phrases.
Developing your hosting plans
Make sure you know what your customers want from their niche hosting package. If you get a chance for input or feedback always jot down any ideas spawned from their questions. For example, if customers enquiring about small business hosting always ask about email hosting as well, that?s something to prioritise and market heavily in your ?Small Business? package. Feedback will also help you make key decisions when you?re determining quantities; for example the amount of web space you provide is likely to be much more important to wedding photographers than it is to domainers.
Working directly from people?s requirements is the most effective route. If you?re just starting out or moving into a new niche, avoid guessing. Find some key forums in the niche you?re targeting to find out what?s important to your target customers, or if you work locally then head to a few businesses in person. Bear in mind that people won?t always know what they want, particularly if they?re coming from non-technical backgrounds, so some common sense and creativity can go a long way towards helping them achieve their goals through your services.
Don?t forget to also have a look at what your competitors are doing with niche packages. What do they do well, and what can you do better?
Once you?ve got some ideas, make a big list of all the things you can offer your customers, including any periphery skills or services such as SEO or business cards, and then group them into logical packages.
Example features and selling points of a niche hosting package
Continuing with the wedding photography theme, here?s an example of how you might want to develop and market a niche hosting package aimed at photographers:
Services to bundle together:
? Domain name & personalised email (key selling point: personal branding and professionalism).
? Unlimited web space (key selling point: store as many photos as you like).
? Unlimited bandwidth (key selling point: allow your visitors to view as many photos as they like as many times as they like).
? Website back up service (key selling point: added security for irreplaceable photos).
? SSL certificate (key selling point: offer clients a secure login to preview, select and even buy photos).
Extra points that set you apart:
? Smartphone control panel (key selling point: even when you?re away on shoots you can still manage your website and files).
? One-click installs of photo gallery software and ecommerce software (key selling point: it?s really easy to create your own website to showcase your photos, and your clients can pay online).
? UK servers (key selling point: better rankings in Google UK and other national search engines, essential for local photographers).
From this starting point you can then add in your own products and services.
Incorporating your own services
Whether you include them as part of your niche hosting package, suggest them as an upsell, or bundle them with a discount is entirely up to you and will depend on how central selling hosting is to your business. If your main focus is on designing websites for customers, you?ll need to alter your package accordingly and focus on the overall vision of what you can provide.
Take a look at our tips on cross-selling and upselling and how to get your customers to buy more.
If you?re a freelancer or run an agency, try incorporating a certain amount of work into each package (e.g. your cheapest package might include a free custom logo, but your most expensive might include a full website design). Allow customers to mix and match and provide prices for hosting and other services separately as well as a joint deal at a discount.
Don?t forget to go beyond the web to offer your customers a broader service: business cards, local advertising and promotional materials can all be useful. Negotiating deals with offline companies or third party resellers can help drive more business.
Important considerations
? The key to success is building a package based on useful complementary products.that your customers will appreciate, so keep experimenting and brainstorming until you?re sure you?ve got it right.
? Make sure you don?t overpromise ? there?s no point offering a great deal if it?s not sustainable or you can?t keep on top of demand. Ensure prices are realistic and you have enough time/resources to complete additional services such as web design projects.
? Don?t overcomplicate it ? Only offer your customers logical products and services that they?re likely to need. Any extras you?re unsure of or testing can be listed as smaller secondary selling points or upsold or cross-sold later on.
? Try to avoid removing anything from your web hosting packages. People are affected much more by loss than by gain, so if something isn?t working, reposition the package, add new features and focus on that rather than simply taking a feature away.
? Make sure your packages and web copy match your audience?s technical ability and understanding. There?s no point creating a ?Professional SEO? package if the customers know more about it than you do.
? Monitor, track and test ? track conversions and experiment with limited-time deals to see which combinations attract the most interest.
? Offer different pricing tiers within each niche package to account for all budgets.
? Try to make packages sustainable and plan for the future ? it?s easier for you to manage if you don?t have to keep changing the names/types of packages you offer to your customers, and prevents them being confused too.
? Focus your business around a logical theme ? don?t try to be all things to all people. Having a photography hosting package, an SEO package and a parent blogger package doesn?t really make sense. Focusing on one area and developing your reputation around that helps you establish your authority in that field.
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Tips for selling niche hosting packages,
Source: http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/blog/2013/05/tips-for-selling-niche-hosting-packages/
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