Monday, August 17, 2009

How to Advertise your Hosting Business on a Forum


Through this article you'll learn to do's and don'ts of advertising your hosting business on a web forum.


  1. Step 1

    The purpose of an advertisement is to promote your business. Promoting your business gets you in the know and when you are in the know the chances of acquiring more clients is highly possible. This leads to every single private business aim out there - profit.

    With a good advert, you are selling your business to customers. Please read this guide carefully, any questions and additions are very welcome.

  2. Step 2

    The basic rules

    * Always check for spelling & grammar errors
    * Make sure every single piece of information is correct – you don’t want to be false advertising/misleading
    * Make sure your business name, URL and product/services advertised are displayed clearly
    * Make sure you get to the point, long advertisements can bore people which therefore means loss of interest
    * Make coupons very clear
    * Make contacts clear - emails and representative name
    * Sell your business - achievable by showing uptime, ping tests, demo client reviews or brief testimonials

  3. Step 3

    Formatting

    Formatting your advert will attract customers and give your advert that professional effect. Fonts, colours and images are the right way to go for a successful advert.

    We recommend you to use one of the following font formats:

    * Arial
    * Verdana
    * Sans Serif
    * Tahoma

    Using font formats like Comic Sans MS, Chiller and Times New Roman are not recommended because they are either unclear to read (Chiller) or used for the younger children audiences (Comic Sans Ms) or simply plain boring for the reader (Times New Roman). You must choose a font that suits your business and target audience. Never use more than 1 font in your advert. It makes your advert look untidy and unprofessional (except banners/slogans).

    It is recommended that you stick with your house style. Choosing different fonts per advert can lead to non-constructive advertising.

    Make sure the font size is readable. We recommend you to use size 12 for standard content/paragraphing, size 18 for titles and size 16 for sub titles - depending on the forum rules you are advertising in.

    Depending on the forum background, making sure your font colour is clear to read (try to stick to forum default colours). If the forum background is white then the common sense strategy is black text. If the forum background is black then we recommend white text. Remember the rule bright on dark and dark on bright.

  4. Step 4

    Hyperlinks

    Adding hyperlinks to your advert increases your chances of sales by 99.99%. This is why it is highly important that each and every one of your hyperlink works and points in the right direction.

    Why do I need to include a hyperlink is what you ask? Well the answer isn’t exactly logical; it’s more of common sense. Adding a hyperlink such as your business URL, package URL and policy URL allows customers to order packages directly rather than trying to find out your business URL then browsing pages to find the package, then to place the order. This irritates customers and above all wastes time - time is money. Customers will loose interest in your business if the advert is not straight forward. You must always remember to try and sell your business.

    Remember:

    * Always enter the full URL (http://www.url.com) on any hyperlink in your advert – this makes your advert look professional
    * Never have long URL’s, always keep your company pages short as possible – they are easy to remember and reduces the chance of incorrect hyperlinks
    * Try to name your hyperlinks (http://www.url.com/sharedhosting.html) rather than use page id’s (http://www.url.com/page?q=325). This has the potential for search engines to pick up keywords and to advertise your business

  5. Step 5

    Peripherals

    It is a very good idea to add extras to your advert in order to sell your business. You might have hard competition in the area you wish to advertise in so therefore your advert has to be the best. Adding extras such as testimonials should give customers an idea what to expect if they choose to do business with you.

    Adding server uptime/ping tests could also give your business the benefit of the doubt as they would also get to know your server speed and reliability. The faster and reliable the server is the more customers will think their website is in complete safe hands.

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