As far as I see each hosting company uses various methods to make customers buy their domains. They can provide free domains, free Fantastico scripts, website building software, templates etc. I am planning to launch my hosting company really soon. Also I think to include free internet marketing services in some hosting packages. I am just wondering if such internet marketing program can be considered as a significant competitive advantage stimulating customers to make a purchase? What do you think about this idea? Thanks in advance!

Customers are after the web hosting, not the side dish. Focus on that before anything else. You're looking at it all wrong ... even before you've started, you're thinking a step too fast. First get your service out there, and focus on the web hosting. Next, start adding little features.

As I said. Your customers are after the web hosting .. not the little side gimmicks you pull off.

Originally Posted by andrei155

Customers are after the web hosting, not the side dish. Focus on that before anything else. You're looking at it all wrong ... even before you've started, you're thinking a step too fast. First get your service out there, and focus on the web hosting. Next, start adding little features.

As I said. Your customers are after the web hosting .. not the little side gimmicks you pull off.

Although I somewhat agree with this, I think unless you can provide something special that the competition doesn't, your going to get drown out by the competition.

Providing some sort of marketing package to your new customers could work great if you market it right, but also make sure you dont forget the fundamentals (support, ext)

I think that you need to do evrything whatever you want and that must be legal and honesty is the way.
If you are doing both this well you are ok

I think you have to offer something special for your clients them to stick to your hosting.

I think the OP is thinking about this completely the right way! You cannot simply state that you have the best servers and most friendly/efficient support team - every other host/reseller is already doing exactly that.

To succeed in a crowded market place USPs are your best tool. It's important to identify your niche (step 1 for deciding what value adds you should consider) and go from there.

For example, say you were targetting people small businesses with little/no IT expertise. They're likely to value a highly personal service - perhaps even visiting them face-to-face to assist in person with any IT issue they may be having (can't configure Outlook, find power button etc.). For these customers telling them that you use RAID with Quad Core 10.5GHz CPUs won't do a thing - you've just confused and alienated them... your marketing, selling points, features and additional services must all be appropriate to your market: if you don't take care of that you will struggle to make an impact.

Extra features, especially free ones are always appreciated. that adds a 'reputation points' to the company...

Your plans to setup a web hosting company with the additional SEO services are a very good idea.

Nowadays, more more peoples are looking for web hosting and SEO services.

Maybe you can include your SEO services on the various web hosting plans so that a user can choose whether they require a SEO services with their web hosting plans.

Cheers!

Originally Posted by icyblue

Extra features, especially free ones are always appreciated. that adds a 'reputation points' to the company...

Yes, I agree, because, when I, as a client see a free additional service at some company it attracts me more than other which might be cheaper but providing no bonuses..

I wonder if is a promotion attempt, because I he seen the similar thread on the other forums. Some of the posts contained links..

Originally Posted by timbre

I wonder if is a promotion attempt, because I he seen the similar thread on the other forums. Some of the posts contained links..

Then surely the best idea is to bump the thread back up by replying to it...