By: Mou Mukherjee on August 1st, 2008
Posted in: Events
Tags: HostingCon 2008
Comments: 0

Even though Sharon Koifman (he’s the former owner and founder of Empire Host) is no longer running his own web hosting company, he showed great enthusiasm for the industry. He is still involved as a consultant and VP Marketing for Applicure (a web application security firm). He seemed genuinely interested in giving valuable advice to the audience. Especially to those that have lost their spark, battling it out in the highly competitive web hosting market.

First off, Sharon says there are still lots of things to be excited about in the hosting industry:

• It’s one of the fastest growing industries
• Many people are not online yet, and when they get online, they are going to need websites
• There’s so much room to expand and offer other services
• The industry is using leading-edge technologies (hosting companies are pioneers in innovating technology)

He also made the point that hosting companies are far more important and influential than they think. They do more than provide just websites — they build infrastructure for shops, businesses, personal homes, for everyone in the digital world.

What is a SUPER PACKAGE?

Average hosting companies define themselves on things like customer service, price, bandwidth, disk space, and control panel. Sharon says these are all BORING. Instead you need to create a SUPER PACKAGE. Here is an example of a super package:

• Super security
• Super site builder
• Super backup
• Super anti-spam

The point is to create a package that truly stands out.

Tips for Creating Your SUPER PACKAGE

• Make it personal
• Be passionate about it first
• Get into your customer’s shoes
• Don’t be too technical when explaining things
• Don’t give too many options
• Make it a truly phenomenal value
• Make sure that it contributes to your company (watch out for high operating costs)

When talking about your SUPER PACKAGE, don’t use boring words like uptime, bandwidth, or customer support. Try something more exciting like:

• High Availablity
• Full Web Design for $30 (sitebuilder)
• Extreme Security
• “Fanatical Support®” (Rackspace’s slogan)

His final points were focused around marketing and communication. Once you’ve got a super package, get the word out by creating a product launch, email and call your customers, invite them to teleseminars or webinars. Use a tool like Google Analytics to track your traffic and conversion rates.

Sharon believes hosting companies need  to rethink their approach to developing hosting services and marketing them.

(thanks to Flickr user dcJohn for the fireworks photo and for releasing it under a Creative Commons License)

By: Mou Mukherjee on July 31st, 2008
Posted in: Events
Tags: HostingCon 2008
Comments: 0

One of the keynotes from this week’s HostingCon 2008 was titled “The Optimized Hosting Platform – Meeting the Changing Needs of Hosting Providers.” The keynote was presented by Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. Here’s some of the points he covered:

5 Types of Cloud Computing

Serguei opened with a definition of Cloud Computing from Wikipedia. He then presented his visions for the 5 types of clouds that the majority of computing will move to:

1. Google Could
2. Microsoft Cloud
3. Other coulds (IBM, Apple, HP, EMC, Amazon, Facebook)
4. In-house clouds of large companies
5. Service Providers – telcos, ISPs, web hosters, managed hosters, smaller SaaS players, online service companies

Trends in the Hosting Industry

He also provided some insights on the hosting industry as a whole. He pointed to some trends he’s seen:

• Traditional hosting is established, growing, but slowing down
• Managing hosting and SaaS are the fastest growing segments
• Changes may be required to sustain revenues and continue growth.
• The industry has matured, it is no longer some niche vertical market
• Companies are acquiring and consolidating (Hostway acquired Affinity, Wachovia acquired HostMySite, etc.)
• Rackspace filed for IPO
• Virtualization is growing and enabling SaaS
• Managed hosting is becoming cheaper and more accessible (virtualization and automation are driving this)

Internet Giants are a Threat

Sergei also talked about the threats posed to traditional hosting by the Internet giants – namely, Google, Microsoft and others:

• Google is “changing the world”, and competing with hosting companies by providing free hosting and apps
• Microsoft was always friendlier to partners, but now it is addressing Google’s threat. As a result they are offering services direct
• Other giant IT companies must react (Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo, EMC Could Computing, IBM Global Services, HP acquires EDS)
• Vars and System Integrators need large assets to enter managed hosting space
• Dangerous times are ahead for channel and smaller players.

What Can Hosters Do

He wrapped things up with a concise “to-do” list for hosting companies:

• Be paranoid about efficiency to keep prices competitive
• Fully automate and provide self management for service levels
• Provide Critical Services such as (business class email, Office apps, channel offerings, business line apps, online marketing integrations)
• Host or own your customer and partners data
• Offer broader set of services and many types of applications (Blackberry, Antivirus and Antispam for hosted email)
• Offer better and flexible upgrade paths (different workloads, sizing options, automatic upgrades)
• Stay close with customers and partners

(thanks to Flickr user Robyn’s Nest for the cloud photo and for releasing it under a Creative Commons License)

By: Mou Mukherjee on July 31st, 2008
Posted in: Events
Tags: HostingCon 2008
Comments: 0

I attended a session called “Search Marketing Tools for the Hosting Industry” with a panel of search marketing experts. Curtis from Superb Internet moderated the session.

Below are a few notes I thought might be useful to our resellers that are trying to get more value out of search marketing, or even offer it as a service to their customers.

White-label search marketing, and an e-media plan for hosting companies

Guillaume Bouchard from NVI provided the following tips:

• Consider acquisio for hosting companies interested in providing search marketing as an add-on service for their customers (acquisio was built for marketing agencies, but offers a white label pay per click software)
• Develop an e-media plan that consists of PPC (pay per click), SEO (search engine optimization), SMO (social media optimization), and affiliate marketing
• Do your niche keyword research
• Use PPC for testing out new products, campaigns marketing relevance
• Improve SEO by developing widgets (or a badge), and an incentive for people to use on their websites
• Embed a text-link into the widget for medium to long tail keywords
• Adopt a “Give it up Attitude” as you participate in communities. (be helpful, resourceful, answer questions, provide information)

Advanced PPC: 10,000 Negative Keywords

Ken Jurina from Epiar talked about negative keywords. He provided a fascinating perspective.  Here are some points:

• Negative keywords are negative phrases that trigger your ad to display to the wrong audience.
• An example “hosting tupperware”, when typed into Google search, PPC ads for web hosting displayed
• The issue is irrelevant clicks (that cost money and no conversion), and irrelevant impressions (won’t get clicked, brings down your click-thru rate and Google quality score).
• He recommends Google Search Query Performance Report (performance data for your Google Adwords, can also help to create negative keyword lists)

Find out more about negative key words by downloading a copy of his presentation.

By: Mou Mukherjee on July 30th, 2008
Posted in: Events
Tags: HostingCon 2008
Comments: 0

I’m new to OpenSRS.  As a member of the marketing team, I’m attending HostingCon in Chicago. One session that I thought was highly-valuable to web hosting companies was Adam Eisner’s “Making Your Business Consumer Friendly”. Adam is our Domains Product Manager, and he presented to a full house on Monday July 28, 2008.

Looking around the room, his presentation seemed to resonate with the audience. I think Adam got people rethinking their approach to finding and keeping customers, and people seemed to walk away with some great ideas. Although there is a great review by WHIR available, I wanted to give you my notes on what Adam presented.

It’s Crazy Out There

Adam started of his presentation by setting the landscape that web hosting companies find themselves in today. Web hosting companies are facing a highly competitive marketing which is high volume, low margin, and competitors are willing to do anything to win your customer’s business. Although, this is obvious to most web hosting companies, many are making the same mistakes over and over again when it comes to growing their business. Adam wanted to give a few ideas on how to combat and overcome these challenges, and show people how NOT to make the same mistakes.

Sell on Problems, Not on Features

Adam made the point that web hosting companies keep going after the wrong audience. Adam said that your buyer is not webhostingtalk. Webhostingtalk is one of the largest web hosting communities out there, filled with many experienced webhosters. Don’t get me wrong, Adam has nothing against this community, he just believes that it isn’t the right audience to focus on.

Do You Know Who Your Customers Are?

So who is the audience? Well, the majority of consumers, and small business (your ideal customers) actually find the Internet really messy, confusing and hard to navigate. They are trying to do what seems like simple things like get their pictures online, or get their business online. The opportunity is for web hosting companies to present their offerings in a way that will appeal to these types of people.

For example, many webhosting companies package their services by outlining technical features such as 10GB of storage, 2GB transfer, and 10 email accounts. While these might be great features, hosting companies should focus on making it easy for customers to solve their problems. People just want their website to work, or get their business online, or upload and share photos. If webhosting companies can make it easy for their customers to get this done, there is a huge opportunity out there.

By: OpenSRS Team on July 28th, 2008
Posted in: Events
Tags: HostingCon 2008
Comments: 0

HostingCon 2008 kicked off today in Chicago. We have the usual contingent of OpenSRS people taking it in.

Aside from our big announcement this morning, Adam Eisner, our Product Manager, Domains had the opportunity to give a presentation titled “The ‘Buy and Stay’ Approach: Making Your Web Hosting Business Buyer-Friendly.” From all accounts, his talk was well received and for those who missed it, The WHIR has a nice summary of what Adam talked about.

Over the next few days, we’ll be bringing you more coverage of HostingCon for the benefit of our resellers who aren’t able to make it to Chicago, and for those that are there and can’t take it all in.

If you’re at HostingCon, be sure to drop by our snazzy new booth tomorrow to say hi, and to grab a nice cool treat.