Ideas for marketing my hosting company?

[T2H.org]

I have a $500 monthly budget to market OSHQ.com. I have tried Google AdWords and that has not had a good turnover for some strange reason.

I currently do forum advertisement (free-based) and we get a lot of Word-of-mouth referrals.

Any ideas are appreciated

 

[interestedenough]

Your domain name says a lot on its own, that could help you with your Hosting company:

Operating
System
Head
Quarters

or

Open
Source
Hosting
Quarters


I don't see this written anywhere in the site. Any of these could be a mnemonic device so people can remember your name. I know it sounds contradictory, but some people (including myself) remember a phrase better than 4 letters. So, you could cater to both types.

If you follow that path and develop content valuable to those coming up with websites, it could take you somewhere.

You can start by making an article and describing the hierarchy of webhosting. For example, divide into Linux-Unix, and Windows, then divide these into the development languages that run on those, say PHP, CGI's and Python on Linux, and ASP on Windows. Explain what sort of software packages run on each environment, for example, CMSs that run on PHP are drupal, wordpress, and joomla, CMSs that run on Python is Plone. Develop content (visual / video, and written) on how to install these technologies on your webserver's accounts, etc.

Think of where people start, they many times know what package they want to host, then they go looking for a hosting company that fits their requirements. So for example, if somebody wants to install vBulletin, tell them what the steps they need to follow are to do this successfully on your hosting company, etc.

Develop templates/themes for open source projects, and donate them to the projects (see how siteground does it). Siteground is a company that exploits this type of marketing very well, although I think they don't follow on the customer service... but, that is a subject that is not for this thread, and was only my personal experience. They however, have very good will in many open source projects.

So I think that you should couple your marketing strategy with some rebranding and content development.

 

[T2H.org]

OSHQ.com stands for Only Super High Quality


Thanks for the advice so far!