How/where would you promote a free blog setup with hosting purchase?
I'm offering a domain of your choice, help choosing a theme, and installation of Wordpress and initial blog setup all for $1 when you purchase a hosting plan, which you will need to host your own blog anyway.
I'd really like to help some people that maybe don't know how to do these things themselves (elderly folk?) in the process too. I would do the setup remotely, and give help over email as well as phone support if needed.
I'm looking for strictly online methods so nothing offline will do.
Where/how would you get the word out for this?
Thanks!
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$6 Answers
I have to think that it would be pretty easy to wander into a mall with a stack of "free coffee" cards and get some honest, direct customer feedback. Ask these folks some questions. Questions like:
Do you use e-mail?
Do you know what a blog is?
How much do you think a blog costs?
If you could have a blog, would you?
If you could easily write an online "family newsletter", would you?
I'd listen carefully to the answers and encourage conversation by distributing the prepaid coffee cards for interesting feedback. You'll learn a lot about your plan with even basic market research like this.
I've found that the best way to reach non-tech savvy folks is to run free community training sessions. It's cheap and easy to organize an event. If you talk to you local community center, government, business association, etc, they will likely provide the space and maybe even computers free of charge.
During this training session, I would illustrate what your demographic (folks you want to become customers) want. Based on your questions, if you've found out that most folks would like to write an easy family newsletter and insert some photos, then create a short (under 1 hour) tutorial lesson showing them how to do that. Then, pitch your product saying that you're offering it all for free if they pay for the "storage".
Once you refine your tutorial locally, record it. Take it online. Show folks online how easy it is, who's doing it now, and what they're doing. Get your customers excited about it through your free tutorial.
This is just one quick idea on how to best reach your potential customers. Usually, when you talk with people who you think will be interested in your products, you'll have a few "lightbulb" ideas on how to reach them through traditional marketing.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
http://webhostinggeeks.com/
http://www.findmyhosting.com/
http://www.webhostninja.com/
http://www.webhostingclue.com/
2. Be a google Sponsored Link for "hosting" , "compare hosting prices"
3. Use twitter, facebook, craigslist
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$I would recommend you the following:
1.- Have a good and clear website. Go to your website and think like a customer.
2.- If you are offering webhosting not all the customers would like to have a Wordpress blog and you cannot afford, in my opinion, to help individually with their problems.
3.- Giving a free domain when purchasing a hosting, maybe a good deal, or not. When a have been looking for a website solution (host + domain), looking strictly to the price, I look for the annual amount of the two items and I think that nearly everybody do the same.
4. Difference from others. What do you offer that the others do not offer? Personal assistance would be a good point, but you have to measure your effort. Imagine you have 100 clients a day demanding a solution to their problems. Some problems would be easy, others not... and take in consideration that a lot of times it is not easy to understand newbie people and they do not measure about the difficulty of a solution.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
I'm glad that you mentioned the target market. Because I'd be quite surprised if there was actually was much of a market for this kind of offering. Esp among "elderly folk". :)