August 22, 2011
Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca
This is going to be a multi-part series, covering the very basics of getting into the ISP business.
I'm going to start from what might appear to some to be the “last” step, however: The ISP website.
There is no such thing as a “irreplaceable” component to being an ISP (or a business, for that matter): We've all heard the arguments that sales is vital, without which the ISP fails. Or tech support is vital, without which failure occurs; Or server admins, or accounting or marketing, ad infinitum.
The truth is, they're all vital. Without any one of them, the business falls down.
The website for an ISP is often the very first impression a potential customer has of the business; In todays' wired world, more people are using the Internet to find an ISP than the phone book. Even on recommendation from a friend or colleague, the first step is to look up the ISP online, be that from work, a friends' place or the library.
Just like any other website striving for success, your ISP home or main page has just thirty seconds to persuade the visitor to make another click – And that click is vital – It doesn't necessarily have to be to the sign up form, but getting the first click means you've engaged the visitor at least into looking for more information.
Your main page says a lot about you: If it is shoddily designed, the subconscious message is that the service is the same: Amateur and half-hearted. If the wording is poor, be that spelling or grammar mistakes, use of Text Speak or jargon-heavy terms, it tells many a visitor they will not be able to communicate with you.
If you are offering service across the nation, or across an entire province or state, but the home page focuses on 'Home town pride' – You tell visitors from outside of your head office location that they're not your focus, so they won't buy.
Ideally: Your main page must say (at least) 4 things:
- Who you are
- What you offer (DSL, Cable, Wireless, VoIP, etc)
- Why you're the choice (best price, best addons, best support, broadest coverage, etc)
- Why they should make another click.
There are two other, critical, considerations:
- You have ONE screen in which to state this message. That “one” screen must fit within the broadest possible number of monitors and resolutions. To test this, drop your monitor resolution down to 1280 x 1020 and go to your home page. What you see, before any scrolling, is the message a first time visitor sees and bases their decision on for the next click.
- Make sure what your marketing message(s) are saying matches what they see on the main page. If your focus is on unlimited/no cap accounts, the last thing you want focused on your home page are your accounts with transfer limits. (This holds true with any business: If your marketing message focuses on price, but the home page explains high quality = high price, you're turning away visitors by the thousands, all without making a second click to find your low price deals)
You must have other content on your site other than your price list and a sign up sheet. A first time visitor is there to determine if they should sign up with you in the first place:
- You should be showing off your technical savvy by having a detailed FAQ on common issues faced by customers: This list should be added to as your tech support people run into things. It shows the customer you're able to handle any issues that show up.
- You should have a comparison page with all your account types at a glance WITH PRICES. The tired old horse of “call us for a price” turns a lot of people off: If you're not willing to put at least baseline prices online, your competitors absolutely are.
- You should have an “About us” / brag page: Who makes up your ISP ? Why are you the best people to be running the business you do ? What has your company done to make it stand out in the community or industry ?
- You need to have a clearly laid out Contact page. Potential customers want to know how easy it is to get in touch with you, and not just your sales lines. If you have specific hours of operation, this needs to be laid out. If you've got specific contact policies, such as paid support or premium support, this needs to be laid out, as well. One thing you do not want to do is restrict contact to email only. While this is hugely tempting and a lot more efficient, when dealing with the general public, there are is a large segment of the market who wants to talk to an actual human being before making a buying decision. Restrict voice contact at your peril.
- Ideally, you should have a news or events section. While this isn't strictly necessary to make new sales, it does show that you're more involved than just taking money and providing connections. If you are active in the advocacy for fair Internet access, if you're involved in CRTC/FCC petitions, if you offer classes or workshops, if you've got customers with news items – These should be highlighted on your news page.
Finally, your site must be realistically navigable by someone who is completely unfamiliar with your industry. While some think of this step as too much effort, the best method to determine if you've achieved this is to as a couple of friends, family members or neighbours who are not technically savvy to sit in front of your website and sign up for an Internet account. Can they actually find the sign up form ? Does it make sense ? Do they know what they are committing to ? Do they understand all the words and terminology being used ? Believe it or not, there are more than a few ISPs where not all of these questions are true (There are even some where all are answered “no” !)
There will be another article on using your site for public and customer relations in the future, as well. The above are the very basics of a good ISP site. At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself this: Can I, or my staff, design a site like the above ? If the answer is no, hire a professional to do it for you. I did exactly this for both www.canadianisp.ca and www.masterhostlist.com because my design skills are non-existent. If you fall into this category, like so many do, hire a professional: It pays off in spades.
Marc Bissonnette, Beachburg, Ontario, Canada
August 3, 2011
Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca
Most of you reading this may be tempted to skip over this – After all, the title is suggestive of Marketing 101, right ? Right ? If it is, then why, oh why are so many products and services aimed at people who cannot afford them, use them or need them ?
Todays' article was inspired by a friend who manages a theatre: She was telling me that a local production for a childrens' show was suffering from low turnout and its future was in question. Why does it suffer from low turnout, you ask ? Well, the cost to attend this show is $29.95 per person.
Yes, per person – Young, old, babies, toddlers, families, individuals, it is per person. For a typical North American nuclear family of four, it would be $135.37 ( 4 x $29.95 + 13% GST) to attend this childrens' show.
Now, some of you, especially those who earn a good amount of money, will be saying that a hundred and forty dollars is a good price for a family of four for an evenings' live entertainment.
However: According to www.pembrokeontario.com/economic-development/site-selection/demographics , the average family income for Pembroke is $77,506, before taxes. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume 33% in taxes (According to the Fraser Institute, however, the average Canadian total tax burden is closer to 41.5%) so the family income goe from $77,506 to $51,929.02. To make the next paragraph easier, let's divide that by twelve, to get an idea of monthly money: $4,327.42. Across Ontario, the average monthly housing cost (rent/mortgage alone) is $814.64, according to CMHC. A Nutritious diet for a family of four is $759 ( www.ottawa.ca/residents/health/living/nutrition/services/price_eating_well_en.html )
Pulling a bunch of numbers from www.immigration.ca/primer-ontario.pdf tells us that average monthly expenditure for everything else, including: Household Operation, Household Furnishings, Clothing, Transportation, Health Care, Personal care, Recreation, Reading Materials, Education, Tobacco and Alcohol, Games of Chance and Miscellany works out to between $2000 - $2800, depending on where you live in Ontario: Taking the lower end of that (for the Pembroke example), that's $2,000 for all of the above. Let's be scrupulously fair and remove $425.00 from that number, which is the monthly average entertainment amount. When all is said and done, the average target market in Pembroke, Ontario, will have $1,178.78 left over for the month – You'll note that the categories above do not include things like RRSP or RESP contributions, emergency funds (Car break downs, emergency medical, emergency home repair, etc). Assuming that the average Ontarian doesn't save for trivial things like a retirement, education or unforeseen emergencies (in case you missed it, that last sentence is dripping with sarcasm), this leaves a grand total of $39.29 per day for anything else. Let's be generous and say an even $40.
So back to our original example of the theatre production at $135.37 for the family of four: This means spending 3.38 days worth of 'other' money for one nights' entertainment (Which does not include the cost of getting there, food, beverages and the like) - Let's say four days worth of cash for one evenings' worth of entertainment, or about three hours.
Of course, your average consumer doesn't break down their costs to 'daily allotment of “other” spending money”, but more along the lines of “How much is it going to cost and what's in it for me ?” In this case, a children's show will most likely be seen by at least three people (Mother, Father and child or single parent and two children) and often by four people (two parents, two children), which breaks down to $101.53 in the three person scenario and $135.37 for four – For about three hours of entertainment. You can expect to add anywhere between twenty to fifty dollars to that for cost of transportation, food and beverage for the evening, bringing the expense to just under two hundred dollars (or five days worth of 'other' money for the entire family). That is asking a lot for just one evening which, with all due respect to the childrens' show production, isn't exactly the same level of quality as, say, Les Miserables or Phantom of the Opera (Or Phantom Menace, for that matter :) )
In the “Let's call a spade a spade” department, let us also recognize that live theatre does not have the same drawing power as, say, modern movies, theme parks or sports events (Professional or Bantam league) – Yet the pricing suggests that they're top notch in everyones' estimation which they are obviously not.
So what should they have done to increase both attendance and revenues ?
Firstly, the whole pricing scheme should be revamped. You could either take the standard route of higher price for adults and lower tiers for children or – my preference – charge the premium amount for each child under 12, a slightly lower amount for 13-18 and a token cover charge for the adults – After all, it's not like Mom and Dad are attending a live action reproduction of a show designed for the 4-12 market for their own entertainment.
The next – and tied in – strategy would have been to either focus in on concession sales (if applicable – not all venues make this available) and, more likely, sales of show-related merchandise pre-show, during intermission and post-show, with the offer of autographed items from the cast as incentive (Heck, some add a fee for the autographs).
Another creative option would be a ticket sale for a drawing during intermission where the winner would be called on stage for participation in a scene, with photographs provided to the winner (for a (optional) fee). In addition to the purely 'gravy' revenue this would provide, it creates incentive for repeat visits for those members of the audience who particularly crave their 'time in the limelight'.
In all, the major mistake made by this production was the utter failure to consider their market – In Pembroke, $100 for a family outing is pushing it a little. $50 is a lot more palatable, with extras and options being just that: Optional; The basic entertainment is there for an affordable price and the extras (and profit that goes with it) is there for those who can afford it, but not required and therefore not a detriment that keeps people who would have attended away from the show in the first place.
What does this mean to you and your product or service ?
So you think that your product or service is so different from a childrens' live action production that this advice doesn't apply to you ? Think again. Every market is different. There is a reason for the expression “charge what the market will bear” - If your products' cost is $100 and you need to make at least twenty percent profit to justify a sale, selling in a region where the average income is $18,000 a year is financial suicide. Unless you are selling a product or service in the twenty dollar or lower range (and even then, you may fall into the 'too low to be considered valuable category), even a national, single-message campaign will see tens of thousands of dollars wasted on entire markets that simply cannot afford what you are trying to sell.
All the statistics provided in this article for Pembroke, Ottawa, Toronto, Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario (the five cities used to make up average numbers) were all easily found from reliable sources using a search engine within a few minutes. I did it just to reinforce the credibility of this article – Shouldn't you be doing the same to increase the sales for your business ?
Marc Bissonnette, Beachburg, Ontario, Canada
