Experience of attracting customers in a highly competitive market: the story of a small company

we will talk about the company that is engaged in service of computers in St. Petersburg. As the target audience of this service is very far from Karamira, I believe that the hub "I PR" is not suitable: the main point of this post is not advertising our services, and discussion of strategies for the promotion of new companies in the old markets.

Article is not for SEO professionals, it is describing the experience from the point of view of company management, not SEO specialist.

Work area our company — computer services and — more recently — cloud solutions (in other words, setting up private cloud infrastructure for rapid deployment of virtual machines by the customer). Despite the fact that three years ago habré was discussion about the questionable novelty of the first of these services, inviting external companies for maintenance of it infrastructure practiced in St. Petersburg for almost twenty years: I personally know people that raised this business from scratch in the 90s.

As already mentioned the discussion fairly noted that it outsourcing covers several related areas, where maintenance of computers and networks is just one modest element. The rest is the responsibility of individual business processes or specialized IT-subsystems or business applications. For example, billing, processing, telephony. But now I am only talking about maintenance of computers and networks.

Our company started this business in 2007. What worked in attracting customers in real life, not in theory, we initially were surprised. Today we bring our experience and our insights into your court — maybe this article someone will save time in the search for effective tactics.

Who became our clients for 4 years
the

the
• construction firms
the
• contact center
the
• small hotels
the
• Institute
the
• information portal on home appliances

All our clients are small and medium-sized organizations — from 10 to 300 computers; and those where hundreds of computers, often bought service only part of them (the more they have no money).

A large international company (which among our customers yet) ordered it outsourcing in a broader sense: for example, some companies we've worked with before, was given to outsourcing the entire telephony and computer network maintenance in offices. In such cases, their global contractor were some of the it's a monster, for example, AT&T, and in Russia he was a subcontractor in a particular city or even in a specific business center hired another subcontractor.
In the case of Russian small and medium-sized companies in the chain between those who pay money and those who make the work much shorter.

the

Why you came to us clients?

Ironically, we now see only two reasons why the company changed those who served before us:

the
1. those who served them, had ceased to do so (the system administrator, from which all depended, was dismissed, or the operating company went bankrupt)
the
2. those who served them, boring them worse than a bitter radish (started to work worse and worse, or take more money and more).

the

As we find such customers?

Tried many things:

the
1. contextual advertising in Yandex and Google. The result we did not like. More precisely, within a few months of advertising in Yandex. Direct we occasionally (every five or more) call the people to seek the cheapest service on the Internet. We never dump and promised that, so the conversion of advertising in Yandex. Direct was zero;
the
2. of the blog articles on our website for all sorts of interesting topics. The result is a mass of untargeted visits to our website with zero conversion. Everything is simple: if a person is looking for "how to configure the Cisco to access the Internet" the chances that he will make a decision on hiring a company to setup something in his office — little;
the
3. familiarity. 10% of our clients are those who come on the recommendation of our friends (some of them, leaving system administrators to other businesses, we have clients in inheritance).
the
4. cold call. It would seem that the most straightforward method should be the most inefficient. Here we were waited by a surprise: 90% of clients — those who we called. No, who is our expert on cold calls, we do not say, and her salary is good :)

It is not excluded that the secret is in the talented sampling of those who call to the source was not annoyed by the offer of services, and to glean, to the court if he our service. To offer unnecessary, a bad business, and need a wonderfully sold. Checked personally by selling sneakers on the Juno in the mid-90s: hungry visitors bought two boxes for a half-day.

the

Insights

I say again: we will focus on clients from among small and medium-rossyskih companies. Conclusions the experience of personal interviews with clients who came to us through Dating and telephoned to book.

First, startups (not even IT, but just startups) are not inclined to hire outside companies to it outsourcing. The maximum that they might be interested, it outsourcing 1C-accounting, but it is easily replaced by the increasingly popular Elba.

Second, organizations of different ownership forms and occupations give service it infrastructure outsourcing when an existing method of service has exhausted itself: either the service suddenly disappeared (retired, bankrupt), or increased to unacceptable values of the parameter quality/price.

Thirdly, to find new customers in this situation helps mainly cold calling and a good reputation. The share of the other methods when small volumes (less than hundreds of customers) does not exceed the statistical error.

I would be grateful for the oncoming carve-up experience.

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru