The Secrets of Web Hosting Add-ons – Marketing Credits

The competition of web hosting industry has become more and more fierce, so web hosts begin to offering an array of add-ons to attract customers, such as free domain registration and transfer, cPanel licenses, SSL certificates, free site builders, free data backs, Secure Shell Access (SSH), Static IP Address and more. In fact, the most attractive add-on provided by these companies is the marketing credits from $50 to $300, for it is helpful for webmasters to drive traffic to their websites in a short time thus grow their business.

In this article, we have discussed the pros and cons of this free add-on in detail, with a view to helping your readers have a clear and precise understanding.

Pros of Marketing Credits

The majority of web hosting companies offer 3 kinds of marketing credits – Google AdWords credits, Yahoo!/Bing and Facebook.

Google AdWords Credit

Google Adwords is a PPC (pay-per-click) advertising program created by Google for Internet advertising. Webmasters only need to create ads and choose keywords related to their business, then Google will automatically display these ads next to or above the search results once people search the keywords chosen by the webmasters, with a mix of advertising medias like context, graphic banner, and radio.

According to Nielsen in May 2012, Google AdWords has become the most widely-used advertising platform with over 400 million unique audiences. Check the benefits it brings to the customers.

• Customers only pay for results, meaning that customers are charged only when people clicks on their ad and lands on the websites, not when their ad is displayed, so it is totally risk-free.
• Customers can be given many tools and reports which tell them how their ads and campaigns are doing, as well as how much they are spending.
• With the most used search engine worldwide, customers can drive traffic and attract visitors effectively by displaying their ad to people at the precise moment.
• Customers can change all aspects of the ad to suit their business, such as keywords, text contents, target market, the days and times your ads will appear and many more.

Yahoo!/Bing

The Yahoo!/Bing is the combined advertising platform of both Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo! search engine. According to US search engine rankings report made by comScore’s in June 2012, Yahoo!/Bing has accounted for almost 30% of the online search share in the US. To be honest, this is quite a huge number! So customers can easily and effectively get as many people clicking on their websites as possible. Check the main benefits of Yahoo! Bing in the following

• With one ad buying through Yahoo! Bing, customers are able to reach 166 million unique searchers in the U.S.
• Customers are more likely to successfully market their products or services, as searchers on Yahoo! Bing are likely to spend 24.1% more than searchers on many other advertising programs.
• Yahoo! Bing also has some syndicated partner sites such as Facebook, Monster, WebMD, and Viacom, plus networks like The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.

Facebook

There are also some web hosting providers who offer free advertising credits on online social networking platform – Facebook, which has more than one billion users worldwide. In fact, whether advertising on search engines or on social media platforms, customers can attract people to click on their websites with ease, but there is a slight difference between the 2 methods. With search engines, customers can target their audiences through keywords, with Facebook, however, customers need to consider more factors to reach the right people at the right time, including age, gender, location and interests.

Cons of Marketing Credits

There is no doubt that the marketing credits is useful and beneficial, but just like every coin has two parts, this add-on also has some restrictions.

• Web hosts only offer marketing credits for customers reside in the United States or Canada, meaning that this add-on is not currently available in other countries.
• The marketing credits is only valid for customers with a new hosting account.
• To get this add-on, many web hosts require customers to provide credit card during the account signing up process. So customers may face the risk of personal information leaking, or excessive money deduction.

Summary

Advertising costs money, but the offers of free adverting credits is absolutely a good gifts for customers, especially those who are using paid advertisement. Therefore, we have recommended the top 3 trust-worth web hosts which offer this kind of add-ons for free with the web hosting plans.