Hosted Solutions Keeps Marketing Local
By Anastasia Tubanos, theWHIR.com July 13, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — From sponsoring the birth of a child to tattooing a company’s logo on a person’s forehead, many Web hosts have employed unique and sometimes outrageous marketing tactics.
Others, however, have stuck to more traditional, but nevertheless attention-grabbing methods, marketing their brands through sports, such as 1&1 Internet’s recent sponsoring of a racing yacht for the 2007 America’s Cup or ReadyHosting’s racecar in the ARCA RE/MAX series last year.
Carolina-based Web hosting provider Hosted Solutions (hostedsolutions.com) has chosen a similarly novel route by marrying its logo to a number of different local sports teams, including NHL 2006 Stanley cup champions, the Carolina Hurricanes.
In November 2002, Hosted Solutions signed a multi-year marketing and service agreement with the Carolina Hurricanes to be the organization’s official Web hosting sponsor.
Since then, the Web host has partnered with a number of other sports companies including the NFC’s Carolina Panthers, and Speedway Motorsports, a motorsports entertainment provider and owner of six premier speedway facilities across the United States, including Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Gary McAuliffe, Hosted Solutions’ VP of business development says that partnering with sporting organizations was a natural initiative for the company. ”We’ve always felt that sports was a good place to brand ourselves. Our very first marketing initiatives, a lot of them were associated with sports radio,” says McAuliffe. “We always liked the values in sports, you know, a lot of team focus and other good things, as well we always thought the demographic of people that watched sports was a good place for our brand, so we thought we would tie the Hosted Solutions brand into local sports, like the Carolina Hurricanes.” On top of using original tactics to promote its brand, another factor that makes Hosted Solutions so unique is that it seems particularly interested in building itself up as a local business — an approach many Web hosts shy away from, caught up in the competitive race to expand nation-wide. ”Usually customers like to have local market access to parts that are servicing or supporting their IT infrastructure, so we’ve always felt that giving the authority to a customer to drive to our facility and vice versa has given us a great competitive advantage over some competitors with a more national focus,” says McAuliffe. “Customers really appreciate and enjoy the ability to not only have access to their infrastructure but access to the people supporting their infrastructure. That’s always been an important part of our model.” Despite the NHL’s lowered TV ratings in the US, McAuliffe says it hasn’t been a problem for Hosted Solutions, as the company has seen high click-through rates regardless of the cup finals. ”In North Carolina we get some great local television coverage from the local sports stations and luckily for us the coverage has been adding a whole other layer to our marketing efforts,” says McAuliffe. “But I will tell you this, I don’t think the national coverage of the NHL is the reason why we partner with the Hurricanes.
“We partner with the Hurricanes for the local coverage and the local market we’re reaching. That’s always been our focus. The fortunate nature that they made it through to the finals and won has been great for us, but ultimately we approached that sponsorship for the local aspects of it.”
