Do Colocation Hosting Websites Need Goals? What About Data Centers?

Many who create and manage colocation hosting websites focus a lot on design and branding and not very much on achieving goals.

Evaluate If Design and Branding Are Overshadowing Your Goals

And this – ignoring goals at the expense of design and branding -- is a terrific approach, as long as you’re still operating in the early 2000s, in an era where your sales team still dominated the buyer’s journey.

Today it’s quite different. Typically 60% to 90% of the decision-making process for colocation hosting and data center-related services happens before a qualified prospect is ready for a conversation with someone from your sales team. This represents a drastic shift in power towards the buyer, away from the seller, and one in which many firms are frankly not getting found early enough.

So what kinds of goals need to be factored into your website and overall digital strategy?

Identify Which Goals You’re Trying to Achieve on Your Colocation Hosting Website

Goals must be SMART goals – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

A goal has to be specific like you want a certain amount of qualified leads each month. Or a certain amount of sales opportunities each quarter. Or a certain amount of clients generated by a certain date within the next 12 months.

• The goal has got to be specific (“S”).
• It’s got to be something you can measure (“M”).
• It must be attainable (“A”) based on your history.
• It needs to be relevant (“R”) to the overall mission that your marketing and sales team and your revenue team combined are going after.
• And it must be time-bound (“T”). Everyone can make wild predictions about what they want to do in the future. But unless you assign a deadline, how will you know if you’re actually making progress or ever reaching that goal?

If you talk to someone who’s ever gone on a weight loss program, for example, he or she may say, “I want to lose 20 pounds.” That’s awesome. By when?

And the “by when” is what makes all the difference because anyone can always say, “I want to run a marathon.”

OK cool. Are we talking about trying to run a marathon in six months or in six years? Because that can make an enormous difference with regard to how aggressively you train.

Prioritize These 3 Simple Rules

1. Set goals.
2. Develop buyer personas.
3. Make your website a helpful, educational resource for the ideal clients that you want to attract.

If your website's home page advertises the price of your services or discounts, almost like an e-commerce website, there may be something majorly wrong with your strategy.

Also, see

• Are Colocation Hosting Providers Aligned Around Shared Goals?
• Do Colocation Data Centers Need SMARTer Goals?
• Is Your Data Center Company Focused on SMART Goals?
• SMART Goals for Data Centers
• Why Data Centers Focus Content on Goals

How does your colocation hosting website perform? What kinds of goals are you working towards? Let us know your progress in the Comments below.

Learn more about Colocation Data Center Providers and Go-to-Market Strategy (GTM) for Growth.