Behind the Brands That Power Small Business: How Hostopia’s Marketing Services, Support, and Infrastructure Empower Service Providers

TL; DR: By helping ISPs and telcos differentiate and expand their service portfolios, Hostopia enables businesses to better serve customers looking to build an online presence. The company, founded nearly 20 years ago, gives service providers the opportunity to increase profits and customer loyalty by offering a variety of premium white-label products and platforms. From web hosting and logo design to email marketing tools and online directory management, Hostopia’s innovative approach enables service providers to deepen their relationships with small businesses by giving them powerful solutions they’ll love.

Service providers, such as ISPs and telcos, offer connections their customers can’t work without. Instead of simply offering basic tools and options, however, Hostopia provides an opportunity to seamlessly offer products that resonate with small business customers.

Building on experience with web hosting, logo design, email marketing, and eCommerce, Hostopia’s tools add value to service providers’ core offerings while building revenue and customer retention, according to Damon Fieldgate, who serves as Vice President and General Manager of Hostopia’s parent company, Deluxe.

“Part of Hostopia’s value proposition is that Deluxe also manages Aplus.net and Deluxe Hosting, among other brands important to small business operations and success,” he said. “By building Hostopia, we’ve leveraged what we’ve learned and deliver those lessons, along with a stellar suite of products, to our partners.”

By operating Deluxe Hosting and Aplus.net in direct sales channels, Damon said Deluxe and Hostopia teams became experts at selling valuable tools to small businesses. Hostopia passes that expertise on to service providers who want to develop a closer and more profitable relationship with their own clients.

“When we go to our partners, we can say, ‘Here’s what we’ve tried at our channel. Here’s what works and what doesn’t work.’ We have the framework, structure, and operational cadence to help them build their direct channel out to their customers,” Damon said. “It’s a win-win.”

Service providers may excel at offering traditional products and services — but they don’t have to stop there, according to Damon. With Hostopia, ISPs and telcos can widen their scope and deepen their relationship with customers.

“When we partner with service providers, we give them the chance to give their customer base a real boost in value,” he said. “Not only are they adding new revenue, but they’re also creating stickiness around their core products.”

To unknowing entrepreneurs, telcos and ISPs might seemingly offer relatively identical products. By integrating with Hostopia’s platform of white-labeled programs, however, providers can both differentiate themselves from competitors and provide intriguing services that attract and retain customers.

“When they add a series of cutting-edge tools to their product base, their customers really see the value in staying with them,” Damon said. “It’s important to build a strong partner relationship with small businesses because those companies are the cornerstone of our economy.”

Hostopia’s product platform breaks into three main categories: branding, online solutions, and small business marketing. Small businesses can perfect the design of their logo, website, videos, social media profiles, and printed promotional materials, along with productivity tools for email, eCommerce, and online faxes.

“Product development is driven by two things,” Damon said. “First, we research what our enterprise partners see as their customers’ needs. Second, we look at each case individually to see which products will dovetail with the partner’s core services.”

As more and more businesses move online, so are the brands, companies, tools, and services needed to grow an audience. As eCommerce becomes an increasingly crowded marketplace, Damon said businesses can find it exponentially more difficult to catch customers’ attention. Small businesses often become buried under larger competitors.

“That’s why digital marketing is taking up a lot of conversation,” he said. “Our customers and our partners are always reaching out to discuss it.”

As such, Hostopia’s products concentrate around helping those small businesses get discovered. SEO experts help users execute link building, outreach, and rich content generation strategies, while social media marketing tools manage Facebook content and advertising.

“From pay-per-click to organic optimization to social, we’re doing it all,” Damon said. “Our social tools extend across many platforms, not just one or two. Of course, generating content your end-customers will use is important, but the way you promote that content is equally important.”

Whether it’s the way Hostopia’s search engine marketing experts deliver proposals customized for small business customers or the email marketing tools that allow entrepreneurs to create, send, and track promotional emails, the company concentrates on delivering top-of-the-line solutions.

“We want to give our partners profitable tools that their customers won’t be able to live without,” Damon said.

Hostopia does not take a passive approach to supplying the products and services for their partners to white-label and resell, according to Damon. Instead, the company engages with partners on marketing and sales fronts to help both organizations find success.

“This isn’t a field of dreams,” he said. “‘Build it and they will come’ doesn’t exist here.”

As experts in both helping small businesses find success online and the exact products and services that help customers reach their goals, Hostopia offers to engage and support their partners’ small business customers.

“We actually do the inbound engagement for customers who express an interest in the tools we sell on behalf of the partner,” Damon said. “In the instances where we’ve taken over, we’ve seen a measurable increase in sales, retention, and penetration.”

In addition to collaborating with partners’ customer-facing teams to craft the messages that resonate most with a service provider’s prospective customer base, Hostopia looks for ways its services complement the partner’s signature products and competitive advantages.

“It’s not only about delivering these great products,” Damon said. “It’s also about helping partners make sense of how those products fit in with the customer conversation they’re having around their core services.”