Marketing and advertising is a tricky business, because what might work for one organization, for one product, at one particular period in time may not work for another. There are far too many variables involved, so there are never any hard and fast rules when it comes to promoting your product or service. That said, there are a few guidelines that you should bear in mind.

For example, when you’re offering a web hosting service, it is important to try and capture every segment of the market by providing a wide range of services. On the one hand, you want a cheap and easy-to-use plan that new webmasters can afford and understand. This way, they don’t have to fumble through complicated coding and terminology that they may not completely understand. On the other hand, you want more advanced plans with impressive feature sets for established web professionals. They may have particular compatibility requests, a need for a certain number of databases, and so on. Reliability and functionality are more important, in this respect, than pricing. And then you have to address everyone in between these two polarities.

Put yourself in your target demographic and consider what you would want if you were a customer. This applies to everything from clothing to electronics, freelance writing to a dry cleaning service. And don’t forget to offer exceptional customer service, but people will always value that over slightly lower pricing.