EasyStreet Grows, Part 2:
Marketing Your Success

There's plenty of advice on how to sell bad products, but many ISPs don't realize that you also need to work hard to sell a good product.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [August 15, 2006]

In part 1 of this article, we described a successful business. Portland, Ore.-based EasyStreet has been in business since 1995 and has grown considerably to become a real presence in the community.

But although the ISP uses ITIL systems standards and delivers good service, the company's founder, Rich Bader, was concerned that it did not present a professional face to the community, so he hired Karen Karger as director of marketing and undertook an upgrade to make sure that the data center, which delivers quality service, also looked like it could do so.

"The new data center speaks of a successful organization," says Bader. "It no longer looks like a struggling company, with second hand furniture and just white paint on the wall."

New clothes for the data center
So the company removed the old furniture, put some paintings on the walls, and upgraded the reception area with a glass wall behind with the NOC people and their screens can be observed.

In addition, the company built two conference rooms with views (again through glass) into two different machine rooms. "They can have an impression of the data center without having to go into it," says Bader. This is important, because data center companies want to admit as few people as possible into restricted areas, and that includes prospective customers.

Along with upgrading the look of the data center, the company upgraded physical security.

Recently, Bader says, just after completion, the data center helped win EasyStreet a big contract with a company whose developers are based in Portland but whose headquarters and sales staff are in California.

After he won the contract, Bader learned that his data center had been up against one of the best known in the nation.

"The CEO came up to visit us. He came up to kick the tires. In the past, we would have had to explain why it looked the way it did. Now the facility looks good. Of course, he agreed that having his equipment in our data center near the developers would be better for them, but I believe we won this business in part because of [the upgrades to] our data center."

Living on EasyStreet is hard work
Next up for EasyStreet is to upgrade the website, which looks very similar to the earliest version archived in the Wayback Machine (from December of 1996). That where Karger's job starts.

Then Bader wants to upgrade the marketing collateral.

After that, he wants the ISP to "use the tools we tell our customers to use."

He ruefully cites an old saying, "the cobbler's children go barefoot," and admits that his own ISP could use the internet better. At ISP-Planet, we believe that most ISPs could use their own products better. Most ISPs implement Asterisk in their own offices before deploying it to customers, but do not necessarily take advantage of the other business services they themselves offer.

It's a big job that Karger's about to undertake, delivering Unity in Marketing to EasyStreet, but she has the most important thing she needs: a supportive CEO with a clear plan.

—End