You responded. We surveyed^* thousands of small business owners and employees about their web sites to learn how often they make updates, check visitation reports and get a general idea of what they expect to pay for hosting. Respondents agree on some consistent patterns.

Your web site is one of your most valuable assets and our survey revealed that business owners have clear ideas about what’s important and what that should cost!

1. How often do you update your web site?

Over 50% now make updates at least monthly.

2. Do you monitor visitation statistics on your web site?

70% currently view the traffic reports for their web site and over 50% look at them at least monthly!

3. What’s most important to you… rank the importance of Design, Updates, Hosting Cost or Search Engine Ranking.

Nearly 50% rank Design as most important. See breakout below.

4. What do you feel is a fair amount for the web hosting services you receive?

Most small businesses expect to pay between $100-$200 per year, with less than 20% spending more than $400.

*SOURCE: Kerigan Marketing Associates Inc. email survey, sent June 12, 2009.

If you simply desire bare bones web site hosting, there are plenty of reputable services well under $100 per year you can move your site to. Site transfer has gotten as easy as moving your cell phone service (see link to recommended hosts).

If your goal is to strengthen your business image thru your web site, whether you need a design makeover, a user-friendly statistics program to measure traffic, or search engine optimization — or, frankly, you’re just embarrassed by the current state of your site and know it’s time to update, here are some ideas.

View our clients, or an easy-to-understand chart of our hosting packages, most at just $13.75 per month / $165 per year. Contact Us to discuss what we can do for you.

Despite elections and Olympics, 2008 has been a down year for traditional media, according to an article in the Financial Times published last week, with economic slowdown cited for marketing cutbacks at Coca Cola and General Motors.

However, many Fortune 500 and small businesses are seizing competitive opportunities by maintaining, even increasing their advertising budgets, with the goal of continuing consumer awareness through electronic marketing. Recent surveys point to organizations balancing traditional media by increasingly turning to relationship marketing with electronic newsletters, community sites and eblasts for these new economic times.

We’ve been pioneering email marketing for over five years and we’re constantly attending seminars, working with consultants and, generally, just testing new opportunities to improve every day.  We’ve found that business managers like it because they can measure effectiveness with open rates, click-through rates and sales!

We design and deliver many eblasts each week. Here’s our Top 5 list you can use:

1. Update your database- keep it current, including adding new relevant addresses (always with opt-in) and removing addresses that are no longer valid.

Industry experts agree that email databases degrade at a rate of approximately 25% per year, due to people changing emails for new jobs, new internet service providers, etc. We highly recommend opt-in databases, and we’re in the process of updating our online sign-up systems to operate with double opt-in confirmations for even higher security.

2. Avoid certain keywords, messy code, too many images, and even poor grammar that immediately set off red flags for spam filters.

Spam filters are becoming much more sensitive, making it difficult for you to ensure that you’re receiving all of the emails you’ve asked for. Their main purpose is to protect you from perceived unwanted content, so even the slightest suggestion that an email may be unwanted will cause it to be flagged as spam — and never delivered to your inbox.

Poor grammar may not get your emails trapped in spam filters, but it may hurt your image if the eblasts or enewsletters you are sending are not consistent with company’s quality. We always strive to create organized content — both text and images — and we focus on keeping emails informative and interesting to the reader.

3. Make sure your web server has a good record with all of the major Internet Service Providers (ISP’s).

This isn’t always a sure bet, but it certainly helps in maintaining your true credibility with intended recipients. The best way to make sure that unprofessional and fraudulent email marketers don’t drag you down with them is to set up a dedicated server solely for your email marketing. If you’re on a shared server, their bad reputations are automatically attached to you in the eyes of spam filters.

4. Put serious thought into your subject line.

The goal of your efforts is for your recipient to OPEN your email, and your subject line is usually the determining factor if that will happen or if they will hit DELETE. The 5-7 words you chose for your subject line are important. What got you to open this one? We closely monitor “open rates” for the eblasts and enewsletters we send and we’ve learned which terms work better than others.

5. Use email marketing to drive readers to your site.

One additional benefit of email marketing is to direct recipients to your web site via links placed throughout the body of the email. It’s a commonly used marketing tool used to increase web site visitation. You should monitor your web site visitation on the day you send your eblast and days immediately following and “should” see significant spikes in visitation.

If you would like a price quote or more information on an email marketing program, please contact us. We’ll gladly share options with you and supply client references. If you are interested in switching your hosting to us, or improving your site thru a design makeover, take a look at our work, and send us an email.

When the Boss suggested that I attend a webinar for Google Analytics, I wasn’t sure how much I’d walk away from it with, but now that everything is said and done, I’m very glad I did.

Google Analytics is a tool provided by Google to track visitation, hits, downloads, and other useful bits of data about your web site. It is a very powerful tool, and many webmasters swear by it; it will work with virtually any site on any server. And the best part is – IT’S FREE. You gotta love Google.

Though a server-side analytics program (such as your basic Webalizer program many sites use) is a must, in my opinion, Google Analytics is a great supplementary tool. I say this because, though Google Analytics doesn’t have access to your server’s logs (and therefore cannot be as thorough as a server-side program), it gives you an interesting perspective on how search terms affect your web traffic. Not to mention, it is fairly common for server-side programs to crash or malfunction. So, when that happens you can then rely on Google to provide your visitation data for the down time.

OK, I know most managers prefer the quick bulleted version, so here’s why Google Analytics could be important to you:

• Assuming you’re not yet checking your web site stats – and these days you really should be – you might as well begin with this simple program.
• Google Analytics is aestheticly pleasing and very user-friendly.
• It should take only 15-20 minutes to set up (or at least for your web host).
• It’s password protected.
• IT’S FREE!

With that said, the biggest benefit of using Google Analytics is its integration with Google AdWords. Adwords is a “pay-per-click” ad program that will show your site as a “sponsored link” on the results page of keywords specified by you. You just select the key words you think people will use when searching for your site. Then, when a user searches for that term in Google, your link will show on the results page. See example results page here. The attractive feature of pay-per-click ads is, you only pay when a user clicks the link. Your site may be too new to rank high or otherwise outrank bigger, more important sites in the main organic ranking area. AdWords allows your web site to be viewed high on the first page, and you only pay when people click your link! If you’ve never done this we can help you pick the right words.

If you have an AdWords campaign for the site you are monitoring, Google Analytics makes it very easy to see quick, helpful AdWords statistics from your dashboard. This can be very useful in telling you where your money is wasted – and where your money is well spent.

I look forward to using this great technology to better observe site traffic, patterns, and to ultimately better serve our customers in the future.

From school kids to CEO’s, the environment has become a hot topic. My Google search of “Florida Ecotourism” yielded 250,000 results where just two years ago I found little info for a client research project. Whether you consider yourself a tree hugger (I bet that image ain’t what it used to be) or just a business manager who needs to understand consumer desires, now may be the time for you to lift a finger to test the winds of change.

We just completed a web site for a new home builder with a specialty in green-building under the new LEEDS certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). Another recent project included a new active-adult community based on environmentally-friendly construction that results in substantial energy cost savings for homeowners. One of our golf course clients just asked us to increase the prominence of the Audubon International designation on their web site. And, kayaks have replaced powerboats in our recent tourism design graphics. Those are just some of the trends that have impacted my work life.

The ‘green’ agenda has become a hugely important one for many businesses. Consider the evidence. GM reported that sales of its Suburban SUV model declined by 24% for the month of December, 2007, while this week’s Detroit Auto Show debuted an ethanol-feuled Ferrari and a plug-in electric Maserati. J.D. Power and Associates projects steady growth for the hybrid segment for the coming years. CNN.com recently featured a report on new tourism trends stating, “We’ve started to see more and more companies that traditionally offer just sun and beach kind of packages embracing eco-tourism concepts.”

So, how can seeing the world with ‘green’ eyes help your business?

Consumers are increasingly searching for green alternatives and as a result they’re  typing these terms into search engines. It may be time to think about how you can leverage this opportunity with some updated copy on your web site’s home page. Here are some examples, with links, of environmentally-friendly solutions we’ve created to help our client’s assist their customers and employees:

1. For destination marketers, integrate relevant popular search terms into your home page like “walking trails,” “birding” and “pet friendly.”
2. Golf Courses can promote their Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary status, or eco-friendly practices.
3. Realtor web sites can offer easy links to nearby parks at the communities they are promoting.
4. Employers create online employment applications reducing paper and fax power costs.
5. Physician offices implement downloadable patient registration forms.
6. Construction companies integrate customer project update links on web site.
7. Establish a green policy at work which might include:
   • Turning off monitors, printers and lights after work.
   • Try cleaning out files and recycle papers you no longer need. Many organizations sponsor cleaning weeks.
   • Use spell check and proofread before you print or copy. Print double sided whenever possible. Minimize the amount of paper you use.
   • Buy reusable office supplies instead of disposable supplies.
   • Set up an area to store and exchange reusable office supplies, such as binders and hanging folders
8. The EPA offers a range of helpful ideas at  http://www.epa.gov/epahome/atwork.htm

While we don’t punch out hundreds of cookie-cutter sites, we’ve designed and built a wide variety of successful custom web sites for our clients, including many ADDY Award winners. As marketers we approach web site design differently than internet-only firms. We see web sites as one [important] component of your marketing package, yet the site must be consistent with the overall design of your other marketing materials, including a familiar advertising look that led customers to the site in the first place. View samples of our integrated marketing campaigns

1. The power of newspapers is news. Marketing that is newsy gets noticed because news is on
the forefront of readers’ minds.

2. The power of magazines is credibility. Readers unconsciously attach to the advertiser the
same credibility that they associate with the magazine.

3. The power of radio is intimacy. Usually radio is a one-on-one situation allowing for a close and
intimate connection between listener and marketer.

4. The power of direct mail is urgency. Time-dated offers that might expire before the recipient
can act often motivates them to act now.

5. The power of telemarketing is rapport. Few media allow you to establish contact in a give-and-
take situation as adroitly as the telephone.

6. The power of brochures is the ability to give details. Few media allow you the time and space
to expand on your benefits as much as a brochure.

7. The power of classified ads is information. Nobody in their right mind actually reads the
classified ads except for those in a quest for data.

8. The power of the yellow pages is even more information. Here, prospects get a line on the
entire competitive situation and can compare.

9. The power of television is the ability to demonstrate. No other media lets you show your
product or service in use along with the benefits it offers. TV is still the undisputed heavyweight
champ of marketing.

10. The power of the internet is interactivity. You can flag a person’s attention, inform them,
answer their questions and take their orders.

11. The power of signs is impulse reactions. Signs motivate people to buy when they are in a
buying mood and in a buying arena. Signs either trigger an impulse remind people of your other
marketing or both.

12. The power of fliers is economy. They can be created, produced and distributed for very little
and can even bring about instant results.

13. The power of billboards is to remind. They rarely do the whole selling job but they’re great at
jostling people’s memories of your other efforts.

Researchers found that the brain makes decisions in just a 20th of a second of viewing a web page. They were surprised as they believed it would take at least 10 times longer to form an opinion. The study, published in the journal Behabiour and Information Technology, also suggests that first impressions have a lasting impact.

Speedy conclusions

The Canadian team showed volunteers glimpses of web sites, lasting for only 50 milliseconds. The volunteers then had to rate the web sites in terms of their aesthetic appeal. The researchers found that the speedily formed conclusions closely tallied with opinions of the web sites that had been made after much longer periods of examination.

Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canda, and lead researcher of the paper expressed her surprise at the results. “My colleagues believed it would be impossible to really see anything in less than 500 milliseconds,” she told the web site of the Nature journal, which reported the research. The judgments were being formed almost as quickly as the eye can take in the information.

Lasting impressions

The researchers also believe that these quickly formed first impressions last because of what is known to psychologists as the “halo effect.” If people believe a web site looks good, then this positive quality will spread to other areas, such as the web site’s content. Since people like to be right, they will continue to use the web site that made a good first impression, as this will further confirm that their initial decision was a good one.

As web sites increasingly jostle for business, Dr. Lindgaard added that companies should take note. “Unless the first impression is favourable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors,” she warned.

And, statistics show many internet users feel the same way–B.J. Fogg, director of the Stanford University Pervasive Technology Lab, discovered in a recent research project that most consumers think like me:
“The number one factor by which people actually judge web site credibility was by their first impression of the visual design…if it doesn’t look credible or if it doesn’t look like what they expect it to be, they go elsewhere. It doesn’t get a second test. And it’s not so different from other things in life. It’s the way we judge automobiles and politicians.” To go deep on this subject, explore this article on Stanford’s Web Credibility Project. I’d also recommend you check out the sites of your closest competitors. Does yours make a more professional first impression than theirs? If so, you just might get the extra business. If not, it stands to reason they will.

To substantiate this trend, web site design is an area where we’ve seen growth in our business versus simply web site building. Recently we’ve had clients hire us to simply redesign the look of their web site, creating a new home page graphic and a consistent support page structure. We then deliver these files to their existing web site programmer to build out their site. Here are two examples below. It’s a lot like the differing skills of an architect and a builder. One’s trained to design functional and aesthetically-pleasing structures; the other follows those plans with hammer and nails. We see a growing future in this area as small businesses grasp the importance of professional design yet may wish to stick with their existing web developer. Our in-house artist, Catherine Noel, is a graduate of LSU School of Design and has utilized her talents in the creation of numerous Kerigan web site designs.

While we don’t punch out hundreds of cookie-cutter sites, we’ve designed and built our share of dozens including numerous ADDY Award winners. As marketers we approach web site design differently than internet-only firms. We see web sites as one [important] component of your marketing package, yet the site must be consistent with the overall design of your other marketing materials, including a familiar advertising look that led customers to the site in the first place. View samples of our integrated marketing campaigns.

Here are five areas of judgment for most web sites. Start by addressing these and you’ll be on your way to improved credibility:

1. Photo Quality - For most of our work we hire a professional photographer. Less expensive than you may think, this investment is one that almost always pays for itself.
2. Good Grammar – take the time to write it right. Poor grammar and punctuation on your home page sends a bad message. Get someone else to proofread your work if needed.
3. Navigation Priority - are your most important categories easy to find, quickly? We recently redesigned a tourism web site and learned that weddings, pet-friendly beaches and winter rentals were important. We moved them into prominent positions.
4. Contact Simplicity – if you expect me to fill out a form to contact you, forget it. Make it easy to click on an obvious email link to contact someone.
5. Email Address – Is your email anything other than “@yourwebsiteaddress?” If your web site is PremierRealty.com and your email is @Yahoo, do you expect someone to believe this is your full-time, professional focus?

Most entrepreneurs use the call-to-action to get people into their business. A typical call-to-action would be a “20 percent off” sale or a coupon. It is pretty easy to track especially
when the customer brings in the coupon.

Image advertising is much more difficult to evaluate, but it’s still important. The purpose
of an image ad is to raise consumer awareness of the product or service you provide. Just
look at what car dealers, financial institutions, communications companies and
restaurants do with their advertising. TV has a ton of image ads.

But don’t expect a direct response from image advertising. In the same way wearing
clean, pressed clothes or wrinkled, dirty ones affects you personal image, image
advertising sets the tone and impression of you business.

Frequently, image ads are called “branding,” because they are promoting the brand and
not the business. Probably the best example of branding is Nike’s “swoosh.”

The heart of branding is that the advertised message is true, is clearly directed to the
public and runs repeatedly. Branding really represents the essence of the company. Apple
expresses liberty regained; Pepsi, youthfulness; Oil of Olay, timeless beauty; Saturn, the
American competitive spirit; and AT&T, the promises of the future.

People have needs for specific products or services-such as carpet cleaning, pest control,
jewelry, banking- and when they need those products or services, you want them to think
of you first.

Studies have shown that, to be effective, an image ad must be seen at least seven times.
Image ads are just reminders telling people “not to forget” the brand.

Verizon spent more than $300 million to change its branding from Bell Atlantic. It had to
spend this money to convince consumers that it was a credible company. However, most
companies cannot afford to spend $300 million on pure image advertising. A good rule of
thumb is that you ought to be spending about 10 percent of your advertising on image ads
(your total advertising budget should be about 5 percent of annual gross revenue in
retail or consumer products, and 3 percent of business-to-business).

Image advertising is most effective in publications that target you message to a specific
audience, such as a specific income level.

In the same way that you guard your personal reputation in your community, you should
also guard or promote your company’s “image” by investing in image advertising on a
regular basis.

Jerry Osteryoung is director of the entrepreneurship program in the College of Business at Florida State University and is executive director of FSU’s Jim Moran Institute of Global Entrepreneurship.

Certainly, one answer is, “it depends.” And, while that may be true (larger businesses require more complex strategies and tactics than smaller ones), I am never really satisfied when I am given that broad grasp of the obvious. I continue to observe some common strategic issues in the marketing projects I’ve been working on. Since these themes repeatedly present themselves in my work, across a wide variety of businesses, I felt it would be worthwhile to summarize them and share. Just in case you are curious as to the source of my insights, they come from marketing assessments I conduct for organizations ranging from real estate to banking to government agencies, across Florida and out of state. Additionally, my small team of four consistently networks with our agency colleauges and business associates, and scours industry web sites to stay ahead of the marketing curve.

The following list represents my Top 5 Marketing Tips you should be thinking about for your business:

1. Start with a Plan.

A simple marketing plan should include at least these three parts—Identity, Strategy, and lastly, Tactics. Basically, you need to understand what makes your product/service different from competitor, what strategies will most effectively reach your consumer, and how much your specific programs will cost plotted on an annual calendar. Big businesses do this, and it’s not hard for small ones to do it either. One approach is to do it yourself, or internally, and there are plenty of inexpensive templates online. Another is to hire a consultant that will bring the added benefit of expertise and a fresh perspective to the business.

2. Clarify your Identity.

If I say Mercedes, Honda, Hyatt or Motel 6, don’t you quickly find the image of each in your mind? Three important questions I pose to business managers include:

a. Who are we trying to reach?

b. What do they currently think?

c. What do we want them to think [about us]?

Your answers should roll out effortlessly. If you can’t confidently, and quickly, explain what makes you different than the competition, why shouldn’t your prospect go there?

3. Establish a Marketing Budget

What is your 2007 budget? At nearly halfway thru the year, are you on-track? Are course corrections needed? From the industries I’ve served here are a few categorical averages:

Casual Dining

4.5% of total revenues spent on marketing. That was our standard at Community Coffee and is applied by Chili’s, Bennigan’s and most in the restaurant segment.

Real Estate

Coldwell Banker corporate recommends 5% of commissions for a project be applied to marketing.

Medical

Through our work with a mid-size orthopedic firm, we’ve learned the industry average is 1% of total revenues.

4. Get serious about your Web Site.

Look at the bottom of your web site, right now, and see if the copyright says anything other than 2007. If it says 2006 that tells the customer the information has not been updated for at least five months. When you search for a product or service are you looking for a provider more committed to their field than that?

Increasingly, managers are telling me their number one marketing goal [for their advertising efforts] is to drive people to their web site. Others confess they are downright embarrassed by their current site, often something completed by a friend of a friend completely outgrown. Pay close attention to quality photography and a design image that fits your organization. Remember, you get what you pay for

5. Build business thru relationship marketing.

Most business owners know it is cheaper to retain the customers they have versus prospecting for new ones. In most cases, both are important, but relationship marketing is the area where customers are cultivated and strengthened. Do you have a follow-up plan for how you build business from your valuable customer contacts? Are you constantly growing your database?

A simple hand-written Thank You note after a key meeting can really standout in your prospects electronically-driven day. Direct mail still retains the #1 spot for marketers as the leading relationship vehicle in the recent 2007 Target Marketing Media Usage Survey. However, email marketing showed the greatest growth outranking direct marketing 35% to 31% as the preferred method for “customer retention.”  Email marketing should be approached with care so you may want to consult a professional. Still, the benefits of cost and flexibility warrant its exploration even for the smallest of organizations.

……..

Jack Kerigan, Jr has guided national brands and regional brands such as Community Coffee as Director of Marketing. He established Kerigan Marketing Associates in 2000 and now resides in Port St. Joe, Fl  where  he leads a small team of marketing professionals focused on strategic advertising management, web site development and graphic design.

I have people come to me all the time wanting me to write ads for their
products or services. Most of them about have a heart attack when I tell them
that I never write an ad for less than $2,500 and my average price is $5,000.
For a single ad. Just one. The reason is, that there’s a lot of legwork and
research that has to happen before I can write an ad. Most of what needs to
be figured out before putting pencil to paper, or fingers to keyboard, is going
to be covered in the rest of this program. But here’s an understatement:
There are a lot of things you’ve got to understand and take into consideration
before you can churn out even a simple advertisement. Then you’ve got to
create a master strategy for advertising, marketing, and selling your product
that takes into account your selling advantages, or the inside reality, and the
customer’s needs. You can’t just go around making stuff up all the time on
the spur of the moment that’s based on nothing more than your best guess of
what’s going to work. You’ve got to be more sophisticated than that. What’s
the Boy Scout motto? Be prepared. Same thing in advertising, know your
strategy, know what your customers want, innovate your business, know the
best way to say things, then write the ads.

I’ll just give you a quick laundry list of stuff that’s got to be sorted out and
deciphered before you start writing. Now I’m not talking about techniques
here, I’m talking about base level grounding materials that precede any ad
writing. Things like determining your advertisement’s objective: Is it trying
to get orders? Inquiries? Generate leads? Promote brand awareness? What is
your ad trying to do? You’ve got to figure out who your target market is and
what they need to hear to make a compelling sales argument and in what
format they will most readily accept your information. What’s important to
them? Would they watch a video brochure of your product or do they just
need a postcard? What kinds of things influence their buying decisions?
Have they been burned by someone in your industry before? Is what you’re
selling not important enough for them to put a lot of thought into it? Or is it
such a major purchase that they’re going to have to see something really
impressive from you before they’ll buy? Or is it somewhere in between?

You’ve got to know all this before you start writing the advertisement or
else it’s inevitable that you’ll be saying the wrong things to the wrong
people and you’ll end up like the cat on the hot stove who draws the wrong
conclusion; in this case about advertising. You’ve got to know this stuff!
Here’s the good news: it’s not THAT difficult. But it’s imperative that you
create a master game plan for all of your advertising. Every ad you place
should have a specific, predetermined purpose. Each ad should pull its own
weight and make a profit for itself. We have clients all the time who will
come running in and say, “Hey, I just got out of a meeting with the radio
sales rep and they’ll give us a great deal on this block of airtime. What do
you think?” Well let me see your marketing plan and see if this “wonderful
deal” fits into that plan.

Or a guy will say, “Look, I know that you say all that stuff about creating a
whole marketing plan, but I really, really need a flyer right now. Can you
just put that together real fast and then worry about the rest of the marketing
plan later?” And the answer is yes, but I can’t guarantee it will work! This
exact thing happened recently with a guy who had an aluminum siding and
replacement window business. Now I don’t know what you think about
these telemarketing companies that call you all the time during dinner and
ask you to buy siding for your house. I think they’re annoying. But since
we’ve done a lot of work in the construction and the home improvement
business, I already knew quite a bit about how to put his entire marketing
plan together, before I did any of the preliminary leg work I just mentioned.
Hey, after you’ve done this a couple of thousand times in a couple of
hundred different industries, I would hope that you could put together a
marketing plan for a siding company. I mean, come on, wouldn’t you get a
little nervous if your heart surgeon was wheeling you into the operating
room and was asking the nurse, “Hey, where’s the Heart Surgery for
Dummies book?”

I unfolded an entire marketing plan to him, a strategy called the “Code of
Ethics and Competency” that is excellent for good, honest companies who
happen to be in industries that have problems with shady operators who have
a reputation for being less than forthright with consumers like siding
contractors, for instance. I showed him how to integrate the strategy into his
telemarketing, into his advertising, into his yard signs, into his tradeshow
booths, into his sales presentations, and into every single aspect of his
marketing. I’m talking about a full-blown powerhouse marketing strategy
that would absolutely annihilate every one of his competitors. And his
brilliant comment was, “Yeah, but right now I just need the flyer that my
guys can stick on people’s doors. Can you do that?”

The answer is NO!!! Why? Because a single flyer just creates an outside
perception that the inside reality can’t support. You just can’t shortcut the
system. You can’t just slap a couple of techniques on there and hope you’ll
get stellar results. You’ve got to take the time to put the plan together and
build a case that convinces your prospects that it’s worth their time and
money to even consider doing business with you.

-Y2Marketing