It is almost daily that we run across a survey or article that is proclaiming the importance of the web to every businesses marketing, sales or even operational efforts.

To reinforce this trend, here is some information that came out of a survey that was conducted online and polled 250 marketing executives from companies ranging from health care to telecommunications to professional services and more. Here is what they found:

• 35.5% of those surveyed said they are going to increase spending by 10% to 25%
• 26.0% of those surveyed said they are going to increase spending by 25% to 50%
• 21.6% of those surveyed said they are going to increase spending by more than 50%
• 56.6% of those surveyed said the web is currently the hub of their marketing strategy
• On a scale of 1 - 10 with 1 being low knowledge, these marketing executives gave themselves an average score of 6.3 when ranking their knowledge of the latest web marketing trends, strategies and technologies.

The underlying story here is that 1) make sure that you are taking a very hard look at your web efforts 2) you don’t have to be an expert regarding Interactive strategies or even the technology that powers these strategies, you just need a solid business partner that can assist you.

As a small business owner, we seldom have the luxury of running a marketing campaign “just to see what happens”. We also find it difficult to justify the spray & pray campaign where we blast out one message to the masses, hoping that the segment of this group that we are trying to reach will pick up on our message.

To see the maximum results to our marketing effort & dollars, it’s critical that we segment our marketing efforts. Deliver the right message to the appropriate market segment.

So…how do you start to segment your marketing message? Online advertising is the type of advertising most US marketers use to reach specific customer segments, according to a May 2008 survey.

All too often, too much emphasis is placed on the “Look” element of a web site project’s design. The forgotten cousin to Look is Usability. Even though the Look is critically important, it is high time that we hold Usability in as high regard as we do design.

According to Forrester Research, 40% 40% of web users did not return to a site when their first visit resulted in a negative experience. Now, ask yourself, what was it that frustrated you at the last web site you abandoned? Most likely it had to do with not being able to find what you were looking for; getting lost on the site somewhere; not enough information on the product/service you were there to research; or there may have been no way to contact the department or person at the company. In a word you left frustrated because of a break down in the site’s Usability.

Usability has to be thought through, purposefully planned out and meticulously implemented. If your web site isn’t converting customers the way that you would like, it might be a Usability issue.

We’ve been talking a lot about the goal of conversion for our Clients websites. Now its time that we start looking at the real value of a conversion. To help get our heads around the real value of conversion increases, let me ask you a question:

What percentage increase would you have if your website conversions went from 3% to 4%?

The most common answer would be “a 1% increase. Actually, going from 3% to 4% conversions on your website is a 33% increase (it is a 1 percentage point increase)!

Now the next question that we have to answer is what is a customer worth? If your website is designed to sell your widgets you will identify the value of a customer by the Average Order Value (AOV). If, however, your website is designed to generate leads, then your going to look at average lead value (ALV).

If your AOV is $50 and you spend $200 for every 1,000 visitors to your website and you have a 2% conversion rate on your website, you have 20 actions for every 1.000 visitors. (calculate: $50.00 x 20 = $1,000.00)

Now lets look at a modest increase from a 2% increase in conversions to a 3% increase in conversions ( a 50% increase in conversions; 1 percentage point) We’ll use our same example as above: AOV=$50.00, 1,000 visitors. (calculate: $50.00 x 30 = $1,500.00). A $500.00 increase in sales.

This gives your $200.00 investment in driving those 1,000 visitors a tremendous ROI.

According to a recent report from Forrester Research, online marketing is the top priority for b-to-b marketers, as reported by 84% of the survey respondents. 53% of the participants in this survey said their top priority is to improve multichannel customer experiences.

Its time to get all of your marketing strategies pulling in the same direction. Just having a website or arbitrarily dropping an ad in a magazine isn’t going to product the results it may have. Your customer is becoming more sophisticated and technologically savvy, your marketing has to address your customer’s expectations.

Create campaigns in the context of an entire experience, across multi channels to bring relevant information to a targeted group that builds brand expression, galvanizes current and cultivates future relationships, results in increased conversion rates and have access to detailed, measurable results.

Leverage All Media At Your Disposal
· Don’t fixate on any one channel. Keep in mind the entire customer experience. It’s evident that the lines between channels are blurring. If your customer, based on a previous catalog purchase, receives an email about that product directing them to a landing page that raises awareness that product is on special and they receive that email and click through to your site on their iPhone. What channel is that? Does it matter? They aren’t making a concerted effort to separate online or offline. You shouldn’t either.

Make Connections
· An Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) two-year study released results showing if you use a variety of media vehicles in a thoughtful and connected way to reach your targeted group, you raise the likelihood of creating that connection.
· The study illustrates that the same marketing dollars utilized for on and offline advertising, using an effective combined effort, raised brand awareness by 8 to 34% and increased purchase intent by 5 to 1000%, which obviously increased sales.

Overcome Obstacles
· Letting budgets, organizational structures or politics impede implementation of such campaigns would be a mistake.
· This year, 70% of Super Bowl advertisers bought search ads relating to the spots they ran, a 20% increase from a year ago.
· Now, big-budget dollars are being put forth in support of cross-channel efforts in which the Internet plays a pivotal role.

Keep It Relevant
· Today, direct mail, print, radio, television and packaging are driving traffic online. What will make your web site experience compelling enough for them to visit or even convert?
· Relevant information they want to know more about than a 30 second or quarter page ad can provide.
· Allow them the ability to dive deep into their subject of interest and immerse them in your brand.

Collaborate
· Give your campaigns the best chance for success by collaborating across all channels. Sharing of ideas, addressing potential conflicts and taking all customer touch points into account should be part of your strategy.

Utilize “Busy Times”
· Consider key triggers like product introductions, promotional events, seasonal trends and exclusive offers. Use these triggers to reinforce the customer experience impression by continuing to produce a consistent brand expression whether it’s on or offline.

Quantify & Tweak
· Analyze your measured results. Use these metrics with the entire customer experience in mind.
· Think about using information captured during offline promotions for online use. Manage leads and improve conversion rates.
· What are the optimization points? When and how does one channel tend to lead to another? Which calls to action have worked the best? Where are customers bailing?

Give Us Your Thoughts

Despite a softening of the economy, 213 businesses polled in a recent B-to-B news survey, are planning increases to their marketing budgets with a very heavy focus towards Online opportunities.

The survey found that 60.1% of the 213 surveyed businesses are planning increases in their `08 marketing budgets with 33.8% of their overall budget going toward Online marketing vehicles. This is an increase of Online’s slice of the pie of over 7% from last year.

Website Development Number 1

When looking at how these B-to-B marketers are planning their online spending, 74% said they are going to focus on their web site development, 70% said that they are going to initiate e-mail campaigns while over 64% said that they are going to focus heavily on search marketing.

OK. . . its no secret that Michigan’s economy isn’t in the best of shape, however, the worse course of action in this economy is to pull in your marketing efforts. During these challenging times, every marketing dollar you spend, whether on print or interactive, will speak louder and go farther in attracting your customer.

Historically, we’ve seen aggressive companies gain dramatic market share positions during challenging economic times. During the 2001 slow down we saw companies like Dell capitalize on their competitors decisions to pull back on their marketing dollars.

Today, businesses have the opportunity to realize more positive ROI’s through targeted marketing strategies and most importantly the integration of offline and online marketing campaigns.

As you start to look at your marketing efforts in a tightening economy here are some things to think about:

• Campaign Goal: Your communication message should switch from brand or image building to action based goals such as lead generation.
• Online Optimization: Make sure your website in in sync with your search marketing goals and strategies. If you haven’t updated the information on your website, get it updated as soon as possible.
• Cross Channel Marketing: Make sure that you are using all of your marketing opportunities to communicate your message. Use offline campaigns to create excitement and your online marketing to tell the story.

According to Arvind Rangaswamy, a marketing professor at Penn State “firms that typically market during a recession embody an entrepreneurial culture”. A lot of what happens during tightening economies are emotional and the best thing a business can do is to not get caught up in the emotional element.

What is it, exactly, that you want a visitor to your website to do?

Do you want your website visitors to buy what your selling? Do you want them to contact you for a quote on your services? Do you want them to sign up to receive your newsletter?

Too frequently we see business owners and marketing managers that are considering a web-based project and their predominant concern is the creative element of the project (make sure it looks cool). Worse yet are the Interactive agencies that pitch their entire process on their design expertise! An Interactive project requires…Interactivity!!

Here’s what can happen when an Interactive Agency just focus on the design element.. I recently ran across the website for a “web design & interactive consultant” agency based in the UK. For all of their proclaimed expertise, the screen shot to the right is what I found on their site. Think about this as a visitor to the site and you will notice a couple of things:

1. There is no way of knowing what your signing up for!
2. You can’t find out what their plans are for your information (no privacy policy link)
3. Great Design though

Make sure that the next time you look at your website your looking at it through your visitor’s eyes.

Business is tight and your going to run an advertising campaign promoting a sale. You want to get as many people into your store as you can. As you sit down to write your ad, you have a decision to make on the headline for your ad.

Which Is Better

1. Buy One Get One Free
2. Two For The Price Of One

You can debate which of these sale headlines will bring in the most customers but without testing, you can only guess and as with all offline marketing testing, the work involved to statistically test the results of a campaign can be time consuming, expensive and very difficult to complete.

Online marketing with a well thought out analytic tracking process will give you the results to the best possible headline, within days and possibly event hours. By using an e-mail blast you can send out 2 versions of your sale one with the “Buy One Get One Free” headline and one with the “Two For The Price Of One” headline. With the measurability of the web, you can capture which of your e-mail messages generates the most opens, click-troughs and ultimately the number of sales generated by each headline.

The Internet makes this sort of testing so quick and easy that the results are driving marketing message decisions on all marketing media. Day-in and day-out we are seeing the combination of online and offline marketing efforts doing great things, even in a tough economy. However, it all has to be built on a foundation of analytics of performance