“People need deals and deals need people.”  You remember that scene in “A Beautiful Mind” when Russell Crowe, er, I mean John Nash, says the best option is the one that benefits both the individuals involved but also the group as a whole?  In other words, you need to create deals for your product/service that are mutually beneficial for both the consumer and for you.  The economy will stabilize once we’ve reached equilibrium.

And how do we reach that equilibrium, you ask?  The WEB!  The INTERNET!  The entire ONLINE ARENA!  Advertising-online is the wave of the new century.  Now is the best time, if any, to get your business into the 21^st century.  If you do, you’ll be in the best position when people start buying again.  Why?  Because there are a lot more people using the web right now than you think.  In fact, the web is very quickly becoming the hub of all media.  The web allows you to watch TV and movies, listen to the radio, or just download music, talk with friends (and even people you thought you would never see again thanks to a little something called social networking, i.e. Facebook, MySpace), buy pretty much anything you want, pay bills, do all your banking, and even get medical advice.  The virtual world is slowly replacing the real one.

So when people start buying again, you better have your DeLorean equipped with a flux capacitor at 1.21 gigawatts (yes, I know that was a corny and completely contrived reference to Back to the Future, but I had to get it in there somehow) because the future is here and there’s no stopping it.  And when people start buying again and go online to do so, if your business isn’t online it probably won’t survive.

In the next couple of posts, I’ll give you some tips on how to get your money’s worth from the world of the Internet and advertising-online.  It’ll definitely be worth your investment.

Suppose you’re the corner coffee shop.  All the people living around you that need coffee will come to you for coffee whether or not you advertise to them.  So why would you spend ridiculous amounts of money on a marketing strategy that targets those people that are already coming to your store?  That type of marketing is not worth the investment.  If a marketing strategy is not bringing in any NEW customers, then it is worthless.

You need to figure out what amount of customers you would have regardless of your commercials on cable TV.  Let’s say that with the cable TV commercial, you have 105 customers.  But 100 of those customers would come to you anyway, with or without having seen that commercial.  So that commercial is only bringing in 5 new customers.  Now let’s say that commercial cost you $5000.  Those 5 customers only gave you $1000 (yes, I know, that is some pretty expensive coffee, but go along with me here).  You have just now lost $4000.  That type of investment may not be a good idea in this economy.

A good marketing strategy doesn’t focus on targeting customers you would already have.  In fact, a good marketing strategy doesn’t waste any time with those customers.  A good marketing strategy only focuses on targeting the customers that you don’t already have.  These are the customers that will bring in more money.  These are the customers that will make your investment in a marketing strategy worthwhile.

Let’s say that you’re a business.  People aren’t buying your product because consumer spending is down.  That means less revenue for you.  Maybe you have to lay off a few people you can’t afford to keep on.  But there’s still work that needs to be done.  So the work from the laid off employees gets delegated to the remaining employees.  But your remaining employees are already up to their noses in work.  So what happens?  Productivity gets cut.  You’re unable to deliver, which in turn cuts your revenue once more.  Everything is snowballing again.

So how do you save your business?  Do you simply stop spending money?  If you cut down on marketing costs, you may save money in the short run, but you’ll lose new customers.  So what do you do?

I’ll tell you the answer…in my next post.

First of all, you need to be able to measure your sheer traffic volume. Traffic volume is the general number of visitors to your site, whether they were conversions or not. This can give you a clear picture of how many web surfers are even reaching your site, from anywhere on the web. This number is also important because it gives you something to measure everything else against.

Secondly, you need to measure traffic quality. What is the bounce rate of your site? How much time are your visitors spending on your site? These things are important to measure in order to gauge how well your site keeps the attention of its visitors. By measuring this against the traffic volume, you can see what percentage of your visitors is actually staying on your site, versus just looking at it for a couple of seconds and then hitting the back button (or any other way to get off a site so quickly).

Thirdly, you need to determine your traffic sources and measure how many visitors you are getting from each one of those sources. This allows you to see where you are getting your visitors from and enables you to allocate more resources to those arenas. You can measure this against traffic quality to see where the most interested visitors are coming from (from which website or link they are being redirected). You can also measure this against traffic volume in order to determine the percentage of visitors from each source.

Fourthly, you need to measure your conversions. Making that sale, i.e. getting that conversion, is the goal of your business. By measuring conversions, you can see how well you are doing in each category. By measuring conversions against all of the above mentioned kinds of data, you can determine where most of your conversions are coming from, how long each conversion spends on your site, and the percentage of total visitors that become conversions.

Lastly, you need to determine how often you should analyze these data points. This depends entirely on your business and your industry. It also depends simply on your preference. Some people like to have daily numbers, some like weekly, or monthly, or quarterly, or even annually. The point is that you need to figure out how often you need the data reports in order to be on top of your game. But that is entirely up to you.

Again, these numbers individually won’t mean much. A number by itself is just a number; but together, these numbers will paint a very clear picture of the health of your business. With all of this knowledge, you’ll be able to do everything that is necessary in order for you business to thrive. If you know how to swim, into the deep end you go.

Here’s our press release about measuring traffic data (it’s the same thing as above).

Here’s the same press release, but from another website.

Here’s the PDF.

Depending on whatever industry your business is a part of, you’ll need to update your website daily, weekly, monthly, or whatever consumers of your industry demand (aren’t we all at the mercy of our customers). But beware, once you start updating your content more quickly, your site visitors will expect the content to be updated in that same frequency for the rest of your site’s lifespan. So be like the tortoise, start out slow and pace yourself. You can regularly update your site with new content such as pics, videos, or even text. That way, your regular visitors won’t abandon your site completely.

Here’s someone else who thinks so as well: http://wordsyouwant.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/why-updating-websites-is-important/

In order to define your geographic parameters, you should identify where you are already getting business from. Let’s say that everyone in your town already comes to your pizza shop for all their pizza needs. But if you go one level higher, let’s say your township, you can still do much better. So you should then run your SEO – search engine optimization campaign for your township. You should simply run your marketing campaign for the market that you are not winning. In our case, we try to win the keywords with the localities of New Jersey and Central Jersey.

Of course this means that your website will receive much less traffic than if you were to win the keyword “pizza”, since “pizza” will be utilized by everyone in the entire country, or maybe even the world, but the rest of the country is not your concern when it comes to selling pizza. You’re trying to win over you own geographic location. So the overall general traffic to your website might be less, but the precision of targeting your locality will result in more business.

Here’s someone else who thinks so too: http://www.searchmarketingmaven.com/going-local-instead-of-going-global/

SEO – search engine optimization is a way to get your business at the top of a Google or Yahoo search results page. This is the most effective form of SEM – search engine marketing, or advertising-online. If you use Google to search for the service/product that your business provides, does your business show up on the first page of results? How about the second page? Maybe the third page? Does it show up at all? Chances are that your business is nowhere to be found.

Most people these days use search engines to perform product/service research before they buy anything. And more than half of the activity on the Internet is on search engines. So what does this mean for your business? You need to get indexed on search engines so people can see your business when they are searching for a product/service that they need. If you do get indexed, then you will probably have an almost exponential increase in business since the marketing potential of the Internet is unlimited.

So how do you get indexed? That’s where blogging comes in. But first you must understand how search engines work. Suppose you go to Google and search for “pizza shop”. Google will run through the entire World Wide Web and find the sites with the most occurrences of the phrase “pizza shop”. “Pizza shop” here is a keyword.

If you blog for your company, then you can utilize relevant keywords so when people search for the service that you provide, your business will come up. So the point of blogging is to win those specific keywords that are relevant to your business. And since blogging is very frequent, it is easy to win keywords since you can use them over and over and over again.

Here’s some more info on the matter: http://seoarticles.seoforgoogle.com/blogging-for-seo.cfm

A business can respond to pretty much anything through blogging, especially negative rumors or negative public reaction to anything the business does. Since blogs are supposed to be updated incredibly frequently (usually every day or at the very least once a week) a business can respond to the public in real time, instead of having to go through all the time and trouble of having to set up a press conference. Also, since blogs allow comments, a business can see the public response to the communications + public relations campaigns themselves. Blogging is a great way for a business to set up a dialogue with the public. And if the public feels that the company is truly engaged in a two-way communication channel, rather than a one-way, then they will feel more involved with the business as a whole. That, in turn, will make more loyal to the business.

Here’s someone who thinks the same thing: http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2004/10/12/blogging-for-pr