Acquiring first time visitors to your website is one of the riskiest endevours in Internet Marketing.  

• Where should they come from?
• How much are they going to cost?
• Can we convert them to buyers or leads?
• Will they ever come back?

In my experience, businesses are very familiar with these concerns.  And these concerns are legitimate.  But often the concern is misfocused.  Typically, businesses are concerned about the traffic itself.  The appropriate concern should be the website itself and the planning that went into how the website would convert visitors into buyers/leads.

If you want to learn more about addressing this for your website, then please join me on Bryan Eisenberg’s webinar on Thursday, October 30 2pm EST.  

Click here to go to the registration form for the webinar.

Just a reminder that Commerce Arkansas is this Wednesday.  If you have not registered for the event click here.

If you are planning on attending the breakfast or lunch please stop by and say hello. 

Also, please bring any Internet Marketing or Web Design questions that you have. 

A schedule of the Sales & Marketing sessions is posted on the Upcoming Events page of this blog.

Much of the news around the economy has been grim lately – everyone can admit this.  Just click here for the gory details.

12-Month DJIA Slide

However, in the midst of all this turmoil one area is thriving – Search Engine Advertising. 

SearchIgnite reported that search marketing spending grew 27% in the 3rd quarter of 2008; up from the same period last year. 

Search Engine Marekting Growth

Can newspapers, Yellow Pages, TV, radio or print come close to making the same claim?  You probably know the answer to this since it is likely that you are currently considering trimming these budgets back yourself. 

So what do you do with this information?  Get prepared and properly balance your marketing budget. 

1. Make sure your website is operating as it needs to be.  How do you know?  Ask two questions: a) What is your website conversion rate? b) Could it be better? 
2. Examine if your competitors (national or local) are making investments in their Online Marketing.
3. Create an online marketing plan that outlines how to: a) reach potentional customers and clients; b) engage customers and clients about your value proposition for them; c) convert visitors into sales or leads; d) retain these relationships for future marketing efforts. 
4. Execute on the easiest battles to win in your online marketing plan - and yes, that may be implementing or improving your search engine marketing.

Online Marketing Blog recently conducted an unscientific survey of 400 bloggers and online marketers and asked: “What 3 internet marketing tactics will you emphasize most in the next 6 months?”

Have you asked yourself that same question?

Here are the results of the poll:

• Search engine optimization (36%, 149 Votes)
• Blogging (33%, 134 Votes)
• Pay per click (26%, 107 Votes)
• Email marketing (22%, 89 Votes)
• Social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn) (21%, 86 Votes)
• Blogger relations/blog PR (14%, 56 Votes)
• Microblogging (Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku) (11%, 47 Votes)
• Affiliate marketing (11%, 47 Votes)
• Advertorial (NewsForce, AdFusion) (10%, 40 Votes)
• Video marketing (7%, 29 Votes)

One note in the results is that ‘Corporate Web Site’ also got 7% of the votes. 

Now maybe you just need to get some more traffic for your site – plenty of sites get too little.  But if your website isn’t converting visitors to leads and/or buyers then you are just pouring water into a leaking bucket. 

See the table below to understand the business purpose of working on your website’s coversion rate.

We recently audited a company’s Google Adwords account.  The business goal of the website was standard lead generation. (Google Adwords is at its best for lead generation). 

As usual we were able to quickly find several critical improvement suggestions which would lower their average cost per lead.  But there was a greater find in their Google Analytics data.

The business had begun using Google Adwords when they still had their old website roughly seven months ago.  At this time, they were getting qualified leads for roughly $25 per lead, which is acceptable for their business.  Then, one month later they decided to absolutely redesign their website. 

In my opinion, their web site needed to be redesigned.  And I would estimate that the redesign work cost them about $7,500, but you never really know from just looking. 

On first glance, the new web design looked great. 

But there was one critical problem. 

The company’s average cost per lead more than doubled after the website was launched!  Unfortunately, the company decided that their Adwords campaign was ineffective and suspended it.  Now they aren’t getting leads at all! 

But the truth is that in the web design process no one ever truly considered or planned for business goals.  While the website does look better than the previous one, it’s usability is poor because it is difficult to even find where to submit your name and contact information.

So in total, not only did the company pay good money and time for the new website, they also paid for it every month because their average cost per lead doubled!   

How much is your website’s design costing you every month?

I first saw this video on the blog of my friends at Future Now.

As I was first watching it, I imagined the beggar as typical online business.  He is set up and occasionally some revenue trickles in.

You can even imagine his business metrics (you have metrics for your online business too).  Possibly, 1 in 100 who passed dropped a coin in his can.  And for the sake of ease, let’s say those individual coins were dimes.  So for every 1,000 people who passed by the beggar made $1.00.  Ouch! 

So the new words on his sign made the entire difference!  He went from a conversion rate of 1% to 5% and it looks like he may have also increased his average donation as well.  For the sake of ease, we’ll say that patrons began donating two dimes.  Now for every 1,000 who passed by he made $10.00! 

A few simple words made the whole difference. 

How well is your website working for you?  Could an improvement in your copy start to make the difference?

Please excuse us while we redecorate our blog.

Some things we can tell you now about the new blog…

• The new blog will be our first step in becoming Arkansas’ premier firm for web usability, e-commerce, search marketing and web analytics.
• Spectrics’ new blog will also be our corporate website
• You should be blogging for your business too.
• We have transfered our blog platform from Typepad to WordPress (more on this decision later).

We appreciate your patience.

If you need something from us in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know a lot about automotive maintenance.  So my Toyota Avalon has had trouble starting lately.  Naturally, being stubborn, I’ve been disgruntled – yet satisfied – to jump it every time we’ve needed to go somewhere for the last few days.  Am I cool or what?

So this morning my bride finally convinces to me just go buy a new battery for the car.  Obviously, I’m not going to get on the Internet to buy a battery.  I wouldn’t know exactly what to do once it got to my house.  But I did want to go to the Internet to get some information on car batteries.   

I was prepared to go to AutoZone.  Why AutoZone, you ask?  Honestly, because they advertise a lot.  I trust their brand.  So I Googled something about ‘car battery’, because I didn’t want to come across as an idiot when I took my car to the store.  But something happened along the way…

I clicked on paid ad for Advance Auto Parts, an AutoZone competitor, about ‘car batteries’.  Eureka!  It took me to the landing page you can see below:

Advance Auto Parts Landing Page

Did I go to the right place or what?  I’m in Internet Car Battery Heaven!

For a second, just think about this landing page.  There are several pictures of car batteries, so they are immediately meeting my needs.  Next, the words ‘Fast’ and ‘Free’ jumped out me.  So did I order my battery?  Of course not!

I clicked on the easy to find ‘Store Locator’ button and found a store right here in Little Rock, Arkansas.  They actually have several stores I could have gone to.  But if I hadn’t gone to their website Store Locator I would not have known that I drive by one several times per week. 

In less than an hour, I had called the store and asked how much I should expect to pay for a new battery, had my new battery installed and went to work.  Now my car starts every time!      

So what is the lesson here?  Some businesses still want to quibble about the value of their website.  If it weren’t for Advance Auto Parts well done Internet Marketing Car Battery Strategy I would have bought a battery from one of their competitors today.  Instead, I’m going to buy every car battery for the rest of my time in Arkansas from the store I was at this morning. 

Can they trace the purchase to their website?  Probably not, but it is technically possible.  But Internet Marketing is clearly starting to drive offline sales.  Thus ends the case study.