The following is a simple set of guidelines that will help you maintain a healthy website; one that draws in potential customers and gives them reasons to interact with your brand.

The obvious goal of any website is to attract visitors. In order for that to happen, users need to have a reason to visit. And that reason is quality, relevant content! Naturally, upon the launch of the website, you will already have some basic content on your site, usually in the form of text on multiple web pages, a blog, a sign-up form, etc. But is that sufficient?

Offer Solutions

The best type of content to add to your site are helpful tips, how-to’s, or discounts as part of a customer loyalty program. Any effort at providing helpful advice to your existing or potential customers is often seen as a gesture of goodwill, and helps portray your company in a favorable light. Plus, you’ll often be rewarded by an increase in average pageviews and time spent on the site – both of which are indicator metrics of website success.

More Is More

The more relevant, quality content on your website, the more you will be rewarded. Organizing and structuring the content into individual pages according to specific themes will work wonders for the website’s organic search engine rankings, boosting your links higher up in the results pages on sites like Google and Yahoo!

There are a number of ways to find new content to regularly add to your site. Do you have a new product offering you’re proud of? Create a blog post about it. Do you find that many of your new customers often have very similar follow-up questions? Add a page of content that thoroughly, and proactively, answers questions you can anticipate from soon-to-be customers. Have video footage that is entertaining or informative? Stream it on your site and provide readable text-based summaries. Make sure that your content is easy to read, easy to understand, rich in information and targeted for your audience. And remember to update often!

How Will People Find My Website?

There are a number of different advertising programs to use to help promote your website. If your new website project was part of a broader marketing effort to attract new customers and build market share, Envision Interactive offers media planning and buying services that help our clients achieve such goals.

Who’s Searching?

Undoubtedly, your prospects are out there on the Internet actively looking for information, products, or services you offer. They are using search engines to tell them which websites contain the most relevant information on what they are looking for. The sites these users are navigating to are the result of either strategic SEO or SEM efforts by your competitors.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a term that refers to the modification of specific elements of a website in order to improve the site’s organic (i.e., free listing) rankings on the search engines. High natural rankings can contribute to a significant volume of site visits – by very qualified prospective customers! There are many different approaches that SEO firms take when trying to achieve a level of effective results. But Envision Interactive’s SEO services have proven successful time and time again. We employ a rigorous optimization methodology, whereby we focus on the core fundamentals of proper HTML structure, perform intensive data analysis to gain insights into successes as well as shortcomings, and then put in place any learnings gained.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM, “paid search”) is another means of driving qualified visitors to your site. Unlike it’s free counterpart (outlined above), SEM is a pay-for-performance advertising model; an advertiser only pays when a user clicks on a text ad that directs the user to their site. This is an attractive, low-risk marketing platform that often yields very profitable returns for advertisers. SEM provides a great deal of flexibility, allowing advertisers the ability to maintain control of budget level, keywords, geo-targeted areas, and maximum keyword bids. Again, Envision Interactive’s SEM team has extensive background experience proving the value of this advertising platform for numerous clients across dozens of industries.

Enter Pay-Per-Click advertising. Also known as PPC. If you are new to this term, don’t worry. You probably know more about it than you think. PPC ads are the text-based ads that appear on the results page of any search you perform. You’ve probably seen them a million times on Google or Yahoo! or Bing. They usually take up the far right column, and sometimes can be seen at the top of the page too.

First let me say that PPC isn’t good for every company, nor is it always the right tool to use to market a new product or service. For instance, if you run a software company that makes a never-seen-before business-to-business application for education institutions, you would probably find that PPC doesn’t work as well as direct sales. If your product is highly technical, or if it requires a shift in thinking for your customer to “get it”, a small text-based ad probably won’t make the sale for you.

But for many companies (dare I say most companies?) running a PPC campaign through major search engines can provide incredibly accurate ROI in a time when spending is critical. During a recession, advertising dollars rightfully are directed toward performance-based marketing, such as paid internet advertising. Why? Because when cuts are needed, it’s easier to stick with results-driven channels that have a measurable ROI.

If Envision can help you understand the benefits of PPC, contact us.

So, the big question most Marketers are asking us these days is: do I cut my marketing budgets or not? The answer is simple: absolutely not.

History tells us that the great companies find ways to grow during a slow economy, not shrink. They change their strategy, or even launch a new product or service that is more suitable to consumers when times are tight. Here are some examples:

• Procter and Gamble – During the Great Depression, pushes Ivory soap.
• Intel – In 1990-1991, during economic difficulty, pushed out the campaign “Intel Inside”.
• Wal-Mart – Launches their “Every Day Low Prices” campaign in 2000-2001.

In some cases, buyers are spending more than they were before the economy entered a recession. If your business falls into an high-end luxury category, you may even benefit from increased spending. Customers who can afford these products are more insulated from recessionary concerns.

Still thinking about crawling into that hole? You might re-emerge from your budget-slashing mode only to realize that a competitor has grabbed a portion of your customers. That’s right – you might just save your way out of business. Increasing or maintaining your marketing spending during a recession can increase your share of the market voice. As other players in your industry “chicken out”, they leave the door wide open for you to move in and steal their customers. Keeping budgets where they are may be a risk, but if your voice is heard louder and stronger, you win.

Continuing to advertise in a recession also sends your customers a very clear message about your longevity and strength – an important thing in these uncertain times.

So, focus on spending smarter, but not less. And if you are planning to cut your marketing spending, keep a few things in mind:

• Keep it short-term. – You should think of cutting your marketing budget in a down economy as a very short-term strategy. And, if this course of action is taken, know that you are at risk of your brand emerging weaker and much less profitable.
• Cut unmeasurable marketing first – Your goals are probably the same as all marketers: achieve the highest ROI possible. So, if you have a hunch that you need to cut spending, start with marketing channels that are impossible or difficult to measure.

We propose you think of your marketing budget as and investment and not an expense.