Your sales staff on the Web

The next generation of Web marketing opens the doors to new markets in an often cost-effective manner

Story by Sean Fitzgerald

No matter what business you’re in, if you don’t have a place on the World Wide Web, your business is far back of the back in terms of marketing.

But even just having a Web site in 2008 barely means you’ve tapped the surface of online marketing. Neither is focusing your Web site’s content on meta tags and keywords – quite the rage in Web marketing just three to four years ago – or sending out e-newsletters to current and prospective customers.

The next generation of online marketing – referred to as Web 2.0 – is allowing those savvy enough to go out to the cutting edge tools to promote their audience to new markets in a cost-effective manner. It’s a matter of not simply having a Web site for your business, but using that Web site and the Internet as a cross-functional platform to change the way your business reaches out to its market.

There’s a variety of different tactics to employ from social networking to blogging to wikis, even posting video on YouTube to drive traffic to your site.

“It’s all about getting popular, and these are all avenues for getting popular,” said Jim Dobinski, managing director for Stellar Blue Web Design in Neenah.

Other tactics can be as simple as your name.

With the low cost of domain name registration, many companies support several different domains, all strategically selected to grab their audience’s attention, then point them toward their main site (for more, see Professionally Speaking, Page 33). It’s similar to the days of spending thousands of dollars to purchase a toll-free telephone number that cleverly spelled out a term related to the business, said Tammy Schultz, president of Virtualtech Web Site Design and Promotion in Appleton.

“Now, instead of having people directed to your phone number, all of your marketing should have them directed to your Web site,” Schultz said. “People need to think about their domain name as marketing.”

Social networking
MySpace, the popular social networking site which was acquired by Google last November, is a cheap means of allowing a multitude of people to get to know you and your business.

As a result, the perception of MySpace as a toy for pimple-faced teens to connect with one another around the globe has evolved into a valuable tool for marketing a business.

“On College Ave., you can find a MySpace site for almost any of the bars,” said Dustin White, Web developer and database manager with Stellar Blue. “Many will put their specials, or a band that’s playing, up on MySpace.”

Stellar Blue has its own Web site, as do a handful of its clients. Developing a MySpace page for your business has mostly all upside benefits. MySpace is free and simple to use, and is part of community of more than 30 million users who interact with one another virtually, making it the largest and fastest growing virtual community on the planet.

StoneYard Food & Spirits in Appleton, one of Stellar Blue’s clients, uses its MySpace page to promote live music.

MySpace, though, is still void of a strong network of local professionals who often know each other outside of simply a virtual relationship, said Dana VanDen Heuvel, founder of BlogSavant and Green Bay-based VanDen Heuvel Executives LLC, as well as a well-known integrated marketing consultant and speaker on social media. He suggested tools such as LinkedIn, a social networking site with a more professional reputation.

Ultimately, finding the right social networking tool is all about going where your customers are communing, VanDen Heuvel said.

“Businesses need to ask themselves, ‘Is there a conversation in the marketplace that’s taking place about our industry, about our products, and about our services?’”

Get your blog on
Essentially an online journal, a blog is another inexpensive and simple way to continually add new content to your Web site and offer your customers regular updates on your business without having to place a work order with your Web developer. And a blog’s content can be valuable fodder for search engines, if done appropriately.

“’Search’ is still the lowest common denominator in everything we’re talking about here,” VanDen Heuvel said. “Blogs are probably the most effective way to (populate search terms).”

There’s an estimated 120,000 new blogs created every month, according to Wired News magazine, but most are short-lived and fade into irrelevance after a few weeks. Free services like BlogSpot and Xanga easily walk users through the steps to set up a blog.

Blogs can be an effective way to announce a new product or service to customers, but more importantly, said Virtualtech’s Schultz, “It’s a way to position yourself as an expert within your field.”

Blogs do come in two formats – the first, is simply an online diary the user writes for visitors to read; the second, is an online diary that permits feedback from visitors to the blog. The latter – for those who want to promote user-interactivity – can offer a negative perspective on your business if the blog is attacked with malicious content, such as a link to an online casino or pornography site, Schultz said.

If you go this route, it’s important to take some measures to control what others post. Cathy Wunrow, the creative director for Stellar Blue, suggests setting aside a specified time where outside postings can be made. That will enable you, as the owner of the blog, to provide real-time responses to your visitors’ posting, and allow you to police any unwanted content.

Audio and video files
Audio and video files posted to Web sites have been around for quite some time. But small business had seldom used such files to complement their existing marketing efforts. Web content was primarily text-based up until the past four years or so, and 
“One thing the Web’s been lacking in the past is the hearing component – it’s all been reading,” said Virtualtech’s Schultz.

Not everyone learns best by reading. Many learners – and many consumers and potential customers – are more apt to sights and sounds when discovering more about a product or service, Schultz said. That’s where video files can provide a more well rounded user-experience for visitors to your Web site.

One of Virtualtech’s clients, Curb Depot, placed video files from its Web site on to the video-sharing site YouTube last year. There was no cost to it, and relatively little effort. With no expectations in mind, the company received a handful of telephones calls seeking more information about Curb Depot’s products – simply as a result of the posting on YouTube, Schultz said.

The techno-simplicity of making and editing video today makes such a posting accessible to nearly everyone, said VanDen Heuvel. At the same time, it leaves a tangible archive to pass along and proliferate throughout all the other marketing avenues a business may have forged for itself.

www.nowwhat?
Everything mentioned above can be effective for getting customers to your site, but that’s only half the battle. Once at your Web site, the next greatest challenge is delivering on your customer’s expectations.

Prospective customers looking for a product or service on the Web and stumbling across your site will often determine whether to do business with you in the first 45 seconds at your Web site, said Mike Pulvermacher, president of eBizResults in Oshkosh, citing industry data complied by Jupiter Research.

Pulvermacher regularly offers seminars on Web audience behavior and attempts to teach his pupils to think more like the average visitor to their own Web site. It’s important, Pulvermacher noted, particularly because so many smaller businesses don’t take their online presence as seriously as they should.

“When someone comes to your Web site, they have a purpose in mind. They’re in a hurry, and they expect that you’re going to do all of the thinking for them,” Pulvermacher said. “Don’t let them get frustrated while at your site. When somebody has a bad experience with your Web site, then they have had a bad experience with your business.”

Pulvermacher also teaches his seminar audiences about writing for the Web, a much different style than writing an essay, a thank you card or any kind of professional correspondence. He said most people skim the Web rather than reading it, meaning short, impactful phrases work more effectively than long paragraphs of text that read like a chapter of War of Peace.

All of our Web experts we spoke to for this article said frequently updating the content on your site will not only help with search engine optimization, but will also keep past Web site visitors coming back for more.

A clean looking, professional design to your site is important as well, said White of Stellar Blue. Make it easy for the Web site visitor to access the information they need.

 All in perspective
Web 2.0 offers a lot to keep a business owner on his or her toes, especially on top of all the other marketing initiatives you pursue to reach your customer audience. And if you’re a small business owner who takes care of human resources, bookkeeping, cleaning the toilets and making the coffee, more improvements to your Web site might be the furthest thing from your mind.

So where’s a good place to start?

VanDen Heuvel recommends his clients have a clear idea of the expectations of their Web site. If you have pie-in-the-sky expectations, it might take more work to get there than you have time, money or desire.

It’s also crucial to be aware of your Web site statistics, such as visitor traffic, how visitors get to your site, and how long they stay, as examples. Stellar Blue, for instance, sends its clients a brief email update each morning of their Web traffic statistics. Both Dobinski and White of Stellar Blue said it’s important to set goals and expectations for some of the metrics related to Web site traffic. Evaluating the changes in that data over time allows both the Web site owner and their Web developer to modify the site accordingly to more effectively cater to your audience’s needs.

All in all, even with the advent of Web 2.0, the fundamentals of marketing haven’t changed. Promoting your business is still about reaching out to the audience who can benefit most from your products and services.

“(In the short term) Technology changes, human behaviors don’t,” VanDen Heuvel said, reciting a mantra he said he regularly shares with his clients.