Mobile Redirect Options:

1. Redirect to mobile version of website and provide an opt-out to full version of site
2. No redirect and provide an opt-in to mobile version of site
3. Provide an interstitial page asking the visitor what version of the website they want to see

Cookie duration can provide additional customization options.

My Preference for Mobile Redirects

In most cases, I’m a fan of automatically redirecting visitors to the mobile version of the site and providing an opt-out to the full website. I think this provides the best experience (assuming your mobile site has the same functionality as your main website) as it doesn’t force the user to think. Obviously, there may be situations where this isn’t the correct method, but I think for most websites it works best.

The second option (not redirecting users to the mobile site and providing an opt-in) usually gets lost in the details. Often the design of the website causes the opt-in link to be small enough to go unnoticed. And if it does get noticed, the user is forced to reload the page.

The third option (interstitial page) is my least favorite option. It places too much pressure on the user; how should they know what version of your website to use, they haven’t even seen it yet!

Even though I believe one method is better than the rest, any of the three options can provide a good experience if implemented correctly. Unfortunately, since all websites are different, selecting the wrong method for your site can destroy the user experience.

Examples of what not to do

OK! Magazine
OK! Magazine automatically redirects mobile visitors to the mobile site and they also check to see if the content is available via the mobile design – Great!…except, this is where things start to go down hill.

If the content isn’t available, they provide you with an interstitial page that supposedly redirects you to the full version of the site, which would be great except the redirect overrides your ability to access the full version. So clicking the link simply reloads the same 404 page. Boo!

TMZ
TMZ chooses to automatically redirect all mobile users to their homepage. For someone reaching the website through search, this adds zero value as most likely they are interested in a specific page and could care less about the homepage story (Justin Bieber’s alleged baby mama!)

What they should do:
You’ll notice in both examples the website used my preferred method of redirect (automatic), however, it was implemented poorly and therefore ruined the experience. Both sites would have been better off simply loading the full version of the site as the content wasn’t accessible via the mobile design.

Having a mobile site is not enough and handling redirects poorly is worse than not having a mobile site at all.

How Not To Handle Mobile Redirects is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

These tools provide a wealth of information but we also use another great tool. One that’s often overlooked in the SEO world…our eyes.

Usability, Design and Interaction
These 3 items are rarely talked about in search circles since they’re not necessary to have a properly optimized website (or at least they weren’t). However, investing in these elements can deliver tremendous value to the overall site and can actually help strengthen more traditional search metrics.

The Human Test
Search engines are increasingly becoming more human and the Google Panda update is a great example of this. With it’s release, Google was able to take feedback from human quality raters, apply it to their algorithm and scale it on a massive level. All of a sudden Google became a much better judge of website quality.

Measuring a Feeling
Now, you can argue that aspects of usability, design and interaction can be translated into quantifiable metrics like browse rates, facebook likes and so on. It’s true. Our audits include these measurements and more like it, but these numbers provide you with the outcome, not the cause. You need to understand what the data is telling you.

Seeing the whole picture
If you’re not using your eyes and reviewing the website for design, usability and interaction, you are missing a huge aspect of the website and its ability to perform well in organic search. Technical aspects, content and information architecture are all incredibly important, but they’re still only pieces of the puzzle. They don’t tell the whole story.

The time to focus on site design, usability and interaction is now! These elements will only increase in importance as time passes and will separate the sites that attract massive amounts of search traffic and those that do not.

You may also be interested in these articles:
Calculating Website Redesign ROI
Don’t Settle For Bad Web Design
Shame On You Apple

Photo courtesy of Thomas Shahan.

See With Your Eyes, Not With Your Tools is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

The list contains tools for SEO management, paid search (PPC) optimization, usability testing, analytics, email marketing and social media management.

Website Visitor Testing, Usability & Feedback Tools

Userfly
Tags: Usability Testing, User Testing, Recorded User Visits

Userfly provides instantaneous web user studies by recording user visits and letting you play them back to see every mouse movement, click, and form interaction.

Clicktale
Tags: Customer Experience Analysis, In-Page Analytics, Heatmaps

ClickTale focuses on visitor interactions inside web pages, recording everything from mouse moves and clicks to actual keystrokes. This gives a much more thorough, in-depth view into what your visitors are focusing on and interacting with inside the pages themselves.

Crazy Egg
Tags: Heatmaps, Click Tracking

Crazy Egg lets you visualize every click your visitors make. Discover exactly how visitors are using your website – then optimize it to increase your conversion rate.

Landing Page Testing, Multivariate/AB Testing Tools

Unbounce
Tags: Landing Page Software, AB Testing

Unbounce is a self-serve hosted service that provides marketers doing paid search, banner ads, email or social media marketing, the easiest way to create, publish & test promotion specific landing pages without the need for IT or developers.

Visual Website Optimizer
Tags: AB Tests, Split Testing, Multivariate Testing

Visual Website Optimizer is an easy to use A/B testing tool featuring point-and-click test designer and WYSIWYG editor for creating variations. It also dramatically shortens time to go live with your A/B tests because of the innovative “tag-less” integration.

Google Website Optimizer
Tags: Website Optimization, Website Testing

Website Optimizer shows alternative pages at random to your website visitors, then measures which versions lead to the conversions you want.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Software Tools

Seomoz
Tags: SEO Software, Backlink Analysis, SEO Community

SEOmoz PRO combines campaign-based monitoring, actionable recommendations and premium access to the web’s largest SEO community.

Raven
Tags: SEO software, Link Building Software, SEO campaign management

Raven online software system helps customers quickly research, manage, monitor and report on SEO, email, social media and other internet marketing campaigns.

Paid Search Management (PPC) Software

SpyFu
Tags: Competitor Keyword Analysis, Google AdWords Competitive Analysis

SpyFu allows you to enter in any domain and instantly see the Google AdWords keywords and ad copy which that site uses. You can also compare multiple websites and uncover hidden keyword opportunities.

Sem Rush

Tags: Google AdWords Keyword Analysis, Keyword Research

SEMRush is an online tool for Google organic and AdWords competitors keywords research.

Keyword Competitor
Tags: Keyword Research Tool, Competitive Insight

Keyword Competitor is a real-time keyword research and competitor monitoring tool. Real-time means that all the data collected from the Internet is on demand so that you know each keyword and SERPs and ad placement right now.

Website Analytics, Tracking and Data Software

WROI
Tags: PPC Conversion Tracking, Ecommerce Tracking

Track the clicks, leads and sales from all your online advertising in one place. Then, dig deep into each campaign to eliminate the ads, keywords, landing pages and placements that are costing you money without bringing in sales.

KISSinsights
Tags: Survey Tool, Online Surveys, Customer Feedback

KISSinsights gives your customers a way to tell you what they need. Ask a question (or two) and your customers will see it slide up from the bottom right-hand corner of your site.

Compete
Tags: Traffic Analysis, Website Traffic, Engagement Metrics

Monitor and benchmark traffic & engagement metrics on up to 1,000,000 different websites. Use competitive metrics to understand how your competitors are attracting and keeping customers online, and then improve your own on-site performance and marketing channel effectiveness.

Email Marketing Software

Mail Chimp
Tags: Email Marketing, Email List Management, Newsletters

MailChimp helps you design email newsletters, share them on social networks, integrate with services you already use and track your results. It’s like your own personal publishing platform.

Aweber
Tags: Email Marketing Software, Autoresponders,

AWeber’s email marketing tools like professional email signup forms & autoresponder services make it easy for you to build your email list and stay in touch with prospects.

Social Media Monitoring Tools

Radian6
Tags: Social Media Monitoring, Engagement

Radian6 gives you a complete platform to listen, measure and engage with your customers across the entire social web.

Lithium
Tags: Customer Engagement, Social CRM

Lithium engages your social customers (online and mobile) with habit-forming community experiences. We help you find them, find their passions and motivate them to participate so you can all make good things happen for each other.

HootSuite
Tags: Social Media Dashboard, Team Collaboration

HootSuite Social Media Dashboard helps enterprises maximize the reach and efficiency of social media outreach and listening efforts.

Seesmic
Tags: Social Media Tool, Social Services Management

Seesmic is a powerful collection of social management tools that provide businesses and individuals with everything they need to build their brand online. With applications on every platform, Seesmic is the most comprehensive solution on the market.

TweetDeck
Tags: Social Services Management, Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace

TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.

Miscellaneous Internet Marketing Tools

Hello Bar
Tags: Notification Bar, Header Bar, Toolbar

A simple notification bar for your website that delivers your message and drives more clicks.

If you liked this list please share it with friends!

Toolbox image courtesy of Robert Donovan

The Big List of Internet Marketing Tools is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

Most of the time, this sort of calculation is not done. Either because people believe it is too difficult to accurately calculate or they don’t want to be held accountable for their projections.

Why you should perform ROI calculations

Agency side: This sort of calculation can be extremely valuable during the new business stage. Quantifying the positive return of a website redesign will position your agency as much more than a creative shop.

Client side: Establishing estimates will give you a baseline for the new design and will let you know if the new site is performing better or worse than the existing site design. Not to mention it will get you thinking about additional tweaks and changes to the site post-redesign.

Calculating ROI
The easiest place to start is with actual data. Hopefully, you are accurately tracking website analytics and gathering this information is only a couple clicks away.

Conversion Rate: The number of visitors that reach the website divided by the number of desired actions taken on the site. Ideally, this metric should be specific to individual traffic sources and account for multi-touch attribution.

Monthly Web Traffic: The average number of website visitors. Pay attention to seasonalities and marketing campaigns that can skew these averages.

Close Rate: The number of website leads divided by the number of sales. You can disregard this number if you sell products/services directly through the website. In that case, close rate would equal conversion rate.

Average Sale Price: Your average sale price for an order.

Example website redesign ROI calculation
For illustrative purposes let’s say you are considering a redesign of your website that will cost $25,000.

Current (known) metrics

• Average monthly visits: 10,000
• Average conversion rate (leads): 2%
• Close rate (leads to sales): 30%
• Average order price: $250

Post redesign projections (estimated) metrics

• Projected average monthly visits: 11,000
• Projected average conversion rate (leads): 3%

Traffic increase impact
Due to increased publicity, ease of use and increased sharing among visitors of the site, we forecast the new website to increase overall web traffic by 1,000 visitors or 10%.

Beware of unqualified web traffic!
Sometimes a redesign can cause a huge temporary spike in traffic. Many of these visitors won’t be interested in your offering, they’re merely checking out this new website they’ve heard so much about. When forecasting traffic increases, you may want to be cautious and discount the numbers.

Conversion rate increase impact
An increase in overall conversion rates from 2% – 3% translates into an additional 100 leads per month (10,000 x 3%).

But remember – we are forecasting a 10% increase in traffic. This means the website will actually be generating 330 leads per month (11,000 x 3%). An increase of 130 leads per month or 50% over your existing rate!

Sales Impact
Since you haven’t changed anything in your sales process we don’t expect the close rate to improve. Historically, you have been able to close 30% of incoming leads at an average order price of $250. This means out of the 330 inbound leads, you will close about 99; an increase of 39 orders a month.

An additional 39 sales per month translates into an extra $9,750 in monthly revenue and $117,000 in additional revenue for the first year!

ROI on your website redesign
Assuming ongoing maintenance costs of the website don’t change, the cost of the redesign is fixed at $25,000 (cost of redesign). This means the annualized ROI is 368% (($117,000 – $25,000)/$25,000).

A word of caution
The increased traffic isn’t going to happen overnight, so when forecasting these numbers be sure to factor in the time it takes to realize the increase…it could be a month or two or three.

Analyzing the components and factors
Increasing your conversion rate by 50% or obtaining a 368% ROI on your redesign might sound insane but it shouldn’t.

Many websites do everything in their power to hinder prospective customers from converting. Simply by removing roadblocks, encouraging visitor interaction and focusing attention, you can convert more visitors into leads and more leads into sales.

Questions? Concerns? Tell us in the comments!

Calculating website redesign ROI is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

If you’re still looking for ideas and recommendations it’s not too late. Here are 25 resolutions worth pursuing.

25 internet marketing resolutions for 2011

Social Media Marketing:
1. Define an ROI for your social media efforts
2. Create better (targeted, relevant, exciting) blog content
3. Create higher quality multimedia content
4. Energize your community
5. Take part in a new community or blog

Search Engine Optimization:
6. Ensure everyone touching your website understands SEO
7. Encourage natural links for your website
8. Craft web content with natural search in mind
9. Ensure your site is following on-page SEO best practices
10. Proactively request high quality, relevant backlinks

Paid Search Marketing:
11. Don’t overlook the basics of PPC management
12. Judge performance on conversions, not just CTR’s
13. Improve under performing campaigns or discontinue them
14. Improve (AB test) your ad copy
15. Understand when it’s time to outsource PPC management

Web Analytics
16. Tag everything! Establish proper site wide reporting
17. Set actionable, meaningful web metrics
18. Invest in tools to give you the answers
19. Establish AB or multivariate testing on landing pages
20. Ensure someone is responsible for results

Web design
21. Invest in good great website design
22. Build better performing landing pages
23. Establish ROI projections for new designs
24. Design with different devices (mobile, tablet) in mind
25. Design for your consumers

AND one more because it’s so important…
26. Remember that email marketing is still cool

Photo courtesy of: Bob Jagendorf

25 Internet marketing resolutions is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

Cost – “We don’t have money for a quality design.”
Sorry this isn’t a valid excuse. It’s true, some websites can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars…but most don’t. Most small and medium sized websites can be had for $5,000 – $15,000. Some cost much less but I think the majority would probably fall within that range.

If a few thousand is too much to spend there are thousands of website templates that can be bought and customized for less than a hundred dollars. Sure a template isn’t as good as an original design, but when budgets are extremely tight (or nonexistent) a little bit of customization can go along way.

Nature of the business – “We are in a boring industry, people expect our site to look like this.”
This is easily the most ridiculous excuse. If all of your competitors have crappy websites wouldn’t you want to stand out from them with a great site?

In cases like this the bar is so incredibly low, all you have to do is not suck. Craft a user experience and design that customers don’t expect. Make it easy for them to navigate your site and find what they need. Give them an experience they will remember.

CMS limitations – “Our system can’t do that.”
There is absolutely no reason to be stuck with a content management system that doesn’t deliver what you need. The options are almost endless and prices start at absolutely free. Technology should not be a limitation to good website design.

Are you the cause of bad web design?
Maybe you haven’t been tripped up by the excuses above but somehow you still ended up with a poorly designed website. Could over involvement be the cause?

This is a difficult subject to broach because as an agency you want client involvement. However, it needs to be the right type and level of involvement. Some clients secure a great designer but don’t give them freedom to design the site. They feel the need to make countless edits and revisions for no real reason other than to be involved.

One of the reasons you select an agency or designer is trust. Trust them to build you the site you requested.

But it’s not completely the clients fault. As a designer you need to set expectations and educate clients on your design process. You also need to take their suggestions and determine if they make sense or not.

Your client will have a level of expertise within their industry that you simply can’t match. It’s possible you overlooked something, don’t let your pride get in the way. Design for your target consumer.

Agencies, designers, clients – what reasons for bad web design did we miss? Tell us in the comments!

Don’t settle for bad web design is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

Rosetta Stone is a leader in proprietary language-learning software. If you’re not familiar with the product, their language software is priced per level per language, i.e., level 1 Spanish. With each language consisting of three levels and each level costing around $200, the software is not cheap. And, needless to say, software with a high price tag will be subject to piracy.

So the question becomes:
Can a person actively searching for an illegal copy of software be convinced to pay for it?

Most companies would probably say no and simply pretend these people don’t exist and hope they go away. But Rosetta Stone doesn’t appear to be ignoring this group and actually is going out of their way to target them.

The above ad is shown on Google AdWords for the search phrases “Rosetta Stone Torrent” and “Rosetta Stone Rapidshare” (Rapidshare is a file upload site that many people use to host large files.).

According to Google keyword data:

Rosetta Stone Torrent:
Global monthly searches = 90,500
Average CPC = $0.05

Rosetta Stone Rapidshare:
Global monthly searches = 22,200
Average CPC = $0.05

So instead of missing 112,700 potential consumers every month, Rosetta Stone places an ad relevant to their search request (possibly instilling a little fear in them) and gives them a chance to purchase the software legally.

I have yet to see other companies employing this method, which is a shame because in most cases the volume of search warrants a response from the company.
Check out the data for Microsoft related keywords.

Office Torrent
Global monthly searches = 368,000
Average CPC = $0.93

Office Keygen 2007
Global monthly searches = 201,000
Average CPC = $0.79

A keygen (an abbreviated form of “key generator”) is a program that will generate valid CD keys for a piece of software.

Why this is important
I know it probably seems a little weird to target people that are actually trying to steal your product. However, consider where they are in the buying cycle.

1. Awareness √
2. Interest √
3. Desire √
4. Action

This person is well aware of who you are, they are very interested in your offering and they are actively searching for a way to take action. Don’t let them get away now!

Why it works
Let’s not forget the facts: downloading software is illegal, it’s time consuming and can lead to viruses and spyware. No, not all of the pirates are going to concede to defeat and buy your software. But, some percentage of them will. Make it easy for them to do so.

Sweeten the deal
The ad below appears when you search for “Rosetta Stone Coupon” and similar variations.

When you click the ad you are taken to a landing page that gives you 10% off. Rosetta Stone is offering this discount because the customer is one step away from a purchase and the company wants to remove all doubt. Everyone likes to get a deal and most people don’t mind paying for something if they see value in it. Why not offer this same incentive to individuals trying to get a free copy of your software.

You’re not rewarding bad behavior, your encouraging good behavior with a reward.

It’s time to start thinking outside the box when it comes to paid search marketing. It’s so much more than a simple direct response. Yarrrgh what ye say matey?

Profiting from Pirates is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

If you’re familiar with Google AdWords, then you probably know that within the campaign settings you have the ability to target consumers with smartphones (i.e., full HTML mobile browsers). Google calls this “device platform targeting.” Even better, AdWords allows you to directly launch the iTunes Apps Store, Google Maps or YouTube applications from the sponsored ad.

This seems like a no brainer for companies selling apps and music downloads. Create a campaign – target only mobile users and direct them to your offering in the app store or on iTunes. Keep in mind that you can’t target specific types of smartphones (i.e., only iPhones or only Blackberrys) but with smart keyword and negative keyword choices, you can get pretty darn close.

Tom Tom AdWords ad and corresponding mobile site

Tom Tom provides a soft landing for mobile users and quick access to buy the app in the iTunes App Store.

When not searching from a smart phone, the same ad directs you to the regular website.

Why I’m picking on Apple

I was determined to find examples of companies targeting mobile users and directing them to a mobile version of the site and the most logical company to showcase would be Apple – right? You would think that a company that owns about 11% of the smart phone market and almost all of the mobile searches performed each month would want to show off their mobile prowess with a slick iPhone optimized site. The problem is, this site doesn’t exist.

Each of the AdWords ads (as well as organic search results) for Apple directed me to portions of their main website. It seemed that no matter what I searched for, I couldn’t get a mobile version of their site. Note: I performed the same searches on a Blackberry Pearl and had similar results.

Why is this troubling?

Read any design or usability blog and you’re sure to hear about Apple’s well laid out and intuitive web design. However, when this same design is displayed on mobile browsers, it becomes completely useless.

Apple’s homepage as displayed on the iPhone

Secondary iPhone page displayed on the iPhone

I’m sure you could argue that mobile visitors are only a small percentage of total visitors to Apple.com, but is that really any excuse not to have a mobile site? Compete shows that Apple.com get’s about 23M unique visitors a month. Assuming that even a small percentage of them are mobile users (0.5%), this means that 138,000 visitors are greeted each year to a site that is cumbersome to read and navigate.

AdWords mobile advertising – what you should do

1. The first step is to determine if you want to show your AdWords ads to mobile users. If the answer is no, then simply uncheck this option in your AdWords setting. If the answer is yes, move on to the next step.
2. Determine if your current landing page is suitable for mobile users. Most likely it will need additional modifications.
3. Create a new version of the landing page optimized for mobile browsers
4. Copy your existing AdWords campaign but target only mobile users in AdWords settings

Need some inspiration for your iPhone optimized site?
Check out these resources

• Smashing Magazine – showcase of iPhone optimized websites
• CSS iPhone gallery
• Engage interactive mobile site – This site not only displays well in the iPhone browser, it actually responds to movement of the phone. Turn your phone to the left and right and browse the site effortlessly.

UPDATE: 1/20/2010
Today Google announced new targeting for mobile ads.

• Device targeting now allows you to target specific mobile devices and mobile carries.
• Ads linking to mobile app downloads will automatically appear only on devices that offer those apps. Plus, the ad will display a ‘Download’ link instead of a URL

What do you think – Does Apple need an iPhone optimized version of their website?

Shame on you Apple is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

I recently joined a new gym and paid for a full-year membership upfront. About 2 weeks into my year membership, I walk into the gym and see a giant banner advertising a yearly membership for 62% less than I had just paid. Not 10%, Not 25% but a full 62% cheaper. To make matters worse, I provided my email address when signing up and the owner of the gym thought this would be a good time to do a little email marketing. Yes, not only was I forced to see the new lower price every time I ventured into the gym but I was reminded via email that now was a good time to buy a year package.

If this scenario sounds familiar it should. It was only a couple of years ago that Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to early iPhone adopters recognizing that they should receive compensation after Apple dropped the price of the phone from $599 to $399 only 2 months after release (wow, remember those days?) Sure it took a couple hundred complaints to get Steve to respond but eventually he did, offering a credit to the  group of early adopters.

What should marketers do?
Like any 12 step program the first step is admitting you have a problem or, more accurately, acknowledging that some of your customers are going to be angry with your new promotion. This in itself isn’t a bad thing; it’s what you do next that matters.

Determine the size of the group affected
How large is this group? How many people are affected by the new promotion?

Determine the extent of the issue
How big of a deal is this to your customers? Is it something worth tweeting/bloging/facebooking about?

Propose a solution
If the group is large enough and the issue is severe enough, you’ll need to develop a solution. You don’t have to match your current deal and I’m not promoting that you do. The customer did derive value from purchasing your offering and hopefully has been enjoying it this entire time. But understand that this value might not equal the cost savings they could have received had they waited to purchase.

What do you think? Have you been burned by purchasing at the wrong time? We want to hear about it in the comments.

BTW – email address isn’t the only field in your customer database, please use other data when deciding who to send an email to. I don’t want to be encouraged to make a purchase days after I just did. If this is confusing please read more on what Seth Godin says about friction here.

Don’t tick off your customers is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

Digital marketing in a recession:
Hint – Don’t cut your budget and give away free stuff!

Forget about just weathering the storm and hiding under the covers. Now is the time to increase conversions, streamline your digital marketing and grab market share cheap! I know most companies will have the kneejerk reaction to cut their marketing and advertising budget. That’s fine if you want to lose market share and profits. But, if you’d like to keep your current customers and maybe gain new ones, don’t cut your budget – cut your costs and refocus your attention. Here are 8 steps to help you market electronically in a down economy.

1. Grab the low hanging fruit
You have the choice to attract new customers or retain and up-sell existing customers. The latter will always be easier and cheaper, especially in a recession. You already have a wealth of data on your existing customers (or at least you should), you know what they’ve purchased in the past and what products are logical up-sales and compliments. Reach out to your current customers and engage them in conversation. Remind them you still exist and you have solutions they need. In economic downtimes, consumers are looking for brands and companies they can trust and who better to trust then someone that has already sold them something.

2. Remove deterrents
Take a look at your website with a new set of eyes. Better yet, have a prospective customer or current customer review your website. Are there pages that are confusing? Are there broken links or missing content? Do you have images that don’t quite fit your brand image? Now is the time to clean up your site and take care of these items.

What are your goals for the website? Does your content help you achieve these goals? If not, get rid of it. Less is always more – say just enough and then move on. Cramming more information into your pages isn’t going to convert more customers. It will most likely just turn them off.

3. Focus on the middle and bottom of the sales funnel
If you have a website analytics or CRM system, now is the time to mine it (if you don’t have one, what the heck are you waiting for?). Take a look at your current conversion rate. This is your baseline. Your goal is to beat this number and close more sales and leads. Take a look at your conversion funnel. The conversion funnel is the steps a user must go through to accomplish a goal. Most analytics programs will visually represent your conversion funnel. Take a look at your goal abandonment percentage. Where are visitors bailing out? Take a look at these pages, fix them, provide additional content that is missing, and remove content that isn’t needed.

4. Don’t waste money on consumers that will never buy!
This seems obvious and it should be but frankly a lot of companies are directly or indirectly marketing to people that will never buy their products or services. Review your current advertisements and placements. Are you spending money on sites that have never led to a sale? Are you purchasing keywords that have never led to a conversion? Now is the time to trim the fat. Go back and comb through your data. The key is not cutting your budget but redistributing the money spent on losing campaigns to those that are returning a profitable return.

I would like to issue a word of caution when analyzing customer data. The old school methodology is to look at customers over their lifetime and review direct sales from these consumers. I’m not saying this isn’t beneficial to do (it is and I would recommend you do it) however, this methodology doesn’t take referrals into account. If your business has invested any effort into social media you will want to review your customers and see which ones are the most valuable to your company with a different set of metrics. How many friends have they referred to your site? What is the total value of all those sales? Expand the value generated to include these additional customers and recalculate their value. How do they stack up now?

5. Lower your customer acquisition costs
Your customer acquisition costs are all the costs associated with acquiring a new customer. To determine this number, divide total acquisition expenses by total new customers. Most online marketing mediums will compute this number for you automatically. Because each medium will have different costs associated with it, compute this number for each medium separately.

For paid search marketing there are several tactics that will help you lower your costs of acquisitions. On an overall campaign basis, you should already be working towards lowering your cost per click (CPC) by improving your keyword quality score and conversion rates. This is nothing new. You should already be doing this, but more often than not, I see companies that monitor their keyword lists for a few months and then never log back in. If you don’t have time to monitor your paid search campaign, hire someone who can. Otherwise, you’re wasting money.

6. Follow your competitors even closer than normal
Do you visit your competitors website, do you read their blog, are you signed up to receive their newsletters – You should be. As I mentioned earlier the kneejerk reaction in a recession is to dramatically cut operating costs by trimming advertising budgets and reducing services deemed unnecessary by the powers that be. This can be a huge opportunity for your organization to step in and sweep these customers off their feet. Did your competitor stop offering support for a legacy version of software? Maybe you should start. Has your competitor dropped their ad spend on Adwords? Maybe you should increase your daily budget. The key here is to monitor your competitors’ actions and be ready to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

7. Understand your customer’s situation – Get out of your bubble!
Are you ignoring the fact that your customers 401K just got wacked for half its value and they’re worried about keeping their jobs in the next year? How can you expect your customers to care about you if you don’t care about them? Your company can’t operate within a bubble. Be real, be compassionate and be relevant to consumers. If you’re developing Ad creative, consider using current topics and concerns of your customers. If you’re unsure what I’m talking about, take a look at the new Allstate and Hyundai commercials.

8. Look for new outlets to reach customers at a lower cost
Ah, social media – I saved my favorite for last. No matter how cool and relevant your website is, consumers are going to spend their time elsewhere and that’s ok. The great thing about social media is that it allows your customers to experience your brand and company on external websites. Remember, no website is an island. You want visitors to consume your content on their time. Setup company pages on relevant social media sites and automate content updates with RSS feeds and subscriptions. Not sure where to begin? Perform a couple of company name searches across Google, facebook and Linkedin and see what turns up. You may find your brand loyalists have already setup pages dedicated to your company.

Conclusion
I haven’t presented anything new here. Digital marketing in a recession shouldn’t be any different than marketing in times of prosperity. However, in times of abundance we have the tendency to be lazy and not monitor items as closely as we should. Often items go overlooked and unchecked but when sales drop and costs become more visible these items come back to the forefront.

Online marketing in a recession is a post from: Radium
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