Will the core of your e-commerce website be about advertising, market trends, competitive pricing, customer service or customer centric ( niche ) marketing. Where should you be concentrating your money and efforts?

advertising studies

According to a June 2006 study conducted on behalf of the Online Publishers Association (OPA) by the Center for Media Design at Ball State University, advertising dollars aren’t keeping up with skyrocketing consumer web demand.

Despite the fact that only 8% of all 2005 advertising dollars were spent on web advertising, the internet accounts for 17% of all media consumption— behind only TV and radio, and beating out all forms of print media. Additionally, the web is the only medium that ranked in the top two for consumption both at home and in the workplace.

Not only are people logging on in record numbers, but the connected consumer is also proving to be a worthwhile investment.

— Jessica Dye | EContent - Digital Content Strategies & Solutions : September 2006 | www.econtentmag.com

Before we get any further into this introduction; I would like to make clear the distinction between advertising on the Internet and website content form and function.

For the uninitiated and many others who conduct business via a website, please be fully aware of the following. The website is generally not a good advertising medium. In fact, it is almost common knowledge that studies and research will support; the website in and of itself as an advertising medium is quite terrible.

The website is best at providing an application or serving content. Primarily the website should serve as a platform for content publishing, information distribution and e-commerce.

The other side of this distinction is the Internet can be an excellent place to advertise.
The Internet encompasses a whole lot more that just websites, even though many would equate the two. E-mail is not a website, yet it can be useful as a great Internet customer services application and provide an advertising opportunity.

According to the Direct Marketing Association - E-Mail returned a whopping $57.25 for every dollar spent on it in 2005,… In contrast, print catalogs generated $7.09 and non-e-mail Internet marketing produced $22.52.

—by Ken Magill | Direct Magazine : November 2006 | www.directmag.com

Please note the above information is regarding legitimate e-mail and not spam. Effective
e-mail campaigns are conducted by ethical professionals who use proper tools, technique
( skills ) and measurement technologies.

resume

Aside from Internet e-mail, the search engine is by-in-large a delivery application that is thus designed to provide advertising opportunities for those with the skills to optimize the website and or pay the search engines to engage in pay-per-click advertising; among other search engine technological advertising opportunities.

Search engines are not really what you would consider websites but are another Internet based application. I think you should be getting the idea that the website is not a billboard made and deployed to advertise but rather an information delivery application.

advertising can be a little painful ( ouch $$ )

Advertising is, from the perspective of a small business person about as exciting as hammering on your thumb. You get the painful sensation that it is doing little if any good. You get the bill to show for your advertising efforts ( the pain ) but you aren’t sure you can pay the dang thing with the increase in business you hoped for.

Yes, I know you have advertised before and it just didn’t do it for you. You couldn’t see any positive difference in your business. Every once in a while you decide to advertise again just to see if you can see any difference in your bottom line. The last time you advertised did you ask yourself how you were going to measure its effectiveness?

should you advertise?

Remember this about advertising if you remember nothing else. If you can’t measure it, you won’t understand it. If you don’t understand it, you can’t manage it. If you can’t manage it, you won’t use it effectively and you are wasting time and money. Your advertising then becomes a crapshoot. You might win sometimes but mostly you will just lose. And you will never understand why. Just like gambling only without any of the fun.

If you equate advertising to marketing, then yes you should advertise. Marketing involves much more than buying space within some form of media, but that is another topic of discussion.

If you don’t understand advertising and you don’t have the tools and knowledge to measure and manage an advertising campaign, then you probably shouldn’t. Ask yourself it this is an area where you have some expertise and a better than average degree of successes.

Is the prospect of doing-it-yourself and spending $500 on a chance that your advertising campaign may be successful one worthwhile? How will you know if it is or isn’t?

Oh, I get it! If a whole bunch of people buy your product or service directly after you advertise then you done good, right?

Wouldn’t it be better to spend the same $500 with half of it going to a skilled professional who knows what they are doing and the other half on their recommendations for advertising to obtain a measured result.

where then to advertise?

Where it is best to advertise really depends on many different factors. Do you have a physical business presence or an online presence or do you have both. What kind of business do you have and what do you sell?

If you intend to do-it-yourself and not seek professional help with your advertising then you must at least employ the use of these basic concepts.

SEGMENTATION

Who specifically is your target audience?
Why are they a part of your target audience?
Where will you find them?
How will you speak to them?
What are you going to say to them?

If you want to make the best success of your advertising campaign you must break your audience into the smallest known common denominator. In other words, if you know their names and addresses; then advertise to them as individuals or at least as individuals belonging to a small group of like minded people.

Identify your customers and speak to their needs and concerns. Solve their problems or provide a solution for their consideration. Don’t address your customer generically in a general way.

RELEVANCY

Put yourself in the place of the customer. You are in fact someone’s customer. How do you feel about the day to day exposure you have to commercial sales.

Besides filtering all the advertising from spam e-mail, television, radio, printed publications, snail mail and the telemarketing crowd, what sales information do you listen, consider and then respond too?

The answer of course is only those things that are relevant and interesting to you.
Your customer or potential customer is no different than you when it comes to separating the advertising wheat from the chaff.

MEASUREMENT, TESTING and ANALYITICS

In order to understand and manage the scope of your marketing campaign you have to be able to measure its performance.

You should conduct enough research into the kind of marketing you intend and then develop various tests to differentiate the results.

Having access to sophisticated analytical technology, usually provided as an application service is essential to the proper measurement and testing of a marketing campaign.

THE SALES FUNNEL

The sales funnel is analogous to a physical funnel in that the top will accommodate a greater volume entering the larger end of the process whereas a smaller volume will result at the terminating end of the process.

Generating and tracking the progression of sales prospects through various stages of the purchasing decision; the sales funnel follows the treatment and sales mechanisms whereby prospects may reach various decision making milestones as they move through the funnel to the final purchase. The sales funnel too involves the development of metrics from marketing point of contact to actual sales conversion.

Complex sales funnel models denote the measurement of that ratio of prospects entering the sales cycle at the top of the funnel against the actual successful sales conversion at the bottom of the funnel.

Try this Interesting resource:
The Funnel Calculator
http://www.funnelcalculator.com/

closing thought

Although we have not discussed in much detail that which has been mentioned within this introduction to marketing basics, we will pour over each important aspect in future installments.

When it comes to advertising; think about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Spending hard earned money in a scatter-gun approach is a bad way to go. You don’t always have to make a sale on today’s advertising if you were able to prospect a customer that will buy next week or next month.

If thought out and planned carefully, advertising can and should provide you with incremental successes. Or at the very least you will acquire pertinent metrics that will prove their value in your next advertising campaign.

Making a sale today with advertising from yesterday’s promotion will be short lived if it is not designed to fill the sales funnel for steady and continued prospect tracking analysis and a commitment to long term marketing success.

— Julie Foster ©2006

Have you began thinking about your upcoming holiday marketing plans? I know it is a real brain-drain to be coming out of the end of your busy summer, but ignore holiday planning now at your own peril. Thinking about your business email campaign is a good place to start and may be the most productive for your small business.

I participated in a Webinar on August 15 sponsored by Habeas. “Habeas is an email trust authority that re-establishes email as a reliable business communications medium. Habeas enables commercial email senders to certify their communications as legitimate, and helps ISPs and message security vendors make better, more efficient decisions about how to sort inbound mail.” —Habeas

The webinar lasts about an hour and I did come away with some very useful information. Even though the webinar was really directed more toward big business, much of what was said does apply to small business as well.

Presented in slide form with audio, the presentation is simple and easy to follow. During the question and answer segment at the end of the presentation, I asked two questions which were specifically directed to small business. You will be able to hear the questions I asked and the answers, which were basically:

1. What are 3 bullet points small business can consider most important for their holiday email strategies?

2. What form is most desirable and acceptable to the small business customer; html composed email messages, or plain text?

Although you missed the live webinar presentation, an archive version is available and I would recommend you take an hour to view or at least listen to it during your lunchtime.

:Best Practices to Drive Holiday Sales through Email

Description: Online holiday sales are growing exponentially every year. Whether you’re an e-retail veteran or launching a holiday campaign for the first time, you can benefit from this free webinar on how to maximize your email programs to make the most of this season.

Learn what types of email programs perform best during the holidays. And, make sure your delivery rates are reaching their highest potential.

The webinar is presented by HABEAS and hosted by
Chris Brubaker, Marketing Director.

Key Takeaways:
• The time to prepare for the holidays is now
• Understand your real delivery rates
• One person should be responsible for the total email program

Guest Presenter from Forrester Research®
Sucharita Mulpuru, Senior Analyst

Online holiday sales will be significant in 2006, with projected online sales of $26 billion. A 20% increase of $4 billion over the $22 billion spent in 2005.

Email is the most common marketing tool of online retailers - 93%. Email is the most used and the most effective at one of the lowest costs per order.

The archive is available now:
http://www.habeas.com/en-US/archived_events/06aug/Presentation_Files/index.html——Habeas

Free email assessment to determine you Internet email reputation, i.e. is your company email on any email spam or blacklists.
http://www.habeas.com/en-US/reg/reg.php?s=repcheck_blacklist

How To Buy A Small Business - Top Tips From Successful Business Buyers

Date: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 Start: 6PM Pacific | 8PM Central | 9PM Eastern
Duration: 1 Hour

Fee: FREE

It is estimated that 80% of all individuals who set out to buy a small to mid-sized business never do so. There are many reasons why potential business buyers never end up buying a business but this workshop explores what problems and difficulties business buyers usually encounter and how to successfully overcome them. This online workshop covers everything from the right ways to search for a business to negotiating and closing the deal.

Who Should Attend: This webinar course is designed for potential business buyers who are looking to buy a small to mid-sized business and need the tools to actively search, find, and close on a deal.

Information & Skills Attendees Will Learn:

• How To Correctly Search & Find The Right Business For You
• How To Accurately Value Small & Mid-Sized Businesses In Today’s Market
• What Forms, Documents, & Information You Should Have Ready
• Learn The Correct “Protocol” Of Working With Brokers & Owners
• Why Non Disclosure Agreements & Buyer Profiles Are Important
• Dealing With Business Brokers, Agents, & Owners
• What To Look For In Tax Returns & Financial Statements
• Getting Brokers/Agents/Owners To Return Your Phone Calls & Emails
• Ideally Structuring The Deal That Is Best For You
• Get The Best Financing To Leverage Your Purchase
• Escrow & Transition Strategies To Ensure A Success Future

See details and register:

USABizMart.com https://www.usabizmart.com/education/

What makes a website good?
• Navigation — must be easy to figure out and not the least bit confusing. There should exist a natural organization (taxonomy) to lead the reader to the information or activity they desire in a logically ordered fashion.

What the heck is the three click rule? The answer is simple. The great majority of website visitors will look somewhere else if they cannot find some of what they are looking for on your website in (3) mouse-clicks.

The average shopping cart abandonment in a study conducted by Forrester Research was estimated at 48% in 2005. Don’t frustrate your visitors and shoppers attempting to figure-out your websites navigation system.

• Aesthetic — websites should be appealing and in good taste. Good taste being somewhat subjective, there should be a balance in the aesthetic appreciation by the audience or customer it is intended for. If it looks good, it will feel good to your audience.

• Organization — should be kept simple. Like the website navigation, the organization should flow in an ordered and understandable manner. Think the alphabet. In order to correctly get to the letter “Z”, you must first begin with the letter “A” and then proceed systematically forward. Everyone understands the alphabet and how it progresses. Your visitors will look for the natural flow through the website.

• Design & functionality — is and should be of primary importance in the development of the website. It must provide an appropriate appearance with good visual cues and an intuitive interface. The information too should not be overwhelming or overcrowded. Remember the axiom of KISS “keep it simple stupid” and “less is more”. In more professional development terms it is referred to as the “look and feel”.

Such development guidelines for the graphical design, navigation, form and function of the website is easier said than done. All this and website content too, is better left up to professional website development businesses.

I will digress a little here to emphasize as I did in “Does small business need help leveraging technologies — Part I”, that should there be genuine interest, determination, skills, tools and time to accomplish the task, then to follow through with the necessary ongoing maintenance, there exist a very fulfilling reward. The development of ones own website.

—Julie Foster ©2006 All Rights Reserved
Does small business need help leveraging technologies Part I – Building a business website
Does small business need help leveraging technologies Part II – What makes a website good

A big question with no simple answers. Let’s narrow the scope of this topic. There are indeed many things that you may have to consider. I can tell you right now before we get into the nitty-gritty of this question that you better weigh the pros and cons with due diligence. Failure to make the correct decision will cost you time, money, reputation and perhaps the very success of your online business presence.

The cost of “time”… You must be honest with yourself in determining whether or not you are really interested in learning all of the disciplines involved in developing your own website. At the very least you will have to have a sound working knowledge of the following:

• Programming:
You will be using one of the more common scripting techniques such as html, xhtml transitional, xhtml strict, css, asp, .net, php, dhtml or javascript ?

• Static vs Dynamic web pages:
If wanting to utilize a current design and dynamic generation of web pages you must have some working knowledge of database design and functionality. Most dynamic websites today use the opensource MySql database. Static websites have limited useful applications these days. Avoid them unless you a a specific requirement for their use.

• Authoring packages:
Several good ones are available, i.e. Adobe-Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive CS2, Microsoft FrontPage, CoffeeCup HTML Editor, NetOjects Fusion, etc.. There are many to choose from and you will find some of them expensive and extremely sophisticated (read complex.) Conversely there are many that are free and simplistic ( not to be confused with needing little knowledge or skills to use).

• Graphic design:
Understanding how to create graphic images, laying them out in an esthetically pleasing manner and being able to incorporate them into a useful web page design can be challenging for the very best of web authors.

Being aware of image color depth and size is of primary importance even before you tackle the scanning, acquisition and manipulation of the chosen graphic materials.

The cost of “time and money”…
Moving on to the expense involved. The equipment and software applications are anything but cheap. There is a lot of opensource software that is very capable. Although the documentation is not that great in many cases and support is often offered only as a paid extra. I personally believe that much opensource software is superior. Such application software should not be looked upon as free.

Regardless of where you get the equipment and or applications to accomplish your goal of being able to successfully design and deploy a website, there is always significant cost involved. You will be able to decide for yourself if the do-it-yourself approach is the way you want to go.

With this is mind you must certainly consider the routine maintenance of the website. It is an ugly thing to undertake the monetary, time consuming and mental investment of building the business website only to then be to sick-of-it for the continued routine of freshening content and the maintenance required of every successful web presence.

The cost of “your reputation”…
There is really no mystery about whether a business reputation effects the bottom-line.
If you have a nice business site that works properly and you deliver to the customer in the expected manner, then you will establish a good baseline reputation.

Should your website be difficult to navigate, poorly designed and it puts-off the customer in any manner; believe me, your reputation and bottom-line will suffer. You will develop what-ever reputation is paid you by the customer.

There is just to many places to buy what-ever widget or service you are selling. Customers are very discerning and demanding these days and competition for them is truly intense. Don’t risk your reputation and your investment.

In Summary:
Gone are the days of the late 90’s when you could get by with a clunky static website.
Everything is anew and everything has changed. If you have friends and neighbors that are giving you advice about your website and they are not currently involved in that industry directly as a business…. run..run..run from their advice.

If you really have the time, money and desire to forge ahead with self authoring, deployment and maintenance of your business website, then I encourage you to follow your dreams and pursue that pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow.

Should you be very interested to the point of shear excitement in tackling the aforementioned and you have the aptitude and determination; you may become quite fulfilled in developing your own online business presence.

Et cetera ….
First and foremost; Are you or is someone within your business or resource available circle of acquaintances “very skilled” in current web authoring technologies? Is spending your time or paying for in-house or a paid outsourced acquaintance to do the job— really cost effective? One must weigh all these factors and more against paying a professional to perform these and the many other aspects of marketing your online business.

— Julie Foster ©2006
Does small business need help leveraging technologies Part I – Building a business website
Does small business need help leveraging technologies Part II – What makes a website good

“The Essential Small Business Blog.”

I promise you will benefit in some way by your visit here and hopefully by your participation.

Are you planning a small business startup? Are you hoping to understand new marketing techniques in an online or brick and mortar business. Do you need help to sustain your very existence in a difficult economy? Do you desire to make more money and a greater success of your business?Wecome to Smarten’ up U “The Essential Small Business Blog.”

Let’s get down to it then! “Smarten’ up U” referred to by some as just “Sup-U” is your destination for understandable answers to small business questions and concerns. This blog is for everyone! If you are thinking about a startup or have an existing business — come here.

Over time this blog will be populated with insight from visitors just like you. Regardless of your experience, education or success — everyone has something to offer someone else. Perhaps you will present a different perspective, a look from outside the box, a past failure or a success.

The information and comments you find here may be a little irreverent. But you will find them poignant, useful and totally essential in your understanding of starting or conducting business as a small business owner in a modern and global marketplace. And yes, even if you are working from your home, garage or farm field this blog is meant for you.

Indulge me as I make a further comment about your participation here. Everyone wants to help you to understand and to succeed in your endeavor. And everyone wants to learn from you and understand your perspective. We all have something to offer and something to receive in our understanding. Please contribute your experience and knowledge. Please contribute your questions and answers and comments.

“Smarten’ Up U” exists to share resources, contribute comments, exchange ideas and experiences and develop a dialog into the universal study of what it takes to succeed in a small business venture. A very exciting challenge given the multiple and unique circumstances for every individual interest and budgetary resource.

— Julie Foster ©2006