Many of us in the marketing services and/or agency business are 
starting to see some real tangible marketing patterns emerging 
that businesses need to be aware of if they want to leverage 
their marketing dollars in this "post .com implosion economy."  

GOOD WEB SITE DESIGN INCREASINGLY MORE IMPORTANT

It's imperative for a company to have a quality web site today 
- but many firms are still throwing up web sites that are just 
poorly designed or overly complex. Poor navigation (menus and 
overall site structure) when coupled with low quality graphics 
is really problematical (!) - online visitors think less of 
your company as a result which will hurt revenue in the long 
run. Many think just doing a minimal job is sufficient but 
they aren't factoring in how close your competition is! On 
the web any potential customer is only one click away from 
seeing a high quality web site that is well designed and 
conveys a quality image. 

A good rule of thumb when budgeting for a web site is to 
assume you will pay approximately $250-300. USD per page 
- this should include your graphics design, content 
development, setting up registration forms, etc. This may 
sound too expensive for many companies but for better or 
worse perception is reality in the online world! So, don't 
short change yourself, put some resources into your web site 
and be prepared to continue to do so - it's now a vital 
component of any company's ongoing marketing processes that 
needs constant upgrading like traditional marcom (PR, print, 
etc.) materials. 

OPT-IN E-MAIL TRENDING DOWN BUT STILL VIABLE 

Opt-in or permission based e-mail (meaning people give 
you "permission" to market to them) response rates for 
Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer are dropping 
below where they were a year ago by 30-50% on average. 
What's happening? The ever-increasing deluge of Spam is 
negating the throughput (response rates, purchases, etc.) 
of quality opt-in e-mail. 

Opt-in e-mail is still a viable and excellent way to market 
your company but expect less results, lower costs/fees (more 
vendors equals more competition which is good) and the need to 
repeat your campaigns if you want to see tangible results. And 
don't get dazzled by a design firm or your in house marketing 
staff that wants to design a fancy HTML e-mail message for you 
- 65-75% of the market today still doesn't want fancy graphics, 
they want a short message, delivered concisely with short 
paragraphs in a text format. Less is more! 

PERFORMANCE BASED MARKETING ON UPSWING

Publishers and advertisers are more and more willing to accept 
advertising which is "performance based" and/or based on a 
"cost per click" or even a revenue share basis. Meaning, it's 
not like putting an ad in the USA Today and hoping people 
respond to the publication - you can now work with list 
brokers, online publishers and marketing organizations to 
setup very targeted campaigns that are based on your paying 
a small cost for an actual response to your message via an 
opt-in e-mail campaign, text link ad on a web site and/or an 
insert in a newsletter. 

Case in point, companies like Virtumundo, Inc. (they are a 
pioneer in the performance based market) are now willing to 
charge nothing upfront in many cases for an advertising 
campaign and to just do a revenue share with you on the 
back end; this is typically 20-40% of your SRP, will vary 
depending upon your goods and/or services. And, they will 
do a test campaign prior to a full-bore campaign to make 
sure that the response rates will be worth their investment. 

Another key benefit to any business that wants to leverage the 
shifts occurring in performance-based marketing is its inherent 
ability to be highly targeted. You can tie a marketing process 
(campaign) to web site, newsletter or pay per click search 
engine (Overture and now via Google's Ad Words Program) with 
specific demographics that are highly qualified and targeted. 
Contrast this again with the traditional print medium where you 
can target to a certain extent; but not like performance-based 
marketing. Consider an ad again (for example) in the sports 
section of the USA Today - it will clearly deliver a sports 
enthusiast, but not a male who plays tennis that lives in the 
Western US, etc. And, better targeting will always deliver 
better results, assuming all other issues are on a level 
playing field. 

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING STILL A MYSTERY TO MANY

I hate to say it but most of the web sites we analyze still 
don't have the basic HTML fundamentals (Title, Keywords, 
Description) in-place so their sites can/will be indexed 
(reviewed by an automated bot/software agent) properly. 
Their title is wrong (don't repeat your company name), there 
are too many keywords (you want 8-12) or the wrong keywords 
and the description of the company is either poorly written 
or reads like yet another "mission statement" that has been 
developed by the CEO/CFO and three Senior VPs. This is basic 
block and tackling marketing and should be setup properly 
when a web site is designed. 

Be prepared to deploy some marketing resources for quality 
Search Engine Marketing - it's fiercely competitive for web 
site rankings; you've got 3-5K web sites coming online every 
single day of the week and many are trying to drive market 
awareness via S/Engine ranking. What's a rule of thumb of 
what to pay for standard S/Engine Marketing Services: i.e. 
Title/Description Development, Keyword Analysis, Content 
Rewrites, etc.? Costs can vary tremendously, depending on 
your market segment, web site size, what type of services 
you outsource, competitive issues, etc. Generally expect to 
pay $3-6K for a basic 3-4 month campaign and then some modest 
fee for ongoing maintenance (say $200-500.per month). There 
are alternative sophisticated S/Engine processes that cost 
much more than this, but these are typically suited for 
companies that have a good sized marketing budget and or 
a large web site that necessitates a different approach.