Web Marketing (part 5)

Great articles just keep arriving in my inbox! Don't think for a
minute that I just use these articles to put up 'some post', they
actually reflect what I think about Web design, web development,
and web marketing, written by a professional who has time to put
these thoughts and insights down.
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The New Marketing Landscape

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!

By Lee Traupel (c) 2005
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Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of marketing experience. He is
the co-founder of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium
based, privately held, Marketing Services and Software Company,
Intelective Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com.
Intelective focuses exclusively on providing services to
small-to-medium-sized companies that need strategic and tactical
marketing services. He can be reached at Lee@intelective.com.
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