These simple recommendations for 2009 will help businesses and organizations kick start or accentuate their online marketing efforts.

1. Do track and monitor visitor behavior.

Studying your Web site visitor’s behaviors will enable you to determine what on the web site works in order to have visitors meet the objectives of your web site. Analyzing your web statistics on a regular basis will give you a better understanding of how to enhance or improve your site. Information such as referring keywords and referring sites can lead to opportunities that will increase your online presence. If you’re unsure how to get started, we recommend talking to your hosting provider to see what Web statistics tracking comes with your account, or use free analytics tools such as Google Analytics or AWStats, No site should be without these, and it is vital to your success online.

2. Do set online goals and objectives for your company or organization.

Ask yourself what goals you want to achieve for your company. It could be increasing sales leads, revenue, awareness, online visibility or trial downloads. Objectives for your company can be as simple as increasing more eyeballs to a specific page on your site, downloading a whitepaper, or making sure visitors can easily navigate their way through your sales process. If you don’t set goals or have an understanding of what your objectives are, your Web site is merely a glorified marketing brochure. Make your Web site accountable and put it to work for your business.

3. Don’t build a new Web site without first understanding what was working and what was not on the existing site.

Before you write that big check for a new site, it may be a good idea to understand the successes and failures of your present site. If your site isn’t performing how you would like, it may just need some improvements and clear paths to goals. If you’ve got an idea that your site should be entirely video, hot pink, or you want to add a multitude of new features, ask why and then ask if these new elements are appropriate for your audience and their needs? Assess your current site and your competitors’ sites. Review your site stats, conversion paths (are visitors having trouble accomplishing tasks or accessing pertinent information), talk with current staff and clients to get a better understanding of how to improve your site.

4. Do build and nurture your customer database. In a down economy, the old adage of “it is less expensive to keep a customer than find a new one” was never more accurate.

Repeat customers are often overlooked while advertising dollars are spent on obtaining new ones. Start at home. Customers who have previously bought from you are saying “We like you.” So why are you ignoring them? Learn about who they are, what they like, and how they like to be communicated with. Learning the reasons why customers continue to work with you can help direct your new customer acquisition strategies. Don’t underestimate the value of a testimonial from a repeat or long-time customer.

5. Do listen and talk to your customers. Your customer is your biggest asset. They will tell you what is working and what isn’t. See #4.

The customer IS always right. This saying has evolved to mean more than just the obvious. Who else is going to tell you where your company is falling short? Certainly not the folks who work for you. Your customers care about you – they do – but they need caring back. Your customer is your biggest asset. They will tell you what they need, how to market to them, where to market to them, and what they like and dislike about your products or services. If you are not willing to listen, plan on having a large advertising budget that continues to attract one-time business. When it comes to your Web site, you may have no trouble navigating because you use it everyday. What about a first-time user? Understanding the obstacles visitors face when visiting your site and addressing them can lead to a higher percentage of repeat business. A pleasant customer experience is worth a thousand words (or more business).

6. Don’t take email marketing for granted – it cannot be commoditized. Put the elbow grease into targeted and personalized email marketing. Track, test and analyze.

Sure, how hard can it be? You send email every day. Email is more than just hitting the send button. Segmenting your customer lists to market directly to their preferences can serve as your number one revenue generator. It seems like a daunting task, but you’ve got to start somewhere. How effective is your email marketing software? If your message is getting to only 80 percent of the folks on your list, that is 20 percent of revenue you may be missing. Make sure your email service provider has relationships with the appropriate ISP to ensure a high deliverability rate. Monitor your email results to understand how visitors are reacting to your messaging – from subject line to layout to copy. Utilize professional email solutions in conjunction with a quality web analytics package to remarket directly to them.

7. Do start a paid-search campaign or continue with one. This is still the most cost-effective advertising medium today. Knowledge gained can be used in other online and offline initiatives.

Paid search (such as Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN adCenter), can get you quick results and visibility within search engines. Statistics show that 20 percent of search engine users click on sponsored listings. You may garner sales from terms that you have no reasonable shot of generating non-paid traffic from. Furthermore, it is believed that visitors from paid listings are generally further along in the buying process, whereas organic visitors are most often gathering information.

8. Do start a blog. But have a plan, and know why and what you want to say.

Blogs are a great way to drive traffic and increase your online presence. But they don’t run themselves. Blogs need to be managed and maintained consistently to prove value. The biggest struggle is finding something valuable to say, especially when thousands of new blogs are created every day. Make sure you are offering something of interest to your target audience. Put yourself through a Q&A to discover your strengths, key areas of expertise, and most frequently asked questions from clients to get ideas on what to post and how you can provide value to your audience on an ongoing basis. Be prepared for negative comments and remember that a blog is not a surefire route to success. It takes hardwork and dedication.

9. Don’t buy blindly into the hype of social media. First understand what your goals are online and understand that social media equals managed media.

Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are merely tools in the toolbox. You can’t build a house with only a hammer and that is the same situation with your brand and your visibility online. Social networking for marketing purposes requires an organization to implement labor, management and planning. If there is no one there to manage or build the relationship, your efforts will fall flat. A clear focus, understanding of your audience, and reasonable expectations will save a lot of money and frustration in the long run.

Performics says “Discovery, Differentiation and Discounts Drive Online and Offline Holiday Shoppers to Search” and their new consumer research analyzes consumer shopping behavior and media consumption across seven consumer segments and nine vertical product categories.

In collaboration with ROI Research, Performics released survey results of 7,043 consumers on how search engines play a role in their purchasing decisions, seven demographic audience segments were questioned across nine different verticals.

Michael Kahn of Performic makes a key statement, “Consumers turn to search for different reasons, online strategies from one marketer to the next can look like night and day depending on the verticals and target segments each needs to navigate. In some cases, consumers use search to buy; in others, it’s a research tool, often used to find offline retail locations.”

Key differences across demographic segments were identified in how search is used in the purchase process, a few of these findings can be found below:

• 81 percent of silver surfers (65 years and older) spend at least an hour/day on the Internet, utilizing search to find best prices and product information, but typically buying offline
• 89 percent of African-Americans spend at least an hour/day on the Internet, most often using search to find offline locations, especially for automotive and electronic purchases
• Baby boomers used search more than 75 percent of the time when purchasing automobiles, appliance and electronics
• Gays/lesbians, who reported more overall shopping than other demographic segments in nearly every product category, used search most often to shop for automotive, appliance and electronic products and services

This online vs. offline dynamic emerged as a key theme. Some interesting findings include:

• Travel reigned as the top online product category, with 70 percent of respondents reporting making their last Travel purchase online
• Health care was the most dominant offline category, with 81 percent of consumers indicating their last purchase happened offline; yet 90 percent of respondents used search to research these purchases
• Use of search was split almost evenly across the seven segments for telecommunication purchases, and 39 percent made their purchases online
• Tweens were most likely to purchase apparel and electronics, but despite the notion that Tweens often “live” online, most make and recommend purchases offline

Liberty Interactive Marketing: We say that all advertising, on and offline works together.  Among all the clutter and the competition, you must be present online and ahead of your competition.  It does not necessarily mean having to spend more (although that does help), but in this economy it may make better sense to know who your customers are so that you can be there at the right time and the right place. It can be as simple as utilizing all resources online to make sure every brick and mortar location can be found easily online with an address, map, and phone number.  That your site is programmed efficiently for mobile accessibility. That your web site has an appropriate customer experience, in which consumers are able to access many different levels of information quickly and easily. Additionally important, is your visibility online within search engines and various shopping sites.  Can consumers find you, your products, and the information they need to make a purchase in-store or online? If they can’t, your competition is just one click away or up the street. What are you doing to keep the focus on you, to solidify the purchase process with every prospective customer?

Performics and ROI Research sought to gain a deeper understanding of the influence of search on consumer purchasing behavior including how frequently consumers use search to gather product information, compare prices, and look for specific brands or retailers. The study also tracked key demographics such as income, education and media consumption patterns. Read the full release here.

An analysis of the Scottrade conversion path and why they get two thumbs up from Liberty Interactive Marketing.

Their process goes something like this:
1. Searched “scottrade” in Google, they are running PPC for their branded term. Smart. Also, they show up #1 for their own company term. They’ve been awarded sitelinks from Google, those are the links below their listing in the organic – login, branch office locator, etc.

2. Login and open a new account are NOT hard to find! Thank you.

3. One criticism is when you hit “open an account” the form is a popup instead of just opening in a new window or taking you off the page.  Also, there are no question mark links (?) to help you select what type of account you want.  This is where I stopped, but the smart thing is that Scottrade asked for just some brief information about me prior to getting into the details of the account preferences and selection.  Why is this smart? Because this is a friction point. I stopped because I didn’t have the answer.  The next day I received a phone call from Joel, the Branch Manager hoping to help me out with completing my account setup.  I figured out the answer so I didn’t need to call him back.  Two days later I still hadn’t completed my account set up, but in the mail I received a PERSONALIZED booklet from Scottrade offering an offline way to complete my account setup! Wow, A) thanks for reminding me and B) thanks for helping me out if I didn’t feel comfortable completing it online.

4. The next week I finally completed my account setup online, what can I say I was busy.  The only portion I was unable to complete was linking my bank account.  Friction point.  Low and behold, I received another phone call from Joel, the Branch Manager (not a different person, the same person!!).  His voicemail offered to provide me with options for helping me set up my account for funding and  when I didn’t return his call, I received a paritally filled out form so help me along the process WITH A SELF-ADDRESSED POSTAGE APPLIED ENVELOPE! Thank you. It’s like my soccer coach always said “You can’t have control of the ball if you just stand around waiting for it to come to you, you must go to the ball to make things happen.”  Scottrade was bringing the proverbial “soccer ball” to them and it worked.

Why do I feel good about this persistence aka customer service? Because Scottrade found the right mix of online and offlline initiatives. They didn’t bug me until I was blue in the face and turned off from the process.  Their methodology and flow was more like reading my mind because they were aware of the friction points within their conversion process.

How you can get there?
1. Start with your Web site, ask friends, family, strangers to use your site and ask them to complete your desired goal for them, if you are serious about investing in your online customer experience, contact us or  Red Flag Consulting

2. Determine friction points throughout your conversion funnel/process, are they something that can be fixed online or do they require offline operations/interference to get customers to the end goal? Determine solutions, time and effort. Rethink your process if necessary, just because it isn’t broken doesn’t mean it can’t be improved! Raising conversions even .5% can have a serious impact on business.

3. Talk to your customers, listen to your customers, find out what went wrong, what worked, etc. Make changes and test!

4. Keep testing, if you find that your conversion process is half online and half offline find the right mix of phone calls, emails, direct mail.  You’re bound to tick some people off but at least you will learn if you are willing to listen.

4. Implement online marketing strategies, test landing pages and your process from all lead sources.

5. Listen, learn, test, repeat.

6. Feel comfortable with not being able to please everyone; please the majority, the right majority and you will remain on the right track.

Congrats to Scottrade for an excellent example of how to get customers through your conversion funnel, understanding that there were friction points along the way and knowing how to solve those to get customers to complete their desired task, as well as yours.