The Cutting Edge of Online Marketing

I love it when simple products do a job extraordinarily well. In a recent blog post, Refreshing Your Manufactured Housing website – why?, we covered some of the reasons why now may be the time to update your online information. If you haven’t read it, of have forgotten it, read it again.

In the July issue of MHMSM.com, Maria Cucchiara of All Seasons Communications wrote Six Reasons to Update Your Current MH Website, which explained why an updated website is a necessity. Again, read it or re-read it – there is wisdom in Maria’s words.

All well and good. All commercial websites need to be refreshed every few years or their effectiveness starts to fade. And that is a job for a web design professional. If that’s where you find yourself, call us.

But what about those little changes that need to be made from time to time? You know the ones… a changed price or phone number. Adding a feature to a bullet list. Adding or deleting a dated sentence…

If your’s is a small to medium operation, you may not want to call your web developer every time one of those pops up. If you hired an amateur – or a part-time developer – you may have to wait a long time to get the change made – if ever. They may have simply disappeared or gone out of business.

What if there was a way to make it easy for anyone in your office who can create a simple Word doc to make those little updates for you? Think that could save you some time and money? You bet it could!

If we had built your website, you probably wouldn’t be facing this problem right now because it would be built on a platform that allows you to make simple updates.

But even if your website was built using static pages, the ability to edit sections of your site can be added even now.

And if you can use Microsoft Word®, you can use the simple WYSIWYG interface that can be installed on your website using the files you use now, and keeping the “look and feel” of your current site – the design.

There is more information on this on the Update Your Own Website page at OrangeCat.net. If you are in the position where you or an employee need to make some updates to your website, this may be the answer.

And we’ve been doing this since 1996, so we’ve never vanished on any client.

Last April, in Google changes name, adds features to Local Business Center,we told you about Google changing the name of their Local Business Center to Googled Places, a geo-location service tied to their Local Business Listings.

The Google Places folks made this short video to give you a brief overview of Places and the Service Area feature.

Essentially, you use Places to define your service area – the area in which you service your customers. You can select your service area by city name, county or zip code.

And once you have defined your service area, you ca hide your business address. This comes in handy if you operate your business out of your home or primarily through a post office box or mail drop.

Retailers might find this useful to define the areas they wish to do business in. Installers and transporters can show the areas they serve. And Google can display your business on Google Maps in search engine results pages (SERPs) for your area(s) and your keywords.

Adding Places service area information to your Local Business Listing is really a “no-brainer” if your business services customers in areas other than just your home city.

Although I’m not big on pushing other’s products in these posts, there are times when a tool is just too good not to share.

My latest MHMSM.com article, Online Marketing 1-2-3, Part 2 – eMail Marketing explains why email is just as important to your marketing efforts now as ever.

In consulting with clients over the years, we’ve gone back and forth discussing the merits and drawbacks of various email deliver software or services. And there are pros and cons with every system. In this video, an AWeber user demonstrates just one reason why AWeber is the email application of choice for anyone who is serious about marketing online.

Would you like to:

• Email your list automatically every time you make a new post to your blog or website?
• Update your Facebook and Twitter accounts every time to send an email to your list?

These are just two of the many features of the AWeber application that will help you build your business.

There are tons of advantages to using AWeber over other providers. To learn what they can do for your business, visit the AWeber website</a>.

As stressed in The Manufactured Housing REVOLUTION, you can’t have a revolution without change. Several times in the past month or so, we have mentioned the necessity to keep your website information fresh.

You may have changed models, prices, options or other important information. Sometimes the website lags behind. That’s not a good thing because according to the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), some 80% of home purchases begin with the buyer doing research online.

Outdated information on your website can cause them to conclude that your business is out of touch with the market and may lead them to eliminate you as a possible source for their new home without further consideration.

Web design that hasn’t been refreshed in a long time (5 years is way beyond the optimal lifespan of a website design), can leave your business looking as outdated as the design itself. But that is a topic for another post.

There a lot of reasons why the information on a retailer’s or community’s website becomes outdated. One of the most common that I hear is that the web designer has disappeared, gone off to college or gone out of business – the recession has taken a lot of good web designers out of the field.

When the person that designed your website becomes unavailable to do updates, for whatever reason, the website tends to recede into the background of company concerns.

Bad move. An out-of-date website’s effectiveness as a marketing tool becomes quickly compromised.

Does your business or community website have current information on homes available right NOW at your location. If not, why not?

Is it because there is no provision for that information on your website? Or is it because there is no one available who knows how to do it? Or is it just too difficult and time-consuming to keep it updated?

Those are all common reasons for not having an updated homes list on your website.

How about your customer or community newsletter. Do you have one? Do you send it by direct mail or physically distribute it in your community? Do you email it? Do you keep a current issue and an archive of past issues on your website?

Again, if not, why not?

If you don’t yet have a website for your business, now would be the time to get one set up as the situation improves both in the general economy and in the Manufactured Housing industry.

What you are looking for is a solution that is easy to update for you or your web designer. An easy to update application will save you both time and money and simplifies keeping your website updated

Adding one or more blogs to your current website or creating a new website with blogging capability is the answer to creating a newsletter or listing single properties in a Search Engine Friendly (SEF) environment.

The Search Engines L-O-V-E blogs – blogs are (or should be) updated on a regular basis and they archive all of the information published to them in an organized archive. Search Engines try to supply searchers with solid, up-to-date information and a well-organized, organically growing website gets their attention.

Your chances of achieving a high search engine ranking in your region is greatly increased by having a blog, and you can have more than one blog attached to your domain.

For instance, MHMarketingSalesManagement.com has the main database-driven website with over 900 items and has blogs like this one that feature individual writers such as myself, Editor L.A. ‘Tony’ Kovach and Tim Connor as well as the Industry Voices and Inspirations blogs.

A blog (or blogs) can be added to any existing website fairly easily. A blog can also be the primary website by using pages more prominently than posts. A good example of this is the website I created for a limousine company in Danville, Kentucky and which now holds the #2, #3 and #4 spots for it’s keywords in Google’s Search Engine Results. It has all pages and no posts at this time and so functions as a traditional website.

The takeaway from this is that whether you have a website or not, you should consider adding a blog to your online marketing toolbelt. Use it to share new homes you have available, keep customers updated on what is happening in your company or community, get that newsletter online or perform any number of other online marketing related tasks.