The Cutting Edge of Online Marketing

We can't all give each other haircuts.  We can't all just flip burgers in restaurants.  Check out lines are necessary, but we can't all be in retail stores.  Someone has to produce something!  Producing nations – be it production in agricultural, energy, raw materials as well as goods (i.e.: manufacturing and building) – are historically more powerful, more independent than non-producing nations.

So while you can have "a service economy," in fact, the service economy over time compared to a production economy – all things being equal – will tend to see the producing nation gaining in wealth and power.

To be sure, this is an over-simplification, one designed to make a point.  There are other factors, such as the political system one works in.  Part of what made America great and so rapidly growing after the Revolution was our freedom, relatively lower taxation and less corruption than many other nations. 

The point is that production is necessary for 'the wealth of a nation' and its people!  Sure we need teachers, doctors, nurses and scientists.  We also need people who build homes, buildings, cars, computers, shoes, clothing and those who produce on a farm, ranch, etc., etc..  When we have more people making and producing – intellectual production can count too – then we can actually have more people giving haircuts and hamburgers (service jobs), who can make more money doing it. 

What does this have to do with marketing modular and manufactured housing?  Plenty! As you will see below.

While America has had a long love affair with the automobile, housing is a far more important part of the U.S. economy than cars.  The basics of life are food, clothing and shelter.  While transportation is important, you can transport people in many ways.  By contrast, housing is necessary for survival.

Potential Market Demand for Housing, Factory Built and other

A smart marketer (or business owner/executive) wants to know many things, including the need for the product or service he or she wants to promote.  The marketer also wants to know what the potential demand for the product or service can be.  With that in mind, let's take a look at some facts.

On October 9, 2011, we had 312,387,546 Americans according to the U.S. Census Bureau's population clock. More facts:

        OCTOBER 2011
   
    One birth every………………………………………………….   8 seconds
    One death every………………………………………………   12 seconds
    One international migrant (net) every……………… 45 seconds
    Net gain of one person every…………………………..  13 seconds

Look at the population patterns since 1980:

    Year.   Population.          %/+

    1980    226,545,805        11.5%
    1990    248,709,873         9.8%
    2000    281,421,906        13.2%
    2010    308,745,538         9.7%

What does all this mean?  By July 1, 2030, the United States Census Bureau says we will have a population of 363,584,435, less current population of 312,387,546 yields a net gain of an estimated 51,196,889. 

Using the current 2.57 people per household, we will need 19,920,968 new housing units by 2030, PLUS the need for the number of homes that will be retired or lost due to fire, natural disaster, deterioration and similar factors.

If manufactured housing captured an average of 20% of this market need for housing, we would have to build 3,984,194 homes by 2030.  This is roughly what the Industry has averaged in as our housing market share in the past 20 years, so this is not an unrealistic number.

That is 209,694 homes a year.  That's roughly 4 times what we are currently producing! 

We would need to add about 150,000 jobs in factories alone to meet that need.

That would mean whatever your part of the Industry is, you would need to do about 4 times more business, or in the case of manufactured home land lease communities, you would likely be full and adding sites where possible.

Frankly, I believe we should be targeting a lot more than 20% market share.  But my point is even at 'historic' levels, those who survive have the opportunity to thrive.

Problems spell opportunity in disguise

Ladies and Gentlemen, we can't get bogged down in thinking about just the current housing downturn and the forclosure glut the media loves to focus on.  In fact we are awash in opportunity in the housing business in the U.S. alone.  But let's not forget the need for housing in other parts of North and South America. Think about the housing needs of Asia (where 60% of the world's population currently lives), or Africa, Europe,  Oceania and the rest of the world.  We could be shipping homes overseas, IF we get our 'act' together as rapidly as possible.

With incomes down and population rising, American home building – in factories! – offers a huge opportunity.  Energy and other sectors of the economy are important, but we are in some phase of the factory home building industry and we can uniquely able to serve every part of the population.

A smart business professional should think about a two parallel paths to present and future success.

Path 1: A Plan to grow your businesses' share of your location's housing market. 

Plan 2: A Plan to advance the image, acceptance and thus marketing potential of factory built homes.

To summarize, the facts support the reality that housing is heading for a boom.  With so many site builder's decimated and out of business, manufactured and modular construction may be uniquely well poised to take advantage of that coming boom.  300 factories now shuttered in the last 12 years could rapidly be tooled up and re-opened. 

But we have to deal with and implement a marketing and image program in order to achieve that potential!

Path 1 is the subject of our popular Dominate Your Local Market Seminar that was presented at the recent Texas Manufactured Housing Association and New York Housing Association annual meetings.   It is supported by the Attracting More Customers  with Good Credit Seminar that will be presented Wednesday, October 19th at the Indiana Manufactured Housing Association's annual meeting.  If you are planning to attend, please say hello after the presentation and share your feedback.

Path 2 are reason we should be pursing the MH Alliance/Phoenix project, so we can boost sales and improve results now, and continue to do so on into the future.  Read a news story about the project here.

To learn how we can help boost your marketing and business results now, click here.# #

blog post written by
L. A. 'Tony' Kovach
http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach

What if you had to carry around a football all day, everyday. And at random times, 300 lb. men would come out of nowhere and tackle you. Do you think at some time, you’d drop the ball? I’d place the odds at close to 100%.

OK, so you have a million tasks you perform everyday in your business. One of them is taking care of your online marketing (the football). All day, random things come flying at you (the 300 lb. men). Think you might drop this ball? If you’re a normal, red-blooded human you will at some point.

Setting aside specific time for important tasks is the only way to be sure they get done. Setting a habit not only leads us to doing certain things at certain times, but also gives us that gnawing “something isn’t right” feeling when for some reason (distractions?), it doesn’t get done.

What tasks need to be done on a daily basis is determined by the requirements of your online marketing strategy. Consistency brings results. If you set your strategy to require daily actions, do them every day. If weekly, do them at the same time every week. If monthly, again be consistent, but don’t expect anywhere near the results of doing them daily or weekly.

Online marketing is not rocket science. It is the result of doing several little things over and over again. The magic is in the cumulative effect of those small efforts over time.

Whatever your online marketing strategy is, be sure to build enough time into your schedule on a consistent basis and you’ll see results before too long that will last well into the future.

I live in Danville, Kentucky – a town of about 15,000 that has been named “one of America’s Best Small Towns.” As charming as our little town is, every so often a trip to the “big city” is in order. What this has to do with manufactured, or any factory-built housing will become apparent. This past Sunday was my wife’s birthday. We decided to go for dinner at Sutton’s Italian Restaurant in Lexington, KY. Sutton’s is a client of mine (we did their website) and this was their new location. I really like to keep up with what my client’s are doing as having knowledge of their operations helps me do a better job of marketing for them.

We ordered some wine, recommended by owner Gordon Lewis, a locally produced Merlot from Jean Farris Wineries. Notice how the locally-sourced product was the one recommended. It was a very good wine, the best Merlot I have ever had – and I’m NOT a big Merlot fan normally.

So far, so good. It’s the next succession of events that I wanted to point out. We ordered an appetizer. One of our favorites in Italian restaurants is calamari with marinara sauce, so we decided to go for that. Well, the calamari was super! It mixed in was a special treat. Banana peppers (peperoncini) which had been sliced into rings like the calamari and fried along with them. Exceptional.

So I took out my iPhone and photographed our half-finished plate and posted it on Facebook. Within minutes, a friend who didn’t know of the restaurant’s new location asked me where they were.

He’ll be checking out the new location shortly with his entire family. Now, my question is… how much benefit will Sutton’s receive from a picture, a caption and about a minute that it took me to post it to Facebook? Five people will eat there as a direct result. How many more read the post, now know the new location and will find their way there over the next few weeks?

And what’s it worth if they like it, return and tell their friends?

Even if the restaurant has no idea where those customers originated, they benefit from that small bit of social networking. It happens that Sutton’s has a Facebook page of their own, so those reading my post can easily find them on Facebook. And or course, their Facebook page has a link to their website.

So round and round it goes, a small ripple in the pond of information creates a much larger result. Sutton’s pays their employees who then spend the money in the local economy and the additive value of a dollar spent adds to Lexington’s GDP.

More ripples in our various ponds are what will get the economy moving again on a local, national and global basis. It’s not hard. Go make a ripple today, even a small one. It will will multiply as the circle widens.

And don’t forget to post every new thing your business does on your website, your blog, your Facebook page, your LinkedIn status and tweet it on Twitter to boot. Have a new home on your lot or in your community? Install a new home? Performed some community service? Hire a new sales person, customer service rep or installer. Each of those is a small stone causing a small ripple that grows and grows and…

Everytime I hear someone talk about how many ‘hits” their website gets, I have to stop and wonder. Are they misusing the term or are they trying to deceive?

Since most people have no intention to deceive, they are probably just using the wrong term. But there are exceptions; those who intentionally use inflated stats for their own aggrandizement.

Why would someone want to deceive you or me about the number of visitors to their site? As so often is the case, it comes down to money. The more traffic a website gets, the more it can ask for advertising or other services.

For instance, a website owner can charge more to place an ad or item if he can show more traffic. If a web designer can show that she is drawing big traffic numbers to a website, her value goes up.

So, what’s wrong with ‘hits’?

When counting web traffic, three common terms are used, each of them measuring something different. In A couple of things you need to know about website stats, I stated “‘Hits’ are the most misleading and worthless stats on a web log” and showed an example of how 89 pageviews can turn into 1,171 ‘hits.’

Since pageviews represent people and most ‘hits’ represent some other, non-human page element, the problem is one of who your business serves – people or elements. If your business is like mine, it’s people who pay the bills.

How would you like to pay for 1,171 of something and only receive 89?

Alright, let’s explain the three main terms used to describe web traffic. You may have seen this before, but sometime seeing it again in different words helps clarify it.

Sessions – A session is initiated when a visitor enters your website. The session ends when they leave the website or when the session times out. The session can time when a visitor enters your site, and walks away from the computer without actually leaving your website. The we web server has a timing mechanism and when the visitor stays beyond that time with no activity it times them out and ends the session. You’ve probably had this happen when you logged on to a website (maybe the bank), got distracted and then returned to the web page to find yourself logged out. A ‘unique’ visitor is one who initiates a new session. One person can initiate more than one session in a day if the web server it set to time them out quickly.

Pageviews – A pageview is recorded whenever you visit a web page. So a visitor to your website who visits several pages can record several pageviews in a single session. Your sessions and pageviews counts, along with the stat that tells you how long the average session lasted are very valuable stats in helping you determine the value of a website visitor, whether for advertising purposes or for your own analysis.

Hits – A ‘hit’ s recorded every time a web page or an element of a web page is loaded into your browser. That means the web page counts as a ht as well as every element of that web page including images, javascripts, stylesheets or anything else the page calls. Those with an interest in inflating this statistic can also pre-load images – even though they never appear on the page, they are counted as ‘hits’. That’s how 89 pages viewed produced 1,171 ‘hits’ as mentioned above. For most purposes, ‘hits’ are meaningless.

When someone quotes ‘hits’ stats to you, look at it with suspicion, not necessarily for the the intent as much as the lack of knowledge. Ask them for the ‘people’ stats of sessions and pageviews. If they can’t or won’t supply those, take your business elsewhere.

I’ve never received an order or a visit from a photo or a javascript. It’s the people that count. Make sure you are counting the people and you’ll always get your money’s worth of value.

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.