The Cutting Edge of Online Marketing

“Where do I start?” That’s a question I hear from retailers, community owners and clients from other industries alike. And it’s the question most likely to need an answer from a professional like myself.

Here is the key thing to consider before even calling a professional in. Because without an answer to this question, a campaign cannot be properly planned and executed.

What you expect your online marketing campaign to do?

For sake of discussion, a campaign could be a website, an email campaign, a social media campaign or a combination of all of them.

So let’s use an example and sketch the beginnings of a build-out to suit that example.

Read more…

Online marketing has made the job of identifying, contacting and staying in touch with leads a simple and easier process. Unfortunately, it has led some to believe in a “do it once, benefit forever” marketing mentality.

While some of your efforts in online marketing can be classified as “evergreen” (non-changing information giving you benefit for years to come), the day-to-day effort of building customer and prospect relationships requires some diligence.

Just as gathering a big pile of lumber, nails and other components on your factory floor requires more effort to turn it into a house, the building blocks of an online marketing campaign require ongoing effort to turn it into a working strategy.

Components of an online marketing campaign:

• Website
• Blog
• Social Networking
• Static Content
• Dynamic (Fresh) Content
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Analytics
• Press Releases
• News Feeds
• Marketing
• Web Design
• Craigslist
• Online Listings Sites

We’ll work our way through this list in later posts, but this time I’d like to draw our attention to the first item – the website.

I know from experience that some of you still don’t have a website. But there’s a better than even chance that if you don’t yet have one, you are probably not bothering to read this blog …or this ezine for that matter.

I’ve drawn this analogy before, but your website is like the foundation of one of our homes. It isn’t optional. Without it, your marketing efforts, both online and offline are structurally defective and it danger of collapse.

If your website hasn’t been updated, it is much like the home that was set and forgotten. Deferred maintenance is now taking it’s toll and it won’t be long before parts of it are endangered from internal rot and invasion by enemies from without.

The technology to make updating your website an easier and less costly task are readily available. Your web design team should know how to make it possible for you to update parts of your website yourself. If they don’t, we do. So give up the dependency of that old school adversarial relationship and give us a call.

By the way, we just scratched at items 4 & 5 on the list as well.

By all indications, 2011 could be a very good year for manufactured housing if we are willing to do what it takes. In an Industry Voices post last week, Thayer Long of MHI aid out some objectives for 2011. Giving them the support they need to see those objectives through could be the start of something big.

But don’t neglect the basics. Make sure your marketing foundation (your website) is up to the job at hand. If it’s not feeding you leads and providing a way of keeping in friendly contact with those leads from the very beginning of the sales process through to the post-sale customer service, sit down with a professional and bring it up to par.

2011 is just around the corner. Where will you be?

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.

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.

You’ve attended the meetings. You’ve got your copy of The Manufactured Housing Revolution book. You’ve read Bob Stovall’s Online Marketing 1-2-3, Part 1 – the Website and Maria Cucchiara’s Six Reasons to Update Your Current MH Website in this month’s MHMSM.com.

May 2010′s sales figures from MHI show a 16.9% gain on the previous May. Momentum is starting to build. Now is the time to make your commitment to making more sales this month, and the next and the next…

No one else can do it for you.

We believe that Manufactured Housing has a very bright future. Market conditions are coming to favor the industry. See Ken Rishel‘s Why Does Globalization Favor Manufactured Housing? in the July issue of MHMSM.com for more on that.

Read the two articles mentioned previously… again, if you’ve read them already. Internalize what is being said. Then, take action! Without action, even the grandest plans will come to nought.

It’s said that “nothing happens until a sale is made.” The sale is the root – the production, delivery, installation, usage and service are the fruits.

Here at MHMSM.com, we have been planting seeds for nine months. In that short period of time, our website, podcasts, blogs and special reports have drawn huge numbers of readers from the industry in the U.S. and around the world.

We score extremely well in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for keywords relevant to our industry.

Page one positions 2, 2b and 5 held by us for keyword “manufactured housing online marketing.

Retailers and communities note: we can do the same for you.

We can build – or re-build – your website. We can add on a blog (ask us why this can be vital). We can run your email list for you. We can handle your social networking. We can create a comprehensive eMarketing program to boost your Search Engine ranking in your local market.

Now is the time to get started.

The Manufactured Housing REVOLUTION.

Make it your’s – make it now!