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4 Tips on How Siteowners Can Weather the Financial Storm Amanda G. Watlington, Ph.D., A.P.R. SearchForProfit.com - Oct 14, 2008

The stock market is in turmoil, credit is tight, and the winds of recession are blowing. Is your online marketing plan ready for the storm ahead? Is your website shipshape? Site owners and marketers are eagerly seeking ways to weather the gusty winds of this financial storm. Here are four recommendations to help you keep the visitors flowing even while you are battening down the proverbial hatches.

1. Improve the Site's Conversion Rate Now

A slowdown in consumer buying is a recession hallmark. With fewer buyers making purchases, you don't want to lose any potential customers. Research has shown that during recessions consumers are more careful in how they spend their dollars. Online merchants can expect more intense price competition as consumers looking for the best values carefully research their options before making a purchase. To keep your site from leaking customers during the storm, you will want to do all you can to make sure consumers buy from your site and not competitors. Use your analytics to determine where you are leaking visitors and use this data to help plug the leaks.

If you sell online be sure to revisit your shopping cart and consider if it presents challenges. Check if you have set barriers to conversion by making the process too complex or obscure. Improving conversion does not necessarily mean completely rebuilding or overhauling the site, but any additional development and coding required to increase your current site's conversion will be money well spent.

2. Improve Your Organic Search Marketing

Tune up your organic search marketing to make sure that your site will be found by consumers researching products online. If your business relies on local traffic, be sure that you have a free listing on Google Maps through Google's Local Business Center (www.google.com/local/add/). A local listing will put you on the map and help visitors find you more easily. You will stand out from the competition.

If your business area extends beyond a single local region or is just online, review your keyword selections and your current results. Make sure you are focusing on what credit-pinched consumers will be looking for. For example, if you are an equipment vendor, now is the time to highlight equipment or services attractive to the buyers looking for "used," or "refurbished equipment," or for "repair" services instead of "new equipment."

3. Evaluate your Per Lead/Sale Marketing Costs

If your marketing plan includes on and off-line marketing tactics, identify what a lead/sale costs from each of your marketing sources. One of my clients was complaining about his PPC budget and how much each lead cost. When I asked what his offline marketing cost per lead was, he paused and gave a figure three times higher. This was a valuable reality check for it contextualized paid search within the overall marketing plan. Now is the time to analyze the data and make informed decisions about where to focus precious marketing resources.

4. Improve your Landing Pages for Better PPC Performance

If you are still not using campaign specific landing pages for your PPC programs, now is the time create the landing pages. Then, use the tools such as Google's free Website Optimizer to improve their performance. Not sure how to do this, there are several excellent books to help you understand the process, including Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer by Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar (Sybex, 2008, ISBN 0470290633). This book, which focuses specifically on Google's Website Optimizer, will guide you step-by-step through the process. Even if you are new to the landing page optimization, by following the steps you can improve the performance of your PPC program.

Finally, resist the temptation to simply cut away at your marketing expenses. During any recession the keenest temptation is to sharply reduce spending on marketing. Unfortunately, this does not always allow you to maintain the necessary flow of customers to sustain the business. It is not difficult to measure and monitor performance online through the available analytical tools. Use your analytical tools to ensure that you do not waste your marketing dollars. Stretch them by spending only where the returns justify.

Amanda Watlington is the principal of Searching for Profit (www.searchingforprofit.com), Charleston, Massachusetts, a marketing consultancy which focuses on developing business results for clients adopting new marketing strategies.