Las Vegas Web Design Las Vegas Website Design & Marketing Services - Perkolate

Evaluating Your Website’s Performance

Setting up a website for your Las Vegas business is the very first step of marketing your website on the internet. The success of your website depends on the goals you set and accomplish. 

If you expect your site to move your visitors to take some form of action while on your website, whether it is visitors filling out a simple online form so that you can contact them, or purchasing a product online, there are specific steps you can take to insure that your web site is functioning efficienctly. One of the very first ways to tell is to check on your website’s traffice. It’s a great tool to judge normal traffic vs. traffic at times when you are running promotional marketing and activities.

Having a large amount of traffic doesn’t necessarily mean that your site is successful at getting your business leads and sales. You want visitors to take action while on your website; call you, submit a form for a quote, make a purchase, etc. This is known as your website’s conversion rate and is essential in judging your website.

How to calculate your website’s conversion rate

To find your web site’s conversion rate, you take the number of visitors per month and guestimate the percentage of your visitors that actually purchased something. So, if you had 1000 hits to your site in one week, but only 10 of them purchased from you, your site conversion rate equals 1.00%. 

If your website’s goal is to get your visitors to fill out a form, make sure to figure out the difference between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. Not everyone who fills out your online form will actually become a client. However, whether your site is setup to sell a product or service, or to get them to fill a form out, your website conversion rate measures the success and/or failure of your site whenever you promote or update your website.

Over time, you just may find that you need to implement a few additional marketing strategies if your website traffic and conversion rates are low. Some ideas that might help are implementing a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy so that you can rank on search engines for organic searches. More visitors will be able to find your website more easily. Once your SEO strategy is in place, you should monitor your rankings and make any needed adjustments regularly to keep or grow your SEO rankings.

You should also review the usability and ease of your “call-to-action” on your website. How simple is it for a visitor to take action and what motivates them to take action? If you want them to fill out an inquiry form, for example, how easy is the form to find? How is it called out on your home page. How simple is the form to fill out? If the form is too long, it may discourage your website’s visitors to fill it out.

Lastly, write the copy on your website (especially the home page) carefully and with a keen marketing sense in mind. Remember the goals of your website and gear the copy to encourage visitors to take action. The right copy writing can be the difference between profit and loss for your website.

Marketing your Las Vegas company is the current economy is now more important than ever. Without effective marketing strategies in place, you will not be able to reach new potential customers, and as we always say, if you aren’t marketing, your competitors surely are.

With this in mind, I’ve compiled a list of links that discuss and outline top effective marketing strategies for businesses:

• The Top 7 Marketing Strategies for Independent Professionals on a Budget - BusinessKnowHow.com
• Best Marketing Strategies - helium.com
• Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies of 2009 - marketingcharts.com
• Top Marketing Strategies for Businesses on a Budget - UnArchived Articles
• Web Site Marketing Techniques Rated - streedirectory.com
• Best Marketing Strategies for Maximum Sales - Combining Market Research, Brand Management, Advertising and PR - suite101.com
• Top 5 Guerilla Marketing Strategies - sparxoo.com
• Top Email Marketing Strategies For B2B Marketers - webpronews.com
• Top 8 Strategies to Marketing in a Recession - ElementsDaily
• Niche Marketing Strategy - How to Greatly Increase your Odds of Business Success by Using a Niche Marketing Strategy = Geisheker Group
• Market Targeting - learnmarketing.com
• How To Find And Sell To Your Target Market - about.com
• Target Marketing - Targeting Strategies - websitemarketingplan.com
• Top Small Business Marketing Trends for 2009
• Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies - about.com
• Seven Top Online Marketing Trends for 2009 - ClickZ.com
• The Top 10 Marketing Tips of All Time - marketingscoop.com
• Business Owner’s Toolkit: Marketing Strategy
• Business Marketing Strategy Essentials - bizrave.com
• One Page Marketing Plan Template
• Marketing Plan Outline - quickmba.com

If there is one thing your Las Vegas company can never compromise on, it would be marketing. Marketing often forms the base for a consistent and a productive sales effort for your company’s products or services. If you are serious about promoting your company and presenting a professionally targeted image, you should think of hiring a professional marketing firm like Perkolate.

4 reasons why you should hire a professional Las Vegas marketing firm:

Leave the specialized job to the experts.
Marketing is definitely not a job everyone has the experience, education and skills to do, it is a profession. It may seem like anyone can do it, but then there is a fine line of difference between doing something and doing something professionally and with strategy. Professional marketing firms like Perkolate Marketing have marketing experts who have years of marketing experience under their belts. 

Do you really want to do it?
Remember, you could easily end up spending a lot of time with the marketing efforts for your product or service. And you most likely wont have the experience to even take an educated guess as to what a sound marketing plan could accomplish for your business. The first question you need to ask yourself – Do you really want to handle your company’s marketing by yourself? Assuming you do have the right kind of resources to do the job, would you really wish to invest the time into your own marketing programs, tracking the results and deciding the best way to refine those efforts? Most business owners answer “no” to this question, and could be much more effective handling other parts of running their Las Vegas businesses.

Marketing strategies and tactics are ever changing.
Years ago, marketing used to be primarily print ads, radio and television spots, yellow pages, door-door or through the newspaper classifieds. Nowadays, the turnaround time for running a marketing campaigns gets shorter and shorter. It involves much more that traditional advertising efforts. Online marketing, social marketing, pay-per-click campaigns and search engine optimization (SEO) are more important than the traditional marketing strategies of yesteryear. You need to stay on top of these new and emerging marketing tactics, and Perkolate can show you how!

Let a professional marketing firm maximize your marketing budget.
Whether you are promoting a $2 pen or a $20,000 wrist watch, your marketing plans and programs require a budget, a truth you cannot and should not escape (especially in today’s economy). Do you really want to risk spending your marketing budget on efforts that will not deliver results? It’s far more cost effective to hire a professional marketing firm like Perkolate to assist you in marketing your products and services.

The internet age as you’re already aware has truly arrived in Las Vegas. With millions of new users going onto the internet every year, the web has become a powerful media outlet and promotions tool for your Las Vegas business. Businesses are using online advertising in a big way and this is evidenced by the steep increase in internet marketing advertising dollars spent since the year 2002.

The rapid increase in the number of websites online has prompted the creation of search engines to help people find information easily. These search engines have started started programs like pay per click and paid advertisements on for their search results.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of internet advertising used to market websites that successfully taps the never ending demand for seeking information and your company’s products and services. The various SEM methods include search engine optimization (SEO), paid placement and paid inclusion programs like google AdWords. With more than three quarters of advertisers vouching for it, SEO is still the most common form of SEM. 

To advertise online, it takes a strategy, but not the hiring of a marketing agency in particular - you just have to have the know how and the interest in starting your own online SEM marketing campaign. The text ads that are a sponsored in google listing let’s say, are visible when users perform a search epitomize search marketing campaigns. Marketers buy the rights for relevant ads and pre-chose keywords and key phrases to be placed when the users type in certain search terms. 

Marketers were initially hesitant to invest in search engine marketing.  However, that feeling has changed over the past couple of years in the business world and a majority of senior executives consider SEM a critical component in their marketing strategy. The spending on SEM programs is predicted to increase in the future years driven by rising keyword prices, advertising space demand, and the fact that small businesses are running online marketing campaigns using keywords.

OgilvyOne Worldwide, a part of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide is coming to this field in a big way by starting a new unit dedicated to search marketing, NeoSearch@Ogilvy. Marketing teams of all businesses have a tough job on setting their budget especially when it comes to proving a return on investment. The success of search engine marketing is attributed to the fact that advertisers pay ONLY when a user clicks on an ad.

SEM is also a controversial medium, as a series of studies and reports conducted by Consumers Reports WebWatch has targeted it. The pay per click model, though efficient, is vulnerable to click through fraud. Fake clicks from anonymous sources (or competitors) that have no intention of purchasing but done so for dubious reasons increase the ad spending of business without generating sufficient revenue from sales. The big players in the SEM field, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter are taking major efforts to incorporate more transparency in the search engines and to prevent such fraudulent activities in this fast growing advertising medium which is predicted to overtake traditional means of advertising like television.

When you start your Las Vegas business or company (or are thinking about your marketing in general) you should consider writing out a basic marketing communications strategy to help guide you along. It will help you stand out from your competition.

There are really 10 basic things to consider (questions to ask of yourself and write down answers to) when creating a simple marketing communication strategy:

1. Understand your target market - know who they are, what they are like, what issues and problems they’re encountering and how they think and feel.
2. Write effective marketing copy - make it personal to your potential customers and tell them how your products and services will help them solve their business problems. Create your elevator pitch carefully.
3. Define your business needs and abilities - make sure you can deliver on the products and services your business is offering and know the resources, internal and external, required to deliver to your clients.
4. Choose tactics to implement - you should always include the basics, business cards, brochures, a website, etc.
5. Create a timeline of execution - create a reasonable schedule and leave ample time to execute your strategies and tactics and judge the results.
6. Create strategic alliances - find companies or related businesses with whom you could exchange business.
7. Define a budget - you cannot execute all of your strategies and tactics without a budget plan in place. Marketing yourself takes money.
8. Decide how to communicate with your target - print materials, ads, online, a website, television or radio.
9. Track your results - marketing communications can be refined and reworked by tracking and analyzing your results and adjusting future marketing communications plans accordingly.
10. Separate your company from your competition - research your competitors and discover their weaknesses and capitalize your marketing in part around their weaknesses.

Let’s say company has some of the best products in the marketplace. Their products are cheaper than their competitors, and in terms of functionalities offered, they seem to be the best products on the market. Yet, when it comes to sales, the product is lagging far behind. What could be the reason? 

To the naked eye, you may not be able to think of any logical reasons, as everything just seems to be going fine with their product. As a result, you could possibly attribute it to luck… or the lack of it!

Think about it – Something must have gone wrong somewhere. Possibly, the company did not brand itself well, or rather, brand their products well. Whichever way you look at it, branding is an activity that companies cannot look at compromising at any juncture.

So what is branding?

For most people, branding is all about the name of the company. For some others, it really starts with the name of the company and then goes on to other aspects like the Mission, Vision and other things. 

In essence, the name and the tag line with the name should be good enough to catapult the image of your company. A classic example in this case is Nike. See how “Just Do It” was so wildly popular!

Importance of Branding

The significance of Branding cannot be emphasized enough, and definitely is not something that could be discussed in a matter of few pages, or few words. The value of branding to a company is immense, and to say that it is invaluable for a company is definitely no exaggeration.

Of course, branding helps improve the acceptability of the company with it’s target customers. Suddenly, people start recognizing your company by something they could associate you with. For example, people recognized Nike as the “Just Do It” company. There’s no reason you could not create a similar situation with branding your Las Vegas company or business. 

Branding Increases profits

The latest Forrester study reveals that companies who had invested their time in a good branding activity ended up seeing 10-20% more profits than their competitors who did not spend as much time or budget on branding. It clearly is a domino effect. Good branding means a lot of people recognizing and accepting your product.

Branding can directly or indirectly also affect the psyche of your employees. For example, if your company has a catch line, “Customer First, You Next” transpired on to all your employees, you would find your employees living by this catch line for a lot of time. 

The point discussed before is good enough to suggest that the aspect of increased customer satisfaction is not a mirage at all with branding. Most good companies would tend to orient their brand strategy around branding. The belief that increased customer satisfaction would help companies ring in good sales numbers quarter-after-quarter, year-after-year, allows people to think positively about branding.

Summary

As an activity, the importance of branding can never be undermined. Just a company who has benefited tremendously by focusing on this simple fact. And go ask a company who did not wish to think about branding their company or business at all. The difference would be clear as day.

Contact Perkolate about Las Vegas Branding solutions.

Perkolate of Las Vegas is proud to announce the launch of it’s latest website for Superior Arbor Solutions.

About Superior Arbor Solutions

SAS Tree was created to address the specialized area of tree care.  The company was founded on the principal that through education, prevention and a high-level of care, trees in the harsh desert environment of the Las Vegas Valley can truly thrive and provide beauty, shade and property enhancement for long term enjoyment.

SAS Tree (Superior Arbor Solutions) specializes in tree care.  From basic pruning and removal all the way to complex tree surgery and diagnosing diseases, SAS Tree can handle it.  Through our Arborist Supervised monthly tree care programs we can help protect your investment.  Trees are the single most expensive part of any landscape environment.  They are costly to replace, especially when mature.  Therefore, preventative treatment is a must to keep trees healthy and thriving for years to come.

For more information, visit the Superior Arbor Solutions website at www.sastree.com.

About Perkolate

Founded in 1999, Perkolate of Las Vegas is a unique, full service, Las Vegas web design, graphic design and marketing services firm that brews fresh marketing services, website design, and graphic design for clients in Las Vegas that exceed expectations. Perkolate integrates key marketing principles and strategies into all of our client’s projects, that get results. Perkolate can assist you in developing and managing your marketing programs for both internet marketing and offline marketing strategy. We are based in Summerlin, Las Vegas.

The market offers a number of tools which can help you improve your ranking with seo and search engine optimization efforts and tactics for your Las Vegas website. Make the most of them and make your online presence felt. 

Las Vegas SEO Tips For A Strong Online Presence

Search engine optimization ranking determines the position of a website on search engines.  You need a good ranking for your website to be listed higher. The higher the website ranking the more traffic it receives. So in order to overcome the online competition it is important to improve the SEO ranking of your website. The majority of people use major search engines whenever they have to search for any product or service and most of them only go through the first 4-5 pages of the search engine results. No one really has the patience to go beyond that it seems. So for your website to be listed in first few pages, you need to have a high ranking. 

To have a high SEO ranking it is not difficult as you might think it to be. Perfrorming keyword research and optimizing your local Las Vegas website helps you to improve your website’s placement in the result pages of search engines. It is possible to increase your website’s ranking by following a few simple tips. The most fundamental and effective tip is to have proper keyword rich content on the website. It is indeed wonderful if you can allocate enough funds to hire a SEO keyword research and optimization expert like Perkolate. We have rich experience in this field and also have extensive knowledge in refining optimization tasks. If you do not have enough budget for hiring an expert like Perkolate, then you can try to do it on your own. You can easily buy content from online directories. These directories often have optimized articles, which have good keyword density. Keyword rich ready to use articles can help save a lot of time and effort.

You can also modify the design of your website to make it a high-quality SEO compatible. An excellent website has more chances to be listed higher in the search engines. The next important thing is not to use any filters in your website. Search engine robots often get puzzled with the disruption produced due to active links present in the website. Robots usually tag them as broken links, which undoubtedly can produce a negative effect on your page ranking.

In search engine optimization, the success of a website is largely dependent on the overall SEO strategy and plan. You must ensure that the SEO plan chosen by you is in accordance with a comprehensive online marketing program. A SEO plan developed by itself can rarely ever succeed and does not attract much traffic. So it is better to consult a professional SEO company like Perkolate before designing your marketing plan and your website. One of the most important aspects is to continually keep up with SEO efforts for your website. Markets and tactics change constantly and accordingly changes the pattern of search engine results that make it possible to find your website on the internet.

Top Ten Search Engines (your Las Vegas website should be on all of them):

1. Google (of course!)
2. Yahoo!
3. MSN
4. AOL
5. Microsoft Live Search
6. Ask.com
7. Alta Vista
8. Excite
9. AlltheWeb.com
10. Lycos

Organic Search Engine Results

To rank on search engines through an organic search, you must have a website that is properly built, has no broken links, and the content must be updated as much as possible. A professional SEO company like Perkolate can perform keyword research and find out exactly what the public is searching on and can devise a strategy to integrate those keywords into your website.

Pay-Per-Click Online Advertising Campaigns

In addition to having basic Search Engine Optimization services performed on your website in order to gain organic traffic, Perkolate recommends adding in a pay-per-click program into the mix. With a pay-per-click campaign you can choose the keywords you want your website to rank for, set a budget, and your website will appear as a “featured result” when someone does a search on google, let’s say.

Either way you look at it, your Las Vegas website needs to be properly optimized with search engine optimization and promoted with search engine marketing and pay-per-click advertising if you want to keep ahead of the curve!

Need help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)? Contact perkolate at fullsteam@perkolate.com or call us at 702.341.0085.