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

Every business in Las Vegas knows how important it is to advertise but very few are using the full potential of the Internet to increase business. A website just isn’t enough these days, no matter what type of business you are running. Search engine optimization (SEO) is key to getting your message out there to the right people. This is even more important when it comes to Vegas compared to most other cities. People from all around the world plan trips to Vegas every year and most of them do a little research on the Internet before they ever leave home. Restaurants, gaming establishments, resorts, and spa’s will benefit from targeted Internet marketing the most. Even if you run a carpet cleaning service it would be still be wise to start an aggressive marketing campaign. Vegas is a huge place and many of the residents there have just recently relocated.

You need to make sure you have a strong Internet presence no matter what type of business you are running. SEO will help you get to the top of the search engines in order to target people who are specifically searching for the type of service you offer. Social media is another great way to get your companies message out there. Unless you are savvy when it comes to Internet marketing, you may need to hire some outside help. There are companies out there that will use extensive online networks to put your business’s name out there on twitter and face-book. Newspaper, television, and radio ads are still important to an overall marketing strategy but you are shooting yourself in the foot if you ignore the Internet.

Less people are buying news papers and even less are watching TV due to the fact that it is so easy to find it all on the Internet. Don’t be left behind with the rest of the businesses who are still relying on conventional media for all of their marketing needs. Even if you don’t know where to begin you should at least look in to hiring someone who does know what they are doing. Many companies that assist businesses in the online marketing world will give you a rundown of the services they offer and a free quote at no charge to you. Take advantage of the power of Internet marketing and get involved before your competitors catch on and gain a competitive advantage.

How To Write A Marketing Plan for your Las Vegas Business

A marketing plan is the portion of your overall business plan that describes the market for your products, an analysis of your competitors, and your marketing budget. It is a complete breakdown of the services or products you will provide, your unique selling proposition, and your distribution plans. It will also describe your strategy for sales and pricing, as well as plans for promotion and advertising. Each of these topics are summarized in brief paragraphs with separate headings. Each paragraph will explain how you plan to get customers or clients to buy your products, and the advantages they can expect in return.

The products and services portion of your marketing plan will clearly define the unique qualities of the products or services you plan to offer, and how your customers can benefit from using them. This section of the marketing plan characterizes your product telling what it does, how it works, and how it differs from similar products distributed by your competition. Your marketing plan will define the services you are presenting to customers, and list the advantages you have over other companies that provide the same services.

Depending on the products or services that you will be providing, the benefits for your customers may be tangible (can be touched or felt), or intangible (untouchable). For this section of your marketing plan, think about the products or services that you will be providing, and then list as many benefits as you can. Narrow your choices to the benefits that suit your target customers, and write a paragraph highlighting the advantages of each one. Your marketing plan is a detailed description of your company’s products, and the benefits or incentives that you will offer your customers.

The heart of your marketing plan will define the unique selling proposition for your company’s products or services. It is important that you give specific details showing which features set your products apart from that of your competitors. The goal of your marketing plan is to send a message to your customers showing the advantages of using your products or services. The marketing plan is a direct form of communicating with your customers, it’s message should be clear and concise. An essential document for your business plan, your marketing plan will need to be updated regularly. Your updates will address issues such as changes in the market, product prices, and customer demand.

Writing a marketing may seem like an overwhelming task when you consider all the information that has to be included. A company with unlimited funds can hire a professional to write the marketing plan for them, and keep it updated. Small companies or home based businesses can have a well written marketing plan without spending a lot of money. Business software programs can be used to help you create a business plan, and a marketing plan for your company. There are websites that offer free downloads of templates that you can use to write your marketing plan. This templates can be customized to suit your business, and they include step by step procedures for writing a successful marketing plan.

V Finance is a website with free templates to help you write business and marketing plans for your company. They have an extensive website with templates that are designed for a large number of industries and careers. You can visit them at: www.vfinance.com.

It’s always great to find valuable marketing resources online and when we find them, we publish them for our Las Vegas blog visitors so that they can benefit from the online resources as well.

Here are some great websites to visit that can help market your Las Vegas company:

• Free Marketing Resources - Free Marketing Stuff
• Marketing Teacher
• Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Plan and Marketing Careers and Jobs
• Free Marketing Resources
• Sales & Marketing Tools

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.