If the last downturn taught us anything it’s that businesses can batten down the hatches very quickly, and that marketing budgets are the first to be thrown overboard.

Were you hoping to revamp or enhance your old Web site over the next few quarters? If so, a spending freeze memo from the boss could seriously hinder your plans. You might not have the funds to make the improvements you had in mind.

So, what can you do with your site on a paper-thin budget? Obviously you’re going to have to make some tough choices and prioritize what needs changing. We suggest looking at three key aspects of your site’s performance: visibility, flexibility and experience.

Visibility

There are a number of ways to measure your Web site’s visibility, but here’s a simple reality check: How does your site come up in Google when you simply enter the name of your business? If you are a small business, enter the names of the owners or key executives. You’d be amazed how many businesses can’t even get into the first page of results using their own name! It’s equally important to determine your competitiveness on key words that your prospects are likely to use in searching for information on potential vendors in your industry. This is particularly important if your business name is not unique. In such cases, prospects who hope to snoop your site might search on your company name plus your industry or city (e.g., Johnson + Consulting + Insurance).

Even if all of your business comes from personal referrals, you can’t afford to be invisible in search results. A prospective customer who is considering whether to include your firm in an RFP might conduct a search on your company, not just to find your Web site but to find out how prominent you are in your field. Does your name come up in news articles? Blogs and blog comments? Trade association Web sites? Being visible in peer and industry sites not only boosts your credibility in your field, but, if accompanied by links back to your site, can increase your site’s search ranking.

Below are just a few ideas for boosting your site’s visibility.

• Cultivate inbound links - The more external sites that point to your site, the better. While it may take some convincing and some valuable content to get bloggers and online media to link to your site, you can generate links quickly by registering your site with industry associations and chambers of commerce.
• Comment on blogs - Even if you can’t/won’t launch your own blog, you can still leave thoughtful comments on blogs that cover your industry. Good comments are always welcome. They not only reflect well on you and your company, but also result in inbound links to your site.
• Media sites - Sites like YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo and Slideshare are designed for content sharing. Your company might have content that could be uploaded to those sites as well, including photos of your headquarters, company party or annual meeting, PowerPoint sales presentations, videos of product demos, etc. As you set up and upload to these sites, be sure to include links back to your company web site in your profile page and in captions.
• Update your AboutUs.org page - Have you heard of this service? Go to AboutUs.org and you will probably find info about your company there. It has been “scraped” from your site. At no cost, you can register and modify the info. But for a couple hundred bucks, a professional staff writer will produce an in-depth article about your company, which will provide links back to specific pages on your web site.

Flexibility

If your business were to suddenly made a big move, say an acquisition or merger, or it were pummeled by negative news reports, how long would it take you to update your Web site in response? Could you post updated content to your site in a day? In hours? In minutes? What kind of content would you be able to post?

If your Web site feels old and inflexible, it’s probably for a reason, including programming, analysis paralysis or a simple lack of time and attention. To be fair, these are all valid excuses. But excuses don’t count in a competitive market or during a time of crisis. This is the age of instant publishing, in which anyone, especially your detractors, can publish content online and force you to play defense. In such an environment, your static, fussy Web site is no longer an asset. It’s a big liability.

How can you make your Web site more nimble? If you’re indeed on a skimpy budget, you may have to rule out the idea of rebuilding the entire site on even a basic content management platform. The cost of the platform is not the issue as much as the labor required to redesign the site and set up templates and then populate the site with content.

Instead, you should look for ways to apply low-to-no-cost content management tools to selected pages on your site:

• Start blogging. Many companies that keep blogs are able to cope with not only with crises but everyday industry challenges by posting their responses on the company blog. The tools are practically free. You just need a link from your main site to your blog and you’re all set.
• Use a free blogging account, such as Blogger, to feed your news and events pages. You create articles just like you would for a blog. A snippet of code on your site pulls in a feed from your blog account and displays headlines and articles on your site. Examples here and here.
• Post videos to Vimeo or YouTube and have them featured on your home page.
• Pull in and display a feed of your Twitter posts on your home page. (Drawback: you can’t edit your posts.)
• Use a service like PitchEngine for distributing and promoting your press releases. Again, you can pull in a feed of your press releases and display them on your news, press or home pages.

Experience

With a realistic sense of how your current site is faring in these areas, you may discover that you don’t have to overhaul your entire site. Instead, like a surgeon, you may be able to enhance the experience that prospects have when they visit your site.

Experience is a broad word and can encompass many things, but here is a short list of criteria on which you can evaluate your site’s experience.

• Performance – This used to be a common issue, back when the majority of people had dialup modems. Nowadays, a slow-loading site is a rarity, which makes it (when you do find one) a much less tolerable problem. However, site performance can be an issue at specific junctures within the site. Conduct an audit and make sure that your search, contact and other forms not only function as intended but provide a reasonable level of performance and responsiveness.
• Mobile-friendliness – Have you seen what your site looks like on a Blackberry, Windows Mobile phone or iPhone? If your site makes heavy use of Flash, you might be disappointed. Depending on your audience, mobile may be a bigger consideration going forward, particularly if you sell to C-suite executives, busy doctors or iPhone-carrying techies.
• Clarity - Does your site do a good job helping visitors understand the essentials about your company? Does it help visitors quickly assess the relevance of your products or services? Using a metrics tool, such as Google Analytics, zero in on your high-traffic pages (as well as critical pages that you believe deserve more traffic) and evaluate them with an objective eye. If that’s not possible, recruit prospects and customers to help you understand how those pages could communicate more powerfully.
• Conversion - Evaluate your product and service pages or any pages where visitors might logically want to make a purchase or request more information — and make sure your call to action is clear and the subsequent steps (specifiying a product, placing an order, filling out a contact form, etc.) are as streamlined as possible.

This article offers a handful of options for improving your Web site and your broader online marketing efforts. But in reality, there are many low-cost options available, especially if you have more time than budget. The first step is to conduct a frank evaluation of your online marketing efforts. From there, you can explore and prioritize strategies for connecting with your prospects, being more relevant and making it easier for them to move toward a purchase decision.

Photo: Wishes by Shioshvili

• Viral is a fool’s game – If you’re going to chase a tail, chase the long tail.
• Creative doesn’t matter - Relevance trumps creativity every time.
• Control is an illusion – Brands aren’t manufactured in creative factories but cultivated in fertile fields. Use lots of manure.
• Perfection is a sickness unto death – While you were calibrating the color in your brochure, another two competitors just went to market. MP3s are good enough. Be good enough.
• Reverse the direction of loyalty – Customers aren’t loyal, they’re just passing through. Don’t try to make them stick around. Instead, travel with them.
• Postpone ROI. Embrace R&D – Listening is the first half of the journey. And until you do so, how can you be sure what your next move is?

• Graeme Thickins, of DoApp and Tech~Surf~Blog fame, ponders whether using Twitter is decreasing his blogging activity. He also points to an early post on this topic by Ryan Block of Engadget: Does Twittering mean you blog less? The answer might surprise you. Personally, I’ve been seeing the effect on my own blogging. Heck, it’s way easier to spit out a 140-character tweet than to do the thinking, research and linking required for a readable blog post.

• Best Buy embraces Web 2.0 by announcing its Remix API. If, as Brad Stone’s NYT report suggests, this is part of a larger movement by legacy organizations to make their data publicly available, I think we’re in for some fun. Other recent and notable API releases include National Public Radio’s Open API, MTV’s Content API and Apple’s iPhone API.

• Speaking of the big-box retailer with the yellow, tag-shaped logo… From the irritatingly successful 4-Hour-Workweek author Timothy Ferriss, we learn that Best Buy has implemented a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) with amazing results. Specifically, they claim a 41% increase in productivity at HQ and a 90% reduction in employee attrition in some biz units. What’s ROWE? Ferriss finds out by interviewing Cali Ressler, the 20-something BBY employee who introduced ROWE from the bottom up and went on to write about the concept in Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. Read Tim Ferriss’: “No Schedules, No Meetings — Enter Best Buy’s ROWE”

  Update: Daniel Pink has an interview with Ressler and Thompson (Part 1 | Part 2)

• 3 Tips for a Great Landing Page - Landing page. Now, there’s a term, along with “microsite,” that ushers you right back to the heyday of Web 1.0. But for many marketers in Fortune 500 companies – who need 6 months lead time to put content on the corporate Web site – a microsite is still a valid tactic for supporting online and offline marketing campaigns.

• David Meerman Scott, speaking at the Inbond Marketing Summit, tackles the social media ROI question by asking, “What’s the ROI of putting on your pants in the morning?” and “What’s the ROI of the army of Guatemalan landscapers now raking the bushes around the building?” (via @desarev)

• And as long as we’re listening to gurus rip it up at conferences, be sure to check out Gary Vaynerchuk’s short, but intense keynote at the recent Web 2.0 conference in NYC. You might want to your volume down, as Gary gets excited and lets the effenheimers fly now and then.

social media

But despite the mounting curiosity, there’s still not much action on the part of mid-size to large companies.

Waiting and seeing
I can see why some folks are taking a wait-and-see approach to social media. If you wait, other folks will figure out some things for you. One or two leaders in your industry will make a big move and you’ll be able to see whether they fail or succeed. And eventually, some kind of broad consensus will emerge regarding how companies should engage with the user-generated Web.

I believe a consensus already is coalescing, but it exists mostly among brand-me and small-business owners, technology gurus, forward-thinking marketers and their followers – some of the same people who advised us that businesses should embrace the Web way back in the mid 90s. And boy were they right, even if we had a bubble and a hiccup along the way.

An emerging consensus
The emerging consensus on social media simply says that now is the time to jump in. Now is the time to play, to experiment, to make your mistakes and start to form your own professional opinions about which domains (blogging or microblogging, podcasting, wikis, social-networking, etc.) are the most productive and instructive for your company. All while it costs you next to nothing. Think of it as a free or cheap form of education, since very few of these mediums require a huge investment.

In the same way that nobody questions the need for a company to have its own Web site anymore, I believe in a couple years we’ll be at the point where nobody will question the need for companies to be engaged, in some form, in the millions of conversations taking place every minute on the social Web. Not just because a growing number of customers will expect it, but because it could come to represent one of the lowest-cost means of connecting with people who are predisposed toward your products and services.

Price to play
What might you expect to spend getting your feet wet in social media? The good news is that participation is free. It doesn’t cost you a thing to set up a blog (start with Blogger), a Flickr account, a Facebook or MySpace account or a Twitter account. If you’re reluctant to put your company’s name out on Facebook, just set up your own personal account first and see how it goes. Oh, did I mention? Unlike some forms of marketing research, it’s lots of fun!

Now, if you think you’re ready to dip your toes in the tub, but you can’t spare any FTEs, or even a portion of an FTE, consider sloshing over just a little of the cash you’re blowing on TV, radio and print ads.

• For the cost of producing and buying a print ad in a trade pub, you could hire a consultant to establish a passive presence on all the major social networks – or, better yet, an active presence on a couple of select networks!
• For the cost of a radio spot, you could hire a team to build and help you feed your blog for a year.

If you want to get serious and be prepared for the media of the future, you just might have to borrow a little from the media of the past.

Yeah, but what’s my ROI?
With some companies spending money is not the issue, but justifying the spend is. Consequently, I hear a lot about ROI: “What’s the ROI of blogging?” “What’s the ROI of being on Twitter?” And quite honestly, that’s a tough one. For instance, I can’t tell you if this blog has literally resulted in revenue for my business. But I do know that in some cases, we couldn’t have won the job without it. The blog was one of seveal critical pieces that contributed to the sale.

As you think about what kind of return you might expect from social media, keep in mind that the ROI could be entirely qualitative. Comcast maintains a Twitter account, @Comcastcares, staffed by a real guy, Frank Eliason, which they use to monitor conversations about Comcast and then to intervene when a disgruntled customer needs personal service. The ROI? Probably pretty lackluster from a pure financial point of view. But then again, what is their reputation worth to them? And how is that reputation built, if not one conversation at a time. So, what is it worth to Comcast to have thousands of influential technology aficionados – the same people you ask for help when your computer or high-speed Internet goes on the blink – see that Comcast is staffed by real people who actually appear to care?

Give ROI a vacation
Ultimately, it’s not for me or any other consultant to predict what ROI you should expect. The whole question of ROI is an evolving conversation that I believe needs to be left as a big question mark – for now. And given how cheap it is to do social media, why put so much pressure on it to earn its keep? Your company’s potted plant budget is probably ten times more than what you’ll spend on social media…and what’s the ROI on that?

The danger is that if you approach this medium with an immediate need for gain, or to monetize it somehow, you might not have the sensitivity to see how online communities are driven not by taking so much as giving. Yes, it’s a very hippie sentiment, but guess who’s running Web 2.0? Grown up hippies and their philosophical offspring! The point is that in order to thrive in any medium, you need to understand that medium’s unique rules and mores. If you don’t your marketing could come off as clumsy and self-serving and you won’t be able to build a community around your product or service.

One way forward
I know a number of marketing managers who are already familiar with social media and are eager to jump in, but they want to do so thoughtfully. They’re looking for a framework that will lend some sense of professionalism and planfulness to their social media efforts. Fair enough.

If that’s you, let me suggest that your initial success and longer term ROI on the social web will hinge on these three things:

1. Your social media persona – Do you have a clear understanding of who your company is and what it stands for in word and deed? Perhaps you’ve explored this territory in a recent branding effort. If so, dig up the dusty brand book and see what it tells you. Ultimately, you want to determine whether your company is a teacher, a helper, a connector or a [insert a personality type here].
2. Your imagination and sense of play – This is all fairly uncharted territory with very few precedents and formulas to latch onto. You might see that as a curse. I see it as a blessing. It means that the playing field is fairly level. Are you a small bank? You have just as good odds of beating out the top banks to become a real player in social media. There are many right answers and many ways to capitalize on this sea change in online behavior. But you’ve got to explore and find them.
3. Trial and error – Since there’s no script or formula to guide you, it’s reasonable to expect that some things you try might fail or succeed underwhelmingly. Maybe you’ll build an application on Facebook that attracts just 50 installs. Don’t fret. Tweak it and see what happens. With your social media persona as your guide, look for another way to act out your company’s role oline. You’re making omelets, so just commit up-front to breaking some eggs!

Get help if you need it
Of course, you’re not entirely on your own. Without spending a fortune, you could hire a social media consultant to shortcut your learning curve. A consultant could help you clarify your company’s social media persona and explore the many ways that could translate into actions. Or simply help you narrow the field and point you to some sites or networks that your company should consider first.

But ultimately, you have to take a first step, which might be as simple as bringing up the topic with your boss. Perhaps you need to lay out the alternatives:

• Your can jump into social media now while there’s still time to experiment, learn and lead.

OR

• You can wait until everyone else does it and be forced to jump in with little forethought. Because the landscape will be more defined and some of your competitors may have already set a high barrier to entry, you may not have the luxury of picking your battles. When we do achieve this “critical mass” I believe it’s going to be a mad rush. To paraphrase wine and marketing celeb Gary Vaynerchuck: You think social media is big now? Just wait until Oprah gets on Twitter!

It just might be true that everything you ever needed to know you learned in kindergarten. Check out the work done by Commoncraft. They create videos that use paper cutouts and white boards — a process they call Paperworks — to explain complicated software and technology concepts.

As someone who has created his fair share of interactive product demos, I gotta say that this work is brilliant in its simplicity and directness. It’s in a similar vein with the UPS white board ads. What makes it work? Is it the raw honesty of the materials (who can distrust paper cutouts)? Is it our natural love for storytelling that harkens back to childhood?

Google Docs in Plain English is the first video by Commoncraft that I saw, and was an eye-opener for me, so I’ve posted it above. But if you want a helpful 411 on some of the technology that are so much part of marketing these days, be sure watch the demos below:

• Social media in Plain English
• Twitter in Plain English
• RSS in Plain English
• Wikis in Plain English
• Social Bookmarking in Plain English
• Blogs in Plain English
• Podcasting in Plain English (Dango, this one’s for you)

Areva commercial

Royksopp video

The first picture that turned up in a Google images search of “meatloaf.” Turns out it’s a vegan meatloaf by Field Roast Grain Meat Co. Go figure.

Mark Bittman, food writer at the NYT, just wrote a column about how to reduce your meat intake. With the rising price of oil directly and indirectly pushing up the price of meat — not to mention the ever-rising tide of health consciousness — it’s a pretty hot topic.

I won’t try to summarize his article. It’s a quick read: The Minimalist: Putting meat back in its place.

I like Bittman’s style. He doesn’t try to convince anyone on the whys. He deliberately avoids politically and emotionally charged issues and instead offers up some practical tips on how to buy, store and prepare food, so that if you want to change your diet, you can. The goal becomes more doable in part because it’s more convenient.

This approach is worth emulating, especially if you’re in a “green” field and have to advocate a position that requires your audience to make changes to old habits. How do you help people to conserve water, take public transportation or recycle more?

I think there’s a lot to be said for avoiding judgment and instead trying to sympathize with your audience. For me, the most persuasive speakers and authors have been the ones who I hear saying, “There’s nothing wrong with you if you struggle with X,” “I struggle with X myself,” and “Here’s what works for me — see if it works for you.” Those kinds of messages leave people intact and non-defensive, which keeps the door open for further discussion.

Hey, if you haven’t seen it, you might enjoy this video of Bittman talk at TED. Again, it’s approachable and not at all condescending.

Watch: “What’s wrong with what we eat.”

I’m eager to read the book, but I think I already know my reaction, which is mixed. On the one hand, yes, there are metric tons of craptastic content on the Web. But, then again, what do you call the parade of top-40 radio and network-TV programming that the so-called professional class has been coming up with since the 1950s? Maybe Keen never had to watch shows like the Love Boat or listen to Kasey Casem. If he did, perhaps he’d be celebrating the diversity of artistic expression that only could have come about from the explosion of self-expression on the Web.

Like I said, I’ll have to read his book. But, sadly, it’ll go into my reading queue, which has grown noticeably over the past few years, um, ever since I started spending more time on blogs and watching YouTube.

Wells Fargo fosters an informal, ongoing dialogue with its customers

Wells Fargo has been experimenting with Web 2.0 technology quite a bit. Bank employees are empowered to use blogs, wikis and RSS to brainstorm ideas and communicate with customers. One of their most popular outward-facing blogs is the Student LoanDown. Wells Fargo is able to participate in more candid conversations with their customers about financing college and managing debt. Steve Ellis, EVP of Wells Fargo’s wholesale solutions group says that “A blog is informal - a great way to get away from the corporate thing and let people inside our heads.” And vice versa. Wells Fargo is able to use blogs like this as a tool to learn what their customers care about and how best to serve their needs.

Fortis initiated and moderates a social networking site based on the interests and needs of a focused market segment

Fortis has recently launched phase 3 of JoinToGrow.biz, a social networking Web site for entrepreneurs. Members can openly share ideas, questions and struggles with starting a business. They have access to inspirational and educational video interviews of their members where they talk about topics like how they got started, what they’ve learned, how they got financed, what mistakes they made and how they persevered. The site provides networking tools that help entrepreneurs connect with each other based on services, markets, interests and more. Fortis heavily involves the community in developing new tools and making existing tools better.

JoinToGrow.biz is quite popular with its focused market segment. Members are enthusiastic and participative. In the end, Fortis is able to demonstrate their brand’s commitment to entrepreneurs and innovation.

VanCity created and supports a community site around a topics people feel passionate about

VanCity, Canada’s largest credit union, has created ChangeEverything.ca, a site where people simply talk about topics related to “change.” There’s no discussion about financial products or planning or customer service. The discussions and topics that take place are all related to things that really matter to their audience; and that’s “change.”

Just because VanCity keeps a low marketing profile on the site, doesn’t mean that VanCity doesn’t doesn’t gain tremendous advantage to improve their products and services. In fact, the credit union finds opportunities to tie their products to what they learn the community cares about. For instance, there’s a lot of buzz around environmental issues. VanCity created products with lower rates on loans for hybrid vehicles. They offered a credit card where a portion each sale went to an environmental cause of choice.

William Azaroff, the interactive marketing manager at Vancity, says that the success of ChangeEverything is attributed to the open and honest communication within the community and, paradoxically, because they don’t use this platform to “sell” their products. However, VanCity is taking advantage of the halo effect. The end result is that people feel an affinity and emotional connection to the bank. The bank in turn can learn more about what their customers care about and how best to package and adjust their services to meet their ever changing needs.

Until next time

As you can see, financial institutions are successfully finding creative ways to take advantage of Web 2.0 technology to connect and form more meaningful relationships with their customers. Of course, these banks experienced their share of obstacles when implementing and sustaining their Web 2.0 initiatives. In part 3, I’ll talk about overcoming some of these obstacles: discussing common objections and giving you simple ideas to get started.

Resources
There’s a gold mine of information and interviews on Christophe Langlois’ blog, Visual Banking.

Simple solution #124: Name your downloadable files something that makes sense to the user. Hm, I don’t know, like maybe “Avery_template_8373_landscape_back.doc”