As YNot Web goes into its ninth year (gulp!), we have considered what direction we are going and how we need to continue to evolve to keep ahead in providing the best marketing and web services for our small business clients.

This year, we feel our marketing priorities will include the following:

• Offer new packages in Mobile optimization.  We want to make sure we help our clients tap into this huge market opportunity with mobile friendly-websites and marketing campaigns.
• Continued efforts in Social Media Marketing(SMM) for clients with a SEO focus for effective online visibility.
• Retool our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and SMM packages to help clients understand the ROI of each and the value they get from our services.
• Continued efforts to market our website  modernization packages.  We love to empower entrepreneurs to have control of the growth and freshness of their own websites.  All of the websites we create or upgrade are easily maintained by an average user.  And although we’ll still help maintain for those clients that prefer a hands-off approach, we feel we best serve our clients with completed website when we assist with ongoing strategy, new features and technology, and SEO, marketing and promotion.
• Increased efforts in educating businesses in the need to keep up with compliance (particularly for businesses with eCommerce offerings) and security updates for their websites, particularly keeping WordPress sites up to date.  New versions come out regularly throughout the year and updates are increasingly simplified.  Whether we assist or not, we suggest that WordPress users update versions at least every 6-12 months.  The current version of WordPress as of this writing is 3.3.1 (released January 3rd).
• Reconnect with past clients to bring them up to speed with the above.  All our past clients can benefit from a security and compliance audit and upgrade.  Those who have had websites built a year or more ago can particularly benefit from mobile optimization. Those whose websites have been built 3 or more years ago could benefit from a design refresher to integrate new user preferences and trends in design.  Those who have websites built 6 years ago definitely could benefit from modernizations and technology upgrades.

Today I got to be the featured member of Sacramento Business Builders where I was able to talk in depth about YNot Web‘s services.  This friendly networking group provided me a a great opportunity to discuss some of the lesser known services that YNot Web provides–specifically in the areas of Analysis & Strategic Consulting as well as our Online Promotion Services.  Many business contacts simply believe that I am just a web designer.  However, many clients I have know I offer so much more, including Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services, Search Engine Marketing consulting (I am a Qualified Google Advertising Professional and manage several large Pay-Per-Click campaigns for clients), as well as Social Media Marketing services (more and more clients need assistant setting up and managing their social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts).

It was a great reminder to get out there and help people understand more of the options available to them in marketing their business online.

Today I received notification that Constant Contact is changing their policies and will no longer have unlimited trial usage for mail lists with under 50 subscribers (useful for some of the non-profits or clubs that I’ve worked with). Now any list from 0-500 subscribers is subject to the $15 per month rate.
Also changing recently is the Express Email Marketing service that we resell through our YNot Shop. This service once was extremely affordable- as low as $9.95 per year! – but now the lowest we are allowed to offer it is $3.99 per month.
With all these recent pricing changes, I thought I’d take the opportunity to resummarize some of the autoresponder and mail list services I’ve previously recommended (see May 26, 2006) with their current 2007 monthly and yearly rates.

Service	Lowest Monthly Rate	Lowest Annual Rate	Restrictions at this price
AWeber	$19.95	$179.40	10,000 subscribers/unlim list
Constant Contact	$15	$153.00	500 subscribers
Express Email Marketing	$3.99 $7.99	$43.00 $86.28	250 emails per month 500 emails per month
Email Aces	$8.95	$107.40	2500 subscribers/1 list
GetResponse	$17.95	$145.40	unlimited/unlimited list

For the smallest lists, Express Email Marketing still wins out as the economical choice, however for larger than 250 but less than 2500 subscribers/emails Email Aces jumps into play, with GetResponse being the best value for large list owners or business with needs for unlimited lists (both Express Email Marketing and Email Aces cheapest plans only allow for one single list).

Congratulations to client GoGift for the feature article that appears on the front page of SacBee’s Business section today.  The GoGift founders are working hard at getting the word out about their nationwide cash gift registry services as an alternative to traditional wedding and baby registries.  YNot Web handles the online marketing and search engine optimization for GoGift and we wish them well in all their promotional efforts. 

Find the GoGift SacBee article online (you must register an email with the Bee for access).

While determining which size ads I wanted to prioritize for one of our online marketing clients, I found the Most Popular Ad Sizes as determined by Nielsen/NetRatings.

Times change and as large screen monitors and larger resolutions come out, more and more advertisers(25%) are headed to the largest ad size- a 728×90 Leaderboard.  These are the large rectangular ads that are usually at the very top header position on a website.

Also popular with 16% of advertisers is the Medium Rectangle (300×250).  These have made popular with many sites that like to place an ad block within their content, usually between the article or page title and the page text.

Rounding out the top three is the Wide Skyscraper with 13% of advertisers using this size.  These ads usually display in a left or right column beside the main content of the site and reach quite a ways down the page.

Of course, knowing your target ad venue is more important than determining what is most used by other advertisers.  If the perfect site to advertise to your specific market only allows for Full Banner (468×60, originally the most popular size) or a Square Button (125×125) then you would need to accommodate their ad specifications in order to advertise on their website. 

Ever since Microsoft launched their new AdCenter back in May, they have been increasing promotion to try to lure advertisers to use the system to place pay per click ads on the MSN and Live Search networks. If you’ve thought about adding pay-per-click methods to your marketing plan, now is the time to act on AdCenter. Microsoft has distributed a promotional code worth $200 of free advertising, but its only good for a limited time.

If you’re a past or current client of YNot Web and would like to create a new account at the AdCenter, drop me a line or give me a call and I will provide you with the discount code. You can step through their self-serve sign-up process or request that YNot Web sets up your ad campaigns, but either way, this is a good way to check out the pay-per-click arena and determine whether Microsoft’s ad network effectively reaches your target audience.

Yahoo again is sending out promotional codes worth a $25 credit via postal mail to help you sign up for Yahoo! Search Marketing.

If you want to try to pull in a larger number of holiday shoppers and are thinking about trying out this advertisement method, starting with an extra $25 ad budget gives you a little cushion to start.  Granted I would like to see a higher incentive (in the past, Yahoo has offered $50).

If you do not receive a postcard directly from Yahoo, you can always use this link to Sign up and get a $25 credit. You must be a new advertiser to Yahoo to get the credit.

Yahoo! Sponsored Search ads appear on the top of search results of leading sites like Yahoo!, AltaVista and CNN.com.