By Margaret Donahue-Rippetue

During 2005, online advertising revenue may cross a record $12 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers’ New Media Group. In the third quarter, according to DM News (Nov. 22, 2005), revenue jumped 33.9 percent, the highest quarter ever reported (the first and second quarters of 2005 set a record at 5.8 billion, a 26 percent increase over the same period in 2004, according to DM News, October 3, 2005. This is pivotal, as these numbers include the month of August, typically a slow period for advertising.

More than ever, Marketers are using the web for online advertising due to the value-per-dollar that this medium offers. Recent numbers reflect that display ads represent 20% of the business, classifieds gained 1% over 2004 with 18% of the share, and rich media ads took 8% of the year-to-date’s online advertising revenue.

Evidently, online marketing is working quite well. Forecasts for 2006 by IAB and PwC continue to anticipate growth in the online arena. Industry giants are already jumping into the arena-PepsiCo, is already allocating nearly 10 percent of its ad budget to be spent online; and this summer, the Ford Motor Co. announced plans to spend 15% of its $1 billion budget online, demonstrating clearly that marketing in this manner is certainly a successful method that will only continue to increase in usage by marketers.

http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

RedFusion Media has designed a new website featuring information and helpful links for the Career Visions Alliance.Career Visions Alliance is a joint effort throughout the Inland Empire community, lead by Baldy View Regional Occupational Program, to help students, both academically and professionally. In a truly unique and collaborative system, business, industries, and educators in both the public and private sectors are teaming together to better prepare the next generation to become a well-trained workforce, through emphasizing academics, plus aiding in career pathway development.

This new website spotlights the services provided by the Rancho Cucamonga office, making them easily accessible for everyone. The site has helpful links to regional career pathways, career development aids, and job application and training services. As an especially valuable resource, the website includes contact lists for schools in Inland Empire school districts.

Conleys.com Website Redesigned

RedFusion Media has recently redesigned Conleys.com, to display this rapidly growing company’s state-of-the-art greenhouse designs and equipment.

Established in 1946, Conley’s Greenhouse Manufacturing and Sales has remained family-owned and operated for the past fifty-five years. Located in Montclair, CA, Conley’s provides products and service for all commercial, retail, educational and personal greenhouse needs. The website displays the company’s superior strength, extended product life, and product flexibility.

Also offered on the new website are pictures and information on all greenhouse sizes that Conley’s provides, including types and accessories (such as ventilation, benches, doors, and shade and heat systems). Instruction manuals for product assembly are available and easily downloaded from the site.

by Ron BurgessThe marketing media is still buzzing over major companies pulling ad money from TV and shifting it to higher yielding Internet advertising. While large industries have carefully studied the effectiveness of various advertising medias and have structured their plan according to this information, most small businesses don’t have a media plan at all, let alone a way to measure the effectiveness of newspaper vs. radio vs. Internet advertising.

The most probable reason why major advertisers are so infatuated with online advertising may be the declining TV audience and newspaper subscription rate. Or, it might be that it is easier to measure effectiveness in the general corporate trend by measuring everything possible!

Either way, it is undeniable that Google rules in the realm of search advertising. This advertising is placed directly on a page based on the key words chosen by the advertiser and which are associated with the page’s content. The idea is that someone who searches on “gifts” will see websites and ads about gifts. Ads are best targeted by a highly refined search.

A frenzy is occurring online in this big-stakes game for all of the large advertising players, including Microsoft’s MSN.com network, who has a major study underway to examine the return on their investment of certain kinds and combinations of online advertising. MSN’s AdCenter hopes to compete with Google and Yahoo in the placing of key-worded advertising.

“The ROI is very good because the keyword prices are so low,” said Danielle Leitch, Vice President of More Visibility.[1] “Some advertisers are the only ones using specific key words. The DM News reports that one advertiser’s campaign generated $22,000 in sales in the one week after Thanksgiving with just a $400 investment,” according to iCrossing’s Noah Elkin.

The ways in which Microsoft is imbedding behavioral and demographic targeting features will differentiate with Google’s geographic strength.

“Some advertisers will really leverage the new targeting criteria, and others are going to completely drown in it,” says Josh Stylman, managing partner of Reprise Media, New York. However, smaller advertisers have a more understandable online option in display advertising on local and industry specific websites, with ample traffic.

Just like buying ad space in magazines or newspapers, display ads (or button and banner ads) are purchased for a monthly price on pages that you select. Budgets can be easily controlled, and performance is more easily measured than most medias - if the ad space is properly setup by your webmaster or the media company. One advantage of advertising online is the branding ability of the media. Branding is accomplished as many people may view the page, even if they do not click on the ad. If the number of times a logo is viewed is the goal (just as in newspapers and magazines), then the online-per-view cost is a fraction of the cost of newspaper advertising.

For instance, a regional business print publication costs over $40 per thousand views for a small 1/8 page ad. This assumes that every subscriber looks at every page - which is rather doubtful. A regional or city directory website might be as low as $10 per view, and can be coordinated with the actual copy on the page to target the ad. Therefore, the effectiveness multiple is more than just four-to-one, and may even be eight-to-one or more!

The costs of advertising online will probably not continue to be as low as they are today. Many key words and ad spaces are already becoming more expensive as advertisers change their emphasis from traditional media to online resources. But, at the present time, the Internet is an advertisers’ market, with low prices producing increasing usage and visibility.

Inland Valley Manufacturers’ Council Partners with RedFusion Media to Extend Services

Redlands, CA: The Inland Valley Manufacturers’ Council (IVMC) has just completed an agreement with RedFusion Media of Redlands to build its website and an extended industrial and manufacturing directory in its regional directory website, InlandEmpire.US.

The IVMC is a membership-based, non-profit association for manufacturers in the Inland Empire. The mission of IVMC is to improve, increase, and enhance manufacturing within the Inland Empire. IVMC members network to share ideas and best practices in manufacturing. It also is strives to empower the organized voice of manufacturers. The members of the council interface with state and local government representatives, participate in educational programs, and host meetings to assist manufacturers to improve efficiencies and profitability.

The partnership with InlandEmpire.US will enhance IVMC membership by creating a sourcing directory for local suppliers and materials, and provide relevant linking opportunities to member websites, plus links to the IVMC website, as a recruiting tool for the organization. Members include: Portland Cement, Farmdale Creamery, Brithinee Electric, Garner Holt Productions, Quell Brothers’ Sign Company, Williams Furnace Company, and Magneto Inductive Systems. The full membership is available on its website: www.IVMC.US.

InlandEmpire.US is devoted to creating the region’s largest directory of businesses and events in Inland Southern California. The InlandEmpire.US network of local and regional websites expect over 1.5 million page views this year. Currently traffic is increasing at a 30% per month rate.

“We are pleased to partner with the IVMC in this way to create a local presence in the manufacturing sector for the Inland Empire,’” says Molly Burgess, general manager of RedFusion Media. “Since PE.net shut down its site last spring, the IE has had no dominant local directory for reference or events. Because we manage so many websites that contribute to the community, we also wanted a place where we could gather Google ranking through relevant linking programs. Linking opportunities that help websites increase their Google ranking are difficult for webmasters to find, and are not usually understood by most webmasters. We have had very good success with these types of programs, without it costing the market rate of about $100 per page, for search engine optimization on websites,” says Burgess.

IVMC hopes that its involvement in sponsoring the manufacturing directory, will assist its member websites, and do a service to the Inland Empire as well. “We’re excited to be in on the ground floor of such an innovative program,” says IVMC president Bob Botts. “We needed a website, but didn’t expect to learn of some of the opportunities available locally with RedFusion Media.”

If you are a manufacturer, you can learn more about the IVMC at www.IVMC.US. The new manufacturing directory will be completed by January 1, 2006 and can be found in the Business section ofInlandEmpire.US.

RedFusion Media is the leading web design and content maintenance firm in the Inland Empire. Based in Redlands, it maintains over 200 websites for clients such as San Bernardino County Museum, the City of Redlands, ROP, Arrowhead United Way and the Air-conditioning, Refrigeration and Mechanical Contractors’ Association of Southern California. RedFusion Media operates the local directory sites: InlandEmpire.US, RedlandsWeb.com, and RedlandsWeddings.com.

Contact: Ron Burgess
Phone: (909) 798-7092

By Margaret Donahue-Rippetue -

A report from Forrester Research predicts strong online sales will grow up to $210 billion by 2010, representing a 14 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years. This takes into account that online sales in 2005 will top a record $100 billion dollars.

E-commerce is here to stay. Nearly two-thirds of households in North America are actively online, with most already having made at least one purchase. Most people research items they plan to purchase online, and the report states after making a purchase that they are likely to be loyal to the product. Web stores have no closing time; busy consumers can shop without leaving their homes.

More manufacturers are anticipated to launch e-commerce sites as they learn that up to 27 percent of web shoppers have purchased from a manufacturer’s site. Along with traditional retail sites, overstocked items are also available at sites such as OverStock.com, and there is an auction every day at Ebay.com. Innovative dealers are allowing consumers to purchase items online, and then to pick up the items in their local store - helping to bring a new segment of the population into a comfort zone with online shopping.

For interesting sites by category that offer online shopping visit http://dmoz.org/Shopping/

Online Sales Strong for Start of Season http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051130/ap_on_hi_te/online_sales_1

How many offers for credit have you torn up today?
Ever wonder why your mailbox is saturated with offers for credit cards? The answer is simple: “because direct mailing works!”While online advertising has taken the lead in many markets, credit card applicants are still responding strongly to direct mail solicitations. A recent study by ComScore Networks for the U.S. Postal Service determined that consumers typically respond more positively to direct mail than to online advertising in this particular arena.

ComScore’s conclusions were based on a pop-up survey appearing to online applicants, which revealed that direct mailings were responsible for more than 13 million of the 35 million online credit card applications in 2004. Prospecting appears to be most successful when done through the mail. ComScore included that signing up online is most often the end-result of consumers reading offers that arrive in their mailbox.

ComScore Networks specialize in analyzing consumer behavior and attitudes.

To access more resources in this specialized industry visit: http://www.comscore.com/press/pr.asp?year=2005

To access recent articles on postal news visit:http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artcategoryp.cgi?category_id=17&ppg=2

New, Easy-to-use Online Web-based Calendar RedFusion Media announces its new stand-alone online calendar at http://www.redfusionmedia.com/web_calendar.htm. RedFusion Media and its technical partner MacMillan Interactive developed the easy interface to fill our clients’ specific calendaring needs. With clean and straight-forward interface and a live database, you will be able to create a calendar for your website that is up-to-date and easy to read, as well as cost-effective.

With your own personal Username and Password, you will be able to Login at your own convenience to add, delete, and edit dates and events quickly and easily. The calendar is live, so the information you enter will be immediately available to the public.

WebCalendarHost.comprovides a user-friendly calendar layout with which you can include as much or as little information as you wish or need. Each event title you enter shows up in the box of the date you entered it under. For each title which you enter additional information, such as a description of the event, time, location, price, or contact information, the viewer can click on the event title to view anything you may have entered.

You can include a link to your calendar page from your website as well as in an e-mail. There is also a link at the top of your calendar page back to your website so that you and your viewers may navigate efficiently between the two. At the bottom of the calendar page, there is a Print feature that allows you to print the calendar page of whichever month is showing.

We are offering Version 1 of this tool to current RedFusion Media and MacMillan Interactive clients. Anyone interested in utilizing this service and adding a calendar to your website may contact us.

Methods

Actively going out to acquire incoming links, also know as back-links by Google. Most of these are quick to do and are a one-time submission task. Some of these methods do involve paying a listing fee.

Top-Level Directory submission - The big three, Google, MSN, and Yahoo, can all be submitted for free. Others you will need to pay for.

Second-Level Directory submission - all the rest, Alta Vista, DMOZ, Ask Jeeves, and many more are considered generic or second tier directories. It is worth your time getting in as many of these as possible.

Niche Directory submission - perform a search on your favorite search engine for “your keywords + directory”. Try searching for a couple of different keywords or combinations to find different directories that cater to your company’s niche.

Resource sites - taking a similar approach to above, do a search for your top performing keywords and identify any industry resource sites.

Other Methods

Becoming an authoritative site in your area of expertise is the key to all successful websites. These types of links are built up over a long period of time, think of it like running a marathon, you have to keep running.

Content - build top-quality, unique content that provides value to people. They will then naturally provide links to your site.

Start a forum - though very time consuming and resource intensive, a forum where people can talk about ideas related to your area of expertise is an effective method of building content.

Blogs - similar concept to a forum but less resource-intensive. A great way for people to link to your site, and it provides a great customer retention tool.

Press releases - issue press releases. A great way to build up general awareness of your business, assuming you have something positive to crow about.

RSS Feeds – This is basically a press release function, but is expands the area to which you press release is read, by feeding the information to multiple news outlets through XML coding.

Testimonials - provide a testimonial to your suppliers regarding the great service they are providing your business.

Free Tools - provide some sort of free tool on your site. This is a very effective way for the resource sites that are out there to link to your site.

Newsletters - start a newsletter that you can email to your clients. Put up a newsletter archive on your site allowing anyone to view these.