By Steve Lubahn, Vice President of Client Marketing Services at Vision Design Group, Winona, MN

It’s that time of year again, to look back on how we’ve spent a year in anticipation for improving our businesses in the year ahead.

Working closely with more than 250 businesses at our marketing firm, Vision Design Group, I looked back at 2012 to find five key marketing trends that can help direct your marketing efforts in the coming year:

• Continued shift of traditional print and advertising budget to digital marketing. Many clients now have digital marketing budgets that exceed 50% of their total marketing budget.
• Website redesigns are becoming more frequent. Where businesses once updated their website every 5-7 years, they’re now finding it necessary to update every 3-5 years to keep up with online trends, updated information and implement new technology to serve their customers. Remember when we used to come out with a new brochure every six months, or an annual catalog? The ability to make on-demand changes to your website comes with the responsibility to deliver a website that keeps pace with changes in your product and service offerings, as well as changes in internet technology.
• Major increase in requests for mobile optimized websites. Most of our clients are now seeing mobile traffic ranging from 10% to over 30% of their total website visits. It’s no longer optional to consider both the tablet and smartphone device user experience on your website. If you are updating your website, strongly consider a responsive design that will adjust the page layout based on the size of the display, from desktop PC to tablet to smartphone. (See the article Do I Need A Mobile App for My Business? for examples of several types of mobile website optimization.)
• Sharp increase in the number of clients using paid search.Clients who implement cost per click (CPC) paid search advertising on Google and other search engines are typically seeing increase of 5% to over 70% in website traffic. In addition, paid search traffic often results in conversion rates higher than website traffic sources.
• Increase in commercial photography. Companies are choosing higher quality photography not just for printed materials, but also to improve their internet presence. Fewer websites use stock photos and now favor real-life images of company-related people and settings.

Based on this ongoing migration from traditional media to internet-delivered media, how can you cost-effectively improve your digital marketing efforts in 2013? Here are a few ideas that you can implement quickly to improve the performance of your website and increase sales leads.

4 Tips for Cost-effective Digital Marketing in 2013

• Claim and optimize your Google+ Local listing. Google and other search engines are placing a heavy emphasis on local search. If you haven’t already, claim your Google+ Local (previously Google Places) listing. It’s a free and simple action you can take immediately. If you have multiple locations or branches, optimize the listing for each location. Once you claim your listing, add keywords related to your business and services to improve your search rankings. You can also customize your listing with your logo, images, business hours and products and services. Also consider claiming and updating your listings on Bing Local, LinkedIn, Manta and other popular business directories.
• Spend more time on email marketing. Though not as glitzy as social media and other newer forms of digital marketing, email marketing to a solid in-house list continues to be one of the most cost-effective means of communicating with and selling to your customer base. Experiment with frequency and the call to action. A good mailing list can maintain open rates of 20%-30%, and many of our e-commerce clients enjoy an increase in orders after every email they send. Be sure to clean out bounced or abandoned emails to improve your email deliverability rates. For more information on email marketing trends, advantages, and tips, see our blog post Email - still your most effective marketing media.
• Improve your website’s organic search results. If you want to improve your organic search engine optimization (SEO), start with making sure your page titles are unique on each page, and align with target keyword phrases on each page. For best results, try to limit page titles to about 70 characters maximum, and page descriptions to about 125 characters. Most search engines place little or no weight on the keyword metatags, so do not spend much time trying to tweak your keyword metatag. Looking for ideas on what keywords to focus on? Review your Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools reports for keywords and phrases that are currently driving traffic to your website, and focus on those that are resulting in orders or other forms of conversion.
• Consider adding live chat to your website. For anyone over 40, it is hard to image the need for live chat on a website. If you have high school or college age children, you know their cell phones are rarely used for voice communication, but they use them constantly for texting and sending messages via social media. Many businesses are finding implementation of live chat increases their ability to interact with potential customers, particularly those in younger generations. Live chat can also improve your customer service with more timely interaction and can often reduce the time per support case for your customer service staff. Live chat is quick and cost-effective to implement; for instance, a platform called SnapEngage can be implemented with up to four customer service agents at less than $50 per month. For more information on Live Chat, see the Vision Design Group blog article Use Live Chat To Increase Leads and Customer Interaction.

Steve Lubahn is Vice President of Client Marketing Services at Vision Design Group in Winona, Minnesota. Please visit their Web site at www.visiondesign.com. Contact Steve by phone at 507-453-0767, or by email at slubahn@visiondesign.com.

By Stephanie Elsen

If you are in business, you know that it is important to understand how your business is performing. In order to do that, you need some way to keep track of and interpret the numbers that go along with your business. This is where accounting and financial management come into play. Accounting tools can be used to measure and interpret the financial progress of your business. They can also help you communicate the status of your business to important third parties, such as banks and the government. Here are some of the benefits of accounting and financial management.

No more guessing. By maintaining an accounting system, you can improve your odds of making the right decision for your business. While the information alone is not the only factor to consider, it does provide one very important piece of the puzzle in your decision making process. Good accounting records show you where you stand financially, so you won’t have to guess at what your financial position is.

Make better decisions. Accounting plays an important role by giving us a means of communicating the financial part of a business to others. The most crucial function of any accounting system is to provide real data, by which managers and owners can base their decisions. Having numerical facts greatly helps in making profitable decisions for your business. And while the accounting information gathered does not guarantee a good decision, it does greatly improve your chances of making the best decision possible.

Solve problems. Accounting systems provide reports that help you analyze the profitability and performance of your business. Not only can an accounting system help you make decisions, but it can also help you find areas of your business that need to be improved. Once you are able to identify trouble areas, you can focus on improving them.

Track complex information. If your business requires any loans, the lending institution will likely require financial reports to understand the net income and net worth of your business. They may also want to evaluate your financial statements periodically to monitor your ability to repay the loan. Providing this kind of information is next to impossible without business accounting software that can provide financial statements.

Good accounting records show where your business stands financially. Use every advantage available to your business to improve and enhance its performance. Implement and maintain your accounting and financial management system, and your business will be on its way to financial success!

By Stephanie Elsen

Are you looking for a better way to handle the accounting for your nonprofit organization? There are so many accounting software products available and it can be hard to decide which one is right for you. In case you are wondering if CenterPoint Accounting for Nonprofits will be a good fit, here are some statistics about the nonprofits who look to Red Wing Software for their nonprofit accounting.

• About 48% need fund accounting and nonprofit specific features. When you are trying to manage different funds, it can be hard to do that in a basic accounting system that was made for small businesses. Most nonprofits who make a move to CenterPoint Accounting for Nonprofits have tried to make that kind of system work for their needs, but find that it would be far easier to use a system made for that purpose.
• 22% are outgrowing their basic software. Nonprofits that have grown over the years often move to Red Wing Software to accommodate a growing organization, more users, more data, and more! When a system gets bogged down, can’t be networked or accommodate additional users, it’s time to move to something new.
• 17% are doing the accounting by hand. Saving money can be appealing, and starting out by doing the accounting for your organization by hand is common. As time goes by, you will know when you are at the point of needing a better way to handle the accounting. This is when many organizations turn to CenterPoint Accounting for Nonprofits.
• About 13% are new organizations. If a nonprofit organization knows at the start what they need to get the reports, budgeting, and financial management tools in a meaningful format, they start by using an accounting system that can handle those things. By starting out with CenterPoint Accounting for Nonprofits, you can use the system for many years, instead of looking for something better after only a brief period of time.

Red Wing Software and CenterPoint Accounting for Nonprofits have helped thousands of nonprofits manage their financial information. Contact us today to see how we can help you by calling 800-732-9464 or e-mailing info@redwingsoftware.com.

By Stephanie Elsen

Businesses in the U.S. know that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as Obamacare, is making some big changes that affect businesses. Top of mind for many is the requirement that businesses with more than 50 full time employees must offer their full time employees health coverage. (Full time is considered 30 hours or more.) It is important then, that starting in 2014, employers can accurately determine which of their employees qualify as full time employees. And that’s why starting to track the right information in 2013 is a good idea.

So, who qualifies as a full time employee? In order to determine that, each employer chooses a time frame in which to determine full time eligibility, ranging from three months up to twelve months. Whatever length of time is used to determine full time eligibility is also the length of time which they must offer health care coverage. For example, if they are looking at a three month time frame to determine eligibility, then those who qualify must be offered the coverage for three months.

Some types of employers have a difficult job ahead of them in determining which employees are full time. In businesses where there are many part time employees, some of those employees may work enough hours to qualify as full time. Perhaps an employee works many extra hours one month, filling in often when others are sick or simply taking someone else’s hours for them. Will you know which employees are approaching full time eligibility? Are you ready for the 2014 reporting requirement?

Red Wing Software’s CenterPoint Payroll Software is now ready with a report to help users determine which employees are eligible, for whatever time frame is chosen. The report shows the employee name, the dates of the employee’s first and last pay period, number of weeks worked, number of months worked, the total hours worked, and then the average hours worked per week. This report is included standard within CenterPoint Payroll, so users will be able to view the report all throughout 2013 to monitor which employees are eligible. Once health care coverage becomes required in 2014, users will be prepared with a report to verify who is eligible. The report will be available in 2013.

Preview of the “Employee Average Hours Worked Per Week” Report

By Stephanie Elsen

Are you looking for something better to handle the financial information for your farm? You might be wondering if you came to the right place. During the search process, you probably noticed that there are many accounting software programs available. It can be hard to decide between them all. Here are some statistics about the people who choose Red Wing Software’s CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture to handle their farm’s financial information.

• About 55% need agriculture-specific features or accounting features that work well for farms. By far, the number one reason people move to CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture is that they want to enter and track information specific to how a farm operates. Functions such as production analysis, multiple quantity inventory tracking, and ag-specific ratio analysis (and much more) provide meaningful information, so it is easier to make profitable decisions for your farm.
• 27% are outgrowing their basic accounting software. Those who began by using a basic or “shelf” software program can find that as they grow, it can no longer handle their needs. Perhaps they need to manage more than one entity, or the number of transactions has become too large for their current system. In these situations and many more, CenterPoint is a great program to look at. It can handle the multiple entities, and there is no hard limit to the data that can be entered and stored.
• 18% are new farms. Farms and agricultural operations just starting up can definitely benefit from the accounting and financial tools offered in CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture. Why not start with a program you know can grow as your operation grows, and can give you the information you need, in the way you need to see it. Staying on top of financial trends and knowing your profitability from the start can really help you grow!

Make the right decision for your farm. Red Wing Software and CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture have helped thousands of farm accounting software users manage their financial information. Contact us today to see how we can help you by calling 800-732-9464 or e-mailing info@redwingsoftware.com.