MSAE Presentation

Using Your Web Presence to Enhance Membership Value March 5, 2009 and Audience

Agenda Web Evaluations: MSAE & National Sports Center Using the web to find new members? How do you provide ongoing value & engage members? How do you make it easy to retain and renew members/audiences? Questions

Target Audience Coaches/Team Leader (esp. Hockey & Soccer) Individuals who are going to clinics/tournaments N. Central Community People looking for an event facility Developers of sports facilities Business Goals Recognize Sponsors Cut down paper forms Customer Goals - Register teams Raise awareness for all sports offered Central hub for all communication

Target Audience Current association members Prospective members (all sizes) Allied members (provide services to members) Organization Goals Make it easy for members to find information Attract new members Communicate pro-actively to members

How visible is your organization? Finding New Members

Potential Members are Online 1.3B internet users worldwide Nearly 75% of US Households subscribe to an internet service 92% of households with annual incomes over $70K are internet subscribers 2 55% of all US Households have high-speed Internet Access 3

Search Growth Search is quickly approaching email as #1 Internet activity 49% (60 million) of Internet users search every day 90% of all internet users use search 60% (76 million) of Internet users email every day 91% of all Internet users use email Source: Forrester Research

Global Search Volume Global Percentage of Volume Google: 77.4% Yahoo: 12.5% Live Search (MSN): 5.9% AOL: 2.1% Over 400 Million U.S. Internet Searches Per Day

Search A Critical Component People’s first interaction with your content is often filtered through the “eyes” of the search engines Without these software programs that search a data sets (such as the Web) user would have a very hard time sifting through all the information online.

Offline Media Complements Online Search Source: iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study, August 2007 Question: Within the last 6 months which of the following prompted you to go to a search engine to look for information on a particular company, product, service or slogan? (Select all that apply) Two-thirds of Online Search users are driven to perform searches as a result of exposure to an offline channel Television ad Word of mouth from friend / acquaintance Magazine / newspaper ad Company’s store / physical location Radio ad Billboard, indoor sports venue sign Ad / company name on company truck / van /car Ad / company name on taxi / train / city bus I have not preformed a search 0% 20% 40% 60% 100% Percentage of Online Search Users 33% 3% 7% 9% 17% 20% 30% 36% 37%

Good Visibility on Branded Terms

Branded Terms – Good Visibility

Local Search – They own the page.

Localized Keyword Search – - Visible - Partner links are important

Localized Keyword Search – Visible, but not in the broader context.

Regional Keyword Search – Not showing up

General (National) Keyword Search – Not visible Paid search campaign?

General (National) Keyword Search – Nice visibility on soccer facility

General (National) Keyword Search – No visibility

General (National) Keyword Search – Nice visibility “Wild Hockey” search

Branded Search – Good visibility considering the competition

Branded Search – Good visibility

Branded Search – - Good beginning on 3 rd Party Links

Keyword Search – Missing visibility on general keywords

Understanding a Search Results Page Organic Listings “Free” Pay-Per-Click Listings “Paid Advertising”

Organic Search - How it works Once indexed, a page’s relevance is determined by the engine’s algorithm Keywords/Metadata (Page title, keywords and descriptions) Does this matter? Search engine “Road Map” The “main themes” of a website or page Control content displayed on search results page Content Where on page, where within site, surrounding words, clarity Aligned with page title, keywords, and descriptions

Organic Search - How it works A page’s relevance is also determined by… Inbound Links Links from 3rd party websites to your website How many and from which sites Not having too many Outbound links URL - what is your website address? Frequency of page refresh - are you publishing content often? Website code - does the code prevent search engines from spidering your content?

PPC Search Advertising Advertisers bid for positioning (think online auction) In most cases, the higher the bid, the higher the placement “ Relevance – Click Index” factor is applied to algorithm Advertiser pays only when text ad is clicked (PPC) Two major distribution methods Search match - Ex: search directly on Google.com or Yahoo.com Content match - Ex: PPC ads displaying on partner sites

PPC: Search Match #1 Search Match #2 Search Match #3 Search Match #4 - #7 Search Match Listings

PPC: Content Match #1 Content Match Previous #3 Fidelity.com loses placement in Content Match #2 Content Match

Search Engine Listings Have seen stats saying 80 to 90% of all users are clicking through on organic listings, but this varies by topic and relevance to what the searcher is looking for.

How Users See a Listings Screen

Adding Natural Search to a Paid Search Campaign Dramatically Boosts Performance Source: iCrossing, “Search Synergy: Natural and Paid Search Symbiosis,” March 2007. Online Performance % Change When Natural Search Is Integrated With Paid Search 92% 45% 45% 44% 41% 39% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Clicks Actions Orders Page views Visitors Time on site

Acquisition –The Big Ideas Think about how what your key audiences would type into Google to find you. Review how you are helping people find you online. Use Google’s free Keyword Tools to find out traffic on keywords Spend time and money on your search strategy both paid and organic when it makes sense for your acquisition strategy. Costs can range widely depending on the keywords you want to target. The most popular words are the broadest and most expensive. Look at less popular words that might be more targeted for your audience. E.g., Minnesota Soccer rather than Soccer

How can the web add value and help engage members/visitors? Providing ongoing value and engaging members

Is your site useful? Makes it easy to join Support your brand & mission Built to make updates easy Saves your organization time & money Useful to your members/audiences Easy to use for everyone

Observations Design Homepage tells me you are mostly about meetings and events Feels older and not as up to date as it could be Broken links Have to dig a little bit for information Below the “fold” Jobs and Events – two biggest trafficked areas are visible right away Too many PDFs Tell people when they are downloading something so they expect that Not as many ways to engage in a two-way exchange Site search not visible to help users find information

Observations Technical ColdFusion system is running it with a minimum content management tool Makes pages hard to add content to without asking for help from a programmer ColdFusion is software for managing web applications that has lost ground to newer platforms and programming languages The HTML is not using much CSS Makes pages hard to change quickly There's more navigation links in any given page's HTML than there is content which can cause confusion to search engines

Off Site Efforts Social Media or Off Site Efforts Monthly email, bi-monthly events LinkedIn Account? Blog – missing MSAE brand identity elements iBizRadio hosted video

Engagement –The Big Ideas When you redesign the site, update the technology rather than try to reuse what you’ve got to make it easier to update Ask your users what they want to see on the site (and they are in the room) what they want to see on the site and move that content front and center Find ways to encourage ongoing virtual networking on communication – make it simple

Observations Design Deep rich content to get customers back to the site for specific sporting leagues and events Unless you are familiar with it, it takes sometime to learn Content geared for people in-the-know, not necessarily for the person coming to the site to find out quick logistics information Does a good job of setting up all that the Sports Center has to offer Maybe just needs a little more context around it for the business audiences Design is consistent though not always idea when linking to 3 rd party content pages (Point Streak stats on games)

Observations Technical Site looks well put together from a template and management structure Using Dreamweaver and Contribute? Site is on a solid infrastructure that has some search optimization working Sitemap was broken when we viewed it

Off Site Efforts Social Media or Off Site Efforts Mini-site for Schwan’s USA cup a nice idea-helps direct user to more relevant content for them LinkedIn Account? Blog – blog is nicely integrated using site design and identity WebCasting events – very nice way to engage families/friends Weekly TV RSS subscription to events and news Facebook for events

Engagement –The Big Ideas Think about creating ways to get to content more directly Create mini-sites iPhone/Mobile site for days events/directions Ask your users what they want to see on the site and create pathways to that content – Create User Profiles of key site audiences and design experiences for these users Make it easier for people to customize their view of the site (like MyYahoo to help them prioritize information) Work with 3 rd party providers to skin their systems to fit into your site.

About Social Networks Source: eMarketer, “Social Network Marketing Ad Spending and Useage”, December 2007; BusinessWeek “Generation MySpace is Getting Fed Up”, February 7, 2008 1 Social Networks are Not Just a Teen Fad 37% of US adult Internet users and 70% of teens use Social Networks Nearly 50% of all page views on the web are on social networking sites 2 Advertisers are There Already Online spending on Social Network advertising will grow 75% in 2008 to $2.2 billion 3 Demographics are moving toward society as a whole Largest growing demographic of Facebook is 40+ women YouTube demographics mirror US as a whole

Do you make it easy to leave? Retaining & renewing members/audiences

Retention –The Big Ideas Put your time and effort into projects that will bring real value to your customers/members so they can’t do without you (Create ROI Models) Think about how you provide real value and extend that experiences online Don’t be afraid to get transactional Don’t be afraid to license third-party tools that are already build and cost effective to deploy Go where your audiences are – offsite if necessary

Thank You for Participating Questions?

Thank You! Lisa Helminiak Principal | Strategist Email: [email_address] com View a copy of this presentation at www.azul7.com/blog

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