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While business conditions may have improved for some retailers, few will dare to lease more space this year.

Commercial real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap this week forecast that vacancy rates at retail buildings will increase this year throughout South Florida, especially in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

The firm forecast that countywide retail vacancy rates this year will average 12.9 percent this year in Broward and 12 percent in Palm Beach County, versus 8.9 percent in Miami-Dade County. The comparable vacancy rates last year were 11.4 percent in Broward, 10.5 percent in Palm Beach and 8.1 percent in Miami-Dade.

In a report released Wednesday, Marcus & Millichap also predicted that South Florida landlords will lower their average asking rates for retail space in all three counties this year, compared with last year. The firm expects average asking rates per square foot of retail space to fall by 2.7 percent to $22.59 in Miami-Dade, by 3.1 percent to $17.86 in Broward and by 3.3 percent to $20.21 in Palm Beach.

Marcus & Millichap forecast that new construction will add 1.35 million square feet of new retail space this year, including 750,000 square feet each in both Miami-Dade and Broward.

In Broward, “the start of a recovery in retail property fundamentals will not occur in 2010,” Marcus & Millichap reported. In Miami-Dade, “although retail spending increased in the first quarter, perhaps due in part to Super Bowl-related activity in January, it’s down nearly 6 percent on a year-over-year basis.”

Demand for retail space among operators of grocery stores and pharmacies is steady, but “if you’re talking about specialty retailers in malls, they have a much-reduced view of needed space,” said Rick McAllister, president of the Florida Retail Federation, a Tallahassee-based trade group.

Statewide, retail sales hovered close to 2009 levels in the January-April period but remained well below levels of comparable periods in 2007 and 2008, Florida sales tax data show.

“Most people have figured out they aren’t going to lose their job, and their income hasn’t dropped, so there’s pent-up demand, and I think that’s what we’re seeing,” McAllister said. “Consumer confidence is continuing to gain ground, and consumer confidence leads to spending. … But right now, we’re not seeing the uptick that we’d like to see.”

Online marketing could intensify as more companies make it pay off

More companies are likely to gain from online marketing as they integrate their Internet presence with broader marketing strategies.

“We’re finding if you just go online, it doesn’t work by itself,” said Roberta Backus Turner, chairwoman of South Florida-based advertising agency Backus Turner International. Her clients get better results if they “reinforce it with traditional media. … We find the combination works very well.”

Many companies are trying online marketing because of the low cost.

“People are still leery about the Internet as far as credibility,” said Sherrie Chastain, co-owner of Skunkworks Marketing Solutions, a 2-year-old business based in Palm Beach Gardens. But “traditional marketing is much more expensive than Internet marketing.” Chastain said one of her commercial clients, a seller of impact-resistant glass, formerly spent $13,000 a month on Yellow Pages print ads in South Florida and now gets a bigger response by paying her firm $2,500 a month for ongoing online marketing support.

The main goal of online marketing is to maximize so-called “SEO,” or search engine optimization, the widespread practice of crafting online content so the target audience can find it easily by using Google, Yahoo and other Internet search engines.

But unless the theme of online content is part of a consistent marketing message, the payoff from an Internet presence may be meager.

“That’s the fundamental mistake that everyone is making,” said Murray Izenwasser, owner of an online marketing agency in West Palm Beach called Biztegra. Many companies “are creating a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, or a blog, but they’re never taking a step back and asking, ‘How does this fit in with everything else we’re doing?’ … It’s not about interactive anymore. It’s about integration.”

However, conservation is the watchword at many companies that have decided to spend less on marketing, online or offline, until the economy improves.

“I see a little trepidation in the marketplace,” said Alec J. Rosen, managing partner of AJR Partners, a marketing agency in Coral Gables. “There was an expectation at the end of last year that we had turned a corner, and I think with the recent news in Europe and the markets and all of that, I think people have gotten a little jittery.”

Gambling industry poised for a new phase of expansion

The casino industry in South Florida is a good bet to expand this year despite the hard-luck economy.

Installation of slot machines may increase as a result of a new state law cutting the state tax that pari-mutuel operators pay on slot-machine revenue.

Effective July 1, the law also creates a 20-year compact between the state of Florida and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. The tribe will pay billions of dollars to the state government for the duration of the agreement while offering so-called Class III casino games, including blackjack and roulette, together with slot machines and poker at five of its casinos in Florida, including three in Broward County.

Under the law, the state tax that operators of pari-mutuel horse tracks, dog tracks and jai-alai frontons pay on slot machine income will drop to 35 percent from 50 percent, starting in July.

The profitability of the 4-month-old Calder Casino in northwest Miami-Dade County “will be considerably enhanced” by the lower state tax on slot machine revenue, said Robert L. Evans, chief executive of Churchill Downs Inc., owner of the casino and the adjacent pari-mutuel horse racing track, Calder Race Course.

Calder is the fifth pari-mutuel in Miami-Dade and Broward counties to introduce slot machines in recent years, “and we are now second largest in the market in terms of net gaming revenues,” Evans said on Churchill Downs’ May 6 conference call with stock analysts. “We have got a better mousetrap there, with the facility that we built, and I think if we just stay patient and do a good job of marketing, we will continue to build the revenue base.”

Florida Gaming Corp. hasn’t yet introduced slot machines at the Miami Jai-Alai Fronton but plans to do so. In a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Florida Gaming said it intends to raise funds by refinancing debt or selling its jai-alai property in Fort Pierce “to initiate efforts to install slot machines” at the Miami fronton.

Las Vegas-based Boyd Gaming, the state-licensed operator of Dania Jai-Alai, has postponed plans to redevelop the pari-mutuel fronton, and hasn’t introduced slot machines there.

“But we are taking another look at it,” Keith Smith, president and chief executive officer of Boyd, said on the public company’s quarterly conference call May 4. “Now that the tax rate has been lowered, it certainly takes away one barrier.”

Internet marketing has taken on a whole new angle with the introduction of smart phones such as the Apple iPhone and Google’s Android.

The power of internet marketing through mobile phones is the fact that you get your message through to people in the moment they are thinking casually about something. If they are thinking, lets eat, where is a restaurant, they see your ad on their phone, click, and you make money. If they are thinking about losing weight while they walk along the beach, they see your ad on their phone, click and you make money.

Apple just sold over 2 million more iPhones, and Google says their customers are activating 160,000 Droid smart phones a day!

Often, small business ecommerce site owners get trapped in the endless quest to reach Google’s search audience that they overlook the importance of tapping in to other online audiences — including Facebook.

Facebook Like is one of the social plugins offered by Facebook that lets people share your content with their friends.  When you add the Facebook Like button to your own small business ecommerce website anyone who clicks it will have a story appear in their News Feed with a link back to your website.

“Facebook is building another index of the Web,” said Charles Nicholls, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of SeeWhy. “Only this index it isn’t based on Google’s arbitrary algorithms, it is built based upon people’s likes and preferences.”

Understanding how the Like Button works on the Web is pretty easy. Once you have the social plugin added to your website, Facebook users can click that Like Button your page and news of this activity and is added to their own public activity stream.  All of their Facebook friends will see their friend has “Liked” your page, and they can also click the activity and be taken directly to your page.

The good news for ecommerce site owners is that Facebook Like is easy to put on your website.  It’s a simple matter of getting a line of code and deciding where on your webpage you want to display the Like button.  Nicholls recommends that you should include Facebook Like on your homepage and also on your individual product pages.

To get started you’ll want to visit the Like Button Social Plugin Page on the Facebook Developers website.

What many people don’t know about Facebook Places is that instead of just letting them check-in to a place, they can also tag their friends. Where they are, shows up on both the Facebook wall and life stream.

What is it?
For those of you who have checked out services such as Foursquare, Gowalla and BlockChalk, the idea, concept and implementation will be very familiar. You can create and check in to places. You can see where your friends are. You can find new places, etc. There’s not much new here from an idea perspective. Facebook is getting into the market and they are starting by giving us all of the same stuff we’re already used to and little that’s new.

Verifying a Place claim requires uploading some kind of official document, such as a local business license or Better Business Bureau accreditation.”

Google Places has added the ability for business owners to respond directly to reviews.  This is a feature that Google Places has been needing.  Up to this point there was no way to respond to a review other than going to the Google forum and trying to get a review deleted if it was an in-accurate review. This will give the business owner more control over the content that is displayed on their Google Places page.

Allowing business owners this added control over their Place Page  is an indication that Google is moving in the direction of the Facebook Fan Pages.  This added feature will help with reviews that are just being placed to discredit the business.

Visit Google Places to verify your business today, it is free.