President's Letter

Carpet Bombing vs. Smart Bomb
Approach to Marketing

The state of the economy has driven many organizations to find novel ways to effectively attract new business. Traditional marketing efforts such as cold calls, direct mail-outs and radio ads all share a similar clumsy approach of "carpet bomb" advertising. In this lottery-style approach, companies foolishly bank on the assumption that if one can reach enough individuals they are bound to find some that will want their products or services. While this scheme does possess some viability, it's often expensive and often requires that a large percentage of those attracted be converted into paying customers. These techniques also lack the capacity to determine why they often do not work, and thus often return little on the investment.

An alternative available in today's market is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), representing the "smart bomb" approach. It is one of the least expensive forms of advertising and successfully targets the individual, rather than wasting expensive and timely efforts on the masses. In addition it also provides a vast amount of information, which is used to get the most out of your advertising dollars. This is extremely important during a recession, as every dollar counts.

Unlike traditional marketing efforts, SEO makes your products and services easier to find for people that are already looking for you. A good analogy provided by one of our channel partners is "SEO builds roads to your store. The more roads to your store the easier people can find you". By targeting people already looking for your product/services, this dramatically increases the chances of converting a visitor to your website into a paying customer. Furthermore in the event they don't buy, they still provide valuable information that is used to tweak your online marketing efforts and ultimately increase your return on investment.

When people are looking for a product or service they tend to use Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. These Search Engines have two types of listings or search results. The first is what we call Free Listings, also known as Organic Listings, while the second is known as Paid or Sponsored Listings. Similarly, SEO packages, such as those offered by Offline/Online, should also have two parts to them. The first part should optimize a website for the Free Listings, increasing the number of clicks it receives. The second part of the package should focuses on the Paid listings, which can guarantee your ad appears in top position through a real-time auctioning of keywords. With the use of SEO, a dramatic increase is often seen in the volume of traffic to a target website. The current average increase in website traffic for an Offline/Online customer is over 139%.

During a recession information becomes even more vital. With the help of SEO it becomes possible to gather valuable information regarding the effectiveness of the various areas of a website. During a recession this information can be intensely valuable. In comparison to a direct mail-out to 10,000 people, it is very expensive to tell how many people were actually interested in your products/services, but not contacting you for another reason. With a paid online ad, we can tell how many people searched for a relevant keyword, how many clicked the paid ad and what they did on the website. In some cases we can tell if they contacted the client's company.

There are obvious and numerous benefits to Search Engine Optimization compared to traditional marketing techniques. This becomes particularly important leading into a recession when every cent counts. After all, why waste time & money "carpet bombing" the masses when you can strategically target customers that are already looking for you?

Joey Thompson

President, Offline/Online