Martin Byrne, the national director of Yahoo Canada's search marketing arm, addressed attendees at the SOHO small business conference in Vancouver today. His talk focused on the importance of marketing online, particularly for smaller businesses who can leverage the outstanding reach and low cost of the internet to their advantage.
He pointed out that in terms of online advertising, Canada never experienced the market crash seen in other countries after the online bubble burst in 2000, and has remained one of the most connected and engaged countries on the planet in terms of online use. Byrne said not only is more foot traffic being generated in brick and mortar stores thanks to online research and price comparisons (he cited Best Buy as an example, with 19 percent of their customers in the store after visiting the website), but also that not having a website is damaging to a firm's branding, and is a "hit to a client's trust in the brand."
Like Mike Agerbo, the other morning speaker, Byrne stressed the importance of aligning marketing plans to an audience, in effect "buying people instead of time or space," which is the old tv/print model. Since people will in effect become evangelists for a product they like if exposed to it online, the effectiveness of targeted marketing though social networks and search engines trumps more general offline campaigns. He also said SEO and search engine marketing (online ads through search engines) can also drive offline sales as well as online, and shouldn't be neglected as a way for smaller companies to pull ahead of much larger competitors.
Warren Frey
Warren Frey is a writer, editor, blogger and podcaster based out of Vancouver, BC. After working for six years in the Canadian broadcasting industry, he switched to print and has since covered varied assignments from plumbing conferences to star-studded film galas. But he’s never lost his love for the internet and interactive media, from his teens...[more]
