What Do I Do For A Living?

Reunions of any sort follow the same template. People who have lost touch ask the same questions. Of the top three asked, the one that I have recently had to answer the most was “what do you do?” And with that, I confidently reply “I work for ICMediaDirect.com, an online advertising agency.” This is followed by “So what do you do?” This question leads me to the same general explanation of ICMediaDirect.com and the ad business in layman’s terms. Something that, surrounded by ad execs for the majority of my working day, requires perspective. What I find most surprising is that most of the people with whom I end up discussing online advertising and ICMediaDirect.com share the same ultimate query: How does search make money, or how it can make money for their businesses. As a field trip from the office, let us examine the current search and e-commerce phenomenon.

We no longer need to deploy bells and whistles in hopes of generating sales through catching the attention of the public en-passant. In this age of information, the noisy marketing schemes of yesterday’s amusement parks have become obsolete. Today’s online customer is sophisticated – or fussy – depending on whom you ask. Customers dictate the market to a degree unsurpassed in history, such that the variety of business offerings is becoming limited not by demand, but by visibility.

Since the days of UBid and Excite! the public has quickly adopted e-commerce. The majority of purchases by students at every university across the nation are transacted electronically. This practice is then continued after they graduate. The lack of high-speed coverage in our vast rural regions does not prevent our fellow Americans in the countryside from purchasing traditional elephant hair bracelets from India at the rate of 56Kbps. Even this holiday season’s online sales are strong while “brick-and-mortar” sales are slightly off.

In efforts to survive, traditional stores have simply expanded their businesses with online offerings. The rise in property value has kept retail space in popular malls at a premium despite any perceived drop off in business. Where online sales used to supplement the marketing strategy of traditional businesses, real physical shopping is becoming more rooted in entertainment and brand building to enhance online sales. And the number of online retailers grows with each passing second.

The obvious result of e-commerce is the flourishing of the niche retailers. Where the traditional marketing paradigm did not generate enough revenue per-capita, unless located in a cosmopolitan metropolis, the reach of the online e-store provides access to a larger dedicated pool of customers than any single urban setting on the planet. Further, the nature of replacing a physical address with a web page makes the online medium much more attractive with regards to maintenance and overhead.

Why, then, is it that when you go to Google and type in the name of a company whose ad you heard on XM radio, that the link you want is buried under 50 pages of search results? And who has time to dig through all that anyway?

This is where Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization begins. And for many slow businesses, where advertising ends. Search should ideally give you the result you are looking for. Ideally. Search Engine Marketing is what makes the ideal possible, and Search Engine Optimization is what makes the possible commonplace.

The old advertising paradigm focused on radio, television, billboards, newspapers and magazines. Early online advertising consisted of emails, banners and pop-ups. And as online advertising has evolved, the once-effective pop-ups have now generally yielded an accepted rate of under 1% effectiveness and been replaced with pop-unders. Presently, companies who are not embracing search, or making plans to do so, seriously jeopardize their future ROI on advertising. At the same time, for the online advertising companies who are unprepared to offer this service, search will be their end as well.

How does one choose an ad company? Network and features. Siding with the intelligent businesses, successful advertisers will offer both the conventional forms of online advertising as well as search marketing. If they are looking forward, they should offer SEM or SEO. Companies such as ICMediaDirect.com offer both the full spectrum of banners, skyscrapers and pops as well as a whole division dedicated to Search Engine Management, Search Engine Optimization and consulting services from campaign management to research. Ad companies with these options provide their clients with less headache, more variety and the ability to tailor simple and complex campaigns within their various divisions.  This translates into effective ad campaigns.

Essentially, not only has it become imperative for most businesses to have an online presence to survive, but also to have an effective presence in search. After all, among our ‘fussy’ online customers, who has the time and patience to dig through fifty result pages to find your company? These are the questions I ultimately end up asking before finding out what exactly my classmates of yore have made of themselves.

So, ask me again what do I do? I work for ICMediaDirect.com and I conduct search.