According to analyst firm IDC, the online advertising segment grew 27% in 2007, and yet when considering if and when to invest in online marketing efforts, many manufacturers go through a litany of excuses. Search engine optimizers like Andy Komack, president of Komarketing Associates, have heard all of the excuses, such as:

• "We know all of the potential customers in our space and we are in contact with them in some form already."
• "Our Web site serves its purpose as a capabilities overview, and attracting more visitors is not a high priority."
• "We have a limited budget and we are not convinced of the payoff from online marketing."
• "We just have not explored the opportunities, and we have limited technical resources in house."

Although he doesn't fault manufacturers for thinking along these lines, Komack says that each of these excuses is flawed in its own way:

"We already know the potential customer pool."

These days, people with needs use the Internet for fulfillment, whether to research questions they have about technical issues, find third-party opinions on products, look for new ideas to improve productivity, and/or to source new vendors. "If your company doesn't have an online presence that can easily be found in search engines, product review sites, industry Web sites and user forums, you can be assured that these searchers will find one of your competitors," warns Komack. "Even if you're already well entrenched with a customer, your lack of online presence has just given a competitor a window of opportunity to establish a dialogue that may eventually lead to a shift by your customer to that other vendor."

In addition, many of your current customers have multiple people responsible for procurement, and there is always the chance that even your longest-held procurement contacts won't last forever. So, by making sure that you can easily be found online, "you give yourself a chance to gain additional business from current customers at various procurement points, and give yourself the chance of being the resource that any new procurement people will find on the Web," Komack says.

"Our Web site does just fine as a capabilities overview."

If your Web site doesn't serve at least two primary purposes -- acting as a lead generation vehicle and providing technical resources for users -- you're losing half the battle, observes Komack. "Even if your primary sales channel is a dealer network, your Web site should serve as a means of generating leads to pass on to your dealer network."

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