Dear Executives and Staff,

As a result of conducting a marketing survey of small and medium sized businesses there are obvious trends of similarity. The similarities in the perception in marketing on the Internet and similarities of current methods of marketing. My direct experience and proven performance in online marketing and project management are offered to your company. How these two subjects (a marketing survey and my experiences) compliment each other and provide you with a competitive advantage may not be directly obvious. It is my hope by means of this letter to both share business information with you and to convince you of my ability to provide your company with more sales through my professional online marketing services.

In a September of 2005 survey which covered 2,725 U.S. business owners (companies with 1 to 50 employees), the respondents varied in the degree to which they use online marketing. While 22% of the businesses conduct 75% to 100% of their marketing online, almost an equal number conduct less than 10%. Although these businesses rely most on word of mouth marketing, online marketing was rated the second highest marketing medium in Affinity's survey. The key seems to be cost. As opposed to radio, TV and media print, which were rated much lower for use by respondents, word of mouth and the Internet offer relatively inexpensive ways to advertise. Even though the Internet was rated highly as a useful source of marketing the U.S. Department of Commerce reports that only 46% of U.S. businesses have established an online presence. This is an alarming contrast in respect to the growing number of consumers and business purchasing agents who are shopping on line. Recent reports from U.S. Census Bureau shows 95% of Americans with income above $100,000 purchase products and services online and 42% of homes with income from $30,000 to $50,000 in income. Alarming still are the results from businesses who have expanded operations to online in 2004:
An increasing percentage of orders are being placed via the Web: 38% more in 2005.
· Respondents were asked what percentage of Web sales was considered to be new customers as opposed to customers who previously had used other channels. Results show that 33% of sales were incremental -- sales that would not have occurred otherwise -- and 53% shifted from phone or mail, up from 42.2% in 2003.
· Sixty-five percent of respondents think that a better ROI is yielded when a multichannel approach is incorporated into their direct marketing campaigns. Only 7 percent indicated that a higher ROI was achieved using a single-channel process.
· When asked for the benefits of online marketing, the top responses were increased revenue (73%), greater visibility (58%) cost savings (56%) and reaching new customers/new segments (54%).
· Nearly three-quarters (74%) of companies' e-mail marketing budget were spent on customer retention as opposed to customer acquisition.

When it comes to establishing a presence online for a business there is clearly two choices: You can choose to expand operations and take advantage of the sales opportunities and growth, or you can choose to surrender the advantage to the competition. In my experience there are no business owners who willingly surrender anything to the competition. I offer your company my talents and experience for online marketing projects management. You do not need to hire a fulltime staff of online marketing professionals, website designers, banner and graphics designers, advertising campaign managers, writers and publishing agents, e-Mail marketers, and web site hosting and virus protection expertise to have all of these and more working to promote your business online and increase your revenues. As a projects manager I provide you these professional services and a single point of contact, me, to manage and direct the team. As an outsourced online marketing service your company will save a lot of money and still have the best online marketing team available working for your online interests.

Although the idea of online marketing is popular among small businesses, most say they are only somewhat or fairly knowledgeable on the subject, and only 13% of respondents say they are "very knowledgeable." The obstacles to establishing online presence noted by respondents in the survey are:
Don’t know enough to be able to do it = 18%
Too time intensive = 16%
Difficult to track performance =11%
Don’t think it is important to the business = 10%
Don’t know how to develop or where to place advertising = 7%
My service is prepared to answer and provide the winning methods for these top five concerns and more.

Thank you for your time and attention. Through this letter of information and offer to work for you, I hope you have decided to take advantage of my experience. At the least, you are ready to contact me and discuss these services for your business. Please contact me at your next opportunity to set up a meeting.

Sincerely,
Mark Bertrand
AZ Online Marketing