Eighty-five percent of what we produce is exported. We have clients on every continent except Antarctica. Globally speaking, we’re an extremely small company. So how do we market online when we’re a niche company in a niche industry with limited marketing dollars?

This was the challenge we faced at Street Characters, a company devoted to the designing, manufacturing, training and marketing of mascots and costumed characters. Because we had clients in the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League, we understood that if people knew about us, they would probably do business with us.

But how were we supposed to create brand awareness on a global scale?

Our first attempt was simple: We purchased specific keywords on Google. The response was good, given the large bills we received, but hardly anyone was calling or sending in requests for information through our Web site. What was the problem?

The only thing we could determine was that people—mostly students—were surfing the Internet recreationally and typing “mascots” to see what would come up, but they had no real interest in purchasing a mascot. So our costs were high, and the number of real prospects we generated was insignificant.

I took our concerns to my Forum. One Forum mate, Glenn Fawcett, suggested we update our Web site and “optimize” it. At the time, I was completely unaware of search engine optimization (SEO). Glenn explained to me that when a Web site is optimized, the site is designed to show up at, or near the top of, search results pages. We needed to design a totally new site.

The process started with the optimization team; they identified keyword phrases that described our product. We then selected a large variety of phrases, and “mascots” was one of the most critical keywords. A few years ago, we had purchased the domain name www.mascots.com. We assumed that because we owned this specific domain name, we would be on the first results page once someone searched for “mascots.” Logically, this made sense, but unfortunately, we didn’t even appear in the first three results pages.

This was extremely frustrating. We were told that although we had the correct domain name, our site needed more power. The optimization team said that the best way to boost the power of our Web site was to start a linking campaign. So the experts immediately registered our Web site with a variety of online business directories, and within a few months, we were positioned on the first page of Google for the phrase “mascots”!

Today, our Web site ranks high on Google and other search engines for various phrases. What’s more, visitor traffic has grown steadily since the Web site was optimized. It is hard to imagine how we could have attracted the volume or caliber of customers we now have using traditional marketing strategies, such as advertising and tradeshows. Because we adopted SEO strategies, we put ourselves on the global map.