Going off-line to sell online

by Judith N. Mottl

  Online loan matchmaker GetSmart.com is going off-line to make a name for itself.
   The three-year-old company is ditching its pure web-based advertising strategy in favor of an $8 million national television campaign, beginning in TK.
   In doing so, GetSmart.com joins the rush of online companies that are turning to traditional media to reach consumers.
   "It's the perfect way to get their name out and increase product awareness," says Jim Nail, a senior research analyst with Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, Mass. Though GetSmart.com is the first online lending service he's aware of to turn to the boob tube, Nail says it's becoming a common tactic among online companies.
   "The web is not a good awareness medium," he observes. "People surf with a specific need in mind, so all you're doing [with a banner] is sticking an ad out as they cruise by." With a television viewer, he says, "a commercial message has a much better chance of seeping through to the brain."
   GetSmart.com is banking on lots of brain seepage to keep it ahead of its competitors, says John McNamara, senior vice president of marketing.
   "This [financial services] market is about to break with all the IPOs in the pipeline and the brand names will be the ones heard," he says. While noting that less than 1 percent of current customers in the $850 billion loan marketplace are finding their loans online, McNamara believes the scenario will quickly change once online brandnames are established. "As competition in the online loan area grows more fierce, brand recognition will become the critical measure of success, as it has in other e-commerce areas, such as books."
   The numbers firmly support an off-line marketing strategy. A BizRate.com survey reports that off-line advertising is the "most effective way" of getting consumers to web sites. It found that 33 percent of online buyers were spurred online by off-line messages.
   A Forrester report in March estimates that consumers will obtain $9.8 million in loans and credit cards over the internet by 2003. Fueled by the current refinancing boom and competition in lending rates, online mortgages will grab almost 10 percent of the total market by 2003, it predicts.
   To George Dallas, senior vice president and director of media systems at McCann-Erickson, the wisdom of online companies advertising off-line is a matter of simple arithmetic.
   "Ninety percent of all households in the US have a television," he says. "Not as many households are wired. How many people are going to know you're there if you only do web advertising? In theory, your only potential visitors will be people on the web who manage to trip across you."
   GetSmart.com attracted more than eight million visitors to its site in 1998, according to the company. Its off-line media blitz targets network stations in the northeast, as well as national cable channels. There will also be a supporting radio campaign. The eastern focus is designed to reach the financial and research analyst communities in particular.