How the web makes the phone ring

Eight years ago, Ajax Philadelphia, a supplier of kitchen appliances to restaurants and the food service industry, was considering closing its doors. Today, as CuttingEdgeKitchens.com, it has monthly sales approaching $1 million. Owner Van Weiss attributes the turnaround largely to search engine marketing and how it found an entirely new market for the company.

Weiss says increasing restaurant industry consolidation had dried up many of the 50-year-old store’s accounts. Five years ago, he decided to try to reach new customers by creating a web site. After a few months of receiving little action on the site, Weiss launched a keyword program with search engine Overture Services Inc. (then called GoTo). When customers started finding his web site, he got a surprise: they weren’t commercial establishments, but residential customers who wanted commercial-grade kitchen appliances in their homes.

“We went online to find commercial customers. But now we’re in the high-end residential appliance business,” says Weiss. “We’ve had record years three years in a row. We sell very little to commercial customers anymore.”

Weiss maintains a list of about 300 keywords on Overture ranging from the generic to very specific terms such as particular models of equipment under different brand names. “We have found better success with more specific terms,” he says. Within a few months of launching with Overture, Weiss says his sales started doubling monthly, a trend that held over a number of months. While his average CPC has risen over the past few years, today he pays an average 24 cents to 25 cents per click and more than $2 for certain very specific terms.

Currently, CuttingEdgeKitchens.com does no other type of online marketing such as affiliate marketing, though it has added paid listings on Google. However, Weiss says he spends three times more with Overture than Google – between $500 and $700 on Overture clicks per day -- because of Overture’s distribution. Recently, Weiss has experimented with offline advertising as well. Online success has helped drive a site upgrade slated for next month that will take the number of products on the site from about 1,000 to close to 20,000. The company also has added a second retail store.

The site’s transactional, but, with its average sale in excess of $3,000, Weiss says very few customers buy online without talking to the company first. “So the web’s main role for us is to generate a phone call. Then it’s up to us to sell ourselves,” says Weiss, whose employee roster numbers 13. “People think of Overture just for online shopping, but they’re mistaken. It’s really how to advertise your company, whether you want to sell online or not,” he says. “It’s how to make the phone ring.”