After last week’s post on Research Online, Buy Offline, I had the opportunity to speak with Jeff Kendall. Jeff is co-owner of Custom Exteriors, a high-end San Francisco Bay Area Windows Doors company with clientele all over the Bay Area. Custom Exteriors has been using presence-based marketing for some time now.

Jeff related a recent success story. A prospective customer was in the market for a whole-house window replacement job and had been online researching several prospective suppliers when the prospect found Custom Exteriors through a presence-based online search. Custom Exteriors won the customer’s business — a $12,000 project. Subsequently, the customer told Jeff that his evaluation had been very close and he had narrowed the field to Custom Exteriors and their primary competitor. The customer’s final tipping point: the ability to see when Custom Exteriors was online and immediately engage them with his questions, a capability the competition could not match.

Score one (or 12,000) for presence-based marketing and advertising in the research online, buy offline sector.