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Marketers have many search options — social, personalized, vertical, video and universal search among them. But while it's important to decide which of these make the most sense for your business, it's a mistake to focus on search alone.

Search marketers must work together with their offline counterparts. Any firm that believes search is responsible for 100% of its site's traffic and conversions is in denial.

It's still vital to integrate paid and organic search campaigns, and to explore the latest search-channel trends for opportunities to reach prospects that sites can't. However, it's just as critical to coordinate search with offline marketing since most offline efforts simply don't make it easy for prospects to get the information they need for a Web search. In fact, searchers often don't find the company they went online to look up in the first place. You want your company to be the one prospects discover when they're ready to buy.

A recent iProspect-sponsored study by JupiterResearch found that in the previous six months, 67% of search engine users said they were driven to seek out a company, product or service as a result of exposure to an offline channel. Of those 67%, 39% reported that they eventually made a purchase because of the search.

Search marketers can coordinate with the offline team in numerous ways.

Here's how to begin:

• Open the lines of communication with those responsible for offline campaigns in your company. Offer them your keyword traffic and conversion data. Tell them which keywords, Web site/landing page copy and ad creative is most effective at generating results. Then show them how these successful online keywords and messaging potentially contradict the keywords and messaging used offline. Recommend a test of one offline channel in one market to demonstrate the effect a change in messaging could have on results.

• Encourage offline marketers to include references to the company's URL in their messaging. If the firm's physical location or toll-free number is noted, the Web address should be as well. And if the URL isn't easy to remember, or isn't intuitive, add wording such as “Google us at Oak Office Furniture.” Then be sure you're showing up in the No. 1 position in either or both the paid and natural search results for that term. After all, many people prefer to conduct research on the Web anonymously rather than over the phone, via e-mail or by visiting a physical location.

• Coordinate the look and feel of offline campaigns with search efforts. If the colors on your billboard, direct mail campaign, print ads and company trucks are orange and blue, then make sure visitors to your site are greeted by pages with orange and blue elements. If your TV or radio ads feature a celebrity spokesperson, a picture of that individual should be prominently displayed on the site. Likewise, if your offline branding is very chic and upscale, your Web site shouldn't look like a bargain basement.

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ROBERT MURRAY (rob.murray@iprospect.com)is president of iProspect, a search engine marketing firm in Watertown, MA.