@madpilot makes

Both Alex and I are web nerds. Throw us a technical problem and will be champing at the bit to solve it. This, like many other coders who start their own business, is what we spend all day doing. Unfortunately for us, being totally awesome at what we do is only a small part of running a successful business. Alex’s business, Brown Beagle Software has just taken on it’s first employee, and I’m ready to start selling the living daylights out of my CMS so we need to move beyond adhoc, word-of-mouth “marketing” and get a bit more serious. Of course, neither of us know a great deal about that…

Alex and I are both residents of the collaborative work space twotwenty and over coffee we were discussing some joint marketing stuff that would help the whole group get some work, and the topic of mail drops and social networking came up — and we noticed a pattern: I was speaking in terms of offline networking, whilst Alex kept going back to

online networking. Being the contrary type that I am, I laid down the challenge: We should see which type of sales and marketing works best: offline or online!

Rules

The rules of our little game are pretty simple:

1. Alex can use any marketing method he chooses, but it must occur _online._This would include Twitter, Facebook, Google Adwords, SEO. He can’t count leads from people that originated in real life.

   • Myles can’t use the inter-tron with his quest: He can only use traditional channels, such as face-to-face, networking meetups, traditional media and offline advertising
   • A lead is counted as a genuine enquiry for work. For the sake of this experiment, we can sell any of our services, but we need to be able to do the work. A completion is counted when a job is accepted.
   • Once a prospect has been engaged, communication can continue into the other medium (e.g. Myles can use email, Alex can use a phone).
   • Myles and Alex can spend up to $250 each on their campaigns.
   • Both need to track how much time they have spent on marketing.
   • At the end of the month, whoever has the best ratio of leads vs. time spent marketing will be deemed the twotwenty marketeer of the month™, and will gain kudos until the end of time (or until April).

Head over to <http://www.offlinevsonline.com> to watch the craziness unfurl.