Interview with Eric Jones at Leading Edge Gifts

1. Tell me a little about your position and the type of company you work for:
I am a partner in a small business called Leading Edge Gifts. My base sites are http://www.giveacaricature.com/ , http://www.myfaceicons.com/, and http://www.giveamasterpiece.com/. We specialize in custom caricatures, icons, and personal works of art in an all digital format. Our biggest demo target is "deeper pockets", corporate, medical, universities, etc.

2. Do you think Internet Marketing is important to your business? Why or why not?
Web marketing is the lifeblood of the business. Our demographic does over 50% of it's gift shopping online, and since our products are in digital format, the web is the most logical, effective method for marketing.

3. Do you think Social Networking is important to your business? Why or why not?
Typically the online gift business emulates the storefront window display. It's about offering a product that's unique at an instant glance, social networking doesnt contribute to our business (but we haven't ruled it out) as much as basic web traffic and of course the perfect niche.

4. What types of Internet Marketing tactics are used by your company?
We target high traffic gift sites, and we play with google adwords, msn, and yahoo. We have found that people tend to do their online gift shopping through the use of big, reputable gift specific websites rather than individual retail modules. gifts.com and findgift.com have a great reputation for customer service and narrowed browsing, which helps people find what they want quickly.

5. Does your company belong to any Social Media sites? Which ones and why?
We belong to LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter as more of a formality than an effective marketing tool. We have to expose our products to thousands everyday to land a few orders a day.

6. Do you think Internet Marketing and Social Media have influenced your company either positively or negatively? Please Explain.
Internet marketing has of course. The entire business depends on it. It's our only source of public exposure. We do virtually no tangible marketing. The social Network world hasn't had an impact yet, but we think it may in the future as the masses of web traffic start to streamline into finer formats.