Congrats on the sale Mike - you are right about many companies not getting it. I regularly see some dumb marketing by many large corporates, for instance, on radio and TV they say 'just search [name] in Google' - really dumb
I have worked with a few companies where this has happened in the past.
The issue with big companies is you have a huge marketing team maybe 50 people. And EVERYONE is involved with different things. Usually someone who is in charge of the bill boards has a "smart idea" to make a Massive banner roll out over Sydney where it shows "search for XYZ product" on Google.
Usually a day before it goes live all over the city or something silly like that. You get an email from the marketing person who you have never met who is like "HI SEO person we need to rank tomorrow for XYZ product term"
In the end of the day you explain it is not possible in a day as that is a competitive term, then you say the only thing in 24 hours for this we can do is paid search. And we can start pushing SEO now for this term.
Personally I am NOT a fan of those "Search XYZ" style ads as heaps of affiliates and competitors can easily cash in on the searches.
The best type of marketing you can drive people from offline to online is via URLS which are targeted to that campaign.
Example:
gym.com.au/nova -(nova radio campaign landing page)
gym.com.au/sydney - (Sydney trains bill boards promo)
And so on, you then have targeted traffic stats from the campaign.
This is 101 style stuff but many people stuff it up...
The only way I would EVER think of doing something where you can have an impact on queries would be a TV budget where you can drive people to "Generic Term + Brand" you could impact the auto suggest but then again it is VERY risky.
