The iPhone has passed the 1% market share status but does so with very little help from a consistent media campaign that fully integrates the Internet.

The iPhone was introduced with great fanfare as a phone and Internet device. Today, we are seeing the device promoted as a client side distributed application device in addition to its core offering. This recent back cover advertisement from the Economist touts the device’s ‘apps’ as a consideration set.

This type of messaging and placement is often utilized as awareness, perhaps early stage consideration media, but here we see Apple utilizing the premium real estate in deeper consideration phase. Could this work? They are operating off an assumption that market awareness of the iPhone is near saturation, and reach and frequency media would only serve to reinforce. Could this form of media drive a business reader from consideration into purchase? I think yes, but it has to be done correctly. For instance, many of the applications in the ad are not targeted to the Economist reader. (Certainly finding an apartment should not fit this audience–unless it is an investment banker who can still afford a subscription.)

They should include applications that really appeal to this reader. A search of iPhone apps reveals many appropriate apps available for Economist readers; PortfolioLive and iFutures – Mobile Commodities Tracking are just two examples.

Furthermore, anyone reading the Economist in print is likely to take the next step online. For example, one likely next step in the customer journey is to search for the iPhone itself or for the applications – depending on whether you already own an iPhone.

And this is where Apple may lose their customer by not following through online: While anyone searching for iPhone will find Apple.com, any long tail search for iPhone finds an array of options that do not take the potential customer to Apple or even ATT.com

For example, a search for ‘iPhone financial apps’ produces web site results that do not include Apple.com. Having a reseller control the next step in the customer journey experience should be avoided here, as there are app developers not affiliated with Apple.

Some of the web sites within the top 10 have content, editorial, and creative media that do not support the Apple brand experience – one that is highly controlled in offline media and by its stores.

Another search for the generic, non-branded description of an iPhone is ‘smart phone’, which does not yield any Apple.com results. It does produce several comparison sites, which are difficult to read and can be trying to a potential searcher who is bombarded with different messaging and claims by a variety of merchants, manufactures, bloggers and news site.

For any product seller who has had the benefit of innovation, a consistent, contiguous media campaign both off and online is a must. Failure to participate can result in higher cost per order, limited or inconsistent growth, and lack of momentum. To say the sum is greater than the individual parts is very important to understanding how the customer journey works both financially and cognitively for your customer.

For my first post, I ‘d like to speak to my general intentions and hopes for this blog; after several years off the speaking and press circuit, we have developed some technologies and business methods that are truly unique to online/offline sales media and mediums. I intend to publish much of this work in the form of a book, but I also want to discuss and apply the theories behind it to more timely items via this blog.

It has taken MakeBuzz almost five years to convert from a pure SEM/SEO firm to an eBusiness driven philosophy, whereby we help our clients utilize the web as both a marketing tool and a distributed application. In 2004, we explored web-to-offline-sales theories that awoke me to the real possibilities of the Internet. Client data revealed the complexity of online behavior, how we consume web information and what we do with it. Conversely, we discovered how traditional media and mediums affect web activities. We have named this interconnectedness ‘Internet Integration.’

Now, with more diverse and mature client data coming in, our theories are being proven and we are applying them to an ever-widening range of clients and industries. We are still learning of course, discovering how Internet integration fits within the even larger framework of eBusiness.

In this blog, I will discuss our findings and their applications, and invite responses from those of us in this relatively small, emerging niche. Hopefully this blog will attract those interested in online/offline media, social media, performance frameworks, Internet Integration and eBusiness; I’d like to hear how our economic innovations fit with others. Now that the patents are published and the work is proving the theories, I look forward to this next collaborative step with you.