In 1999, Mark Forst was working as the director of sales and marketing for a global plastics company when he was struck by an idea.  While monitoring the company’s leads, he noticed that more and more were coming from people who found the company through a search engine.

“This seemed kind of odd since we spent no money to generate these leads,” says Forst.  “So I spent a lot of time over the next few years learning, implementing and testing everything that I could relate to online marketing.”

By May of 2002, Forst was so enamored with the results he decided to take the plunge and start a search engine optimization company (SEO), Captiva Marketing, with then co-worker Bill Brasser. 

“Of course, we started out of my home trying to sell SEO services at a time when most marketing professionals, much less typical business owners/managers, didn’t even had a clue of what the SEO field was,” says Forst.  “Needless to say, the first couple of years were a struggle, but we persevered and eventually established ourselves as experts in this new field.”

Today, Captiva has evolved into a full-service interactive marketing agency with not just SEO professionals but also web designers, developers, public relations specialists, and content management and e-commerce software.  “Our success can mostly be attributed to our depth of knowledge and years of experience, but I’d like to think that our company culture also distinguishes us,” says Forst.

Forst and Brasser’s career move has certainly paid off.  “Bill and I started with our former employer as our only paying customer,” says Forst.  “We now have 18 employees and plan to add about three to four per year.  Revenue for 2008 was $2,342,000, and we expect this to increase in 2009.”