15+ Years Of Quality Services in Digital Marketing & SEO
Torchlight Marketing has an exciting history starting back in 1987, and although our business model has changed over the decades our passion and involvement in technology has remained the same. Use the interactive timeline below to learn about how we have adapted.
If you would like to learn more about our company’s history or how we can help your business reach out for a free consultation.
Here are Our Milestones
The evolution of Torchlight Marketing starts back in 1987 with Systems and Programming Solutions Inc. (SPSI). SPSI developed custom software, especially in what is now the CRM space, with IBM on their AS/400 mainframes for many of their customers. SPSI quickly grew and in 1992 they started a training division called On With Learning (OWL) to keep up with demand as their software spread.
The video training materials from On With Learning allowed large corporations to ramp up on their new AS/400 software with reduced training budgets, consistent training experiences and fewer support calls. By 1994 this division was spun off and On With Learning used the Wise Owl as its logo. Innovations continued with building a digital brochure, called a website, on something called ‘The Internet’ allowing OWL to provide more detailed descriptions and sell more video training materials from strategic partnerships with other video producers.
OWL was growing, mostly online, as we quickly learned that advertising and search engines were key for driving traffic to the OWL website. As our focus became more digital we developed significant Intellectual Property on getting more search traffic, today we would call this SEO. And this is where the story of Torchlight Marketing begins. By the mid-2000s Amazon created significant disruption in the sales and distribution of training materials. Although sales were down OWL still found its Marketing Department quite busy helping partners with their internet marketing and a new niche for OWL was born.
In 2006 OWL became Systems & Marketing Solutions (SMS) focused on helping small businesses advertise online through PPC on what was then called Google AdWords. Customers found their advertising extremely effective due to our data driven focus. Digital Advertising started with Google but the landscape of Advertising has spread into Social Media networks, Video Streaming Platforms, mobile phone apps, and even video games.
Digital Advertising is now the largest network for marketers at over $300 billion in 2020. Considering this amount of money SMS rebranded to Torchlight Marketing (TLM) to best reflect our commitment to Truth and Clarity in Advertising. Today we look ahead to Voice Search and are currently researching how best to advertise with the growth of virtual assistants and new social networks. We are also working to guide our clients as Artificial Intelligence and Digital Advertising begin to converge.