What makes a good Search Marketing Firm?

As a business owner, CMO or Marketing Director, the choice of a Search Marketing Firm will be one of your most important decisions.  In order to fully realize the benefits of Search Marketing, it is crucial to understand what role Search Marketing will play in your organization and choose a service provider that supports this role.

What is the focus of the Firm?

It is very important to understand what the prospective service provider specializes in.  Lately, it seems that everyone is getting into Search Marketing.  There are hosting companies, web design firms, web development shops and traditional agencies all trying to get a piece of the market.  It is often the case that no firm can do it all, or at least not do it all well.   It is best to choose a firm that specializes in Search Marketing.  There is no strong argument for using your web developer or your hosting company for your paid search management to keep it under one roof.  The worst combination is a traditional advertising agency that offers Search Marketing services.  That is like getting heart surgery from your pharmacist, they may have heard about it, maybe even read about it, and may be able to talk the talk, but they don’t do it day in and day out.   No matter what type of firm you are talking to, ask them who will be managing and performing the Search Marketing work.  Is it handled in-house or outsourced to another firm?

How do they view Search Marketing?

Do they believe that one aspect of Search Marketing is more important than the other?  Or do they believe that all initiatives work together and view search holistically?  As you interview service providers it is highly recommended to learn a little about the space.  You don’t have to become an expert, just have some basic knowledge.  Unfortunately there are a lot of charlatan’s and snake oil salesman out there.  By doing an hour or so of prep work on your own, you’ll find it is much easier to avoid many of these scammers.

What are their Search Engine Optimization tactics?

White Hat or Black Hat?  Learn this terminology, especially if your company’s reputation and long term success are important.  Basically White Hat SEO Firms play by the rules of the search engines and understand the uncertainty involved in playing by the rules.  Black Hat SEO Firms will tout quick and/or guaranteed results.  Never has it been more accurate that “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”  Black Hat SEO Firms stretch the rules and manipulate them often to the eventual detriment of their clients.  There is nothing wrong with preferring the Black Hat Route, it does work, usually, but not for long.  Getting banned from Google is real, and blaming it on an SEO firm will not get any sympathy or get you back in.  Make sure you know which side of the fence they are on.

What is their Paid Search Pitch?

Are they guaranteeing clicks, traffic or sales?  Ask how.  Beware of the “We have a relationship with Google”.  I get cold calls on my cell phone from firms claiming this all the time; some of the pitches are quite smooth.  If they had a relationship with Google they wouldn’t be talking to you or offering services, they would be using their relationship for their own benefit.  Saying they know a guy at Google is like knowing a guy at the Lottery Commission.  It is common for an agency to have a Rep at Google, we do too, but that does not in any way indicate an inside track or special arrangement.  Beware the Google Partners or Resellers claim; that means they make a cut off your Paid Search spend.

Do they stress bid management and special software as their competitive edge?  While this was the answer many years ago, times have changed.  Every major Paid Search venue uses some variation of a quality score and smart pricing.  This means that the entire campaign from keyword to landing page needs to be tested and managed, not just the bids.

If fact, the bids are pretty much the least important factor since they are derivative of the account performance as a whole.  Google made $16.4 billion last year from people clicking on ads.  They don’t care if you bid a million dollars a click; if your account has low relevancy to the search term your ad won’t show. If you have a significant spend budget in a highly competitive and fast moving niche there can be a benefit to bid management tools, but only as an enhancement to active management, not a replacement.

And another thing; taking Google or Yahoo! or MSNs advice on how to manage a campaign, or worse yet having them manage the campaign is like having the IRS do your taxes.  Enough said.

Now, more than ever it is vitally important to have professional ppc search management company in place for your paid search and ppc campaigns.

A new report by JupiterResearch (commissioned by Marin Software) found that:

• 85 percent of marketers surveyed by JupiterResearch complained that the complexity of paid search management is growing.
• Large scale companies are finding it difficult to resource talent and appropriate ROI tracking mechanisms to scale their campaigns for growth.

If you’re not a company spending $500k/month, you should still have your campaigns managed by a professional.  Here are a few reasons why it’s important to have the right PPC Search Engine Management company in place:

1. Search engine advertising rules change continuously
2. Campaigns must be monitored continuously to maximize performance
3. Testing of ads and landing pages must be done continuously or you are leaving money on the table
4. Competition enters the market daily and increases costs, most noteably unsophisticated competition increases costs
5. Ad writing is an art; creativity is limited
6. Budget needs to be managed wisely; every dollar needs to be tracked

Consider this - Google made $16.4 billion dollars in 2007 off their Adwords platform. If you’re setting up an account simply because it takes 5 minutes and a credit card and Google provides you with recommended keyterms - you should be worried.  This is the same reason why you should not have the IRS do your taxes - they aren’t looking out for your best interest and they aren’t looking for ways to save or make you money.  They get paid per click so if all components (keywords+as+landing pages) are not tracked, measured, optimized, and refined you might as well be throwing money out the window.

Here’s a more in depth article on this topic.

Contact us to dicuss PPC Advice and our capabilities for PPC Search Engine Management. Learn more about our Internet Marketing services.

I read an article yesterday in AdAge (printed version) that was discussing how MSN is trying to unload Avenue A Razorfish (AARF). I won’t go into detail on the article, because it wasn’t as interesting as the article about Sanjaya (American Idol’s popular black sheep) being spotted in AdAge’s Manhattan offices.

The article, however, did spark a severe issue with me and a colleague.  If AARF is managing PPC accounts and so is Google - but yet they are actually the ad venue, isnt’ this a conflict of interest? It’s like going to your car dealer and asking them to finance your loan.  You might as well club yourself over the head.

I’ve heard so many times how easy it is to setup a Google Adwords Account, and well, yes it is.  You just need 5 minutes and a credit card because Google will select your 20 keywords for you. And into the lions den you go.  Consider this, why would Google only say you need 20 keywords? Well, because they are making $600 million dollars a year off of their keyword advertising. So naturally any smart ad venue is going to tell you that you should be bidding on the most broad and expensive keywords available.  Do they mention anything about conversion rate or conversion tracking? No. But, they do tell you how important click-through (CTR) is.  That’s because they get paid when someone clicks on your ads.

My point really is - I can’t believe there aren’t any regulations around Google managing client PPC accounts, in addition to MSN having purchased an agency as a part of a bigger collective but also manages their accounts.  How can this be good?

Hire us to manage your pay-per-click campaigns.