Does search engine marketing belong in marketing, IT or somewhere else?

It’s a marketing job right? That’s why the word marketing is in there.

So is it just the case that the medium is different? Online rather than print or television? Do the same general marketing skills apply and should the person responsible for creating and managing a paid search campaign have a marketing background?

I’ve been pondering these questions because I see many more people from an IT background rather than a marketing background in a SEM role. It’s also an often voiced concern within the industry that there is a divide between traditional marketing agencies and search marketing consultants or agencies.

My overall thoughts are that it’s necessary to understand the whole process in order to get results. I touched on that in this post about the real problem for adwords beginners. PPC marketing does however require a technical, analytical approach that suits typical IT skills. There are also restrictions which I can see make it unappealing for creative marketing types. Here are some of these aspects:

Search marketing is largely pull rather than push

Pay per click advertising is keyword driven and the searcher has already expressed an interest in the product, or at least the topic, by entering a search query. The searcher is goal driven and the advertising copy that works best is one that does three fairly simple things:

• conveys that they’ve found the right place (most effectively done by simply echoing the keywords in the ad headline)
• states the offer
• provides a call to action.

There isn’t a great deal of creative scope for a copywriter or marketer. Also the rules imposed by the search engines are very restrictive. You get a certain number of characters and some formatting rules to follow. Anything unusual isn’t allowed and even if it falls within the guidelines it’s likely that quality score will suffer.

Don’t get just one shot

It’s quick and easy to create an ad, start it running and then see what happens. It doesn’t involve any significant design process. The general technique is to try multiple things and keep tweaking to improve the results. It’s an iterative process rather than one shot at a best effort. Ready, Fire, Aim rather than Ready, Aim, Fire.

Huge amount of data to work with

One thing that really differentiates pay-per-click advertising from other advertising mediums is the sheer volume of data that it produces. You know what people searched for, what they clicked on, whether the click converted into a sale and how much it cost. It requires analytical and statistical skills to analyse this data and take action.

I think in the future search engine marketing will be a more integral part of marketing courses and roles but with some cross discipline elements to cover the technical and analytical aspects.

The numerous list posts you see on the most common mistakes made by adwords beginners don’t get to the root of the problem.

They focus on the use of adwords features like this:

1. Too many keywords in one ad group
2. Not opting out of content network
3. Only using broad match keywords
4. Not using negative keywords
5. Not split testing ads

Adwords beginners do generally make these mistakes but the lists miss the main point that beginners often have no clue what they are trying to achieve or how the whole process works. And by the whole process I don’t mean how to log into adwords and opt out of the content network, I mean the process that starts with someone searching for something.

A lot of beginners have no idea of the absolute basics of what they are trying to achieve. They don’t understand the fundamental building blocks of search queries, keywords and ads and the relationship between them. This lack of understanding makes discussion on things like keyword match types and split testing ads pretty redundant.

I know this to be true and I’ve seen numerous examples. A while ago I reviewed a campaign set up by the owner of an entertainment website. The business is an entertainment booking service with a wide range of categories from clowns to bands to motivational speakers.

The campaign had one ad group with about 20 keywords and one ad. I explained the need to create targeted ad groups. He made some changes and asked me to take another look at the campaign. He’d created an ad group called “bands” with the keywords “rock”, “country”, “blues”, “world music” etc.

I think Google are at fault for giving the impression that adwords is easy. As Andrew Goodman said in a SEM group I follow, “It sure ain’t “five minutes and a credit card” - as the seductive sales pitch suggests”.

I’ve posted before that I’m a fan of the search marketing standard magazine. I’m a subscriber and each issue has had some excellent articles. I wondered whether print would work for search marketing especially as there are so many resources available online and it’s a fast changing industry. As it happens I’ve read each issue pretty much from cover to cover and thoroughly enjoyed flipping through the pages of a magazine targeted at my industry.

For the next two weeks there is a 67% discount for new subscribers plus there will be a $1 USD donation to the charity “toys for tots” for every subscription.

It’s a great deal with Australian subscribers paying $6.60 USD for a 1 year subscription (4 issues).

Here’s the link to subscribe (active until 10th December). The coupon is: HOLIDAY67

And just so you know, it’s not an affiliate link. I think it’s a good offer so i’m happy to pass on the information.

An SEO and PPC competition is running from January next year with the entrants judged over a one year period. I’m not entering (for a start the entry fee is $5000 per category) but I’m interested in the criteria and the sample questions for a bit of self evaluation.

In the PPC category, entrants are judged on customer satisfaction, depth of knowledge, reporting methods, internal principles and competitive advantages.

There are sample questions here.

This is worth a read, even on the weekend. It’s Lisa Barone’s live blogging of a webinar with Seth Godin.

To give a taste of what it includes, here are some notes I made but you really need to go and read the whole thing.

• Consumers are starting to expect a lot more direct communication with organisations. The Internet has created channels for this communication and organisations that don’t use these channels will lose customers.
• It’s no longer possible for a company to control their message. Blogging and other avenues have changed the landscape. Now a company better have an authentic story because they won’t be able to hide anything.
• Too few organisations are really embracing the long tail.
• Marketers are obsessed with “how many”. They need to shift their thinking and start focusing on “who” instead.
• The effectiveness of Internet advertsing (ppc) can be measured unlike buying TV ads. That frightens a lot of traditionalists in big companies.
• No-one is forced to read your blog! Blogs need to be a magnet not a microphone.

There was an article today in Canada’s national newspaper about the impact of the online search market on ad agencies.

I came across it on Andrew Goodman’s blog and I’m linking to it because I think it’s relevant to the Australian market. The paid search market in Canada is cheaper and less competitive than in the US. There are parallels with the Australian search industry in this respect. We are a couple of years behind the US and this creates opportunities for businesses and agencies.

Google’s president of marketing and commerce makes the point that advertising agencies shouldn’t see the dominance of Google as a threat but as an opportunity. He concludes with the message that (in Canada) “we’re underinvested compared to what the opportunity is.”

Andrew points to Gord Hotchkiss’s post on the same topic. Substitute “Australia” for “Canada”. The post is very relevant to our market as well.

Andrew Boyd has started a blog about blogging in Australia and interviewed me.

I received the latest issue of the excellent Search Marketing Standard magazine yesterday. The theme for this issue is “International Search Markets” with articles on the search industry in the UK, Italy, Germany, Russia and China.

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Rand Fishkin interviews Lucas Ng who is an in-house SEO/SEM at Fairfax Digital in Sydney. I hardly ever watch blog videos as I’m far too impatient but I had to watch this one as Rand was asking him about the differences in the seo industry in Australia and the US. Also I sat next to Lucas in one of the sessions at Search Summit Sydney and he’s a nice guy : -)

Watch the video but if you’re impatient like me here are some of Lucas’s comments:

I was sent a copy of Search Marketing Standard. It’s a quarterly publication and is solely devoted to search engine marketing including pay per click, organic and social media.

I enjoyed reading it. There are some good quality articles and it made a pleasant change to be browsing through a magazine rather than reading online.

The publishers are in New York and all of the advertising and the conference guide is aimed at a US based audience. Having said that, the articles are varied enough and relevant to make it a worthwhile read here in Australia.

The current issue has articles on:

• Web design
• Mobile marketing and usability
• Paid search quality scores
• Link bait
• Local search
• Blogging
• Search engine friendly HTML
• RSS
• SEM training and certification

Here’s a link: search marketing standard