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Gary Angel brings over twenty years of experience in decision support, CRM, and software development, to SEMphonic. Gary co-founded SEMphonic and is president and chief technology officer. He's responsible for leading SEMphonic's development of Web analytics and SEM decision making tools for web marketing professionals. In addition, he helps companies like WebMD, Intuit, American Express and Charles Schwab maximize their web channel marketing through intelligent use of Enterprise Web Analytics

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Tired of SEM Outsourcing? Determining Whether In-House Search Efforts Fit Your Firm

Written on
December 11th 2006
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by Gary Angel  |
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For many outsourcing decisions, one of the key driving factors is the presence of technical or scale advantages that the outsourcer will probably always have over an individual company. Are there any such advantages in Search Engine Marketing? In the SEO world especially, this doesn’t seem to be true. Such SEO tools as there are tend to be dirt cheap and freely available.

In the PPC world, there’s only one real potential differentiator and that’s a PPC Bid-Management tool — particularly if you are looking for a machine automated bidding solution. The truth is that even here, however, most Agencies aren’t using in-house solutions. And, when they are, the solutions are usually worse than the commercial solutions available to anyone. You’ve probably noticed that your Agency isn’t a technological powerhouse — and it’s quite likely they’ve struggled with the technology as much, or more, than you would.

Thus far, none of the factors discussed seem to provide any strong reason why an organization with a serious interest in Search Engine Marketing wouldn’t bring an effort in-house. So why the prevalence of outsourcing in the SEM space? These next two issues account for much of the current practice.

Reason number one is fear. Lack of knowledge still leads many companies to believe they simply can’t build the expertise in Search Marketing to manage a program themselves. This is especially common in Search Engine Optimization — a practice so mysterious that people expect to see its practitioners cloaked in magician’s gowns and carrying black wands or consulting the alignment of droppings in Google trash cans. The truth is, however, that actually doing SEO isn’t as mysterious as it might seem — and some of the best practitioners are more than willing to help your company learn how to do SEO well.

Likewise, running a PPC campaign is challenging — but it rewards knowledge of the business and competitors at least as much as it does good bidding strategies. In addition, both disciplines lend themselves to good measurement — allowing organizations willing to commit to measurement the ability to really improve themselves in the space over time.

Reason number two driving out-sourcing in the SEM space is the aforementioned difficulty in staffing. This doesn’t just strike agencies. Many organizations have had a hard time staffing up appropriately. This is exacerbated when you’re getting started because you often don’t really know what kind of person to hire.

This difficulty is real, and it’s one of the reasons why it sometimes makes sense to use vendors in an educational role. Not all vendors like this, but the best ones are usually willing to help you and your company learn. If you have a good vendor helping guide your staff, you can sometimes get the best of both worlds - best practices plus the gradual accumulation of expertise that will let you effectively manage on your own.

So if you’ve been thinking about the possibility of bringing your Search Engine Marketing efforts in-house, there aren’t necessarily any compelling reasons why you shouldn’t. But, you’ll want to make sure you’ve thought about your culture and how you’ll staff up a department. You’ll want to make sure you have the existing staff or outside advice to get your effort started in the right direction. And you’ll want to make sure you commit yourself to a good measurement discipline so that your organization will actually improve over time. It’s much easier to get started on the right foot than recover your balance once you’ve already slipped!



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Reader Comments.

Gary Angel has keen insight into the logic behind client empowerment; which will always prevail. To empower your client/s with tactical search marketing and measurement is a great solution to the labyrinth of issues surrounding SEO and PPC.

Taking search marketing in-house requires a very methodical approach, there are a lot of slippery-slopes; a solid foundation must be established and adhered to…which must come from the top down. Examples exist e.g., The New York Times, Cisco and Citicorp just to name a few.

Gary is right-on in his summary — “you’ll want to make sure you’ve thought about your culture and how you’ll staff up a department…existing staff or outside advice…commit yourself to a good measurement discipline…”

Nice article Gary!

Paul J. Bruemmer

Posted by Paul J. Bruemmer | 2:35 pm on December 11, 2006.

Great article. I especially agree with the observation “Lack of knowledge still leads many companies to believe they simply can’t build the expertise in Search Marketing to manage a program themselves.” In-house marketers think it is too overwhelmingly challenging to learn and do search marketing themselves, and that it’s more of a black art better left to the “experts.”

And I would argue that many search marketing agencies themselves, perpetuate this sentiment through the industry. Well, it makes sense for them to do so, for obvious reasons. ;-)

I think that in-house search practitioners are starting to “get it.” The bigger question I often hear is that they don’t know how to assign value, and often, goals to their search efforts. For example, they don’t know their value per visitor, their cost-per-acquisition, or their desired margin on paid search efforts - but it’s those end goals that drive the decisions on bid changes, keywords to buy or optimize for, et al. But at least the mechanics of actual SEO and PPC best practices are getting a good uptake. The better educated the clients are the better the industry gets.

Posted by Erica Forrette | 6:52 pm on December 11, 2006.

With the acquisition of ClickShift, WebTrends now offers solutions in both SEM and SEO. I’d recommend checking out WebTrends Dynamic Search, which they just launched this past Monday. It automates and optimizes paid search efforts.

Posted by Kristen | 6:30 pm on December 13, 2006.

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