Introduction
The tools
Experience
Hiring
Conclusion
What is experience worth? A services firm brings the collective wisdom of their portfolio of current and past clients to bear on every search marketing assignment. While a prospective client often requests that a search firm have experience in its category, the reality is that all vendor experience is valuable, as many search marketing challenges are category independent. Just as a lawyer with 10 years experience will likely give different counsel than one fresh out of law school, search marketing specialists who have seen it all can resolve challenges that newer firms believe are intractable.
Belanger: The only way I know to possess true wisdom is to have earned it through the trials and tribulations of experience. This is perhaps one the biggest assets that an SEM firm can bring to a search engagement. This is especially true of laggards to search. If your company is late to the dance, why not benefit from the accumulated smarts of a firm with deep expertise? This will allow you to jump start search marketing strategies to a point of parity. Trying to bake it in-house may create even bigger pockets of opportunity for your search-savvier competition. From experience come best practices. From best practices comes search marketing excellence.
Marckini: Would you entrust a surgery to a doctor just a year out of medical school? It might depend on the seriousness of your medical condition, the procedure and the risks involved. I know I'd like to be sure that the doctor operating on me has performed the procedure thousands of times and that he's not still learning-- potentially at my expense. Similarly, companies whose success relies heavily on search traffic and search-produced revenues may need a more experienced vendor than a company who is just now testing the efficacy of search-- whose needs and budget match up well with newer, smaller firms. Choosing a vendor who fits your level of need is key.
Collectively, a search marketing firm can bring upwards of 2,000 years of experience to bear (depending on the tenure of the firm) on a search marketing challenge. And while not all campaigns will require that kind of horsepower throughout their term, each one will rely on that experience at some point during the campaign.
If you wake up to find your site was somehow dropped from Google or Yahoo or your paid search ads suddenly see a 50 percent drop in ROI, you'll understand the value of that experience. You'll rest easier knowing your firm has contacts at the search engines that have been nurtured over the years to resolve any problem.
Next: Hiring
