Kevin Ryan writes in from the NYC Search Engine Strategies meeting. The news? Search marketing is still hot and may be growing up.

The Search Engine Strategies returned to New York City last week with a bang as search marketing rocked the New York Hilton with four days of multi-track sessions. Attendees numbering in the thousands had a lot to say about the state of search. The overwhelming message? While search is still young, it is showing signs of growing up.

Yesterday, I talked about Overture's name change, and blogs, search and PR. Here's more:

Shopping engines

We as an industry spend so much time with optimization of organic search results, syndicated sponsored listing programs and maximizing content listings that search in the shoppers' realm is often left behind. A wise man once said, “Nothing moves until someone sells something.” In the search world, nothing sells unless someone can find something, and shopping engines are often the best way to do that.

ToolBarn.com’s presentation of shopping search tactics offered some great practical advice. Among the primary reasons offered to use shopping engines are:

• Poor site SEO
• Additional sales
• Heavy competition in search

The proliferation of sites like Froogle (Google’s shopping arena,) Bizrate, Nextag, Shopping.com and Amazon has created a new demand for marketers. The need to expand sales channels for big and small merchants alike with shopping engines are becoming a necessity rather than an option for online merchants.

Each site has different compensation requirements that range from pay per click (Nextag, Shopping.com) to flat fees plus a share of revenue (Amazon) to free (Froogle, but you still have to construct product feeds). The unique demands of this space will certainly be difficult to navigate on your own.

Big business embraces search

Sing it with me folks: Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen … nobody knows the SEM sorrow. With search marketing, large firms face decidedly different challenges than small firms; two panels sought to offer key insights into the big corporate quagmire. Selecting the right SEM firm for large marketers and Big Site/Big Company SEM were the way to go for key insights in this arena.

How does one navigate large scale political dynamics, legacy systems and knowledge deficiencies in the world of big business? Let’s ask IBM.

Among its key knowledge points, the big business experts offered up establishing a centralized search marketing team to help build knowledge and sell the concepts to “extended” teams such as information technology, product management and copy writers.

As a search consultant who has faced the problem of getting big corporations to see the light of search, I found the “use the big company management system” portion of the presentation to be most useful. Among IBM's pearl’s of wisdom? Shifting existing standards for search and design, and then using compliance systems to enforce those standards. Just remember, this process will take time.

PPC and PHI: new format, new ideas, new problems?

A popular subject near and dear to my vocal cords was Pay Per Call (PPC), or as I have begun to call it, Pay for Human Interaction (PHI, because PPC was already taken). An SES discussion led by yours truly seemed to peak audience curiosity. (More on Pay Per Call linked below.)

PHI has yet to really take off for a few reasons. Big providers really haven’t embraced it; direct revenue is not as easy to measure as pure PPC plays; and local users' desire for local telephone numbers have yet to be met.

However, with big players like AOL (via partnership with provider Ingenio) entering the space this April and high conversion rates from the hundreds year old voice invention, PHI promises to be one of the next big things in search.
 
Can a search organization help us grow up?

Headline from the front: SEMPO is alive and kicking. Alongside last week’s SES conference was the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization’s new board election announcement. New blood on the board includes executives from Fathom Online, Alchemist Media and Carat North America.

I say "new blood" because in the past year or so many members have seemed bloodthirsty for big action, and a few blood-curdling screams from members complaining about leadership, or a lack thereof, have led people with far too much time on their hands to criticize the non profit organization prematurely.

Interestingly enough, the big requests from members are standards and professionalism. While the two might be closely related, arguments for and against standards will continue for some time.

Professionalism, on the other hand, might be a bigger problem.  

While yours truly is guilty of the intermittent humorous or sardonic approach to search and even the occasional frog toss, professionalism is a lot harder to program into an industry so young. Even still, we can begin to cut down on one idiotic conference hall behavior; the practice of hiring scantily clad women to try and draw traffic into a conference booth. Last week, one firm had such, uh, ladies, sporting t-shirts that read “Do you want to be on top?”

Now that’s clever.

I have so many issues with this I don’t even know where to begin. Setting female objectification concerns and lack of professionalism problems aside for a moment, said hired “talent” often know exactly squat about your business or search in general.

Worse, as one exhibitor noted, “Attendees see [the scantily clad women] who contribute next to nothing at a competitor's booth and they naturally assume the gals who work for us don’t know anything about search either,” he said. “Potential customers have approached our booth and asked our female employees if there was anyone here from our company that could answer a few questions. Attendees assume women are here for the purposes of eye candy.”

That’s brilliant. Way to set the equality of the sexes movement back about two hundred years! Step one in appearing more professional: eliminate patently stupid behavior on the show floor.

Additional resources:

More on Pay-Per-Call

Search THIS: Why Search is Slowing

Visit SEMPO

iMedia Search Editor Kevin Ryan’s current and former client roster reads like a “who’s who” in big brands; Rolex Watch, USA, State Farm Insurance, Farmers Insurance, Minolta Corporation, Samsung Electronics America, Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Panasonic Services, and the Hilton Hotels brands, to name a few. Ryan believes in sound guidance, creative thought, accountable actions and collaborative execution as applied to search, or any form of marketing. His principled approach and staunch commitment to the industry have made him one of the most sought after personalities in online marketing. Ryan volunteers his time with the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, and several regional non-profit organizations.