If you’ve had a meeting in the last 3-6 months with a search engine account team, then you probably left the meeting frustrated. It appears that sometime in the last two quarters, the powers that be in the big 3 search engines have recognized advertiser’s dependency on them for strategy…so they’ve taken into their own hands to make the most of it. We’ve heard it all: “Holiday starts in October,” “Get ahead of the competition by ramping up spend,” “You’re missing 50% of available impressions…why not increase bids to get more market share [regardless of performance]?” Here’s my question: When did the search engines make the conscious decision to stop caring about customer satisfaction and begin to make recommendations with their own best interests at the forefront of the discussion? At least they used to pretend that advertiser performance was top of mind.
To be fair, this is not indicative of every team I have worked with. Some teams are more capable than others, and teams that handle more mature programs tend to deliver fewer of these pitches – instead focusing on new products beta tests. That said, if you manage a budget for a relatively new player in search, let this be a warning to take these meetings with a grain of salt. The account teams do a very good job of illustrating potential volume of incremental traffic however they fail to back up the data with a forecasted ROI. If you do happen to sit in on one of these meetings, I urge you to question the presentation. Force the team to do due diligence and provide logical insight for scaling the account efficiently and effectively.
While I generally try not to promote our company through this blog, this seems to be the perfect opportunity to plug the advantages of using an independent search agency and technology provider. Companies such as eSearchVision have employees who spend all of their time (including yours truly) analyzing this kind of data and developing best practices and strategies – providing a clear and logical pathway to extrapolate directional metrics into actionable insight with the clients best interest (ROI) in mind. Furthermore, we use proprietary forecasting tools to project ROI to back up or refute the expansion opportunities presented by the search engines. We are mediators – directing the search engine teams to focus on the right categories, filtering insight, and shaping strategies to efficiently scale.
Benny Blum
Palapple Blog | SEO Solutions for your Business…
Thanks for sharing. Search engine optimization is indeed one of the most crucial areas in Internet marketing, it is a perfect bridge between technology and business….