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The SEM Agency Crisis Won’t Be Solved Over Coffee and Crumb Cakes
By dave_pasternack | April 8, 2008
This week, DMNews’ Sara Holoubek wrote an article entitled “SEMs are from Mars, clients are from Venus” which alludes to the fact that clients and SEM agencies very seldom have good long term relationships.
In my view, however, Ms. Holoubek’s evident belief that a solution lies in the application of “mutual respect, professionalism, intellectual curiosity and creative thinking” misses the main point. Clients need to have a much better understanding of the real issues involved with running paid search campaigns. Expectations must be brought into line with reality. Understandably, most agencies utterly fail in setting such expectations at the outset of any relationship because they want the business. The result is the predictable cycle of failure that gives the whole SEM industry a black eye. As I’ve written before, the stages of the SEM Failure Cycle include:
- Manic Enthusiasm (”Amazing! We just set our budget, select our keywords, our geo, our demo, our daypart, and Google does the rest!”)
- Denial (”Our ROI’s in the tank and we’re losing market share: let’s get the search team on the first flight to SES so they can figure out how to run this stuff”)
- False Hopes (”Our search people came back from SES with this great new tool that will take care of everything. Yay!”)
- Alarm (”This stupid tool doesn’t do anything we want it to do so we’ve hired two new people to run campaigns manually. Can you authorize another $10,000 in training please?”)
- Panic (”We need an SEM agency we can drop this headache on — and fast!”)
- Betrayal (”The SEM agency we hired are idiots and charlatans. Find a new one!”)
- Defeat (”You know, maybe we’re better off running newspaper ads.”)
SEM agencies have to start leveling with clients or the whole industry will be trapped in this unsatisfying cycle forever. Solving this crisis has nothing to do with “having coffee with the agency,” however pleasant this might be, or palavering over expense account dinners, or demonstrating “creative thinking.” A solution only can begin when agencies start telling the truth about what clients can reasonably expect from search.
Topics: I'm Mad as Hell and I'm Not Clicking on It Anymore, Ridiculous Statement of the Week, Search Engine Marketing |
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