This post is in behalf of the prospective clients that realize the marketing need for an effective SEM program. A great 7/22/05 article by Stoney de Geyter makes the valid point that SEM prospective buyers need to look at the quantity and quality of services they are buying along with the prices they are quoted. How true this is for any professional service you buy. Stoney goes on to say that "If you want a cheap service, you'll get cheap results." Not only cheap, but if that consultant takes shortcuts the search engines say not to, your web site could be severely penalized by some of those search engines.
The above concepts involve wisdom and fear that the prospective SEM client has to use and deal with. Now for the discernment that prospects need to use. Stoney says "With SEO, however, you usually get what you pay for." I'm glad he said "usually". Because, how is a prospective buyer supposed to know for sure, before the SEO or SEM consultant weathers the test of time? One of the ways I know is to get a personal referral from a friendly competitor who knows a SEM consultant, who knows your industry.
Even that can be dangerous. When I sold buyer guide, directory advertising for an established publication, a prospect of mine, who later became a long term good account, said he talked to a friendly competitor who advertised in my publication. The referral testimonial was mediocre at best, with no recommendation of urgency. Later I found out that that "friendly" competitor had just greatly increased his investment in the publication I represented. This kind of deliberate misinformation could have hurt my client's business, since he eventually got a lot of new accounts by giving that buyer guide directory a chance.
Stoney finishes by saying that low pricing may hurt you in the long run, but, "On the other hand, just because someone charges huge fees does not mean they'll do you well either. This is a symptom of many very large SEO companies. Do your homework and find the company that will treat you as their only client." How does a prospect do this?
I have read many articles by SEO-SEM consultants advising prospects how to evaluate and question search marketers, and they are all good advice. But every legitimate SEO or SEM consultant company that I know of has some sort of disclaimer as far as what they can control (not the algorithms of the search engines), or what they gaurantee (hard work), and don't gaurantee (a #1 ranking for all keywords). These honest, disclaimer disclosures are valid and need to be there for everybody's sake. As far as a consultant company treating you as if you were their only client, this is consistently possible only if the one, two or three shop consultant company has few clients, limits the total amount of clients they have, and is, maybe, subcontracting out some of the time consuming grunt work. Or, it is possible if the larger consultant firm has enough competent people doing the work for them (with a low turnover rate), and they are all closely supervised.
The latter scenario would increase their overhead, so that will be passed on to the clients. The former is harder to find, but more desireable from a client's standpoint, in my opinion. So what is a prospect to do, before he invests thousands of dollars, and much of his time providing ongoing input for the necessary research and analysis?
In my next post, I'll go into my suggestions as to help solve this dilemma.
I am looking forward to your suggestions for this dilemma.
Posted by: TC | July 28, 2005 at 09:30 AM