On 11/22/04 Jacob Nielsen published "Undoing the Industrial Revolution" in which he said: "In the physical world, you win by being big, with economies of scale in manufacturing, worldwide distribution, and branding." But, "In the virtual world, you win by being good: Automation reduces the benefits of scale, the Internet equalizes distribution, and reputation follows from quality rather than incessantly repeated slogans." I like his point on "Reputation replaces image as the way to build a company, product, or brand position." since I have seen too many SEO's and SEM's write articles with the obvious intent of posturing for a better image than their competition. Now, in all fairness, there is a fine line, in some cases, between an author's honest intent of buyer education, and one of self-serving or condescending competitiveness.
With the 2005 SES San Jose Conference coming next week I was reminded of an article entitled Search Marketing 2004: What's Right, What's Wrong written by Andrew Goodman after the last SES San Jose Conference. In the "longer member version", which I recommend, was a Conference comment about "One tech-industry CEO observed that the source of many of the current machinations in the SEM industry seemed to be about relatively small service firms trying to block entry of even smaller firms. In their eagerness to be seen as "respectable," he implied, some established SEM firms forget their own humble origins, and also seem unaware that much larger ad agencies seek to crush them by using similar tactics (essentially cartel behavior and planting the seeds of "FUD" about ethical status SEM industry pioneers). In this observer's eyes, the SEM industry may fall victim to a "be careful what you wish for" scenario as it matures out of the "back bedroom." This, sometimes, elitist tendency arising out of competitiveness, self preservation, and even greed, in some cases, can be detrimental to the entire industry for many sellers and buyers in their "first impression" stage of an emerging growth industry.
Today, Rebecca Lieb of ClickZ Network wrote an article about a booming huge demand, with a short supply, for Search Engine Marketers, since "there are not a lot of good people out there. How many search engine marketing majors did you know in college?" This is very true, but how do new SEO's and SEM's get good? Some are self taught like many of the established consultants, but many take educational courses that are available, and go to work for these established search marketing firms. They later break away to start their own company. After all, everybody has to start somewhere and somehow.
I believe that we are at a turning point right now with an explosive demand for good search marketers that is due to many reasons. But rather than list them all, suffice it to say that opportunities abound for smart and good SEO-SEM marketers who truly know how to sincerely educate prospects to a true value opportunity, and then make it easy for them to buy. In my opinion, the more effort that is put into a good value driven "Pay For Actions & Performance" compensation model that equally benefits the buyer and the seller, the easier the "easy for them to buy" becomes.
Gort Hotchkiss wrote an article soon after last year's SES San Jose Conference in which he talked about The Growing Pains of Search. He said "The biggest thing I saw in San Jose was the beginning of a chasm developing in our industry. A handful of more sophisticated and forward thinking search marketers are beginning to really explore what can be done in search. They're beginning to think research and strategy, rather than linking tactics and meta tag optimization. They've refocused their vision to look at the large and emerging picture of search. In their wake, they're leaving the more traditional firms, usually quite small, who are using tactics from 4 or 5 years ago." In my opinion, these small traditional firms will either get with the long term, financially rewarding program or go out of business. There is always a "chasm" in every emerging growth industry, it is part of the growth process.
While search marketing is becoming much more sophisticated, and the price of entry is going up, the dollar size of this market will go up as more traditional media dollars from corporate marketing and advertising budgets come over to search engine marketing. This plus a SEM segmentation due to increase specialization of industries in B2C & B2B will open up opportunities for new consultant companies. Local Search will do the same for local SEM's as the 25 billion dollar international yellow page advertising market continues to convert from print. Granted, some SEM's will make more money than others, but that is the way it has always been with any service provider consultant/agency business. The difference here is how big the market will be according to Forrester's own Charlene Li's recent blog post (26 Billion in U.S. Online Marketing by 2010).
As the roles and goals of the players evolve, I believe Danny Sullivan is bullish on the continued growth of the search engine marketing industry, and so are many people.
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