If you click on the image, you'll see that after unsuccessful attempts at relationship building, "parting" can be more like "divorce proceedings" than "sweet sorrow". "Agency Turnover In Search Marketing" was mentioned briefly in my last post.
So, while SEO- SEM Consultants and clients CAN part on good terms, there is always the possibility of hard feelings or worse; revenge by either party. A client could do word of mouth negative comments by blogging, etc., and the consultant could do the same. Extreme examples would be clients-customers creating web sites like WalmartSucks.org, or consultants calling the former client's competitors, and offering "inside info" for a price, or maybe even the secondary web site with an established "relevant traffic situation" being offered that they created to do a "Pay For Traffic" compensation plan (if the client didn't get it in writing, and initially set it up so that the secondary site ownership is his) . But, back to that aritcle.
Randy Schwartz says in "Agency Turnover In Search Marketing" that: " Search marketing is a very new field." followed by "This sounds obvious, but speaks volumes about the client-agency experience." After that he goes into the differences between an SEM Agency Consultant, and a more traditional Advertising Agency. He then goes into reasons why many clients don't cooperate with their SEM Agency Consultant due to lack of education and "proprietary information" reasons. Clients can also try to get too much communication and "brain-suck" techniques from SEM's, so Randy explains why that is a concern when he says: "But nobody wants to risk a brain-suck and it becomes not only inefficient, but counterproductive to document every last detail that'll give the client a true understanding for the market complexities." My take on that is that clients become untrusting from reading horror stories or having "bad" (in their opinion) experiences, and want to make the most of their investments.
Randy mostly talks about paid advertising vs. organic search engine optimization in his article, but I love it when he says something that could be applied to both aspects of search marketing: "Instead of offering excuses for the client's doubt or dissatisfaction, SEMs need to strive to provide solutions." and also; "SEMs need to understand how their partners view or value search marketing, to what standards they're being held, and ideally how those benchmarks are derived." Truer words were never spoken, including; "The issues outlined above mainly speak to conflicts of communication." Yes, but not just any kind of communication; O'HUG Communication ( Open, Honest, Upfront, and Good = clear, conspicuous, comprehensive, and completely comprehended).
The real goal is NOT to do any kind of "parting" with clients like the 370 members of the ANA! Their July 2005 Forum on "Marketing Accountability" had a presentation by the Marketing/Consulting and Research company, Copernicus called "A Six Sigma Approach To Making Marketing More Accountable". Page 10 says: "Measuring marketing ROI won't improve performance if you're not fixing what was causing the disappointing results in the first place." Page 11 has a quote from Anne Clancy: "IF ALL YOU DO IS WHAT YOU'VE DONE, THEN ALL YOU'LL GET IS WHAT YOU'VE GOT." Could these quotes apply to how Search Marketing sellers and buyers are interacting today? How do you feel about it?
Animated image courtesy of www.artie.com
Comments