In my post on "SEO Consultant Compensation Based On 'Knowledge'", I said that "I believe that the SEO seller should not be held accountable for what does or doesn't happen offline, but the SEO buyer should be!" The reason for this is, basically, ONLY the SEO buyer has control over what happens offline, after the initial "actionable" contact is made by an online prospect. This is why I'm against the concept behind the traditional definition of "Pay For Performance".
The SEO buyer is a marketer of products or services like the 370 Members of the "Association of National Advertisers". They recently focused on a "2005 Marketing Accountability Forum" (7th link down on the left). I did not attend, but I know they discussed their own responsibilities in tracking all leads from all kinds of sources including those enabled by outside vendors. The President of the ANA did this blog post on 8/25/04, and Kate Maddox of B2B Online Magazine recently did these two articles: "ANA Explores Marketing Accountability", and "ANA Releases Marketing Accountability Study". The 10/3/05 article said: "The task force also found that the most successful companies have strong end-to-end marketing processes that complement their focus on metrics."
This post of mine will attempt to give a suggestion to help with marketer's own tracking of offline leads from Natural Search Optimization efforts. But, first let me remind you that online users prefer the natural organic search results listings over the paid ones. Besides articles and studies done on this, a well known SEO-SEM Company, iCrossing, says: "Natural results attract the majority of internet search click-throughs - up to 80%, depending on the vertical and type of search." So, surely, an ANA Member-Marketer (who knows "Internet Marketing is in") should be held accountable to make sure that proper tracking and measurement from "end to end" of all online and offline SEO results happen.
After 20 years of calling on industrial B2B sellers and trying to get them to track all their leads from "end to end" (not just from the B2B buyer guide directory that I represented), I found that the companies that did achieve success wanted it the most and put forth the appropriate effort. Because, in B2B sales (and sometimes even B2C sales) there are often "middlemen" involved in the sales process. This sometimes caused limited control over the process, and brought into play, at times, "business politics" that affected the amount of pressure applied in getting tracking results. However, the bottom line is that these effective B2B marketers used the "carrot & stick" approach with "end to end" tracking efforts. They would literally pay money as an incentive to anyone involved in the process, and threaten some negative action, if it were not done the way they wanted it done. The more serious they were about success, the more extreme were their tactics.
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