One of the main "crossover" from Traditional Ad Agency to Search Marketing Firm aspects of "Payment By Results" in the Institute of Communications and Advertising's (ICA) "PBR2: Advertising Agency Remuneration Best Practices" is at the bottom of page 17 as the last paragraph for "PBR Philosophy - WIn-Win". It says: "Upside, results based potential in remuneration allows the Agency to participate in the rewards of Client success and allows the Client to meet the Agency's need for increased remuneration. Both the Client's management's team and their Agencies share in the same business objectives. This, in turn, lays the groundwork for a closer partnership that is more likely to broaden into questions of business strategy THAN TO NARROW INTO JUST ANOTHER SERVICE RELATIONSHIP."
After reading many SEO authored articles and related forums for seven or so years, one of their main complaints about SEO clients is that too many of them treat their SEO Consultant as "JUST ANOTHER VENDOR". This client "bad-incorrect attitude" may even help contribute to "improper expectations", and the lack of timely cooperation in doing the changes to the client's web site that help make for a "win-win' scenario. Yet, on page 17 under "Conditions For A Successful Partnership" the first requirement is "Clear partnership between the participants, based upon the achievement of defined goals." A clear and true partnership implies TRUE, SHARED FINANCIAL RISK & REWARD which helps motivate both buyer and seller to both do their part in achieving long term success.
Right now, the SEO seller mostly takes on only the risk of losing the client, along with the ever present possibility of slow or no payments. Their reward is "getting their price". The SEO buyer mostly takes on only the responsibility of "one time" or limited, maintenance, financial rewards even if their rewards are one thousand times greater than the SEO's. But, at the same time, the SEO buyer also risks a lot of wasted time (which is money) if he gets poor results, along with however many thousands of dollars that he promised to pay the SEO seller for One-time Fee Pricing or 6 to 12 month package pricing.
Right now, some people reading this may think that I am only on the side of the buyer. This is NOT TRUE! However, at this point in time, the SEO buyer feels that he is assuming the MUCH GREATER MAJORITY OF THE RISK when he hears the SEO seller telling him that "SEO's don't control the Search Engines". Therefore, there can be "NO GUARANTEES" of any real value except "BEST EFFORTS". An example of an actual SEO buyer expressing those sentiments is in my previous post entitled "SEO-SEM Buyer & Seller Perspectives". If after you read that, you say to yourself that that particular SEO buyer just had the bad luck of running into a few incompetent and unscrupulous SEO sellers, you would probably be wrong, in my opinion. Why?
Here is an article by Stoney deGeyter entitled "Do You Have a Bad SEO Company, or Are You Just a Bad Client?. In it he says: "Can good SEOs sometimes produce bad results for their clients? Absolutely. Happens all the time. Let me give you a few examples." After giving mostly examples of clients not cooperating, and being the source of the problem (which certainly can be true), he then says: "One company came to us from one of the largest SEO firms after their one-year contract expired. We checked their rankings only to find sub-standard results. There were no penalization or sandbox issues, just lack of good performance. I was able to determine that their current firm simply wasn’t doing a good enough job."
Now, what did he mean by "one of the largest SEO firms"? I can only guess that it means that they are well known, and have attained a good degree of financial success. But, my main point is that SEO buyers really don't have a concrete, fail-safe way of knowing whether they picked the "right" SEO seller. Even when they feel they did, the SEO buyer is still at the mercy of the ever changing search engine algorithms just like the SEO seller is. SO, THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT THERE IS BIG RISK FOR THE SEO BUYER (valuable time & competitive edge lost, possible "Google Sandbox" penalties, thousands in expense costs vs. investment ROI, and dealing with unpredictable algorithms) NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, BUT MINIMAL RISK (lose a client, and maybe some payments) FOR THE SEO SELLER! This is especially true if the SEO seller came up with an "air tight" contract that says the client has to pay them for "best efforts" no matter what!
I kind of digressed from where I was originally going in this post, except in that you can't have a true, partnership, "win-win" relationship if the overall risk and reward isn't more equally shared! Also, from a client's perspective, THE SEO SELLER IS EITHER "JUST ANOTHER VENDOR" or a "TRUE PARTNER"!
So, I will continue in the next post to relate certain aspects of the Traditional Advertising Agency Industry to the Search Marketing Industry (mainly the natural, organic SEO part of Search Marketing).
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