Search Marketing is Changing - Is Business Changing with It?

Let's hope that the continuing growth of effort and focus on Search and all its variations doesn't lose sight of prioritizing marketing services client needs based on real assessments of products and customers.

Search Engine Marketing and Internet advertising deserve the attention necessary to prioritize their value in an overall marketing plan.

The types of services that appear and disappear almost overnight in the Internet venue continue to demand attention and marketing dollars. That the numbers of choices continue to grow and evolve doesn't make the job easier.

Choices, hard marketing choices, must be made. It's no accident that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is hard and SEM (Search Engine Marketing)/paid placement/Search PPC (Pay Per Click) bidding is easier and gets more attention. Organic SEO ("natural" Search Rankings through optimization of site design and keyword/phrase placement) vs. high rankings through high bids for specific search keywords and phrases, is driving huge amounts of money into the Search marketplace.

One has to wonder at what point the "value" of the search-driven process is rewarded with sales that might have been more cheaply derived from other marketing venues.

And what about E-mail Marketing (Mass Marketing E-Mail, sometimes aka "Spam")?

E-mail Marketing continues to evolve; more specialization, more e-mail list building through proprietary web site building, more overall choices of e-mail fulfillment services, some with specialized talents and features to aid delivery and "open" rates, click through and tracking of activity. In many ways, e-mail offers an alternative to Special Interest advertising enjoyed by magazines.

At the same time, marketing through Social networks like Facebook.com, Twitter.com, eHarmony.com, Match.com and many, many others, some only invented in the last year or so, continues to demand more and more attention. So do Business Peer-to-Peer networks like Salesforce.com and Linked in, with millions of Members in the U.S. and worldwide.

There are more choices every day, in every aspect of Internet from at- home to Mobile. And new Internet application marketplaces all the time; Cloud Commuting, Cloud Education, Cloud Health and more coming.

This is not to say that Internet Marketing isn't valuable; it is, and it is to the degree that is must be considered "disruptive technology," that which changes the marketing landscape of the traditional methods of reaching customers just because of it's very existence.

Because the Internet Channel is busy replacing print in magazines, newspapers, and typical broadcast venues like over-the-air TV, and with Mobile and Convergence devices (AnyThing,AnyTime, AnyWhere-AAA) offering more applications and garnering more User time every day, marketing decision makers are drowning in choices for marketing dollars.

Ideally, we would know instinctively, or from the professional advice we get, what our Marketing should accomplish... but we don't. We are still experimenting, finding new things that work better and replace old methods.

How to keep up, how to know enough to manage the process as an executive, as an owner?

That's tough. Either we trust our own skill set of acquired knowledge, or we trust the "professional" we employ or retain to advise us. Sometimes, professionals get it wrong; hopefully, they are better at getting it right than people without the multitude of experiences in various industries and specialties.

How well do you Know Your Customer?

Knowing your customer provides insurance that when experiments are proposed in Marketing, when new ideas in reaching out to customers are suggested, your ability to put the customer first in the process will provide a framework for taking the Marketing risks that separate successful company's products and services from the also ran's. So, while technologies may change in products and services, while new media may evolve along with new Marketing methods and ideas, the forward-looking executive will use the Know Your Customer Rule to guide their decision making process.

A famous President offered "Trust, but verify" when talking about Arms Limitation Agreements. Such advice is no less valuable in measuring the Value of Search Marketing Plans. Search, as the leading manifestation of Internet Marketing holds all the potential for great success, and all the risk associated with over-investing or making bad decisions driven by popularity rather than by prudent evaluations.

That we are still having great difficulty even defining success through Internet-based Marketing is readily apparent.

The Internet is a mass-marketing venue that didn't exist just a few years ago. With it's growing ability to target individuals and groups of consumers, real potential for more effective use of marketing dollars is available.

Finding ways to utilize all this potential, while not without risk, is a worthwhile use of executive time. Marketing industry professionals, particularly on the agency side, must develop better ways of "selling" marketing related to new media and concepts like Social; more importantly, they have to educate Clients as to the potential value.

Know Your Customer and you'll have a head start on evaluating how Search Marketing can help maximize your participation in the Search marketplace.