How to Choose the Right Agency

… To Run Your SEM Campaign

Since we just introduced our new Yield Web Marketing Suite for Agencies, I thought it might be helpful to cover how to choose the right search engine marketing (SEM) agency for your business. Finding and interviewing agencies can be difficult and time-consuming, especially if you haven’t done this process before. But it doesn’t have to be.

Here are my five steps for finding the right SEM agency.  (Tip-of-the-hat to David Rodnitzky at Blogation and Mike Nierengarten at SEMpdx for their “choosing an SEM agency” tips.)

Step #1: Identify your SEM agency needs.

Do you want the agency to oversee SEO, PPC or both?

Will you want them to develop content based on the recommendations they give you?

Do you want them to do everything for you and just send you reports every month – or do you…

We’re Big Fans of Agencies…

…Which is Why We’re in New York

Even though we are headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, we are making our first trip east to exhibit at ad:tech New York 2009, with very good reason. The nightlife? The food? The fashion? While New York certainly has a lot to offer–the three months I lived there, I think I slept for about 2 hours total–it is also one of the epicenters of advertising activity. Sure, Madison Avenue is renowned. However, in this digital media age, there are tons of interactive agencies successfully helping advertisers get online and leverage search engine marketing to attract and acquire customers.

So, what could be a better location to launch our agency offering, the Yield Web Marketing Suite for Agencies. We’ve been working on this product for over a year, ensuring that…

For Agencies, Add Value to Client SEM

Break Down SEM Silos

Search engine marketing (SEM) agencies typically fall into two camps: specializing in search engine optimization (SEO) to the exclusion of all else or focusing exclusively on pay-per-click (PPC) while shunning SEO altogether.

Hence, entrenched SEM silos have become the norm and businesses end up working a the traditional ad agency for “outbound” marketing activities (print and radio/TV advertising, direct mail), an SEO agency, and/or a PPC agency.

The problem with this scenario is three-fold:

First, companies end up overlapping their efforts.

Second, little integration exists between traditional marketing and SEM (and online versus offline).

Third, the ability to see a comprehensive view of the marketing “big picture” is often severely compromised.

The SEM silo within companies occurred naturally, according to search marketing specialist Marta Turek. In an objective and insightful essay, “Breaking the Search Marketing Silo,” on her…

Increase Your Agency’s Productivity

Integrated “Cloud” Applications and Efficiency

Though Joni Mitchell’s famous song “Clouds” may lead you to conclude that the whole “cloud computing” phenomenon is just some airy concept (”I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now / from win and lose / and still somehow / it’s clouds illusions I recall / I really don’t know clouds at all”), the fact is, these time-saving, efficiency-enhancing technologies can help you to reduce costs, increase revenues and improve your agency’s margins.

In an interesting post on his IT Enquirer blog, Erik Vlietinck writes about how the “human factors” at a European ad agency led it to lose considerable time and money. Falling into the trap of acting as the “middleman,” the agency dealt with the client and two outside copywriters and caved in to the client’s insistence on weekly face-to-face meetings.

These…

For Ad Agencies, a Call to Act as Consigliere

…or Risk Getting Whacked by Your Clients

In an August post written for the Small Agency Diary blog, Tom Martin talks about how ad agencies have neglected to act in their clients’ best interests. Writes Martin:

We’ve slacked off. We don’t invest nearly enough in our people and resources to ensure we are actually ahead of our clients and in a position to look around the corner and see what’s coming. We have a serious talent gap in our senior-management ranks, and we’ve (by and large) forfeited sound strategy in favor of cheap production tricks and cute one-liners that will line our shelves with awards but not necessarily our clients’ shelves with dollar bills.

To address these issues, writes Martin, agencies can take a cue from The Mob, specifically the Consigliere. For those of you not hip to Mafia…