How to hire a search marketer

August 3rd, 2006 Jackie

For those of us who have been search marketers for five or more years, it may come as a shock that there is a huge dearth of talent in the industry and agencies are suffering for it.

We’ve been optimizing, managing, bidding, and reporting on search results for years now. We know it works. Most of us old timers have become advocates for search - helping to push the adoption of search into the mainstream. Well folks, it’s working.

If you take time to tear your gaze away from Atlas, or KeywordMax or your Google Adwords MCC for just a few seconds, you may be shocked at the range of employment opportunities that have become available to you.

But this article isn’t for you, it’s for the agencies and companies that need people like you to work on search which has grown tremendously in the past couple of years. In fact Jupiter research reports that nearly 24% of search marketers spent more than $500,000 on SEM campaigns in 2005 (compared with 12% in 2004).

If that number doesn’t give you pause, then perhaps this one will. Emarketer reports that paid search spending will reach ten BILLION dollars by 2010. I wonder what Dr. Evil would think of that?

As a person with executive level search  marketing experience (and yes, I still change bids myself), I have been in the position of having to hire search marketers on several occasions. Here are a few tips for hiring your very own search marketer (hint: they may be right under your nose).

Media experience a plus: Media buyers and planners (both online and off) possess the necessary eye-hand coordination to manage search campaigns. Sure they may require some training on how to set up campaigns, manage bids and provide reports - but chances are they can pivot a table in Excel, set up a meeting with Google for a crash course in Adwords and get a search campaign launched lickity split. Media planners also have a well-grounded respect for client budgets. They have handled IOs with grace (a must when dealing with a $500K plus search spend) and don’t get frightened by the term “reconciliation”

You may not need a full-time search marketer: Unless your agency routinely spends a million dollars or more on search per year, it may not be necessary to hire a dedicated search marketer. Even at that spend, you should assess the benefit of hiring a full-time search marketer if you are grossing up the media as your sole source of payment for search. Instead, evaluate the hourly requirements of paid search management and allocate some of it to a savvy internal planner (see above recommendation) or sub-contract it to an Internet Marketing consultant such as myself (blatant self-promotion is entirely intentional)

Starving writers and/or home-based moms welcome: I know you know where I’m going with this. Stop cringing, it’s ok. There are a lot of smart people out there that want to work for you, but they cannot dedicate forty hours or more per week to one position. maybe they live three hours away. Maybe they live in Brazil. I work with a few women who consult from home 10-20 hours per week and help me out with everything from media research to bid management to writing Meta tags. I met all of them while I was working at various agencies and I  maintained contact with them long after I left. It was their decision to leave full-time agency life, but they did not disappear from the online world forever - they simply changed the way they work. Fear not the freelancer!

Have realistic expectations: Sometimes I read the requirements for dedicated search marketing positions just for fun. If you are looking for one person who can create the keyword list, write the ads, research the competitors, launch the campaign, manage the bids, provide ongoing reports and recommendations, know HTML, understand organic search, tie search into your offline media campaigns, be available for new business pitches and reconcile all your online media invoices while balancing a stack of 100 plates on their head - then you may be in for a long wait. Either subcontract your search campaigns to a dedicated search agency, or evaluate how you can disemminate the responsibilities among two or three employees including people that are already working for you but may not have search marketing experience. For example, if you’re already working with a writer, then they can probably develop a preliminary keyword list and ad copy which can be given to your search guru for refinement

Learn the business, please: If you want to expand your agency’s capabilities into the realm of search marketing, then take some time to learn how to do it. Meet with representatives from Google and Yahoo. Attend at least one SES or Ad Tech conference. Download free trials of the tools. Join a search marketing discussion board. Start a search campaign for your agency and manage it yourself! Knowledge is power. If you have more than half a clue about what we deal with as search marketers on a daily basis, then it will be that much easier for you to hire us

Do-it-yourselfers rule! The best search marketers are those people who have managed campaigns themselves for their own web sites. This is primarily true for organic search, but people who have had to spend their own money on paid search quickly learn the value of ROI. Suddenly .50 per click doesn’t seem so cheap when it translates to zero sales and $5000 in media over the course of a campaign. If there’s a candidate you like because they fit in well with your agency, have lots of project management experience, know Excel like the back of their hand and LOVE the Internet, but they have zero search experience (except for promotion of their own web site or sites) consider hiring them on a trial basis. Chances are they will be happy with a smaller salary, eager to learn and will rise to the challenge

Happy head hunting. Here are a few resources to help you on your quest.

The Hired Guns: This agency (of whom I am a member) specializes in finding interim talent for high-level projects that can be done via temporary or long-term freelance positions. They have over 7,500 registered “Guns” that can come in and help you out in a pinch, with little or no training.

SEMPO.org: The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization has a job board (you must be a member to post a job) and they possess a wealth of information about the search marketing industry

SEOConsultants.com: This site is primarily focused on organic SEO, but there are always jobs availale for paid search and even general web marketing. Just another opportunity to reach potential candidates (also, people with SEO experience may also be interested in switching over to paid search and it’s not THAT much of a leap)

Jobs in Search: A job board devoted entirely to SEM (SEO and paid search) jobs

Entry Filed under: E-Marketing Advice