The Importance of Having a Clearly Stated Search Engine Marketing Goal

Imagine the following scenario…a man hires a personal fitness trainer because he has heard this trainer gets results. So the man and his trainer work tirelessly several hours a week. The trainer advises, the man diligently follows instructions, and so on and so forth. After several weeks the man comes into the gym dejected and frustrated, the trainer asks “what’s wrong?” The trainer comes to find out that the man was only interested in building his strength (the bench press and squat to be specific). The trainer assumed the man wanted to lose several pounds and increase his overall health (cholesterol, resting pulse, blood pressure, etc).

Who’s wrong? Both of them I would say for not having clearly articulated the purpose of the relationship and how success will be measured. This kind of thing happens all the time among companies that hire search engine marketing companies and consultants.

There is a huge difference in strategy between ‘appearing high on the search engines’ and ‘bringing in clicks through the search engines while maintaining profitability’. There is a huge difference between ‘increasing the number of demo requests’ and ‘generating sales opportunities 25 times greater than our search marketing spend’.

It’s not uncommon for each stakeholder within a company to have very different goals. I’ve got one client in which the VP of Sales wants me to bring in incremental leads with a focus on overall return on advertising spend. Meanwhile, his boss, wants to be #1 for their niche phrase regardless of the cost or ROAS.

So whether you do search marketing for your company, deliver it to other companies, or procure and use such services, before you get lost in the hype and excitement of this hot medium, take a deep breath and clearly state the goals and measure of success.