A new and complex industry that has grown up along with the adoption of search advertising finds few qualified people willing to stick with SEM in a firm.
Ben Wills’ post on Marketing Pilgrim laments two aspects of getting SEM talent to work in-house: finding qualified people who have a combination of marketing and technical savvy, and keeping them in a SEM position.
There’s not much glamour to SEM, Wills writes, and “the combination of marketing and technical aptitude to truly become an expert is quite unique.” That echoes a viewpoint Dana Todd shared with me via email after PubCon, saying those who excel in the field have “sort of a weird right-brain/left-brain combo personality.”
Search Engine Watch rounded up several sources of information about the quest for SEM professionals. One source, Internet Retailer, makes an interesting point about how demands for techies has shifted to search and marketing pros:
In the early days of Internet retailing, experienced programmers, web developers and e-commerce managers were the object of bidding wars as retailers and Internet start-up companies competed for their services. Now recruiters see a similar hot job market in search engine marketing. In particularly high demand are marketing managers, account executives, pay-per-click specialists and organic-search specialists with a retailing background.
It’s a growing field with substantial demand, especially for the most experienced SEM managers. Finding the right people to fill those needs in-house looks like an expensive prospect for businesses, but the returns of a well-run search advertising campaign should exceed that cost.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
