The golden age of search marketing
Scott Brinker on Monday, June 22, 2009 at 09:52AM 
One of the realizations that came out of the SMX session of Mythbusting PPC Urban Legends was that all of us — and if you’re reading this blog, you’re certainly part of “us” — are still early adopters on the leading edge of the next generation of marketing.
You may have felt like an early adopter when you’ve gone to explain strategies and investment recommendations in search marketing and its tools to your boss, or your boss’s boss. (And if you are the boss, then congrats — you are way ahead of the curve.) If it was challenging, it’s because that’s generally how early adoption goes.
Most businesses in the world don’t do any search marketing yet. Zero. Zip. Nada. When you ask those folks about pay-per-click marketing, their response might very well be, “why would we want to market with paper clips?”
Let me put a point on the curve:
I belong to a group called Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO), a network of over 7,000 business owners in 38 countries. Part of EO is joining a forum, a group of 6-12 other fellow entrepreneurs in your city that you could think of as a kind of personal board of advisors. These are all smart people, who have successfully built multi-million dollar businesses with their bare hands. My forum in Boston has some amazing people in it, and I’m humbled by their insight every time we get together.
But out of the other members of my forum, do you know how many of them do any search marketing for their businesses at all?
Only one. And that’s because she’s running a Web 2.0 startup.
When I mentioned this at SMX, a couple of other EO people from other cities came up to me and shared that they had the same experience in their forums — even in high-tech places such as Silicon Valley. It seemed amazing to them too, but very few people they knew had embraced search marketing.
And this isn’t just a function of EO. Most high-level managers and business owners I meet — outside the context of ion and the search marketing industry — have about the same ratio: 80% haven’t even tried search marketing yet.
And for the 20% who have tried it, I’d say that most have only dabbled. Only a fraction of them have taken it to the next level of using landing pages and post-click marketing to optimize their conversion rates and ROI.
This is why the golden age of search marketing is still ahead. Because slowly but surely, and no doubt with a massive tipping point on the horizon, those business will engage in search marketing.
If you’re Google (or Microsoft?), you’re no doubt quite happy.
If you’re a search marketing agency, you have a very bright future ahead too.
And as an individual search marketing professional, your career prospects for the next decade are very good.
But as a business engaging in search marketing today, it’s a two-edged sword. You can take pride in your competitive leadership. But you can’t rest on your laurels. Because that thundering sound you hear is the hordes of competitors — from all over the world — stampeding towards your search marketing space.
The only way to stay ahead is to do what you’ve already demonstrated you’re capable of doing: push the envelope.
That’s what gets us so excited about post-click marketing every morning — every day is a fresh opportunity to find new ways to push the envelope by making search marketing less about clicks and more about experiences.
conversions, post-click marketing in Strategy 
Reader Comments (5)
So what do you see as the most common way that these companies will make their first foray in to search marketing? In-house experimentation? Agency?
That depends -- on the marketing of specific search agencies and the tools/education available for in-house DIY folks. Although once you start talking about actual scale and commitment in search marketing, the question seems to become: how will companies make their second or third foray in to search marketing?
Scott
Stimulating post! Another way of looking at this is that search marketing is turning from a technology-push affair to a marketing-driven activity, where doing business through measurable activities is much more interesting than discussing the latest upgrade to the Google algo (interesting though this may be). We are hitting a veritable gap in the European market by presenting online advertising, search marketing and conversion optimization as a complete process, not as a set of independent and individual activities.
Are you planning to develop pre-click marketing in the same way?
Kind regards
Ron
I think you're right on, Ron -- bundling online advertising, search marketing, and conversion optimization as a complete process sure sounds like the right vision to us. After all, from the respondent's perspective, it's usually one continuous flow -- marketers would do well to align one's strategy and execution with that view as well.
We're still just getting started with what's possible in post-click marketing! And it's very much our aim to be the best platform for that piece of the puzzle, and interface seamlessly with other pieces of the puzzle upstream and downstream in the funnel.
I absolutely loved the "paper-clip" comment. About 5 years ago during my first week at an interactive agency, I was absolutely convinced that I was going to be working on something called "paper-clip marketing" and I was highly confused.
Thank you, this article was refreshing. :)