Search engine marketing (SEM), is an important field of practice when it comes to online marketing. Done right, it can definitely drive return on investment sky-high. And naturally, when it’s done wrong, the results tend be mediocre at best. It’s worth doing your best to get it right.
So, is doing SEM the right way compatible with doing it in-house?
Many businesses—especially those small and micro businesses and startups with really tight shoestring budgets—have learned the hard way that there’s more to building and executing a quality, high-performance SEM plan that meets the eye. There’s a lot of specialized knowledge involved, and practice does make perfect.
Learning the ropes on the go is always an option, but does your business or organization really want to take months or even years just to realize basic SEO / SEM results? Most would rather kick things into overdrive right at the beginning to realize online marketing profitability right from the very start. And after all, this is what SEM is all about anyway—creating online marketing tools that begin offering high return on investment (ROI) results as quickly as possible from day one.
In-house is fine if you want to dedicate an expensive employee pretty much full time to learning the cause and developing an SEM program from scratch…from the ground up.
Professionally outsourced SEM is a much more effective way to go.
Which, brings us to the next point here…professional SEM experts (like WSpider here in San Jose) are already up to speed with the latest methods and strategies when it comes to SEM, SEO, and PPC. Online marketing is a rapidly changing and expanding field, and working with professionals who are already on top of the game can definitely shave months, or even years, off of the time it takes to get your campaign off the ground and profitable.
Think about it for a minute. To hire a full time, in house SEM expert, you’re probably talking about $30-50 per hour once benefits, etc. are factored in. At $50/hour, full-time, that’s more than $100,000 a year to have somebody who may or may not be effective at making your SEM strategy rock. So, that $100k has to be earned and replaced before any profits you realize from your campaign can ever go to the bottom line.
Yes—the experts are significantly much less expensive—and fully prepared to deliver a higher ROI more quickly—than doing it all in house. Why start in the hole when expert, professional SEM can be done by an entire team of outsourced experts, like our SEM group here at WSpider, for an absolutely tiny fraction of the cost of trying to do it in-house (with mixed results at best)?
