In-House or Outsourced: The modern SEM debate

A COMCORP, INC. WHITEPAPER
In-House OR Outsourced:
The modern SEM debate
BY TAMMY CAMPCEO, COMCORP, INC.
OCTOBER 5th, 20092
I. Introduction There are numerous bene?ts to running your Internet marketing campaign in-In earlier years, most companies didn't house:know the ?rst thing about search engine marketing, and as a result, almost all of In-house employees likely have a better them outsourced their Internet marketing feel for the verticals and brand messaging campaigns to dedicated ?rms. of your company. Therefore, they may be better positioned to identify relevant However, as search engine marketing has search terms and keywords.grown in prominence in the business community -- and more information about In-house staff also may be better search engine marketing has become positioned to ensure that a SEM campaign available online -- more people have is being run in-line with other parts of become knowledgeable about the basic your company. Indeed, they can be in the SEM principles and strategies, and more room to give marketing opportunities a companies are attempting to run their own voice as new initiatives are formed and Internet marketing campaigns in-house. planned-out.
The merits of running an in-house In-house staff also only has one SEM campaign, as opposed to outsourcing, vary campaign to run. In cases where a from company to company, and situation company can afford dedicated Internet to situation. The answer to the in-house v. marketing staff (which isn't always the outsource debate is likely to be different case), they may be able to dedicate more for each individual company. time and energy to the campaign than an outsourced company handling multiple However, if you are trying to determine accounts at one time. whether to outsource or handle your companies' SEM campaign in-house, In-house staff presumably has a better feel there are some guiding principles and for how the internal politics of their arguments you should be aware of. company operates. While outsourced ?rms are sometimes frustrated to see That's what this whitepaper focuses on. recommendations unadopted, in-house employees may be better at identifying II. The In-House Approach potential roadblocks.
The in-house SEM approach capitalizes Finally, return of investment aside for now on the familiarity internal employees -- something we'll cover in more depth presumably have with a speci?c project, later -- in-house SEM campaigns may be as well as their physical proximity to day- cheaper to execute. This is especially true to-day operations of the company. 3
for longer-term projects, that run for a campaigns, especially if you can ?nd matter of years. expert staff that are cost effective in the long run. However, dealing with more However, there are also some drawbacks moving parts with presumably less to running your SEM campaign in-house: collective training, there are also some inherent risks. To start, in-house staff may have insuf?cient SEM knowledge and III. The Outsource Approach expertise. While it may be easy to grasp the main principles of search engine The outsource approach to search engine marketing, there is still a great deal of marketing capitalizes on hiring SEM subtlety involved. This lack of duties out to dedicated professionals, information can be a dangerous thing. ensuring they'll be completed as planned and freeing you up to do what you do If companies elect to try and train their in- best. house staff in Internet marketing, such training can be costly and time- There are numerous bene?ts to consuming, and come without guaranteed outsourcing your search engine marketing results. campaign:
Even if a company has in-house To start, outsourced Internet marketing employees with requisite SEM expertise, ?rms likely have people with wider SEM they may also fail to grasp how to backgrounds. Good ?rms are, for construct a full Internet marketing example, Google Adwords Quali?ed, campaign. Staff may struggle more than Yahoo Search Ambassadors, or otherwise dedicated professionals when it comes to certi?ed. These ?rms -- with a better feel structuring their efforts, and assigning a for tools such as keyword data, SEO priority and price tag to each item. When statistics, and SEM software -- are more time is money, this can be very costly. likely to provide expert services.
And ?nally, though it is true that in-house ... [download for more]