This week SearchShots launches an advice column penned by our esteemed Discipline Lead. If you’re a search marketer in need of guidance, send us an email at razorfishsearch@razorfish.com with the subject line “Prof Ranker” and he’ll get to you when he can. (Note: the Professor’s opinions are not those of Razorfish. The agency is not responsible for bad career moves or other incidents caused by our guru’s sage advice.)
Dear Professor Ranker:
I’m a Senior Search Account Manager with five years’ experience. I’ve worked on big client accounts in retail, finance, travel, automotive and CPG. I’ve spent about $100MM. I don’t mean to brag. I just want to convince you I know what I’m doing. I feel like my expertise is in doubt! You see last month, [search engine name deleted] assigned a new sales rep to my top account. The guy suggests optimizations to me as if I just started doing this. Here’s the crazy part: As far as I can tell, HE just started doing this. Do MBA programs teach SEM? How can someone who’s never even SEEN conversion data have such a strong opinion on how to meet my client’s goals? When he pontificates I feel like all my success providing professional service and improving ROI was some kind of hallucination. The worst part is he offered to take me to Scarpetta next week and I really want to go. What should I do?
–Condescended to in Chelsea
Dear CtoiC:
The most accomplished and distinguished of search marketers extends his sympathies. Sadly, your problem is not uncommon. Sadder still, there is no solution. In my day there was a saying about paying dues. It went, “There is no free lunch.” Observing that this is the rare cliché that is neither figuratively nor literally true, we can perhaps grope toward a humorous perspective on what is otherwise an intensely irritating scenario. For a chuckle, imagine what would happen if accountability for the success of your client’s campaign were bestowed upon this buffoonish neophyte.
You too would be silly to demean your craft by thinking for even a second that in search there is no indelible line between the artisan and the merchant, or the pilot and the seller of tickets. Many kinds of professionals necessarily contribute to world-class marketing. Uninformed opinions about how to fly the airplane are but noise, drowned out in the roar of the engines as the trusted expert in the cockpit steers the glorious machinery lent him toward the heavens.
In closing, I recommend Scarpetta’s duck fois gras ravioli, preferably with a Piedmont red from the year 2 B.A. (Before AdWords).
With All Sincerity,
–Ranker
Tags: sales reps, scarpetta, search marketing advice, search strategy