"I’ve been doing SEM for more than 10 years, and I’ve never, not once, seen a search campaign created by an in-house team outperform one crafted by a competent SEM agency."
Yep, someone actually wrote that down. If you want to see who it was (I won't bother linking) copy the above sentence and Google it. It's nothing more than a fluffy link bait piece full of opinion presented as fact. Anyone who's been in the search game for any significant length of time knows that in-house vs outsourced has nothing to do with how successful a paid search campaign is.
Want to know what makes a search campaign successful? Here are a few hints. It's not bid management tools, keyword research, ad copy, landing pages, geo targeting, match types or search engines. Success also has nothing to do with whether your paid search is managed by a well known agency or by a team of internal folks. All of those elements, while important, can't make a campaign successful.
People are what makes a campaign successful. It doesn't matter if those people (or just one person) work at an agency, as part of an in house team, or out of their house in their pajamas - people are what make campaigns successful. Over the years I've seen one man shops absolutely obliterate paid search campaigns that were built by agencies...both large and small. I've seen it go the other way (agencies outperform internal teams) just as many times.
Apply that same logic to other areas in your life outside of search and you'll see just how ridiculous of a comparison it is. Are the "big shops" always the best? For years my auto mechanic basically worked out of his garage. Sure, he didn't have access to all the newest tools and didn't give me a fancy brochure and business card every time I came by. You know what he did do? He fixed my car every time I had a problem for less than the dealer quoted using the same quality parts as the dealer would. He did it for less $$$ too. The wrench didn't fix my car, my mechanic (a person) did.
I have two dogs. For years I had them groomed at one of the larger national pet store chains. They should be the best right? They have the newest equipment and a nice looking store in the best part of town. They charge a little more but it must be worth it, no one could as good of a job as they do. Last year a friend recommended a local place down the road from my house. I was in a pinch one day (lots of company coming in town) and the large national chain couldn't get my dogs in for two days. I went to the local place down the road and despite the fact they worked out of a tiny space only had two employees and charged less than the national chain guess what...they did the best job anyone had ever done on either of my dogs.
I could go on and on and I'm sure while you've read this you have likely thought of some time in where your life where the "big" service provider didn't do as well as the little guy and vice versa. In other words, you too realize that the size of the business is in no way an indicator of the level of service you will receive. The same applies to paid search - agency does not equal success any more than in-house does. People make paid search successful, and it doesn't matter where those people sit each day. A paid search pro is a paid search pro - in house, agency, independent or other.
In closing I would just say to the author of the original article...if you've truly never seen an in-house campaign outperform an agency campaign...get out a little more, you're missing a huge part of our industry.
Labels: paid search
