SEM Careers: Opportunity Meets Preparation!

Last Week (Aug 20-23), I had the privilege to speak at Search Engine Strategies, San Jose conference. The event was great and I had the opportunity to meet some of the Online Marketing industry stalwarts such as Danny Sullivan, Bruce Clay and Rand Fishkin.

I spoke in the session titled “So You Want To Be A Search Marketer”, which was new to SES. I had other experts from Business.com, Cars.com, SearchRank, Range Online Media and Atlas Web Service with me on our panel. We spoke on various aspects one need to look at to be a successful Search Engine Marketing professional.

I will soon be uploading the presentations of all the speakers. However, I want to take this opportunity to give a summary of my presentation, which was titled “SEM Careers: Opportunity Meets Preparation!” As the name suggests, I talked about career opportunities that are available today to current and budding SEM professionals and what it takes on their part to grab those opportunities.

The SEM industry is expected to be around US $18.6 billion by 2011 in North America. Here is the projected growth chart from the starting with the year 2005.

To fuel this growth, there is a huge demand for talented Search Marketing professionals. Currently, the demand for SEM jobs exceeds the supply of skilled SEM professionals. Today is considered the BEST time to be in this industry.

To be a successful SEM professional, you need few critical skills. The most important skill you need is Communication. Being online, you don’t get a chance to understand other person’s response, as you can’t see his emotions and physical gestures. Thus, you need be really effective in your communication. You also need to possess the following skills whether you are an SEO or a PPC professional:

• Passionate about Internet
• Quick Learning
• People Networking Skills

Some of the key skill differentiators between SEO and PPC are tabulated below:

However, beyond the above-mentioned basic and technical skills, your growth in long term will be determined by fundamental “Sales & Marketing Skills – Your ability to apply to be in customer’s world!”.

I also talked about the kinds of salaries, which are being offered today to SEM professionals in US. Find below the table for the same:

I then talked about the emerging areas and hot verticals in the SEM industry.

Emerging Areas:
• Web 2.0/Community Building/Social Networking
• Behavioral Advertising
• Rich Media Advertising
• Analytics/Conversion

Hot Verticals:
• Retail
• Travel
• Finance
• Education
• Social Networking

In the last, I offered the recipe to be successful in future as an SEM professional. The recipe comprises of 3 ingredients, as described below:

1. Use Search or Search Engine Marketing: For almost everything you need to do in your career as an SEM professional, I recommend using Search/Search Engine Marketing. It includes finding a new job. To give you an example, if you search for “java consultant” on Google, you will (unless a better SEO’ed site came) find Mart Watson’s site as a first result in organic listings. He is finding new assignments using SEO and he is so successful that his site says that he is too busy to accept new assignments at this point of time.

I strongly recommend using Adwords to advertise yourself if you are looking for a new job. Your potential employer will have no doubt (a major challenge in the SEM industry) on your expertise.

2. Continuous Learning: The industry is growing at an incredible pace and you don’t have an option but to catch up with the speed. So, make sure that you are continuously investing in your own education including certifications like Google Adwords Certification.

3. Leadership Role: Given that the importance and the acceptance of Search Marketing are growing across various industries, teams are continuously expanding. Thus, there is a need for the people who can take on managerial role beyond the existing technical roles. Also, as I shared earlier, your ability to apply SEM skills in growing the top and bottom lines of your and your customer’s business will be key to your success in the future.

I hope this post contributes to your career and I look forward to your valuable feedback.

Wish you all a fulfilling Search Engine Marketing career!

Pradeep Chopra
Co-Founder, OM Careers