Yet, as a collective industry, there is a list of things we continue to allow to hinder us. Limiting mindsets; lack of understanding, commitment or investment; complacency; or even the exaggeration of our limitations themselves. You may have heard the famous Richard Bach quote — argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.

And, when you look at the specifics, at this point of our professed evolution, most of these shortcoming are just too bad. And solvable. Let’s start at the beginning.

We Are Embarrassed By Our Own Websites

Almost any company I can think of — in almost any category — will tell you their website is off. It’s ugly, incomplete, confusing, un-optimized or outright broken. In fact, I’ve heard this self-disparagement five times in the past weeks alone.

Despite the fact that we are now certifiably a cross-channel, multi-platform communications, community and transactional universe, our original state of being — the domain — is for all intents and purposes, still a mess. Why? Because we never took the time to decide the purpose of the platform in the first place, with the right people at the table. We designed and built without a sense of that purpose.

Is it a communications platform? A lead generation tool? For the community? For commerce? And, we did not leave real room for change, over time, to support our own business growth. Granted, for most of us, the domain is now part of a much bigger, more distributed picture. But, it’s never too late to regroup on purpose — refresh design, visual presentation, visible content, and utility — and then take steps to optimize it. At least do what it takes to eliminate confusion at a glance.

We Have Not Organized For Content

Most companies have come to terms with the “idea” of being media companies — that content plays a very real role in how we market our services, companies, and brands. But, for most of us, this remains an abstract concept. It’s anything but. Content is an actual asset that takes many forms, but it’s our primary, living, breathing asset. And, we must organize and equip to tend to it.

So, what are we waiting for? Well, the work can be daunting. Divisions, organization charts, roles must be dialed in. We must acquire and train talent; we must hone expertise. And, on some level, we must consider our investments — content management and curation systems. But, until we go there, it seems we tolerate operating in a disjointed uncommitted state of affairs.

The best news is there are some really fantastic examples of companies and leadership that took the time to get it right: with models, org structures, systems and more — all flowing from a unified Content Strategy. Look no further than Altimeter Group’s Rebecca Lieb‘s latest report, Organizing for Content: Models to Incorporate Content Strategy and Content Marketing in the Enterprise, for guidance and real world illustration of best practices in each of these areas.

We Defer To Kids & Gurus

We assume both know more than they do because they are so into it. Social media should no more be entirely relegated to the isolated intern ensconced in the corner with ear buds and 2,000 friends, without training and collaborative team work — than we should trust the guru, just because he tells you he’s the one.

This one is easy to fix. Take your talent plan seriously, vet your options and build a team. Not a stack of self-professed specialists. You want a thriving mix of experience, personalities, talents and skills that benefits by that mix.

We Believe Our Audience Is A Static Object

How many marketers have you met that can tell you exactly who their audience is? The answer is: a lot. Most brands will tell you exactly who their consumer is, by demographics and maybe a few lifestyle points. This glib marketer is common. He or she moves around in this limited state, not having embraced the power of audience-based planning, buying and optimization — simply placing media against a fixed snapshot.

Thanks to today’s systems, tools and state of data analytics options — we are able to target and optimize our known audience but also uncover entirely new, productive audiences. So, why in the world wouldn’t we? That learning-based approach — tapping the combination of machines plus smart people among us — allows us to scale on targeted reach. And that’s the ultimate — right?

What else? We think mobility equals the smart phone and the smart phone alone; we focus on brand advertising instead of brand experience; we awfulize Big Data instead of realizing it doesn’t take much to learn a lot. The list goes on and on.

All of the above and numerous other things are the things that, despite our self love as an industry, we don’t love or respect enough about our own enterprises to do the work to make it right. We boast and love our progress; yet, in a million little ways that add way up, we seem to fear it.

Search practitioners coined the term and drove the movement from the earliest days — wielding a love for data, crude original campaign management systems, Excel-based testing matrices and a belief that optimization was the birthright of search marketers, and by extension, all digital marketers. Therefore, it’s long been a constant for anyone in the business.

But, unfortunately, the industry started to take this capability for granted. Amid nearly-universal emphasis on optimization, we started to lose perspective on how widespread this capability actually was within the digital marketing community at large — and that’s the community that matters.

Are digital marketers fully optimized to, well… optimize? In data analytics, systems and options have continued to evolve within the industry in so many areas that we are just going through the motions. We’ve exaggerated our own state of optimization.

Opportunity Assessments

Our delusion often starts early in the process. Whether you’re part of a specialized search agency or general agency — or the resident search expert — we set out to evaluate our opportunity, our universe of potential keyword demand.

This is usually done through a combination of history, hunch, page analysis, competitive analysis and outright keyword research. The resulting keyword portfolio is where we start.

We intend to optimize our operating list based on performance of campaigns, categories, compartments and sweet-spots within this master list. This means expanding upon what’s working — delivering the most profitable conversion volumes — and gradually optimizing off the buy that’s failing us.

But, even today, this process may remain largely manual, depending on the tools and solutions in which we are willing to invest. So, how long before we start taking short cuts or getting lazy and operating in a sub-optimal state? How long until we turn our attention to the next initiative? It happens a lot in good organizations everywhere.

Campaign Construction & Optimization Planning

Our good intentions apply to creative, path-to-conversion and landing pages themselves, as well. We always say we are going to optimize these. But, do we have the right testing matrix, a properly stocked arsenal of creative, and the right tool set and levels of automation to authentically execute on our intentions?

Do we have the resources devoted to facilitating key changes to the digital or commerce or merchandized environment, based on the magnitude of findings? If you have been talking the talk of optimization in these areas, ask yourself and your team these questions. And, get them answered.

Corporate Culture

Assuring a true commitment to optimization as an operating principle requires making optimization part of the culture throughout the organization. That’s how it finds its way into every strategy, plan and execution.

It has to permeate the way teams engage and work together — the basic workflow. The Adobe 2012 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey Results Report found that optimization is poorly institutionalized. Taking site or environment optimization as one example,  prioritization and responsibility for optimization are out of whack. This despite the known impact optimization can have on a company’s business performance.

Here’s how the Adobe research report put it:

“Despite the importance of digital optimization to conversion and marketing investment returns, survey results demonstrate that 81% of respondents allocate 15% or less of their marketing budget to on-site optimization efforts — up only 1% from our 2009 survey. While the digital marketing landscape has continued to evolve to meet customers’ high expectations, there has been little change in investment to meet the demand with marketing spend that really counts. Research shows that marketers spend $92 to acquire traffic and $1 to optimize it. Greater balance in investment between acquisition and optimization is needed to drive higher returns.

While often slow to gain momentum initially, prioritizing optimization within an organization can make a huge impact to the top- and bottom-line revenues. As industry analyst John Lovett notes, it’s not uncommon to see double-digit lifts in conversion as a result of pragmatic conversion optimization achieved through several small initiatives—for example, subtle adjustments in placement and messaging—not a large overhaul. This process is especially true for organizations that are new to conversion optimization and for initiatives that typically debut on inconsequential pages deep within the site. As these optimization initiatives have demonstrable results of success, they begin to appear on more and more prominent pages. Companies that embrace conversion optimization through small wins, combined optimization tactics, and acute focus are attaining more conversions, establishing deeper customer loyalties, and asserting competitive advantage over their peers.”

There you go. It’s not enough to espouse the principle of optimization and then let go of the wheel or pretend to have the levels of systems and automation into which you have not yet invested. But also, you cannot stop attending to small measures. Those small measures — tested, studied, learned and applied — can roll up to larger-scale optimizations that impact the greater business.

Everyone in your company should be mindful of their part in optimization. The pretense of optimization will squander every true opportunity a company has to improve upon itself and its performance in the marketplace.

We should not organize, manage workflow or report in silos. Nor should we plan and execute in silos. And, never should analysis and optimization of our efforts be done in silos.

Yet, the default position is the silo. In many ways, transcending the silo is an unnatural act. It takes curiosity, thought, delving and collaborative instincts to set the course for cross-pollination and collaboration to make those things happen.

You’ve got to have a silo busting mindset and a commitment to perpetuating the right systems and practices to sustain integrated, cross-trained operations.

Thought pieces touching on the perils of siloing in different arenas of the business always catch my eye.  Recently, I breezed through IBM’s State of Marketing Survey 2012, in which this  issue was touched on in several different ways,  indicating  marketers’ frustration that it remains so difficult to un-silo data in particular parts of the marketing mix. And subsequently, across that mix.

Here’s a little peek:

“For instance, 58 percent of those surveyed said that they believed existing marketing systems were too disparate. This lack of integration can be detrimental to marketing’s ability to drive the customer experience. More specifically, it affects the way marketers can leverage their data across channels. While 65 percent analyze their online visitor data, only one-third are targeting one-to-one offers or messages through digital channels, and less than one in five are using this data for other traditional channels.

Email shows further siloed data symptoms. Only about one-third of survey participants said that their systems automatically integrated email data into their customer data mart, while the remainder either used manual integration, or did not integrate at all. When numbers remain this low, the ability for marketers to effectively target customers with relevant emails is significantly impaired.“

This is only one slice of the marketers’ take summarized in the IBM report. But, this mini picture of siloing is indicative of something that persists day-to-day; therefore, dogging our longer term prospects. Because it is so difficult to escape this tendency to silo, I found myself wondering: if you could do one thing — if you could adopt one new mindset in each key area of consideration — what would that thing be?

For Organization?

Retain (agencies, partners, practitioners) or hire specialists who have an obvious cross-training bent. Whether a marketing or client lead — a specific media type manager or an analyst — they should be able to think, reach and team across the org chart and the table top with their hearts into it. Everyone on the team should be authentically bought into cross-training, cross-pollination, collaborative discovery, planning and performance assessment of your collective efforts.

Workflow?

Create a non-linear collaborative model where people know their roles and understand the roles of others. Similar to the above point, teammates and vendors should not perceive or enact their roles in isolation.

In today’s environment, there is really no such thing as an individual contributor. Yes, create space for deep, individual, creative thought. But those on the team should see their work within the scope of the organization, the department and the project.

There is no harm in creating that kind of visibility. Integrated processes for discovery and planning are a start — and strategically collated deliverables (i.e., a combined SEO assessment and SEA recommendation) are a sound practice.

Marketing And Media Planning/Execution?

No singles, only combos from now on. Following on the point of cross-training — and knowing that the days of single media type execution are essentially over — commit that the folks on your team will be encouraged to think and plan, always, in terms of pairings within the mix.

This applies to integrated Search Marketing; leveraging Search and Social; integrating Social, Email and Mobile and so on. If you un-silo your thinking, planning and execution, you are miles closer to a more integrated data picture.

Data, Analytics And Optimization?

Get on top of attribution modeling. This is a big one. Yes, the first part of this point, is that you absolutely must invest in appropriate campaign management, tracking and data systems for your organization. And, that is a gating imperative. A given.

Systems and tracking systems for their own sake are not enough to adopt an un-siloed approach. We must make it our goal to get serious about analyzing, optimizing and scaling our [now forevermore] integrated efforts.

When it comes to the media mix, we started out in too-siloed a manner and stayed there for too long in the early 2000s. Many would say we got distracted from the potential of conversion attribution modeling for a while.

Now, all the kids are doing it. First click, last click, equal weighting, custom models — find yourself the right tools and systems to determine your most productive models and keep the mindset that such modeling is key to your future.

Silos are quaint and orderly. They have their place. But that is out on the countryside. Not inside your business.

Depending on your partners, vendors, systems or tools, much of your testing may be left to your team’s raw imagination, discipline and ability to organize all testing in the most clear-minded way.

Sound testing takes a sense of order and the willingness to pace oneself. It also requires keeping the right creative and account resources on hand, to continually iterate to service the testing and move swiftly on what you learn. Staying this dexterous allows you to keep tuning the efficiency of the performance and/or conversions you are generating.

Testing Beyond The Usual Suspects

At a high level, the tenets of testing in search have long been keywords and phrases (obviously); categories; titles and descriptions; specific messaging and calls to action; visual assets and landing pages. Within these, there are numerous levers to pull along the path to conversion: text, graphics, messaging, organization, and merchandising. But, to keep orderly, the average search marketer tends to keep the grid pretty simple: keyword, creative, and landing page.

It was eye-opening and refreshing to read a recent Marin Software report, from August 2012, “The Search Marketer’s Guide to Creative Testing and Optimization.” This report reminds us, among other things, just how much room we have to test, how many facets — and thus, how much leverage within a given plan. What are the triggers? Imagine these:

• Display URL:  the thought that the keyword itself might be this asset, or at least a sub-domain or extension of it
• Symbols: the concept of testing things like trademarks — or even “and” vs. “&”
• Call to action: present in most any search marketer’s test, in many ways, the performance marketer’s ongoing obsession
• Price, discounts and offers: some of the most moveable aspects available for consideration
• USP: unique selling points, benefits, other aspects, subjective, of course, to the marketer’s eye
• Brands: playing with the mention of brands and generic keywords, with which we may wish to associate
• Seasonality: seasonal references and descriptors, as well as timing

In some ways, taking a look at this broader list is freeing and inspiring. But, if you want to venture beyond testing basic assets, the issue of discipline, as mentioned above, is not insignificant.

Discipline & Organization Are Key

The Marin report authors paint the picture well:

“All creative tests begin with a choice, and marketers are subject to a plethora of test elements to choose from. Even at a basic level, creative can be characterized by and tested with functional, emotional or promotional qualities. Functional creative focus on the product or service and provide information such as pricing or features. Emotional creative pull at metaphoric heart strings and attempt to form a connection between the customer and the product or service. Promotional creative highlight discounts and evoke a sense of urgency.“

The ability to exercise discipline — to make a choice and organize the test — is key. But, further, I think about the undertones of subjectivity and emotionality — both for performance marketers looking to hardcode the success formula and brand marketers keen to understand brand affinities of their most responsive audiences.

Considering More Subjective Variables

Is it truly possible to isolate what is the most compelling benefit, within a statement of unique selling points? Any given benefit has more than one aspect, in how it resonates with a consumer — perhaps a practical consideration; perhaps an emotional consideration; perhaps timing or proximity. Same with a call to action — the most sophisticated of which are usually a short but provocative phrase. We can guess at the triggers within; but, it’s a guess.

And finally, there is the matter of the “heartstring,” both for brand and direct response. It matters, but it is nothing if not subjective. After all, it is a metaphor. Running brands, companies and marketing plans, we can easily spend our lives honing our ability to make our consumers’ heartstrings sing. But no two heartstrings are created the same. So, total resolution is elusive.

So, in the end, there is a reality we have to accept. No matter how much the science and mechanics advance, there will always be a softer underbelly to what we do. When it comes to consumers and resonance and action, no level of mechanical mastery can guarantee success formulas to infinity.

We’ve got to make peace with the flux, the constant consideration and the tuning to these undertones. No matter how slick and cross-tabbed the rubric, we’ve got to be OK with the looser aspect of testing — following our gut once in a while, trying a few things, playing with the more subjective elements, and incorporating those trials into the test.

Search keeps its cornerstone within the now much broader and more intricate scope of performance media and marketing. It’s a foundational discipline and plays a critical role within the arsenal, but it’s not the only important element. What else must that conversation and our scope of understanding include these days?

The Fundamentals

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to uphold the pretense of “doing search” unless you are willing to keep your commitment to the basics. PPC alone or the occasional tweak, does not constitute a search effort.

Some level of SEO analytics will always be vital, to understand the anatomical performance of your site and keep on top of your approach to titling, categorization of assets, removal of obstacles and of course the tuning of the keyword execution itself.

Speaking of the keyword — keyword analysis, both organically and for the paid space, is essentially the blood of your efforts. Keep true to it.

Last up is the oft-overlooked fundamental of the landing page. The first part is wisely selecting them for your PPC campaigns, always attending to everything from path to conversion. This means dealing with content, density, distractions, bells, whistles and of course, relevancy at every touch.

And while you are at it, make sure your team knows its way around the good old QS or Quality Score, addressing things like relevancy, page load and more. There’s no shortcut when it comes to your landing page.

Bringing together deep awareness of your site’s optimization levels, along with keyword analysis (with attendance to landing pages and quality scoring) — together these are a solid foundation. But, these days, there is more.

The Next Level

The next level of search beyond the fundamentals gets us into a broader performance marketing play.

At the next level, we are thinking about things like localization and true integration. There have never been more ways to localize a search program, both at a system/campaign management level and in terms of approach to the keyword — and how we integrate across the mix with localized mobile and social executions.

In terms of integration, it is now very much the norm to integrate search and display, leveraging messaging and performance data across the two — as well as search and social, search and mobile, and more. The pairings are infinite.

They key is to organize your execution for maximum learning, so that you can scale and grow your integrated effort gracefully.

Finally, one of the best things you can do to get to the next level is to enter more thoughtfully into an overall approach of content marketing, developing, executing and populating your content environments strategically, making sure they complement one another and are all directed toward your objectives. Of course, you need to be ever mindful of how this content is being digested, shared and socialized. Spurring these behaviors with your content is a key method to growth.

The Next, Next Level

There’s a lot of talk about Big Data. Figuring this out — when it comes to performance marketing — is very much where we are.

It used to be that pondering and gauging consumer mode and intent allowed us to extrapolate a path to reasonable success. But, now, assuming we’ve done a decent job of suiting up with systems for campaign management, optimization, measurement and analysis  in the new era — as well as secured the right access to audience targeting tools — we’ve got data galore. Many bundles of it.

Data for data’s sake will never serve us well, so we can expect as an industry to spend some time now figuring out this next, next level — how to make use of the layers and layers of data at our disposal. We need to continually model our way toward  applicable audience intelligence. What we know about our target audience going in to an effort — demographics, a bit of behavioral information — will allow us to execute on some starting profiles.

But, the more we remain open to finding new non-endemic high-performing profiles, the more we can spread our wings and grow our campaigns to encompass a greater scope of productive audience profiles. And what we learn can be applied to the rest of the mix. This iterates and evolves over time with thoughtful execution.

As the space around performance marketing has continued to boom and proliferate, what I have enjoyed the most is a sense of evergreen territory. While our systems get better; our platforms, environments and options expands; our data gets richer and more usable — we can get smarter and learn and earn more. There is always a green bud.

Yet, there is never a singular, final “Ta da!” kind of moment. Every time the options open up or a new level of sophistication is attained in the industry — the bar raises and we’ve got to get back up on our tippy toes. As it should be, right? This is, after all, performance marketing.

As with all things that are tried and true, you may regard your approach as maintenance, steady as she goes — with the occasional keyword audit, trafficking of new assets or tweaking of spend.

But, are you missing out by not being more enthralled by your own efforts? By not keeping a fresh eye or keeping current with the state of your options? Are there hidden costs to your own complacency? Yes.

Given the lush state of the ad marketplace, there is no excuse for not being strategically aggressive and thoughtful about your mix. That’s the starting point.

Hopefully, despite your long-standing love affair with search, you are past the point where you view it as a stand-alone method or silver bullet. So, the first part of keeping fresh is keeping the examination open on your mix.

Within your marketing plan, are there logical opportunities to leverage search with display? Email? Social? We must remember there is always room to learn across media types — examining successful combinations, messaging, titling, visual media, graphics and more.

This interplay is vital to sound integrated marketing. It assures you will get more out of your search, as long as you use the learning to tune your placements and your assets — and remain open to shifting your allocations according to what you learn.

Beyond a fundamental commitment to being pro-active about your mix, what are other ways to keep things fresh, productive and reflective of the current state?

Placements Are In Effect, Your Venue

It used to be that we would structure our plans around 1st and 2nd tier engines — or Premium (Google, Overture, Yahoo, MSN) and 2nd Tier (Ask Jeeves, Kanoodle, others). Remember those days?

While today it’s most likely the case that you orient your PPC around 1 or 2 engines, alone, probably leading with Google — there are still important ways to extend your reach or beef up your involvement where you already are.

If you haven’t already, you should be taking a look at the content or display networks associated with your search provider. This more expansive play allows you to test and learn in the context of content, as well as deploy different asset types and display within your search buy, in order to constantly tune your overall approach.

And, in going this broader route, you extend your placements beyond the obvious direct associations with your product or service and into more non-endemic ones — widening your radius to affinity content, i.e. closely but not directly (bulls-eye) related to your offering.

These extensions on your buy are easy to execute — so why wouldn’t you go there and learn a bit more? Way to get more out of your dollars, in an efficient way geared toward learning.

A Living Keyword Universe

We’ve all been there… that moment when you feel you’ve finally aggregated the best possible keyword portfolio for your business: a nice book of low-cost, high-volume keywords; the right mix of brand-related words; studied, select, higher cost, high-conversion keywords; and the right, most appropriate competitive keywords.

While it’s OK to pilot the plane from there and effectively operate in maintenance mode, way too many of us effectively stop there, never doing more than a light refresh. Why in the world, in such a fluid keyword marketplace, would we assume our keyword opportunity is a fixed state?

After all, this is the age of audience targeting. We are past the days when your only option is outright keyword research and conducting periodic expands.

Display Buying Can Inform Search

One of the best accompaniments to your search today is any audience buying you are doing on the display side.

If you — or your providers — are skillfully executing audience buying, using today’s tools to identify the best audience profiles for your business, you are in a position to continually apply that intelligence to your search buy.

Imagine that you launch a display buy using real-time bidding (RTB) and audience targeting tools, setting out with a few known audience profiles (combinations of demographics and behavioral aspects that tend to convert for you).

Assuming you maintain an open mind and use RTB and those tools to uncover new, additional, and even non-endemic audience profiles, you effectively identify new combinations. Those combinations — especially behaviors and interests — open up new opportunities on the keyword front.

Each month, when you look at your performance reports on the audience buying, display side to see what’s converting, cull those learnings and apply them to a keyword run. And, while you are at it, use that same intelligence to tune your titles and descriptions to potentially resonate with those implied audiences.

Keep An Open Mind And An Adventurous Spirit

These are just a couple areas to consider. But, it’s not so much about the specific elements. It’s about keeping on your toes and keeping an adventurous mindset through and through.

Just because your search team is on its game and has a certain working formula — there is no reason to operate as though it’s a fixed or static situation.

This is digital after all, not legacy media, where you file an insertion, send the assets and call it a day.

If you’ve become so complacent and bored with your own search plan that you no longer pay true attention to it, you can be sure it is yawning itself. And if you and your search plan are yawning, potential is squandered.

There was a time when the guru strode rampant across stages, board rooms, book tours and billable rate cards everywhere, reliant on  the greater industry’s (and most marketers’) reverence and fear of touching search and getting their hands dirty.

We all looked to the gurus — even though we could never quite discern the blend of academic or theoretical expertise and practitioner chops these people had. It didn’t matter.

The industry just needed gurus to be the ultimate wizards — someone to have our backs on the science behind it all. Don’t get me wrong: some of my best friends are gurus.

But, as this was always a self-ascribed term geared toward career propulsion, I will say, in many ways, the guru has had his day. Still, I have a certain anthropological fascination with the guru — I like to check in with him every couple years.

What Allowed The Guru To Thrive?

As we can infer from the above, we tend to allow the anointment of the guru to happen because we need it to happen. When we are still somewhat in the dark, or when at least some of what we do exists in the shadows, there is nothing like the all-knowing guide to create a sense that all can be accomplished.

It took some time for the world of search engine marketing to grow up — to emerge as an arena where there was a true marketplace, a tangible infrastructure, tools sets, and a suite of known complementary methods to execute and perform there.

I think it is this early and persistent mystique around SEO that created a fear in marketers — a fear that fueled the belief that they must always outsource to experts. The guru cadre has relied passively and actively on the rest of the industry being daunted by the mystery and fearful of touching the science themselves.

Marketers and agencies gradually evolved out of those years. With more gumption, they began to organize real practices, departments, companies and other entities around search. The guru, in fact, often served as a consultant for this organizational change.

While the guru still had a place on the stage or within the occasional pop-in visit, this whole segment was now more operationalized, and there was less of a divide between the knows and the know-nots.

And the search guru was more of a complement to a base level of in-house or partner-agency expertise — rather than a cottage industry unto itself.

What’s Next For The Guru?

It seems to me that, right before our eyes, just as the industry is maturing to find the correct context for search, so is the guru evolving and re-defining himself as the industry marches on.

We see this in a few trend lines:

• More and more of these folks have expanded their scope to address performance media and marketing, rather than search as a single practice in isolation. To stay in the game, on the circuit or in the consideration set, along with the industry as a whole, they operate within a more integrated framework and sensibility.
• We see less pure consulting in this arena — and more hands-on, hands-a-bit-dirty consulting. I like to call this practical strategy. This may mean that they have boned up on their own practitioner skills — or it may mean that they have aligned with or hired an execution team. But, it’s come down out of the clouds.
• It’s fairly typical for those formerly known as gurus — now known as strategic practitioners or the like — to be asked to guide vendor or third-party selection on the tool set. It’s no longer enough to understand, diagnose and suggest remedies and approaches for search. Robust tools are needed for campaign management, asset optimization, measurement and analysis — and, most likely, tools that work in a cross-media, cross-platform environment. Guiding a marketer or agency on the selection and on-boarding of these tools is frequently an assignment unto itself.

What Is Next For Us All?

So what does the coming-down-to-earth of the guru mean for the rest of us? We’ve just got to get and stay real, when it comes to the place of search in what we do.

Do not fear search. Make room for it and organize for it; operate from a media egalitarian or integrated mindset; and don’t waste time aggrandizing the guru who used to profess to possess the secret search knowledge.

Those days are gone. We don’t need gurus; in this intricate, tech-driven media environment, we need player coaches, all. You can be one too.

In today’s performance marketing culture, the ideal talent profile is complicated and ever-changing. It’s not as straightforward as recruiting, hiring and training a straight line of talent across client services, marketing or media services, creative, production and analytics. Our performance planning culture can no longer afford to be linear. And, the silos must be unlocked.

It used to be that if you were a direct response marketer or in the business of providing performance marketing and media to clients,  you were wise to invest in search marketing, in folks who knew their way around it, as well as in an email solution and some tracking. Those few things used to constitute a performance marketing operation, even if the parts were disjointed.

As the industry has gradually become more comfortable with its own data and technology underpinnings, and made a greater commitment to integrating media types and collaborating across groups, the ideal talent profile has changed. So, assuming our industry will keep changing, what might we remember and strive for, to identify the best talent for performance marketing?

No More Search Sycophants

Rational performance marketers no longer regard search marketing as a silver bullet. While we used to feverishly look for teams and hires who knew search inside and out, even if they knew almost nothing else, that is no longer sufficient.

Consider hiring strategists and practitioners who are well-versed on three or four of the consistently favored and effective media types for performance marketing: email, search — and, increasingly, audience buying and real-time bidding, as well as social.

When thoughtfully chosen according to objectives and expertly planned, executed and optimized — as well as cross-referenced for learnings — this suite of methods is a powerhouse. You want people in-house or on your team who either individually, or working as a team, possess this savvy.

Hiring For Suite Method Mastery

To focus on the concept of cross-referenced learning, your strongest talent will understand that integration is not simply aligning campaign thematics and synchronizing flights.

They will know how to configure buys, campaigns, programs and assets to share learning across the plan or even specific pairings of media types within it (search + display; search + social; search + email; social + display; and on and on).

If your team can set out to track, measure and tune messaging, titles, descriptions, visuals, formats, offers and more — and continue to apply and iterate — they are serving you well and showing a keen understanding of the tenets of performance. And they will understand the inseparable partnership between media and creative, especially when masterfully optimized to drive performance.

Data, Systems And Technology Are Our Bedrock. Got it?

Today’s smart marketing group or agency is situated and organized more than ever before around data and technology. In fact, it is the foundation of the modern agency.

While the situation is not perfect and the systems still must evolve to cooperate and more seamlessly address the entire workflow, you want people who are excited by this and who will step up to perform in this kind of environment.

More and more, everything we do is touched by systems and tools: search opportunity assessments, media research and RFPs; campaign management and trafficking; tracking and analysis; optimization; creative and assets storage and management; financial auditing and reconciliation.

As we embrace our own future, we will have fewer people doing legacy manual work, more people familiar with and supported by better systems, and more room to hire strategic firepower.

For so long, we had to focus on hiring trench-level talent that knew how to run keyword expands, concatenate Excel spreadsheets and hand-hold the trafficking process — not to mention concoct insights in a really ad hoc manner off cobbled data analysis. To some extent, systems are freeing up our talent to think bigger.

Socialized For Branding Objectives

Just as the smartest org builders do not hire only digital natives, with no understanding of traditional — or, as mentioned above,  sole practitioners with limited scope on media types — so must we hire perfomance marketers who get the fundamentals of branding.

There is so much happening for brand marketers right now — with a display renaissance in play, new creative formats, a video heyday, and more. And, within any given initiative by a marketer, a team may be charged with tackling both branding and direct response or performance.

It’s a bit trite to say it, but we are all in this together. Your performance marketers must be able to sit at the table and participate in a joint conversation. They must be able to hold their own and not defer. Those days are over in a non-linear world.

Ultimately, today’s performance culture is about standing tall with open arms on our improved data and systems capability — and embracing the interrelation of media, both organizationally and in planning and optimization practice.

If we stand in a straight line and stick to our silos, we are keeping our own handcuffs. This is not about hiring generalists but about not being afraid to raise your standard for an integrated talent picture — and hire and train for it.

It’s a composite of methods; it’s an ingredient; it’s a mechanic; it’s a mindset. While it’s not yet unrecognizable, even marketers who once deemed it a silver bullet or their performance-marketing drug of choice must acknowledge that we have somewhat moved beyond search in its pure form.

It’s ironic that the very folks who perhaps took a bit too long to adopt search marketing in the first place than they should have, and who now consider it a vital method, must accept its transformation. But, it’s clear: In order to compete, we must come to terms with what is starting to feel like a Post-Search world, as we raise the bar, yet again.

As we think about how to ready our minds, our muscles and our teams, it’s helpful to look at several aspects of the new reality — the truths of this Post-Search era.

1. Strong Search Is Always Integrated

We’ve covered this. It’s just true. In the Post-Search era, this is considered entry-level thinking. This is presumed: organic + paid, when strategically executed against your objectives, are a powerful blend.

You can achieve branding and direct performance goals on the paid side — with the right assessment of your keyword universe; well crafted, branded and/or action-driving titles and descriptions; well-chosen, merchandised landing pages; thoughtful inclusion of video, multi-media, downloadables; and selective use of engine- or publisher-side campaign options.

And, then, of course, you must implement skillful tracking, measurement, analysis and optimization of every available factor. Execution and analysis can and should be leveraged across the paid initiative and the continual environment optimization piece. So, in this robust form, search hardly looks like its earliest ancestors. From what it once was, it’s a transformed mix unto itself.

2.  Social Is Becoming The Focus Of Plans

There are surveys done very year of media planners and buyers — polling them on which media types they plan to include in their plans for the coming year. Search has been topping these charts forever, especially when it comes to performance marketing.

Email and social have been right up there — again, not necessarily as a percentage of spend, but as an express intent to use or include — for quite a few years. But, search has always been first.  However, at the same time, out in the market, anecdotally, we’ve been hearing agencies, marketing services companies and marketers themselves talk about how much more often social is driving their plans.

So, it was almost no surprise to read recently in Online Media Daily a summary of research released by Strata, the agency media software and processing firm owned by Comcast. This research showed that social has finally leapt to the level of search and is expected to soon race past display, as the “focus” by most media planners at agencies, when developing client media plans. After all, given their buying power, it is with this group that social has had to prove itself over the years.

From the piece:

“Social media has surpassed search, and is poised to overtake online display advertising as the No. 1 source of digital media planning and buying, according to the latest edition of a quarterly survey of U.S. advertising agencies. The survey […] found that 69% of agency executives now consider social the ‘focus’ of their digital ad spending — up 32% over the past year, and now a close second behind display (71%) as the dominant digital media-buying platform in the minds of agency executives.”

Planner preference absolutely gives us a sense of the industry. After all, agencies have so much influence over spending and common thought on media planning and buying practices and methods.

 3. Search As Mechanic Vs. Total Environment

Marketers engaged with integrated planning — blending traditional, digital and then mulitiple platforms within digital, have seen a shift when it comes to the search option.

Within social environments and utility; on mobile devices, applications or within mobile campaigns; within today’s interactive high-engagement publisher environments, especially wherever localization is presumed — search has a more graceful, integrated presence than ever before.

Rather than standing alone as a stark function, or an environment of its own, it’s almost part of the operating system, an element on the dashboard for the individual navigating his or her day across platforms, environments and devices. It’s a smooth mechanical essential, an increasingly well-executed given.

4. The Influence Of Search On Display

The display renaissance we are seeing over the past few years can be largely credited to search.

As networks and exchanges have eventually yielded DSPs (Demand Side Platforms) and what is nothing short of a heyday for Real-time Bidding (RTB), we clearly see the influence of search.

Yes, display is at a certain creative height right now — with rich media, video, and engagement options being richer and slicker and easier to execute than they have ever been. But, that’s not what we are talking about. We are talking about the marketplace for audience buying — and the bid-based systems and technology that make it possible. Our marketplace has become increasingly focused on selling and buying audience in this way — with more inventory being allocated and targeting opportunities and audience intelligence capabilities increasing every quarter.

As reported by MediaTrust in May, “International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts Real-time bidding, with the benefits it brings publishers and advertisers alike, will grow to a $5 billion business by 2015. US advertisers will spend just over $1 billion on display ads purchased through the channel, a tiny fraction of total online ad and total display ad sales. But this year’s spending represents a 203% increase over 2010.”

This is a whole new take on gauging consumer intent, profiling behavior, targeting and buying audience. And, it delivers scale, when well executed, with great efficiency — all music to marketers’ ears. And the talent who does best on the planning team, on the trading desks or generally on the front lines of automatic audience buying — are the folks who get math, embrace the bidding mechanic and otherwise operate from a demand-led search orientation.

Preparing For This Future

There is no great secret to getting ready for change. You can’t really prep for evolution. The key is to be aware of transformation in progress — to recognize and keep the operating principles and methods that have worked for you, but adjust your approaches as the context shifts. Search has been transformative:

• It gave us an appreciation for express consumer intent and demand.
• It proved an amicable and natural companion to other media types (social, mobile).
• Across channels, as they themselves evolved,  it became a natural mechanical fit, nestling nicely into those.
• With its emphasis on data and analysis, it was an early case on the optimization imperative.
• And, when executed at scale — it showcased the brilliance and potential of a bidded marketplace.

Even if search no longer stands in the sunshine as a holy grail — as we move into what may very well be a Post-Search era, we owe it great thanks for where our industry has come.

Thinking about how search is reflected in these environments, I found myself looking back over the past two years and realized just how many times I’d been led to a table to facilitate, walked into a room to participate, hopped on the phone to contemplate or stood in front of a class to illuminate — the merits and practices of integrated search.

Yes, search, in its various forms and fashions has been around since the 90s. So, admittedly, almost every time this conversation comes up, and eyes widen around the table or throughout the room, I have a private inside-my-own-head moment of, “Are we really still questioning this? Come on, people. Stop pondering all those what-ifs, and get on with it.” But, it hasn’t always been OK to say so, out loud. So, we have the conversation. Again.

Pondering these cycles in industry circles, I found myself trying to boil down the collective stalling-in-our-own-tracks to the few most tangible obstacles or hang-ups to integration. And, then, further pondering, what is the one market reality check, in each instance, that should compel us forward — and help us stop being stuck?

1. Fear Of The Clean-up

You hear this one a lot in the instance of a marketing manager who has entered a cross-divisional organization, where different points of ownership often conflict. She says to herself: “I have inherited a mess. To do this right, there is too much clean-up involved. So, I will keep my eyes on the road immediately in front of me.”

The issues are everything from bad legacy site optimization to shoddy enterprise keyword arbitration on the paid side. To derive an overarching strategy and a centrally orchestrated master plan when it comes to search in this very typical situation is practically and often politically daunting to many.

So, such a person or team focuses on what is simple and clear to execute — a modest branded keyword paid campaign, a little SEO — with no serious regard for the perils of their own poor or damaged foundation.

The Reality Check

This is typical. You are not alone. Do the work. There are case studies in progress — large enterprises and even small hectic enterprises who are on their way to getting it right.

Your clean-up does not have to be flawless. It is absolutely worth taking the time to get the appropriate people in the room — corporate, marketing, site, branding and performance stakeholders, as well as any engaged agencies — to get reasonably on the same page. How much deeper will you make your own mess, how many layers will you add to your own hindrances, just because you are not up for cleaning up?

2. Crippled By  Paid Search Reverence

Most search-inclined marketers continue to applaud or celebrate the prevailing use of paid search within the marketing mix. Year after year, it’s considered the top digital performance media. Media planners reserve a large share of budget for it. The percentage of our industry spend going to it keeps trending up. And, we know that consumers prefer it as a means for demanding and finding what they want.

Look at any eMarketer chart, and all these trends are illustrated. But, cursory use of that preference data in our planning leads to myopic marketing. We must look further.

The Reality Check

Your company’s brand or product website is a close second to search — for consumers searching directly for information on brands and products. It’s true. Yes, there has been a lot of pressure for companies to stop regarding their branded website URL as a destination — and think of their environment as more cross-platform. And, that they should. But, never at the neglect of that branded site itself.

In Fleishman Hillard’s 2012 Digital Influence Index, a global study, we are reminded that although consumers prefer search for finding what they want online (thus, making it a mandatory for marketers) — in every country around the world — the branded site is next.

Image via Fleishman Hillard

Yes, paid search is powerful — and so is the optimization of your site. But, beyond making sure it is discoverable and obstacle free, make sure that its content is tuned to your consumer and your business and marketing goals. Make sure that it is an environment that services exactly as it should, on its own.

Consumers are coming directly to it. It matters. So, free yourself of your tunnel vision on search. It’s more than OK — in fact it’s vital — to tend to your brand or product website.

3. Over-dramatizing Organization For Integrated Search

Most of the folks stalling out on the point of organizing for integrated search seem stuck in one of a few ways. One, they feel that truly integrated search — running a robust paid plan closely aligned with environment optimization strategy; concerted, organized optimization of all multi-media or video assets; execution of appropriate social or mobile pushes — requires too much bandwidth and cooperation of resources.

Or, two, they are engaged with multiple outside agencies or consultants who are working independently from one another, and often at odds with each other and therefore, guess what — with their objectives for success. Time to take a deep breath and get over it.

The Reality Check

You have to be organized to succeed. Don’t make getting organized or the prospect of holding your leaders and agencies responsible for working together into an operational drama. Just do it. Thoughtful cooperation will never be counter-productive. It creates a shared view and moves you forward, one way or another.

While we would like to believe that integrated search is a foregone conclusion, it is clear by the cycles of industry dialogue that it is not. I have come to suspect that we may be belaboring current obstacles or organizational scenarios — rather than encouraging each other to take a blunt look at what’s required, and doing what it takes to progress.

Fear, reverence and drama have a tendency to get in the way — in search, as in life — of clarity and action. As we move into the next era of integrated marketing, and certainly of search, may we collectively let go of these ties that bind us to the status quo.