This is a great article for many reasons, but the most important reason is the ability to learn from others mistakes and not make them yourself.
At search engine marketing conferences, I am often asked for advice on how to hire people for in-house search engine marketing jobs.
Usually over lunch a business owner turns to me and says something like, I came here to learn more about all this search engine stuff and what I learned is that I need to hire somebody to do this, but how do I do that? Or, how did you get your job?
This has happened enough times that I thought it would serve well for me and those looking to hire SEM staff to put my advice in writing!
The Timeless In-House Or Agency Debate
Whether to outsource search marketing to an agency or hire to manage in-house is a debate as old as search engine marketing itself. Opinions on this vary, and I invite you to share yours in the comments, but here is mine.
If your company has a small staff and isn’t looking to increase that and manage a marketing person, then hiring a consultant or an agency may be the way to go. If you are looking to grow the business in terms of staff, or open to it, then consider hiring in-house, as often as search marketing programs mature and become more a core part of a business, there’s increased desire to mitigate risk and costs and move operations in-house.
For many businesses I talk to there’s the issue of not knowing what you don’t know. People know search engine marketing is important, but they aren’t sure what to do in terms of actions to improve it for their business, they don’t even know where to start.
An in-house hire in this case would need to be a fairly knowledgeable and self-motivated person, and one that a company can fully trust with this important area. Expense wise, this starts to cost as much as perhaps a small agency engagement, which might be a better option for businesses that need to increase their internal knowledge of search engine marketing before feeling comfortable about hiring an in-house position.
Have an honest debate with yourself about comfort level – ask yourself these questions:
- How well do you trust yourself to manage an in-house hire and know what they need to do?
- Could you learn more by starting off with an agency and pushing them to increase your education level?
- Do you feel like you eventually will want this role in-house and are willing to put in the time to educate and train in-house?