iProspect took the fact that so many search engine marketers performed so many other duties as indicating that many companies choose to “home grow” their talent. The company thinks that this might be due to “the lack of experienced search engine marketers available in the marketplace,” and took it as a symptom of search engine marketing not yet being a mature field. But there are other possibilities that did not seem to consider.
Chris Sherman of Search Engine Watch read iProspect’s report, and this particular stance inspired him to reflect on his days as a management consultant, before he became a search analyst. “A key focus, even more than a decade ago, was to encourage multi-functional teamwork and operations,” he observed. “Putting people into functional silos often led to organizational sclerosis; allowing them to be versatile in their work made the organization more nimble and responsive to competitive challenges and change…Search marketing is a complex activity, with constant change. Perhaps allowing people to wear multiple hats keeps their knowledge and skills fresher.”
Certainly in a competitive landscape, companies can use every advantage they can get. And many firms are pretty tightly stretched as it is; they can’t afford to spend the money on someone dedicated specifically to search engine marketing, even if they wanted to. Given that, it makes sense that you’d try to grow your own talent from the closest disciplines. For search engine marketing and SEO, this still means website design and IT. Marketing becomes a skill that gets “picked up” on the job.
This might help explain why, relatively speaking, so few search engine marketers were involved in offline media that could drive traffic to websites. That’s traditional marketing, and historically, SEOs and SEMs don’t come from that background, they acquire it. If the percentages are low, is it because it takes a while to learn offline marketing, or is it because fewer people who do offline marketing are interested in getting into SEO/SEM? Or could we be seeing a trend of companies relying so much more on SEO/SEM that they have all but forsaken other forms of advertising?
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