The evolution of the Paid Search Marketer

In today’s post, I thought it would be inter­est­ing to dis­cuss how the func­tion of paid search mar­ket­ing has evolved and changed since its begin­nings in 2000. Nowa­days, paid search is the biggest rev­enue dri­ver for most search engines, and search is glob­al­ly mov­ing towards intu­itive results and antic­i­pat­ing user needs. As dis­cussed in my arti­cle regard­ing the future of search, the sec­tor is chang­ing like nev­er before, which obvi­ous­ly has con­se­quences for paid search mar­keters. While the core activ­i­ties of paid search mar­keters haven’t changed dras­ti­cal­ly, many oth­ers things have.

What hasn’t changed for Paid Search Marketers

Over­all, the main day-to-day activ­i­ties remain very sim­i­lar, and paid search today is still about opti­mis­ing search cam­paigns with the help of bid man­age­ment and edi­to­r­i­al tools. While Google clear­ly dom­i­nates the mar­ket, it is still essen­tial to have a good knowl­edge of oth­ers plat­forms like Yahoo, Bing Baidu and Yandex.

A good paid search mar­keter still needs to demon­strate atten­tion to detail, a cre­ative approach to prob­lem-solv­ing, and an ana­lyt­i­cal mind. It is also impor­tant to be a team play­er in order to exchange best prac­tices and be able to test new meth­ods and tech­nolo­gies as they emerge.

What has changed for Paid Search Marketers

How­ev­er, the impor­tance of Paid Search keeps on increas­ing, and vs oth­er media chan­nels. With close scruti­ny from deci­sion mak­ers, Paid Search has a strong influ­ence on wider mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, such as align­ing mes­sag­ing across oth­ers chan­nels in order for cam­paigns to be dis­played seam­less­ly. Paid Search Mar­keters also have their say on the web­site con­tent, as they pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions to test and opti­mise the land­ing page experiences.

We can also note that more and more brands are now choos­ing to man­age their paid search cam­paigns in-house, rather than through agen­cies, as it allows them to have a bet­ter inte­gra­tion of their cam­paigns with glob­al mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, and to save on hefty agency fees.

Final­ly, as the indus­try keeps on chang­ing and evolv­ing, it is essen­tial more than ever for Paid Search mar­keters to stay on top of trends and devel­op­ments so they can real­ly pro­vide a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence on search engine. Most of us active­ly take part in the search mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ty by going to indus­try events, being active on social media, and shar­ing ideas and best practices.

What about you, do you work in Search Mar­ket­ing, and have you noticed any oth­er changes in the role of a Paid Search Mar­keter? Do not hes­i­tate to share your ideas in the com­ments, and feel free to con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter @gble­con.