There's no requirement to do SEO

Especially if you can't prove ROI

I am starting a Slack group for new consultants and those looking to start consulting, if you are interested, get in touch!

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A few months ago, while I was getting a haircut, I curiously asked the barber what it took to obtain her license. Every barber I have ever used had a license prominently displayed on the mirror and I had always understood that licenses are an absolute requirement.

 Most occupations don’t seem to have any licensing requirements whatsoever, so I wrongly assumed that a barber’s license was simply an online course. Her answer indicated that it was anything but that. In many states, practitioners are required to have over 1000 hours of training just to get that license!

She reciprocated by asking what I did for work, and I gave my standard online marketing answer. She shared with me she paid an SEO firm $500 per month and they did great work. My curiosity was piqued, and I asked what they did for her and why she said they did great work. Without boring you with too many details, this agency did great work because they sent beautiful reports which summarized the things THEY did which mostly consisted of making a report.

I asked if she ever received any report which detailed how much revenue or customers their work generated and not surprisingly she answered in the negative. I don’t know whether she was or was not wasting money on this agency, but my questions to her more than likely prompted her to ask some tough questions to the agency.

I didn’t recognize the name of the agency or any of their employees, so I can’t judge their work, however, this practice of charging for deliverables only without any measure of returns is not unique to any individual agency.

Unfortunately, it is standard practice for many marketing agencies that do a great job of packaging deliverables but rarely are measured on outcomes because the clients do not know to ask.

This brings to me the point I made in the headline of this post.

For many organizations, SEO (or for that matter other channels) are seen as requirements for success in marketing and therefore the company needs to retain an agency. In truth, resources should only be spent on the channel and the agency for that channel if there’s demonstrable value. I have found in many instances that there is not and could not be demonstrable value for SEO because online organic search is not an acquisition channel for that company or product.

Before making a decision to even explore a marketing channel, the leadership should ascertain that there’s a defined user that will be acquired from this channel. Then once they are certain that it will be an effective channel, they can make decisions about how to unlock the channel, but no matter what the internal team or agency needs to be measured against the predicted outcomes. If they are not achieving those outcomes those resources can be redirected elsewhere.

To reiterate once again: There’s no requirement to explore a channel just because it exists. Marketing is the means to an end but not the end itself.