I’m also attending DIY SEM: Your Agency May Not Be the Best Resource – Gary Angel, Mark Ruzomberka, David Harrod and here’s my notes and insights on it – coming to you from my iPhone, while live blogging – but first, here’s the marketing notes:

A06 Wednesday, 1:05 – 1:55
DIY SEM: Your Agency May Not Be the Best Resource

Gary Angel, Semphonic
Mark Ruzomberka, Traffic.com
David Harrod, Traffic.com

Tracking the ROI on thousands of keywords seems overwhelming and managing them against business goals feels overwhelming. But outsourcing the task to an agency might not be your best move. Traffic.Com manages a significant ($1M annualized) search engine marketing program that is one of the primary drivers of traffic to their site. Facing competition from Google in their core business, Based on the optimization opportunities revealed by a Semphonic audit, Traffic opted to bring their program in-house and run it themselves. Mark Ruzomberka of Traffic.Com and Gary Angel of Semphonic will describe the process of an agency process review, outline the key decision-factors in bringing a PPC program in-house, and discuss Traffic.Com’s experience managing the program. You’ll get a better understanding of how to audit your existing SEM program, how to identify the optimization strategies that make sense for your business, and some of the benefits and barriers to managing your own SEM program.

By the way, as I noted in my earlier post a few days back, that Jim Sterne has made it really hard for me by putting an excellent session on Voice of the Customer Panel – John Fernandez, Lance Jones, Mark Brooks to be at the same time … but look, I can’t be in two places at one time – and sometimes, you just need to pick and choose what to focus on.

Here’s my notes and insights now:

Excellent session which pointed to a few conclusions:

1. It makes sense to take a paid search program, if only for being able to react much quickly and take advantage if buzz events.

2. Larger agencies maybe optimized for certain types of activities, they may not suit many businesses that operate with a hybrid model, or atypical business cycle (for example, if your business depends on natural disasters happening) you might be happy when events happen that are most people’s misery.

3. Certain optimizations are not worth doing, even if they are possible to do.