“We’re not convinced that the people we are marketing to are using that as a channel…We have a more targeted strategy than, ‘We’re open for business.’ Search is kind of indiscriminate in a way.”

The inference is that search is only useful as a broad entry point for lead generation. End of story. How wrong you are, Steve.

Lead generation is one use (and the one that gets the most credit) but rather than being “indiscriminate” it is actually quite targeted and remarkably flexible. Unlike a 30-second television spot for instance, I can wake up in the morning, have coffee, read a quote from someone in the ad industry, and by late morning have targeted ads running based on keywords like his company’s name and even his own name.

What’s great about this is the ability to zero in on a very specific audience (people searching for BBH, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, Steve Harty) with great speed. Kind of the opposite of “indiscriminate.”

The result of Harty’s lack of search marketing belief is evident in a quick Google search for Bartle Bogle Hegarty:

As expected there are no paid results or ads. Two BBH websites come up as number one and two but there’s no meta description – which is the equivalent of the ad copy that describes why I should care about and therefore click on this link. On the North America site the toolbar buttons show up where a meta description ought to be – sloppy work. It’s only on the Wikipedia entry that we get any sense of the company. Granted we are talking organic here and Harty was talking about paid search but ultimately they are two complimentary ways of entering into the same important space – especially since the lack of organic presence only magnifies the need for some sort voice in the paid results, since users only know that they can’t find the brand if they are looking for it.

Not taking advantage of either one is like having prime billboard space in Times Square and not using it. While BBH may not be using search to draw in new clients you can bet that prospective clients, employees and strategic partners are using search to get a sense of how it would be to work with their potential new agency, its chairman, or their creative team. I would bet that one of the first things someone does after getting a business card from someone at BBH is to look for them and their company on Google. The results are lackluster – a potential client might wonder whether the results of a marketing campaign developed by BBH will be any better.

On the other hand I do have to commend BBH on result number 4, the opening of their office in Second Life. Unlike “indiscriminate” search marketing the no doubt costly Second Life outpost allows them to attract many real clients at their most receptive time – when they are cavorting as centaurs, elves, and flying toasters in a mostly empty virtual environment.

The results for the term “BBH” are even more discouraging:

Brown Brothers Harriman? Why is BBH getting spanked by the bank? Their heavily flash-driven site with very few text tags, no headers and no text page descriptions is one big reason. It appears that the aversion to search marketing for Harty extends even to SEO.

Search engine marketing should be a key component of a whole range of campaigns beyond lead generation. At its heart, SEM is simply another way to have a conversation. Every business is a brand that has a message to send. This is especially important when your brand, like BBH, is in the business of communicating.

In all fairness Harty’s quote and the larger approach of BBH are still not unusual in the marketing world. As part of IPG we have seen the whole gamut of responses to search marketing from marketers of all stripes, and we know that change is sometimes hard to understand and take advantage of. I firmly believe that every type of marketer today (direct response, brand, pr, etc.) needs to be in the search business to be truly effective. The future is now.

After all, your search results are tantamount to your calling card. No matter how impressive your brochure or PowerPoint presentation is every potential client, no matter the size, will run back to their office and Google you or your company after your first meeting – and some will do it in advance. Furthermore, there are also a whole slew of people who regularly do a “vanity search” on their own name. Just think how tickled a Chief Marketing Officer at a firm you’re pitching would be to do his daily search one day and see a targeted ad in his result telling him how good your firm is at what you do. This is just one example off the top of my head. Given 20 minutes I could come up with 20 more ways to creatively use paid and organic search beyond lead generation.

Search marketing does not exist in a vacuum; it is an integral part of how a company or a brand builds and shapes perceptions. Pretending it doesn’t exist or isn’t relevant as Steve Harty and many others do is to relinquish a key opportunity to let people know who you are, what you stand for, and why you do what you do. It will be interesting to see just how high this very post will rank on Google once I push the “publish” button. Will it rank in the top 3 in a search for Bartle Bogle Hegarty? How will that reflect on their brand?

Please do not hallucinate that this will somehow not affect online advertising. In most prior recessions, advertising spending on all media except small, emerging ones has declined. The Internet no longer qualifies as “small” and “emerging.” (And this status didn’t spare it last time). Online ad spending should do better than spending on traditional media, but if current trends continue, this won’t be saying much.

Of course, I understand that an economic downturn has a ripple effect through all aspects of the economy, and marketing dollars are generally going to get cut first. I do wonder, though, if within overall media budgets, marketers will have a harder time axing their online initiatives.

In the late ’90s, I often wondered how some marketers were able to pay the premiums that publishers and networks were commanding online. The answer always seemed to be that they were either testing new channels for the future or buying market share – and would figure out the economics of the business later. Of course, when the market turned, marketers didn’t have the numbers to justify their Internet budgets to their boards and investors, and those expenditures were cut.

Nowadays, as Henry rightfully points out, Internet advertising is no longer “small” and “emerging,” and so perhaps it is more susceptible to the chopping block. But I’d argue that not only isn’t Internet advertising no longer a novelty, it’s also so vastly different from traditional advertising and from its nascent form that it ought to be the very last line item to get cut from media budgets. That is, I think the promise and hype of the late ’90s has been fulfilled: Web marketing is immediate, quantifiable, and most important, wildly efficient. Large marketers and their agencies actually have staff to plan and execute campaigns, and web analytics systems are no longer held together with duct tape. Internet advertising provides a minutely measurable return, so when utilized correctly, it really pays for itself. There’s no medium other than the Internet that allows that level of accountability and relative transparency, and essentially takes the guesswork out of advertising. That ought to mean that while there’s still a ways to go, the web is no longer the great unknown to advertisers, and if the old adage in marketing is “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half,” I’d imagine that the known and unwasted component of marketing budgets – online advertising – will remain.

To clarify, I don’t claim to be an economist, nor am I suggesting that digital advertising is recession-proof. What I am wondering is if marketers might actually embrace the Internet as the last channel standing, if and when overall marketing budgets get cut because of macroeconomic trends. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking, but in any case, if this is a recession, it will be an interesting test both for Internet advertising and for marketers.

As Danny’s first hosted conference since his breakup with Search Engine Watch, SMX was expected to run like a repeat of its predecessor event, Search Engine Strategies. Though SMX definitely had a “getting the band back together” feel, the event was surprisingly different from recent Search Engine Strategies shows. Like SES, the conference featured excellent content and a strong range of speakers, but the dialogue was noticeably more sophisticated. Whether talking about strategic issues (e.g.: privacy or industry concerns) or tactical methods (quality score, spam penalties, etc), the attendees exemplified a level of passion that has long been lacking from SES. I had equally outstanding conversations with in-house marketers from Fortune 500′s like Time, Inc and CondeNast to more niche companies, but equally savvy folks from organizations such as PlasticSurgery.com. It was very reminiscent of search shows from the early part of the decade, when the audience was familiar and the attendees seemed truly excited about the industry.

As such, the hallways conversations were less about lead generation for exhibiting companies, and more about actual innovations in search. Granted, the competitive lead-driven atmosphere of SES isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is perhaps the inevitable result of industry maturation. Nevertheless, I really appreciated the grass-roots feeling that resonated throughout SMX – if for nothing other than to exemplify that, though the industry is growing, search events don’t have to be corporate.

On that note, I’d like to say Congratulations to Danny, Chris and the rest of the SMX team for a phenomenal debut. And, yes Danny, you can lose the suit…we’re all more comfortable when you’ve got your Vans on.