SEM (Search Engine Marketing to the lay person) is about the greatest advertising and marketing invention ever created. (I love starting articles with blanket statments..set's the tone for everything). Let's look at Traditional Marketing vs SEM and see how they compare.

Traditional Marketing, for the sake of this arguement, will include Television, Radio, Newspaper, and Direct Mail. Let's start with the TV. How many stations were there in 1984? In my hometown, if you weren't one of the lucky ones to have a 50' antenna attahed to you house, there were 5. (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS and WHME) Believe me when I say this, but when the President was on, he was on all of them and there went TV night. Fast forward just 24 years and look at the TV scene. Basic cable is 25 channels, extended cable over 70 and satellite TV has hundereds! We won't even discuss TIVO and the DVR, which happen to be the best invention since the remote control was invented. No one like commercial (except at Super Bowl parties) and no one watches them. It's over guys, give up. Move on, really.

Radio is another dinosaur. There are not only 25 or so stations in and around Indianapolis, but you also have XM, Sirius, I Pods, I Tunes, the internet etc. Radio advertising has it's place, if you have a boat load of money, an ego and patience (you have to have at least 2 out of 3 or it won't work). I know a company that just spent over 25K in under 1 month of radio ads and got almost zero return from it...ouch. They would have been better of to give me the 25K, where as I could have given 2,500 people $10 each to purchase one of their products for free! If your not going to own it, stay away....radio advertising is not for the faint of heart. And don't fall into a trap to by banner ads on a radio station website, they have miserable click through rates and even worse conversion rates. If radio salespeople ever learn how to sell measured impressions though, watch out (jab).

Speaking of dinosaurs, here comes Newspaper. As old as "traditional" gets, nothing says help I am dying quite like the subscriber list of the local paper. With ad rates off the chart and readership numbers plummiting, I can't understand how anyone can justify the cost / ROI of a newspaper ad. Seriously, unless you have just dumb money, which apparently cell phone companies and car dealers do, why would you advertise here unless it is some robotic habit you cannot kick yourself of. I read that in the 50's, the average US household subscibed to 2.1 newspapers, today less than 20% of all US households get a paper (the graveyard is 3 blocks down to the left - obscure Caddyshack reference)

And last, but not least, is SPAM on 4 wheels. Yes, I am talking about Direct Mail. Each day around 2pm, I get SPAM and I hate it. No matter what I do, it keeps coming. I didn't ask for Chase to send me a credit card offer, or Estridge to send me a postcard, but they do....ALOT. Researchers say that men dislike direct mail more than women. My take here is that women actually think that people sending direct mail to them possible care more?? Most men look at it as a waste of time and money, not to mention all the trees killed each month to let me know I am pre-approved for a loan I don't need or want. Even if you can get a .005% conversion rate, Direct Mail is still expensive and SPAM (listen, just because you put a stamp on it and let Uncle Sam delivery it doens't mean it isn't unsolicited).

Ok, stay tuned for Part II of the seriers where I will go into SEM and the benefits of measured marketing.