Let’s look at some past “sure things” — in which we were told the money was easy:

1. “Housing prices are going to go up and up. You’ve got to buy ASAP.” (As recently as 2007)
2. “Tech prices are going through the roof. Buy now or you’ll miss out.” (Late 1990′s)
3. “Hedge funds are a license to manufacture money.” (Until this Spring)

Now I hear from CEO’s of search marketing firms “We’ve grown x hundreds of percentage points in the last three years. We’re doing great.” 

Well, I’ve got news for you — within three years eight out of ten of you will be bankrupt or purchased. While that seems dire, let’s look at the reality:

Easy money breeds competition just like food scraps draw ants. 

As I have observed, one cannot swing a cat today without hitting four or six search marketing firms. Picture a massive explosion of search vendors chasing a finite number of prospective customers.

Look at the naive marketing approaches of search marketing firms. Nearly all are run by technology geeks.  Browse through their websites and you will find they all say the very same things.  Almost all are very product centric — with “post and pray” websites and they hire “smile and dial” salespeople.   (See earlier post on why the founders sell and no one else can.  This is a symptom of bad management.)

Keep in mind that all of these search firms are calling the same prospects with the same product, product, product messaging.  Prospects are fed up. Something has GOT to give.

Someday, someone in the search marketing industry will awaken and say “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” 

They will focus on customer-centric marketing, business value and they’ll retrain all their salespeople. They’ll redo their websites and start tracking Digital Body Language. They’ll finally get “demand generation.”  

But the vast majority won’t and they’ll go the way of the dinosaur.

Good luck and good selling. http://www.jeffreyogden.com/