Reader Poll Roundup

We’ve been running polls the past month and I thought I’d share the results. Below are the past 4 polls we’ve run along with the number of respondents and the top 5 responses for each.

What do you like most about your search marketing job? (67)

• You are truly appreciated for your expertise and contributions (21%)
• The client projects are fun, interesting, challenging (19%)
• Flexible hours, work from home or office (18%)
• It���s all about the money (10%)
• Fun atmosphere/environment at work (10%)

Money made a run for it early, but this one was nearly a tie between being appreciated, fun and interesting projects and flexibility.

What is your favorite marketing conference? (56)

• Search Engine Strategies (46%)
• WebmasterWorld Pubcon (27%)
• ad:tech (7%)
• eTail (7%)
• Affilliate Summit (4%)

SES took it away. It’s a tough call for me because Pubcon has been fantastic the past few times. I’m looking forward to re-running a poll of this sort after Danny’s Search Engine Expo has a few under the belt.

What is the primary purpose of your blog? (54)

• To publish/share my ideas (35%)
• To build my/my company reputation (24%)
• A marketing tool for me/my company (22%)
• A platform for interacting with my industry (13%)
• Adds SEO benefit to my web site (6%)

The number 2 and 3 responses pretty much equal blogs as a marketing/promotion tool and surpass the #1 response.

What are your most common reasons for discontinuing a client relationship? (64)

• Client is too difficult to work with (53%)
• The engagement is not profitable for your agency (25%)
• The client declined to pay invoices on time or at all (17%)
• The client’s needs have changed outside the scope of your agency’s capabilities (3%)
• What happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas (2%)

“Difficult to work with” and “not profitable” dominated this poll. I would imagine that companies who have internal account/vendor managers that are good at what they do experience a corresponding level of success with outsourced activities.

Of course there are bad vendors or mis-matches that cause things to go wrong, but I’ve seen great client-side project managers do amazing things with vendors resulting in excellent win win situations. I’ve also seen some client-side managers waste a lot of the company’s time and energy and then blame it on the vendor causing bad blood all around.

I believe the ultimate responsibility lies with the vendor. The consultant must be able to properly qualify potential clients, set expectations and properly manage both the project side implementation as well as the political issues that can occur with complex, interdepartmental marketing programs. Part of what the company is paying for is this kind of expertise, besides the technical and creative skills.

Getting the buy-in from influential stake holders is a must. In fact, watch for an excellent post from TopRank’s Karen Sams on getting company buy in on Tuesday.