Are There Slow Days in SEM?
Before I even begin delving into this post, I reckon that several will respond to the question I pose in the title as “It depends on how many clients you have and the size of the project scope“. Totally agree on that. I was thinking about Search Engine Marketing and workload after reading how many advertising agencies are being forced into performance based contracts with their clients. This is a drastic shift from the typical Client Services Model where you bill your client per hour and in some cases per quarter hour.
I’ve never found the Client Services Model to apply in SEM. The nature of the work doesn’t allow for you to bill hourly. You could be doing research on link building or content optimization as it relates to Bing or Google. These finding could apply for all your clients and you can’t exactly double or triple bill throughout the day. You can – as an Account Manager – request that your team take into consideration the size of the contract the client has signed and clearly specify how much time should be dedicated throughout the day or week to a client, but you will still be hard pressed to line item what was done from 1PM-3Pm for Client A and what was done from 3:30PM-6:00PM for Client B.
There may be SEM companies out there that have found success with a Client Services Model.
The real point I am trying to get to is that if you are balancing SEO, PPC and Web Development it is hard to justify having a slow day in the world of SEM. The data analyzing you can do in Google Analytics alone can take up a majority of the day. Then, toss in extensive research and reading on the internet and applying those finding to your own client base along with managing Paid Search budget management and you can work 10 hour days regularly.
Typical SEO Manager by Friday Afternoon
Like most things, it comes down to time management. If you’re running PPC, by Friday afternoon you should be slowing down the daily spend so there won’t be much management left to do. Certainly you are capable of studying keyword / key phrase performance, adjusting spend for the weekend business cycle and ramping up for the new week. Although, by 3:30PM on a Friday I think most PPC managers are ready to start drifting into Weekend Mode.
Search Engine Optimization is very similar. By using your time wisely you spent all week making needed updates to your client sites, you’ve studied the previous week’s data and shared actionable insights with the team and client and now you’re ready to step away from the analytics and shut down for a couple days.
My point here is that Monday-Thursday are typically very busy days in the SEM world. And if you’ve hired the right people they have busted their asses over the course of those days and deserve to check out mentally on late Friday afternoon. They owe it to themselves and to the benefit of the company to not work 24/7 and return on Monday morning refreshed, ready to get stuck in with the client campaigns and add value.
In fact, I’ve found stepping away from my analytics for a couple days spurs new ideas that I can bounce off other people Monday mornings. Were I to answer the question I asked in the post title I would offer that the reason the SEM world is so exciting is because the work does not slow down. You can bounce from account to account and find new ways to maximize their websites.
And at the same time, because the work is so heavy on analysis and clients will insist on proving ROI, the job can be incredibly stressful. When the weekend rolls around it is good to ease up on the gas and give the team a couple days reprieve. Your clients and your company will be better off because of it.