You are living in a dream land if you think can predict everything. The idea of Agile Marketing is brilliant – exceptional results in a chaotic environment. Anyone that has been involved in a web project – SEO, site build, etc – knows that it requires a great deal of patience to manage the account on a day-to-day basis. There is no “process” that you follow. Chaos and constant flux is the process.
My recommendation is to communicate from the beginning your Go-Live policy. Then repeat it multiple times! Trust me, a false start is the worst possible scenario you can imagine in SEO campaigns. Getting your house in order and making 100% certain the client understands what work is being done before you agree to launch will make everyone happier in the end.
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.
If you have that level of synergy between the Engineer and the Account Manager chances are your company is going to wonderful places. Chances are you are paying them a salary worthy of this level of expertise as well.
