“… we’re WebmasterRadio.FM and we are everywhere.”

The words above form the tag-line for an online talk-radio station I work with, WebmasterRadio.FM. I’ve spent the past two weeks on the road as part of the WebmasterRadio.FM touring crew moving from conference to conference, coast to coast. Our job was to interview as many search and Internet marketers as possible at two of the largest search engine and Internet marketing conferences in the world, ad:tech New York and Pubcon Las Vegas. To do my part of the job, I flew nearly 10,000 miles (9971 mi to be exact), or 16,047 kilometers across the continent and back again in a rather nifty reversed N shaped pattern.

That’s a lot of travel in pursuit of whatever the heck I am trying to find out. During the trip, I questioned my sanity nearly as often as the brutal schedule and sheer amount of work challenged said sanity. What prompts an otherwise level headed Internet marketing expert to throw his or her life into a meat-grinder like that? This is a serious though quasi-rhetorical question. It’s not the fun of being away from home or even the sensation that one is somehow important.

While traveling around the United States, I was privileged to meet and interview some of the people who make the search and Internet marketing industry work. I spoke with the organizers of ad:tech, some of the largest affiliate marketing businesses in the world, the director of monetization at Facebook, the owners and/or operators of other search marketing firms, and innumerable conference attendees. I learned a lot more about the state of the industry in the past two weeks than I have learned in years. Unfortunately, much of what I learned does not make for good news.

I am going to cover the ugly stuff in this post and save the great stuff for tomorrow or Wednesday’s post. There is a method to my madness, one that will hopefully become apparent in the next post. While is dislike being the bearer of bad tidings, I am in the news and information business and I have always been honest with readers and listeners alike, even if I am sure they don’t want to hear a truth I perceive to be true.

The industry is in trouble. Like all other parts of the economy, search and Internet marketing is entirely driven by consumer demand. Anyone who says different or tries to sugar-coat an cascading problem is doing themselves and their audience a disservice. In the case of SEM firms, consumer demand is reflected in the confidence advertisers have when planning their 2009 marketing budgets. For any number of reasons, advertisers are starting to cut the cost of basic (and advanced) search engine optimization from their projections.

Cutting SEO from an online marketing budget runs counter-intuitive to the unassailable fact that search engine optimization is the most cost effective form of online advertising. SEO brings targeted traffic for far lower costs than the other arm of search marketing, Pay per Click however PPC budgets are easier to explain and to justify, even if they do present higher customer acquisition costs to the business. A clever mix of PPC, SEO and social media is as or more effective than any other integrated marketing plan available to advertisers.

Then again, there are a lot of signals in this economic crisis that run counter-intuitive to what should be common sense logic. The credit markets are clearing up, the stock market is slowly starting to rebound after hitting the bottom earlier this month and the glut of overpriced housing inventory that caused the crisis is beginning to move (though at radically undervalued prices). In short, the economy is actually starting to sputter forward again after losing ground for most of 2008. We might even see the beginning of a full recovery starting in the second quarter of 2009.

There are still many weak points to examine and enormous landmines that could be triggered. Right now, the biggest thing consumers and businesses serving consumers have to fear is the contagious nature of fear itself. It IS going to be a brutal winter holiday season and there ARE going to be several businesses going out of business in the next six months. These are unfortunately realities of an economy that desperately overstretched itself trying to get a sense of normality again.

Here’s the rub for search and Internet marketing firms. Explaining the hows, whys, risks and rewards is more important than ever. Giving potential clients the clearest understanding of exactly what a SEM firm does and how it goes about doing it is the key to retaining present clients and acquiring new ones. We need to demonstrate why SEO offers the strongest ROI (return on investment) of any form of advertising. We need to clearly show how traffic driven to any given page in a website can be converted to clientele. We need to use our most brilliant marketing minds to drive home the message, search marketing works. We need to convince our clients to take risks in order to provide a deeply rewarding service. We need to work smarter as well as working harder.

We will. Metamend is always prepared to discuss any aspect of a campaign with our clients. Our SEO, PPC and link development staff are expertly trained and know their business enough to explain it in plain-English. Our reporting and documentation are literally second to none. While much of our process is considered proprietary information and can not be shared with those outside the company or those outside our circle of clients, I can suggest the attention to the finest of details and the accuracy of our stats make the reports we issue clients selling points in and of themselves.

Metamend is upping its game in the face of market uncertainty. Instead of retreating and retrenching, we are going to risk being optimistic. Long term clients will recall Metamend has spent the last year gearing up for these circumstances as we saw (and predicted) the present situation over a year ago. A note to clients and potential clients… If you plan on being an online business at this time next year, this is the worst time to find short-term savings by cutting back on search and Internet marketing budgets. Exploit the stuff that works and cut back on what does not. Search marketing works and we have the server stats to prove it.