Forrester Wave Research Report on SEM Agencies
I just finished reading the short version of Forrester Research’s Forrester Wave Report on Search Marketing Agencies, Q4 2006. (blah, I am behind in my reading… so sue me.) Congratulations to iProspect, Reprise Media, iCrossing, IMPAQT, 360i, and Outrider for their shout-outs in the report. Out of 53 agencies evaluated for this report, only the above-named agencies got a tip of the hat in the writeup, having been chosen by Forrester as good representatives to do a deep dive on.
My favorite line from the report is this: “Most [Wave survey] participants believe their capabilities to be superior to those of competitors – when they actually all offer the exact same thing.” Kind of illustrates the me-too nature of the search marketing management industry, and online marketing tools as a whole. Bid manager tools all pretty much do the same thing. Keyword research tools all pretty much do the same thing. Analytics tools … email services… landing page testing services… All. Do. Pretty. Much. The. Same. Thing.
So why, in an RFP process, do marketers ultimately choose one vendor over the others? I think a lot of it has to do with the salespeople and with the personal relationships they cultivate with the potential client. (Of course this is for those one-on-one sales processes, not so much for the self-service industry tools.) And reputation and word of mouth is also a big differentiator. If a tool or an agency has been favorably-reviewed on a respected “guru” type site or blog, it can really gain a foothold in the marketplace.
One thing to be wary of, all you marketers out there who are conducting agency or tool searches and you are dealing with salespeople. I noted in the Forrester report some comments about an agency getting some “black marks” on its evaluation for “mis-set expectations during the vendor’s sales process.” So be wary of slick-talking salespeople who may say whatever it takes to get your business. This is true in ANY industry and with ANY salespeople btw. I’m not trash talking the SEM agency biz 
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