Search is a tactile art.

At heart, I am a data guy. I run numbers, look at trends, see patterns and set direction based on what this all indicates. This is a great habit when dealing with several hundred campaigns' and oodles of money built up from $1 bids. Taking it all in, running it through database queries and custom routines makes fairly quick work of the tasks (hours vs days). However, this weekend I was reminded (again) that large number crunching projects are not the single answer to search's challenges. You have to get into it. Our campaign managers would probably rather I didn't. But I do. And the truth is,  I really enjoy it. It is very 'tactile'. You can almost feel the information as you pour through the campaigns. You get a sense of the relationship between the different campaigns, keywords, kw types, bids, positioning, QS, ad copy and so on. Some of our programs are made up of a dozen campaigns spending hundreds of thousands a month each while others are hundreds of campaigns spending thousands a month each. Both present unique challenges. But to do either kind well, you have to do more than look at reports, change bids and set up bid rules. You have to get dirty. Most SEM folks have done deep dives into their campaigns. But, do yourself a favor, and without any pretext, just start exploring your campaigns. Look for the little things that won't show up in an exception report, or be uncovered in a problem. Search is about nuances; and nuances, by definition are small and frequently unnoticed. But these are the little things that add up to big things. When we talk about the hard work of SEM, this is the kind of thing we really mean. 

And I think this is what makes good SEM folks unique. To put together a really good SEM program, you need to have a broad perspective, understand the objectives and the stategies. Not just of search, but for the whole marketing and advertising 'thing'. I frequently find myself in conversations about this with my teammates; we all have ideas about the direction we should go with the products and service we promote. But, then we are just as eager to jump into the gritty part of the SEM job. It is because we have an understanding of the larger effort that we know, almost instinctively, what nuances to leverage.

So, do yourself and your clients a favor. Get dirty.