SEMPO Launches 2nd Annual In-House Salary Survey

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SEMPO Launches 2nd Annual In-House Salary Survey

Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, January 13, 2009 0 Comments

Is the economy having a severe impact on compensation for search engine marketers or is the SEM profession weathering the storm better than other sectors? That is one of the critical questions the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), http://www.sempo.org, plans to answer with the launch of its 2nd Annual In-House SEM salary survey.

The 22-question survey is open to all in-house search engine marketing professionals, whether they work in organic and/or paid search positions . Membership in SEMPO is not required to participate. To take the survey, log on to: http://www.sempo.org/learning_center/in-house_survey_0901. All responses are anonymous. The survey will run until February 20 with results expected to be announced in March.

Survey data to be collected includes salary ranges of SEM jobs, from entry level to executive; salary variations by geographic markets, the total compensation package beyond salaries, such as bonuses, benefits and perks; changes in SEM staffing levels within enterprises, and in SEM budgets.

1st Annual Recap

SEMPO’s 1st Annual In-House Salary Survey showed search engine marketers receiving healthy salaries in line with their experience but salaries in the mid-to-high $100s to the $200K range still required five to seven years experience. Another key finding was roughly one third of in-house SEMs were managing monthly budgets in excess of $200,000, a level that exceeded expectations.

Other findings were:

Of those managing budgets greater than $200,000/month, 42.3% are managers, and within that group, 27% report salary ranges in excess of $100,000/year.
39.4% of respondents managing monthly SEM budgets in excess of $200,000 report having 3 years of experience or less. 34.2% have between 3 and 5 years experience, and those with 5+ years of experience totaled 26.4%.
42.6% of those managing budgets larger than $200,000/month do not manage staff. 92.9% are part of a dedicated “in-house” SEM team and 77.4% of those “teams” are considered to be part of their company’s Marketing departments.

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