ClickZ News (www.clickz.com) announced on October 22 that a London-based group of search engine marketing professionals has formed Search Marketing Association UK (SMA-UK), a trade association to promote the SEM industry in the UK and other parts of Europe. The group formed as an alternative to the US-based Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO). After exploring various alternatives, including the possibility of forming a UK committee within SEMPO (www.sempo.org), ten UK members decided to form their own group.
SMA-UK will provide a platform to inform and educate the marketplace of the benefits of search marketing in the overall marketing mix, as well as giving its members an industry voice. SMA-UK will offer corporate, individual and associate memberships. Corporate and individual members will have one vote each, and associate members, such as suppliers to the industry, will be non-voting members. Fees will be based on a flat-rate scheme, rather than the tiered structure employed by SEMPO. There will be no company promotions allowed, and corporate members will be required to appoint an individual to represent the company in the organization.
One of SMA-UK's founding members is Mike Grehan of Smart Interactive, whose biting criticisms of SEMPO led into the group's controversial meeting in San Jose in August. Barry Lloyd, of SEM firm MakeMeTop (www.makemetop.co.uk) and acting chairman of SMA-UK, said that the SMA-UK’s founding members decided a trade association set up in the UK would be the most effective, that with the way that SEMPO is currently set up, it cannot adequately represent UK’s market, that SEMPO is not structured to operate correctly in other countries, and that the need for a separate organization is paramount if anything is to move forward.
Lloyd said also that the UK search engine market is currently the second largest in the world outside the United States, that, after looking at the way trade associations are being developed internationally, it has become apparent that the UK should have its own association for this growing sector, that SMA-UK is not looking to displace SEMPO but expects to co-exist with the international organization to promote SEM.
Barbara Coll, SEMPO's chairman, said that the UK appears to be a unique environment for search marketing, that the search marketing professionals there feel there are things they can do that an international organization just doesn't address, and that she expects that in the future there will be the possibility of an alliance between the two organizations.
