A newly published study by X+1 found that more than half (57%) of corporate marketers surveyed were dissatisfied with their search engine marketing (SEM) results. Surprising? Not really.

From managing online marketing, including search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO), for nearly 15 years and running best practice global SEM programs at the Fortune 500 that have received praise from Google and Yahoo execs as best practices, my experience is that the problem isn't search engine marketing as a vehicle. The problem lies in the poor management of search engine marketing -- as well as many other areas of interactive marketing, an area I consider to be the most complex area of marketing today.

The specific underlying problem to this dissatisfaction, I believe, is rooted in marketing executives hiring inexperienced marketers to manage search engine marketing (SEM). Companies often stress technical skills over marketing skills.…