Francis Skipper, the Search Engine Marketing Director at 451 Marketing, has more than nine years of experience in search engine marketing, advertising and sales. At 451 Marketing, Francis creates and manages organic search strategies to achieve priority placements for both business-to-business and direct-to-consumer clients. 

 

You started your career as a chemist. What lead you to this career choice?

I was very interested in forensic chemistry when I started college. By the end of college I was focusing on biochem and computational chemistry (more computers based) and became a chemist right out of school.

 

What made you decide to change your career?

I was working as a bench chemist and just didn’t enjoy it. In school I did a lot of computational chemistry (chemical modeling) which had a lot of programming – it turns out, it was the programming part that I really enjoyed. I looked for a job in that field and started working at a pharmaceutical company doing bioinformatics. Shortly thereafter, I started graduate school and earned my Master’s in Business. During that time, on the side, I had been building websites and really learning about SEO. After my pharma/biotech stint, I started working at a pharmaceutical search marketing company and really focused on search marketing from there out.

 

I can show you countless case studies from client successes where search has made a positive business impact – through incremental sales increases, brand awareness, overall conversions on their website, or all of the above. You can’t argue with good data.

 

What is the most rewarding aspect of working in search marketing?

Search marketing never gets boring. Trying to stay ahead of search engine algorithms, spammers, affiliate programs, analytics platforms, and the like is extremely challenging. However, I would say the most rewarding aspect is when we can see a real business impact from our search marketing efforts for our clients. This is especially exciting if they were initially hesitant to invest in search.

 

What have you found to be the biggest challenge in search marketing?

1.)   Staying ahead of the algorithm changes.

2.)   Proving the value of search to companies that haven’t done or don’t see the need for search.

 

What do you say to people who think search is unnecessary?

Look at the data. I can show you countless case studies from client successes where search has made a positive business impact – through incremental sales increases, brand awareness, overall conversions on their website, or all of the above. You can’t argue with good data.

 

How did you get involved in public speaking?

Most of my career has involved some type of sales, so public speaking has always been necessary. Whether it’s pitches, internal training, presentations, or panels, being able to present on subject (and search can be a very technical subject) in a way that non-technical folks can understand is essential. Also, since we’re talking about search, knowing your audience and speaking to them directly on how search impacts them and their job is crucial in communicating the value of search.

 

What do you enjoy the most about public speaking?

The interaction with people. I love talking with people about almost any subject, but I really like education people about search marketing who were uninformed or previously uninterested. I’m always excited to interact with peers who know about the subject or to teach people who are unfamiliar with the topic.

 

Since you are back and forth between San Francisco and Boston, we’re curious what aspects of both places you enjoy the most?

Both cities are amazing! I love food and Boston and SF are both awesome food cities. Also, both cities have incredible, albeit very different, cultures. They are similar in a lot of ways, but what I enjoy the most about each city has to do with the types of companies that I work with there. San Francisco has more startups and their entrepreneurial spirit is amazing work around. Boston has the start-up energy too, but is older and has a lot of companies with a more conservative, “Fortune 500” vibe about them which is also very interesting to work with.

 

Have any questions for Francis?  Ask in the comments section below!