expertSEM

Today’s return from holiday visits and DIA travel woes was welcomed by the announcement that WalMart is entering the SEM provider market, and now offers flat fee SEM services.

I have mixed feelings about this development; on the one hand , I despise WalMart for wrecking the downtown area of my beloved Morehead City, NC by driving all the small businesses out of business. On the other hand, I know that WalMart cannot provide a professional level of SEM service at a much lower price than what the industry already does. They will have to find qualified people, or train prospective SEM marketers, either one is difficult, and once they finish this process, they will have to pay the prevailing rate for those employees, or they will just bail to one of the many agencies scrambling to staff up their SEM departments. So I’m not worried about them ruining my paychecks with cheap Chinese imports like they did for brick and mortar businesses.

However, I can’t help but feel a little insulted that this giant is deciding to try and compete with middle income professionals who make up the tax base of this fine country. At the risk of getting way too macro-economic for this blog, if WalMarts all start offering tax, web, marketing, consulting and whatever service they can think of, the end of their road is elimination of anyone who offers goods or services other than themselves, a horizontal monopoly.

Look at their offering, it is for really basic service, and probably poor, unresponsive service at that. No one should be worried, only insulted. And if you didn’t hate WalMart before, you probably do now.