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There are things Search Ad Network will and won't do when it comes to search engine marketing, but it's what the prospective client should do that will put them ahead of the competition from the start.

It's always good to hear a sensible Brooklyn accent on the phone, surrounded as I am in Kentucky with the varying levels of the local inflection. Andrew Beckman, president of SearchAdNetwork, brought that to our conversation today.

We touched on the recent critiques of Google's AdWords made by Ben Edelman. Campaigns that don't add value for consumers are ones that will generally see Beckman walk away from them.

Ones that do add value to their target market offer SearchAdNetwork a greater enticement to do business with a given client. Beckman cited WildBlue Communications, a provider of satellite Internet connectivity for rural areas, as one that worked in terms of building relationships with their market through advertising.

SearchAdNetwork used the expected strategies and routes to help WildBlue. API connections to the big four search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com, and the addition of geo-targeting helped them get WildBlue marketing in front of the desired, underserved rural demographic looking for better than a dial-up connection.

"SEM is time consuming and labor intensive," Beckman said of the challenge to companies to do it in-house. "Automation is key here."

More than just software and hard work makes the difference though. I asked Beckman what he thought is the best characteristic a potential client can possess when considering search engine marketing.

"Very few have a good strategy coming in," he said. Those that do share some traits: they know their audience, which is well-defined; they understand how to acquire customers from that audience, and the cost of that acquisition.

Being better prepared in this way, by doing the research and learning about customers, could lead Beckman to make a deal with a well-prepared client. If the client has that preparation down to an art, and a desire to commit to making the campaign work long-term, SearchAdNetwork is willing in some cases to work on a per-lead basis.

That sounds like a pretty good motivation for businesses to learn more about their potential customers.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.