Cipher SEM is a marketing consulting firm, founded by yours truly. I created Cipher for a couple of reasons. First, after many years in the Fortune 500 corporate hive, I decided to fly free. Equally importantly, I reached a point in my career where I wanted to help organizations decrypt the “secret code” of Search Engine Marketing and Google Ads. At some point, we all feel the need to give back, and with Cipher, I am doing that.

Prior to Cipher, I began my marketing career in a small family business in the mid-90s. I then briefly flirted with the Dot-Com Boom & Bust, helping now-extinct start-ups with their websites. In 2000, I joined the Small Business Division at Intuit in Mountain View, California. There I worked in QuickBooks Product Marketing and Direct Response Marketing, and in 2008 I joined their Search Engine Marketing team. I was quickly seduced by the power of SEM, and I’ve been in online acquisition ever since. After Intuit, I've worked with companies large and small, among them Evite, Sumo Logic, Invisalign, Platform9, and eShares.

I’m certified in Google Search Ads and have done everything from building and launching $500 test campaigns, to managing accounts with annual budgets in excess of $1M. To market successfully, I believe you must 1) be a psychologist - understand your prospective customer, and empathize with them, 2) be a scientist – create hypotheses, build experiments, and measure the results, and 3) be a craftsman – write, design, work with discipline and attention to detail. I strive to be all three.

Lastly, I hold certain values in high regard. Honesty, transparency, charity, excellence in execution.  These guide what I do, and are fundamental to my work at Cipher SEM.

Colan Pursell