PPC AdWords Jobs

Pretty well anyone can describe themselves as a PPC specialist and in this rapidly growing industry the establishment of standards and credentials is still a work in progress. Today we’re going to examine what it takes to work in PPC, how to identify the true experts from those whose skills are less developed, what it’s like to work in Pay Per Click and why creating relationships with genuine PPC specialists could benefit your business.

PPC, AdWords Certification and Google Partners

Google AdWords certification is issued to individuals who can demonstrate clear skills in both basic and advanced AdWords actions. This certification allows people to call themselves ‘Google Experts’ or professionals in online advertising. The certification is available to Google’s online training program, the Academy for Ads, a free program that offers both learning paths and assessments. The process is twofold - demonstrating personal expertise and helping an organization achieve Google Partner or Premier Google Partner status.

Certified Google Partners are agencies rather than individuals, who have been certified by Google to handle AdWords accounts. To earn and maintain certification as either Google Partner or Premier Google Partner, a company must have at least one affiliated member that is AdWords certified, must have demonstrated AdWords expertise, have met AdWords spend requirements, and created both client revenue growth and agency development. For Premier status, an agency needs to demonstrate sustained revenue growth and that it has grown its client base.

These nesting or interlinking areas of expertise give Google AdWords clients a clear sense of what digital marketing agencies or professionals have to offer. In an otherwise unregulated employment field, the Google certification offers a degree of certainty, especially to those moving forward from handling their PPC in-house who are trying to find their way through a minefield of claims and counterclaims about what self-declared PPC gurus can and can’t deliver. Of course there are increasingly attempts to regulate and define professional standards in the field, as has been done with accountancy. The American Marketing Association (AMA) and the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK have both updated their marketing competencies in the last decade to include digital marketing but interestingly, neither has really grasped the supremacy of online commerce. The AMA says “Digital marketing no longer is an add-on. It's an imperative” listing it as one of the nine key elements of marketing, while the CIM identifies it as one of eight technical competencies necessary for specific marketing areas.

What it means to be a PPC specialist

There’s a huge gap between the true PPC specialist and those who have taken a couple of courses, browsed the offerings at the Google AdWords Academy but never actually followed through on the individual professional requirements that would earn them Google Adwords Expert standing.

PPC specialists have expertise in online advertising. They plan and optimize internet campaigns, usually operating either Google AdWords or Bing Ads accounts. They may work:

In-house for the company that has the AdWords account
As freelancers who offer remote services in AdWords or Bing Ads creation
For dedicated PPC or digital agencies where they oversee campaigns for several clients.

Entry level PPC and SEO work offers a reasonable salary but for those who have over five years’ experience the salary increases are substantial and for highly experienced PPC managers and consultants both salaries and commissions can really skyrocket.

An average week in a PPC Adwords job

While the sexy part of PPC is always the creating and unrolling of PPC campaigns, there are a huge range of other activities the need to be undertaken to create, maintain, modify and oversee PPC work. For example, a PPC expert may:

Keep oversight of currently running campaigns, checking progress and recommending better refinements to optimize them.
Analyze trends, dig into data and suggest new approaches based on those trends and data.
Craft converting copy for online advertisements.
Accounts management and communicating with clients.
Create reports and data streams for internal and external audiences.
Pitch new ideas and seek new clients.

While PPC is essential to the process of online commerce, it’s important to remember it’s only one part of the larger picture of online commerce and digital marketing. Some people are PPC specialists and work alongside SEO and digital PR experts while others incorporate elements of SEO, digital strategy and online PR into their PPC roles.

Managing a Google AdWords Campaign

The Google AdWords program is the world’s pre-eminent online advertising system. The same procedures and processes apply to every campaign, from a sole trader’s tiny online storefront all the way through to a multinational company’s global marketing activity. The stages of managing an AdWords campaign are:

Finding keywords to indicate which search terms to focus on.
Designing advertising narrative (called ad text).
Creating the campaign by grouping adverts using variations of the keywords and advertising text.
Crafting individual landing pages for each advert (this happens for larger companies, although small enterprises may simply have a home page to which all their adverts link).
Managing budget by testing advert variations and examining conversions.
Monitoring data from all levels for the campaign, such as click through and bounce rates, CPC and CPL.

What skills help individuals excel in PPC Adwords Jobs?

Maths and analytic skills - because a large percentage of time is give over to exploring the data from current and past campaigns, individuals need to get a degree of satisfaction from digging through statistics and numbers to fine-tune ongoing campaigns. Being able to manipulate data is an essential.
Business acumen - a PPC expert has to understand the client’s business, invest in their goals and have the skills to deliver results through PPC.
Effective time management - balancing responsibilities across a campaign or across multiple client campaigns requires superb time management.
Ancillary skills - some PPC experts have HTML backgrounds, others are skilled at Javascript, both of which can give an extra depth of input to a PPC campaign. While these skills are useful, it’s vital to have a good grasp of tracking codes and tag management.
Copy creation - Click-Through-Rates are delivered in part by the creation of exciting advertising copy that engages the viewer and causes them to take action. Many PPC specialists have a background in copywriting or take additional courses to help them improve their advertising narrative.
Adjustability - PPC campaigns require constant adjustment to find the balance between budget and conversions. Channels have seasonal variations as well as attracting differentiated consumers and any PPC specialist needs to be able to set aside material that has worked previously if results start to fall away. New features emerge constantly as PPC develops and changes and this means that specialist needs to embrace the development of the field with enthusiasm and not be precious about previously successful strategies.

What makes PPC AdWords Jobs so worthwhile?

For those working in PPC the rewards are obvious. There’s the pleasure of having a clear impact; the results of PPC advertising are immediate, usually visible within hours and, unlike other business areas, poor results can be turned around within 24 hours. It’s never boring - while PPC specialists might complain from time to time about being too busy, they rarely complain of boredom. PPC is a widely diverse activity that involves creative and analytic areas, skills in communication and finance and the requirement to plan ruthlessly to ensure that campaigns are optimally maintained. Enthusiasm is another key aspect of the PPC world, a reasonably young field of endeavour such as PPC tends to be filled with young, enthusiastic, forward-thinking individuals who respond energetically to new challenges, this can make for a exciting workplace full of activity and novel ideas.

For those who are naturally logical, PPC AdWords Jobs can be rewarding - paid search doesn’t just require the ability to analyze data, it also demands that the individual, and their organization, be able to make smart decisions, based on data not on emotions. It’s a bit like the 3D chess game they play on Star Trek - decision-making on a lot of levels at the same time. Involvement is the final reason that many PPC experts find their work so satisfying - while PPC strategy is a vital component of the job, there’s also a lot of hands-on activity from number-crunching to face-to-face client communication which is deeply immersive. This aspect of PPC gives everybody, from the head honcho down to the most recently arrived AdWords novice, a literal fingertip influence over Pay Per Click campaigns and is one of the elements of the job that makes PPC so exciting.