The landscape of digital marketing looks vastly different today than it did just a few years ago. Recent changes in how social media platforms like Facebook have adapted their algorithms and shifts in how consumers are using the internet have made building visibility and generating traffic online a much more complex challenge.
Many businesses are discovering that their tried and true methods of reaching out to their audiences are falling short of meeting their expectations, and with this, they’re turning to pay per click campaigns to drive interest in their brands.
For digital marketing professionals, and those who aspire to work in the industry eventually, this has created a demand for individuals with the talent and skills to develop and implement powerful PPC campaigns that generate fast results. If you’ve been looking for a new career, or a way to elevate your current career and increase your earning potential, taking steps to become a certified PPC expert can be the first stepping stone in an exciting journey.
Curious about what being a PPC expert is all about and how you can make it happen? Here’s what you need to know.
What is PPC and Why Is It Important for Digital Marketing Today?
Pay Per Click (PPC) has a place right alongside search engine optimization as the most essential forms of digital marketing. While all digital marketing strategies have the same goal of building visibility and generating conversion from an online audience, PPC is more targeted and direct than others.
PPC is an internet marketing model where businesses, which in this case are also known as advertisers, create digital ads and pay a pre-determined amount each time one of their ads are clicked on. Essentially, it’s a way of paying for clicks instead of earning them organically, but this doesn’t mean that PPC requires any less of a strategic approach.
An effective PPC campaign is built around many core elements. For example, there are insights to consider which type of PPC ad and platform is best for achieving your goals, along with developing a keyword strategy and assessing the ad’s quality score. The perfect PPC campaign requires attention to detail, the ability to look at analytics objectively and the skills to put it all together into one attention-grabbing digital ad.
While SEO also has an important place in a digital strategy, PPC is the star performer when it comes to quickly lead high-quality traffic directly to a business’s digital doorstep. It’s all about connecting with the right audience at the exact moment that they’re most likely to initiate a relationship with the brand. The right approach will grow a brand’s customer base and generate high quality leads at a relatively low cost and higher ROI compared to other digital marketing strategies.
The Role of PPC in a Successful Digital Strategy
We can look at statistics like how 41% of clicks go to the top three paid ads on a search engine results page or how traffic that comes from PPC ads is 50% more likely to convert, and get a pretty clear picture of why a dedicated approach to PPC ads is vital to any digital strategy.
Still, many businesses will look at other avenues of digital marketing before they even glance at PPC. This makes perfect sense for those businesses that aren’t that familiar with digital marketing or don’t have anyone on their team with the skills to create a successful PPC campaign. After all, at first glance PPC can come off as a somewhat risky financial wager, especially when SEO is free.
Helping businesses understand the important role of pay per click ads in a successful digital strategy is one of the most critical tasks for PPC professionals. The fact is that businesses are finding it harder and harder to stand out and increase their visibility through digital marketing standbys like SEO and organic social media reach.
The digital landscape is becoming more crowded, and social media platforms are rethinking their priorities, making it more difficult than ever to reach a target audience without a paid campaign. When a business has their heels dug in and adamantly says no to PPC, it’s a specialist’s job to enlighten them on why PPC is becoming a necessity for achieving any real growth.
PPC serves many important functions in a successful digital strategy. A few of the most critical include:
- Maximizing marketing budgets by only paying when an ad is clicked
- Greater budgeting control and the ability to adopt a PPC campaign to meet budgeting needs
- PPC ads are super targeted and aimed at audiences that are most likely to convert
- PPC produces an almost instantaneous, steady stream of qualified traffic
- Businesses experience a fast and impressive return on their investment
- PPC works hand in hand with SEO to elevate the overall results of a digital strategy
As a PPC expert, you’ll be prepared to show businesses firsthand how a well-designed paid strategy will encourage growth and provide an impressive boost in revenue.
Skills Needed to Master the Art of Becoming a PPC Expert
PPC experts possess a wide range of skills, many of which you might not immediately associate with professionals in digital marketing. This is because PPC experts do more than look at some metrics and throw together an ad campaign. They also have to be masters at interpretation and have a creative passion for their line of work.
If you’re serious about jumpstarting a career in as a PPC expert, here are 5 skills that employers will expect you to have mastered.
Understanding the Metrics
High performing PPC campaigns usually don’t come around as a result of good luck. Achieving real results requires unrelenting attention to detail that includes not only being able to understand how various metrics fit into the picture but also how to leverage them for optimal performance.
PPC experts need to understand how to interpret and apply metrics such as click through rates (CTR), keyword analytics, everything that goes into a quality score and the components that produce the type of ROI that leaves a smile on their client’s faces.
Mastery of the AdWords Platform
There are numerous platforms where PPC campaigns can be played out, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one as effective at producing results as Google AdWords. Google handles the majority of internet searches, so it only makes sense that they’re also the first one businesses turn to when they’re ready to invest in PPC.
Mastery of the AdWords platform is an absolute necessity for anyone who wants to call themselves a PPC expert today. A PPC training and certification course can help you learn everything you need to know about Google AdWords and producing impressive results on the platform.
Creativity
Successful PPC ads require more than a targeted keyword strategy. They also need to be compelling enough to convince even the hesitant search engine user that they’re missing out on something by not clicking on the ad. PPC professionals are required to tap into some creative inspiration to create ads that attract higher quality leads and increase click through rates.
Intuition
Sometimes a PPC campaign isn’t working even though all the analytics say that it should be. A PPC expert works with a combination of intuition and practical insights that allows them to analyze and gauge a campaign’s performance. This skill is especially important from a business perspective because it prevents them from continuing to funnel money into an underperforming keyword strategy or a dead-end platform.
Adaptability
As we just mentioned, sometimes the trajectory of a PPC campaign isn’t what you hoped it would be. Sometimes this stems from a change in the market, an ineffective keyword strategy or merely a bad roll or the dice. Either way, a PPC expert doesn’t hold onto to a strategy because it “should” be working. Instead, they proactively dive in and adapt their strategy before their client or employer feels any financial drain.
How to Become a PPC Expert
If you’re feeling drawn to a career as a PPC expert, you’ll be happy to know that there are very few barriers to entering the field. Unlike many other careers with excellent growth potential, a PPC career path doesn’t require any specialized degree, although there will be some employers who will prefer a candidate with a degree in business or one more closely related to their industry.
There are multiple paths you can take to reach your goal of a career as a PPC expert, and often the path starts with drive and self-motivation. For example, someone who is eager to start the career path but doesn’t have a great deal of training or experience can easily gain an edge over the competition by taking a PPC certification training, along with adding a Google AdWords certification to their CV.
Getting your hands dirty, so to speak, and putting yourself in a position to get lots of hands-on experience is another way of capturing the attention of hiring managers. Begin by connection with organizations that might not be able to afford a seasoned PPC expert and offer your services in exchange for the experience or start your own website with the goal of producing a measurable boost in traffic through keyword management and PPC campaign building.
Finally, knowledge is power. The more you read, do and immerse yourself into PPC projects, the more effectively you position yourself for a gratifying career as a PPC expert. When you’re ready to take the first big step, consider taking a genuine course from various ones that are available in the market.
Community manager at Visual Contenting. Jacqueline loves to talk about social media trends, new technology and how they help businesses accelerate their marketing efforts.
