essential PPC skills that every agency professional must possess

Today, most digital agencies are willing to employ beginner marketers.

Many do not offer meaningful training in pay-per click ( PPC ) marketing. Some colleagues may even hide or misrepresent important information.

You can get a lot of this information for free online, but it is often a mess.

Here is a five-step plan that will help you become an expert in PPC as quickly as possible.

1. Master Client Relationship

It may seem cliche, but I think it’s the best skill.

After over a decade of working in PPC and training hundreds specialists, it is by far the main reason that PPC professionals climb the agency ladder.

Why? You’re responsible to drive your client’s business growth, and this is a people-first industry.

Be aware that PPC performance expectations are high and there is no straight line.

You will have to fix things that others think are critical, or you’ll need to convince them not to touch something despite their perceptions.

This can be stressful and interfere with your ability to handle relationships.

You’ll have to be patient, remain calm, and explain analytical and technical concepts in plain English.

How can you improve your client relations? Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Trust is the key to building trust

With time, trust will come. When your client really needs you, be that person on whom he or she knows they can count.

Imagine a project you have to complete at the last minute that is important to your client, but not to you. It’s also a little outside your scope.

A point of contact at an agency that is untrustworthy would not be able to support this client. You should.

Trust is the foundation for long-term and impactful results.

Show Expertise

It’s true that I have seen many agency staffers not prepare for client meetings. Some people don’t prepare for questions and are only able to say “I’ll be back with you.”

Don’t be that person. Send agendas for meetings in advance.

Include meeting minutes, action items, and deadlines.

Be reliable.

Be empathetic

Not everyone behaves in the same manner. Not every meeting needs to be a sunny day.

You don’t really like your client?

What? That’s okay.

Let them go: you’re not liked by everyone.

Even if the times are hard and the people rigid, you should be the one who drives the project forward.

2. Think Strategically

Okay, I get it. Cloud computing, innovation and big data are all buzzwords. Strategy is no exception. It is still vital to the success of PPC specialists in agencies.

What does being strategic mean? The answer depends on what field you are in.

You can read the HBR strategy article and see that it does not apply to your day-today PPC.

Let me give you a definition of a PPC-centric operational strategy:

Other words, to think strategically is to prioritize your efforts according the result.

This example will help to make the concept more clear. Follow these steps the next time you want an A/B Test:

PPC beginners rarely focus on the operational strategy. If you understand what’s above, this is a good starting point.

Here is a framework that will help you structure your thinking about strategy:

Goals

It is common for ecommerce clients to combine revenue with return on advertising spend (ROAS).

Lead generation clients will receive a cost per marketing qualified lead (MQL).

Can you challenge them?

Include margins to increase ROAS. MQL value is better than MQL volume.

Budget

You will be able to choose between “unlimited” as long as you reach a certain ROAS target or a set amount of money per month/year. Can you contest that?

Is the budget allocated to the correct product line, or the geo that will maximize your goal for example? Has seasonality been taken into account?

Targeting

You are trying to reach your target audience. You will need to use advertising networks and channels. Sometimes, these items are not set up in a way that maximizes your goals.

You can be strategic when you discover pockets of growth.

CTA, landing page, and messaging

This one seems obvious, right?

There’s no one right way to convince prospects to act and reach your goals.

Ads Libraries and your critical thinking can help you to come up with new (and hopefully better) ways of addressing your target audience. Use Ads Libraries to develop other (hopefully better!) ways of addressing your target audience.

Search for daily newsletters that marketers use.

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Terms.

3. Navigation data with precision

Data isn’t just another buzzword. Sorry!

I will break down the data skills and give PPC beginners an easy path.

As a PPC novice, you can think of data in three different ways.

Here are some real-world tools that will help you get started.

You must create reports in PPC to understand the traffic sources, conversion attribution rates, conversion rates by funnel stage, and product-level performance.

Learn GA4 and related analytics tools.

Dig deeper: Google Analytics 4 guide for PPC

You should at least try to determine what events trigger your conversions.

Most often, this means using GTM preview mode to test your client’s live website. Be sure to understand how the system works.

Do not make the silly mistake of dumping a bunch of KPIs on your clients, who won’t understand a word you said because they dislike Excel.

Spend some time vulgarizing data in order to create a story that is both simple to understand and powerful.

Looker Studio, for example, has powerful graphs and tables that you can use to visualize your data.

Google Looker Studio: Five things you must know about the PPC dashboard

4. Commit yourself to learning each day

It’s a skill set that I have seen countless PPC professionals skip, and then be unable to correct it later. This leads to poor performance in terms of operational and management.

No rush; take your time.

Google Ads, and Meta Ads are the two primary PPC channels. The majority of clients will either use one or both ad networks. You may ask, what’s wrong with that?

It’s the dunning-Kruger Effect.

Many people only handle a couple of campaigns and think they understand the platform.

Others will run SkAG campaigns for the rest of their lives without realizing that there is a world beyond this structure.

You want to establish a solid technical foundation for the primary ad network (at least), but you should also be willing to test that foundation from time to time.

Do not believe the hype about PPC changing every few days. But don’t stick to your old habits!

How can you start as a PPC newbie? Here are a few tips:

Get Certified

Google Ads Certifications are not very useful.

They have one great advantage, however: they are a good starting point to learn PPCs, vocabulary and perspectives.

Meta also offers certifications and training, so make sure you use them.

Read the news

You’re probably reading this because you already know that Search Engine Land has a lot of great information to keep you up-to-date and to learn new things.

Follow other content creators. You can, for example, read Jon Loomer’s blog on everything Meta Ads and follow agency blogs.

Test it on Your Own

Google Ads, Meta Ads, and other advertising platforms offer credits to new advertisers. Since Shopify’s launch, it has never been easier to create a store.

Do not be afraid to start a side project. You can learn and experiment in a safe environment.

Network

You will never be capable of mastering all projects on your own.

Talking to PPC peers will help you to master PPC.

Did I mention that it’s awesome to be able to talk with people who know what you’re experiencing?

5. Get Organized

Am I saying the obvious? You will soon realize that PPC is very detail-oriented, and you’ll need to have a “second brain” in order to keep up without going insane (or destroying a client).

Even the slightest mistake can have a dramatic impact on performance. You’ll have a hard time finding the needle six months after you made your mistake!

As a PPC expert, you need to be familiar with:

Project Management

Are you familiar with tools such as Monday.com, Asana Notion and others? Use them if you haven’t.

Priorities, deadlines, dependencies and other factors can help you organize your tasks and projects.

You will have a better understanding of your work and schedule.

Documentation Tools

You want to be able to recall and understand specific dates in order to use them as a reference for the future.

Do you remember what happened in November 2019?

You can now easily create templates for your work

Do you find yourself doing the same thing over and over? This sounds like the perfect case to automate.

You won’t need to reinvent the wheel each time. You’ll also be able delegate so easily, which will pave the way to a successful managerial career.

Every agency professional should be able to master the following PPC skills:

PPC is more than just choosing the right keyword match type and writing ad text.

You are now ready to climb the agency ladder.

The first time Search Engine Land published the article 5 essential PPC Skills every agency professional must have, it was on Search Engine Land .

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