Click through rates. Cost per acquisition. Callout extensions. Ad schedules. If you’re starting a career in marketing or specialising in PPC, these terms will come at you thick and fast in the first few weeks of starting your new job.
Rather than explain the differences between Googles Search Network and Display Network or what ad rotation your campaigns should be running on, I will attempt in this post to explain the five things which have helped me most in my first four weeks working in PPC, in order to help you better understand such terms.
Don’t be afraid to make “mistakes”
It will definitely feel daunting being presented with a client’s account, your job being to spend their money and hit certain goals and targets. There’s no way around this in your first few weeks, but be reassured, once you start to make changes and see the results (whether they be good or bad!) you’ll start to feel a lot more confident. Also, you’ll be started off on smaller accounts (hopefully!) and the changes that you’ll be making won’t have massive effects on budgets and CPC (cost per clicks) etc. so be confident in the changes that you’re making.
Make “mistakes”
The only way to really learn is to make those “mistakes” you’re no longer afraid of! PPC is all about data, and most of the changes you make to bids, keywords or ad copy will be driven by data analysis…these changes, although data driven, may end up being “mistakes”. It’s worth noting at this point that I’m using the word “mistake” as a very broad term. If you adjust bids on some of your keywords (after looking at the data) and they start to lose impressions and clicks then that’s a “mistake” however, if you change your clients daily budget to £100 when they have asked for it to be £10, then that’s definitely a mistake without quote marks. So making “mistakes” is not a bad thing; change ad copy and if it doesn’t perform as well as the original then change it back, change bid adjustments on demographics that are telling you more over 65’s are buying bifold doors than 18 year olds, make “mistakes”.
Read
There are countless guides and blog posts (much like this one) on all of the various segments of PPC marketing, here are the three that I found most useful when I first dipped my toes into the world of PPC. Firstly, as mentioned earlier, PPC is all about data and this blog post The Top 5 Ways To Use Pivot Tables For PPC will help you get to grips with Excel and most importantly pivot tables, which will allow you to analyse large amounts of data easily. Secondly, once you have gathered the data and assessed it you’re going to want engaging ad copy, this post will give you some hints and tips on how to produce successful creative, PPC 101 Writing Successful Creatives. Finally, after you’ve written your creative you’ll want to add various extensions to your adverts to give them maximum exposure this post, this post All About Sitelinks and Callout Extensions will help you make the most of them.
Talk to people
Whether it be about how excited you are for pudding week on the Great British Bake Off or what they think is the most effective ad rotation, talk to people. You’ll hopefully be sitting with the PPC team or at the very least digital marketers, so ask them questions about the industry and what projects they’re currently working on. If you want somebody to check over some changes you have made to an account or if they have any ideas for creative then ask them! In my experience they will be very happy to help you and geek out about PPC.
Google stuff
If there is no one around to ask and you have a problem just stick your question in Google. I guarantee someone, somewhere has had exactly the same problem as you and has either asked on a forum or posted an answer. Googles AdWords Help Centre is also very useful and you can find that here.
Thanks for the tips Mark!
In which situation would you hire a company that does PPC instead of doing them on your own, if you’re not a professional of course?
Hi Filip,
Thanks for the comment.
It all depends on your current situation. If you’re a self starter on your own you may want to look at starting PPC yourself with guidance from the internet on a small budget. However. as your business grows and you feel that there’s a lot to manage that’s when you can look at getting an external agency to help you. They will dedicate the time that you pay them for completely to PPC (or any other digital marketing channel you want to look at) as well as being experts in the industry with ideas on how to improve your adverts and increase your conversions.
Hope that helps,
Mark
Great Article! Thank you for sharing this is a very informative post, and looking forward to the latest one