A Day in the Life of a PPC Specialist

My name is James and I work as a PPC Analyst at Incubeta. I recently finished a Master’s degree in Physics, and a role in PPC advertising appealed to me due to its analytical nature. The job is far more diverse than I had imagined, so I thought I would share with you a typical day in the life of a PPC specialist!

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Firstly, what is Paid Search marketing (or Pay-Per-Click / PPC)? Paid Search is a model of internet advertising in which advertisers pay a specific amount each time one of their ads is clicked. Advertisers bid for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links for keywords related to their business offering, paying the search engine a small fee for each click received on their ad.

So What Does a Day in the Life of a PPC Marketing Specialist Entail?

Email / Newsletters / Blogs

I start every day by checking my email; responding to client emails and dealing with any queries related to my campaigns. I also get sent a lot of industry e-newsletters and blogs which help me to stay up-to-date with the latest movements in the industry. I tend to scan the articles, and then choose a few important topics to read more on – either because they will support existing and future campaigns, or because they could provide valuable content for a future blog post.

Setting up and managing PPC Campaigns

PPC marketing revolves around keywords; keyword research, grouping, and organisation is key to creating great campaigns. So the set up and implementation of a PPC campaign comprises a large part of my work day.

My work involves researching, building and testing keywords, writing and testing ad copy, developing creative display ads, implementing effective landing pages and setting up appropriate campaign targets to ensure that the right messages get to the right people at the right time. The best PPC advertising involves selecting keywords based on analysis of keyword traffic data and goal conversions, instead of third-party estimates.

Monitoring performance

With every PPC client, we have a set of goals agreed. I set aside time each day to check and analyse each live campaign. I spend time a lot of time monitoring and analysing the performance of a client’s campaign on Google Analytics. I will do this to check if there is increased or decreased activity and try to determine the cause, whilst ensuring that we are still meeting current goals for clients.

I also spend time analysing how performance could be improved and looking at new ways to drive more success from a campaign. This may involve looking at competitor activity, or analysing consumer activity from a location, time or demographic perspective.

Campaign analysis and reporting

A large part of the role involves analysing data from each campaign to develop reports to feedback to the client. These will include stats on each element of the campaign’s performance, together with forward projections and recommendations. I use a number of tracking and reporting tools, including a lot of Excel! These tools enable me to understand performance trends across all of the key PPC metrics including spend, impressions, clicks, conversions, average cost-per-click, click-through-rates, conversion rates, as well as many other PPC metrics.

By analysing each part of the campaign, I can quickly identify and amend elements of the campaign which are not performing well, such as keywords which are not being searched on, or regions where there is little interest in the client’s brand. With this information I can change my bidding strategy and key messaging in order to maximise the investment.

Content Creation

Creating content such as ad copy and sales messaging for campaigns, and also blog posts, is another part of my role. As an agency we are passionate about sharing our own expertise and insights from our campaigns, therefore I also have a responsibility to create and publish blogs on anything to do with PPC. Having fresh, exciting, informative content on our website reaffirms our position as thought leaders in this industry. This makes me personally proud to work for this company.

Relationship Building

A final, but significant part of the role is to create and manage relationships. This could involve communicating with clients, networking with industry professionals and working productively with fellow team members. This is an important part of the job and one that brings more diversity to the day-to-day campaign management.

Throughout my day I am multi-tasking; I may be researching, analysing, writing, on the phone and working on Google Analytics at any given moment, at the same time. There’s a lot to do and the playing field is always changing which always makes for a busy, but fun day. The online world is growing and changing at a fantastic rate, as a result a specialist in Paid Search marketing and strategy is exciting, and the follow-on career opportunities vast.

 

Good luck! If you have any questions about starting a career in PPC then please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

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