Why You Want to Work in PPC

Working in pay-per-click marketing means helping businesses grow. The people that excel at PPC love making things work and knowing why they work.

In PPC, the technical execution of a campaign is just as important as the strategic and creative side of things. You can have the perfect ad, but if it’s technically setup to only serve in Antartica, you’re probably not hitting your target audiences.

PPC managers are basically matchmakers.

The role of a PPC account manager is to match an advertiser’s ad with a customer that is likely to hit-it-off with the ad and create a sales or lead baby!

Okay, a bit too far, but you get the jist of it. PPC at its core is about relevancy as you want to make sure people being shown ads are likely to click them, as that’s how you get them onto your client or employer’s site.

So, work in PPC is not about serving ads to Antartica or ads for “window panes” to people researching “widow pains.”

You get to decide the relevancy or irrelevancy; the success of the relationship between customer and advertiser.

Matchmakers that like numbers

PPC involves data analysis. PPC managers have to make sure their targeting performs consistently by using historical trends to predict and proactively adjust for the future.

The best PPC managers can deep-dive into their accounts at a moment’s notice, quickly and neatly summarizing what the data means where, when, and why.

And, when tracking’s working, all this analysis and action leads to more of whatever the advertiser wants whether it be video views, newsletter signups, lead submissions, or good old-fashioned sales.

So, if you’re not afraid to manipulate spreadsheets or tell data-stories, you just might find the PPC profession very accommodating to your numerical wizardry, the more mathematical the better (and the faster your importance and pay will grow, so long as what you’re calculating is improving account performance).

And part of a new & growing profession

As more and more advertising dollars shift from traditional media to digital media, the need for competent management of those advertising dollars grows.

PPC marketing once existed in the shadows, the service itself invisible on most businesses’ radars.

Vantage originated from a solo act in 2008 when the “what is PPC” consisted of more of the sales pitch than the “why run PPC.”

But now, 10 years later, the “why” has been replaced with a “how:” “how will your PPC services make us grow?” “how will your PPC services be different from agency X?” “how will your PPC team handle this promotion, campaign, year, etc?”

The PPC profession has made rapid advancements up the marketing assets ladder. This ascension looks pretty good if you’re considering a career in PPC.

The movement of PPC from mysterious-internet-thing to valuable marketing department happened alongside the internal advancement of the industry’s techniques and competitive changes from the ad platforms like Google or Facebook or Amazon.

Mastery of both the fundamentals of PPC and keeping up with such network updates, new tools, software, and strategies born from these changes, requires a balanced, organized, and always-learning individual.

To Sum it Up:

Your work will have visible, measurable results
Technical, organizational, analytical skills shine
Growing your clients’/employer’s business increases your value and often your compensation
You will gain a behind-the-scenes understanding of the most popular networks like Facebook, Google, and Amazon
All you need is a working computer and an internet connection, allowing flexibility
You will work with AI and not be replaced by it
The fundamental knowledge-base of the profession grows rapidly, meaning the sooner you get your foot in the door the more valuable you’ll be in the future

Taking the PPC path opens up your professional development to data analysis, ad network expertise, lead generation, eCommerce management, and much more; all extremely valuable skills in the internet age.

Moving away from the whirlwind of platform changes, advertising optimizations, and technical execution, PPC, at its core, bridges the gap between advertiser and customer and it does it in a smarter way than traditional media.

From using a comprehensive web of demographics and interests to build the perfect targeting portfolio for an ad to presenting the exact solution to a web searcher’s query, PPC marketers aim to create the most relevant ad experience for an internet user so that an advertiser’s dollars are never wasted.

The beauty of PPC is the ability to get the right ads in front of the right customers.

While the image of the digital marketer spamming internet experiences with click-baity, popping-up, unsubstantial advertising is a powerful cultural touchstone, the real, valuable PPC marketers would consider anything remotely close to such an ad experience as a complete failure.

PPC marketers work for legitimate companies who want legitimate ads in front of relevant customers. Spam is not a part of the profession.

Since PPC’s still basically in its infancy alongside the internet, the field’s relatively self-taught, so if you have any formal education in search marketing you’ve got a leg-up on your applications.

But, importantly, if you don’t have a formal education directly in PPC, there’re infinite resources online and you’ll always have the ability to hop into networks like Google Ads on your own.