I’ve been working at a digital marketing agency for nine years, the last three focusing specifically on PPC. I still have plenty to learn, but over that time I’ve picked up a lot about this industry. My goal here is to provide some early lessons, so you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did!
1. Learn About The Business First
If you don’t understand the company you’re marketing, their goals, and their customers, your campaigns will be destined to fail. While there are similarities across industries, each business is still unique and you need to determine how it can stand out among its competitors. By investing the time upfront to learn about the ins and outs, the pain points its customers face, and the unique advantages it offers vs it’s competitors, you’ll be able to better design campaigns that will fit the client’s needs and which will work for them.
2. General Marketing Knowledge Is Incredibly Valuable
While you should be looking to master PPC, there are huge benefits to be had from obtaining a 101 level knowledge of general marketing concepts and developing an understanding of other marketing channels. This could mean learning more about how the Search Engine Results Page works between both paid & organic search, learning the basics of copywriting, or which channels are best at capturing demand vs generating demand. This additional know-how can be used to inform the management of your PPC campaigns, but you can also use it to provide insight into other strategies or marketing channels that might impact the business.
3. Master The Fundamentals, Don’t Look for “Hacks”
It’s more important to develop a thorough understanding of the fundamentals (ad copy, targeting, landing pages, how the auction works, conversion tracking), than it is to use advanced hacks or short-cuts. I was guilty of this when I started out, as it was much more appealing to learn an advanced hack than it was to spend hours developing a thorough picture of how the auction works. If you don’t have a deep-rooted understanding of these fundamentals, you won’t know which situations call for specific, and if it doesn’t work you won’t know why.
Top Tip: At MoonSauce Agency, we have a few blogs that outline core fundamentals like improving Quality Score, Keyword Research, and Launching a Campaign.
4. Look to Learn From The PPC Community
Some of my favorite ways to grow my skill set have been by working and communicating with others. I’d even go as far as to say my favorite part about working in PPC is how amazing the community is at sharing knowledge!
Linkedin can be great for this – there’s a billion people you could follow and learn from right away, but some of my favorites are:
–Adriaan Dekker: in addition to posts for keeping up with all of the ongoing changes in PPC land, he also posts really cool walkthrough videos to show how to set up things like Dynamic Remarketing or Offline Conversion Tracking.
–Miles McNair: Miles’ feed is a great resource for diving into PPC, with a mix of advanced strategies and fundamentals.
–Roger Cooney (blatant self-promotion!): I’ve put out a few post series aimed at educating on topics like how to improve Quality Score, as well as weekend recaps of the best PPC posts from others throughout the week.
Courses & Webinars can be extremely valuable as well. People on our team have sworn by Isaac Rudansky’s Ultimate 2024 Google Ads Training course on Udemy, and I always love checking out everything from SMX Next (coming up mid-November).
But my favorite option is easily engaging with PPC Communities. These are invaluable, as they are very engaging and active, and you can ask questions from other PPC Pros as well as leverage other resources like Checklists, Courses, and more! My 2 favorites are easily The PPC Hub and the PPC Profit Lab.
And, if you haven’t already, definitely subscribe to the PPC Hero newsletter for some of the best PPC content in the world!
5. The Landing Page is All-Important
The landing page matters far more than I originally realized. When you’re starting work on a campaign it’s important not to overlook it, in favour of those more directly PPC areas, such as creative and targeting. Use any of the available tools to analyze and improve your pages. There are advanced tools you can use like HotJar, but if you don’t have additional budget then Microsoft Clarity + GA4 will get you a lot of the way there for free.
Looking back on my early days, I saw this go both ways plenty of times. I had excellent campaign strategies fail due to bad landing pages and websites, and bad campaign strategies excel due to high-quality landing pages/websites. If you don’t understand the importance of your landing page, you might find yourself going astray went looking to understand why something is or isn’t working!
6. Actual Data is Better than “Best Practice” and Theory
How many times have you looked at an account and said, “This account is a mess, I would never set it up this way!” You go in, make sweeping changes to “upgrade” everything according to best practices, and, instead of taking off, performance tanks! That’s not a great feeling, and was one of the biggest mistakes I made way back in the day.
While best practices are important, performance data is king. If something is working but doesn’t line up with the best practices you’ve studied, don’t over-react. Ironically, now that I have more experience, I know that sometimes the strategy you put in place doesn’t always work as planned. Now, if I see an unexpected strategy working, I take the time to investigate and determine why it’s working, and if a change is actually warranted. You can always run a Campaign Experiment to test if your proposed structure actually improves results.
7. Don’t Only Focus In-Platform
This goes hand-in-hand with the importance of the landing page. In your early days, you’ll spend the vast majority of your time in Google Ads. This is a good thing, as it takes hands-on experience to truly figure out how everything works. As you advance you’ll learn that some of the biggest gains can be found outside of the platform.
One example is improving the offer. If the business only promotes the same generic benefits all of their competitors also have there won’t be a significant reason for someone to choose them over someone else. Another example could be improving their lead intake process. If the business doesn’t respond to leads in a timely manner, or has an unnecessarily complex sales process, then there is a massive opportunity to improve results. We’ve even seen unreasonably high shipping fees kill performance on what otherwise would have been a successful campaign.
8. Use Checklists
There’s a reason doctors and pilots (and hundreds of other occupations) use checklists – they work! PPC is getting more complex by the day, and if you’re not using checklists in some capacity then you’re bound to miss something. By using (and constantly updating/improving) checklists, you’ll create a process that will ensure you don’t repeat the mistakes of your past.
9. Don’t Worry Too Much About Optimization Score or Ad Strength
This one hurts. Early on I was unnecessarily focused on arbitrary metrics that have very little to do with any actual business goals. Don’t get me wrong, there are positive aspects of each. Optimization Score is basically just a measure of how aligned your campaign is with Google’s best practices, but within the Recommendations given there are some good ideas that may actually improve performance. As seen in Optmyzr’s recent study, Ad Strength has no correlation with business results, but can still be useful for identifying ad creative that isn’t strong enough to drive a significant amount of impressions. Quality Score, on the other hand, is a much more meaningful metric.
10. You Don’t Have To Take Every Google Rep Call
You don’t need to hop on a call every time a Google Ads rep reaches out for one. Sometimes it might make sense to align with reps for Enterprise clients, especially if you want to offer access to betas or fancy pdf reports from Google. But in general, you’ll save a lot of time, money, and headache with this quick Email template I use:
“We’re not currently taking meetings, but feel free to send over your recommendations & insights via email”
If you’re working at an agency or freelancing for a high volume of clients, this will save you hours per month.
It’s also important for new PPC-ers to consider that in many circumstances Google Ads reps’ top priority is increasing your ad spend, not your performance. Early on, it can be very difficult to assess which recommendations are likely to improve performance vs increase earnings for Google.
Note – This isn’t meant to bash all Google Ads reps, and we’ve certainly had some fantastic ones! I would simply exercise caution when taking any recommendations, especially if you don’t deeply understand what they are suggesting.
Summary
Google Ads can be completely overwhelming at first, and it’s no wonder why so many people feel imposter syndrome even well into their careers. I’m hoping this article helps you to avoid some of the obstacles and mistakes that I experienced early on in my PPC career, so that you can go on to drive fantastic results for the businesses you work with.
