As PPC nerds, we continuously find ways to bring PPC into our daily lives outside of work. We break baseball down into a game of stats and metrics, try to find the quickest path to the goal completion of everyday chores, and even try to guess the CPM of TV ads during an episode of The Walking Dead.
In the same way we bring PPC knowledge into our daily lives, we can also bring real life skills into our PPC management. Just like the real world, every PPC manager has their own particular way of going about their daily lives – reacting to changes and developing rituals and habits. Some of these habits and behaviors are great, while others are maybe not so beneficial.
When facing poor account performance, we often rely on our tried and trusted methods. However, sometimes our bag of tricks simply does not work and requires a different skill set. To improve account performance, it is often helpful to get back to basics and apply simple life rules that we often live by on a daily basis.
Here are 5 things you need to stop doing right now to improve your PPC performance.
1) Trying To Please Everyone
This sentiment is a tough one to change for many people. As performance marketers, we are judged by our ability to meet goals and keep our clients happy. We become disappointed when customers do not like creative we spent hours poring over or do not respond well to our landing pages. However, as in life, some people simply do not work well together. How do you change it? You shift your focus on trying to please everyone to the target audiences interacting with the brand, the keywords that are driving the best performance, and stick to the tactics that are meeting goals.
2) Fearing Change
There comes a time in the life of an Adwords account where change is inevitable. It comes in many forms:
- ETAs
- Device bid modifiers
- Market expansion
Change is scary for the best of us. It is how we react to change that ultimately makes our accounts a major success or failure. By ignoring change and sticking to what you know, you confine yourself and your account to limited success and growth. In order to advance your account and personal growth, it is vital to embrace change. You should test new ideas, learn how new markets react to messages, and try out various bidding strategies. Most importantly, do not allow yourself to become stagnant due to a fear of change.
3) Living In The Past
We are all guilty of getting stuck in a rut and clinging to our safety nets simply because they work. But do they still actually work? As account managers, it is easy to continually use the same tactics over and over again, especially when performance declines and the only dependable outcome is that we beat ourselves up over our failures. Whatever strategies have worked over the past three years does not guarantee success today.
Online advertising is a constantly changing industry and in order to give clients the service they expect and deserve, PPC managers must constantly strive to be on top of their professional development and not be afraid to reevaluate out-of-date strategies. For example, while you may have placed less emphasis on mobile in previous years, it should be important to reevaluate your current strategy and make sure that you are testing mobile behavior and avoid missing out on potential customers.
4) Putting Yourself Down
As with real life, positive self-talk is paramount and the worst person to lose confidence in you is YOURSELF. No matter how much you know or how experienced you are, you will always have strategies or tests that simply do not work. That is just a fact. It is important to take the good with the bad. You test, you evaluate, and you move on. You don’t dwell and you don’t take it personally. You pivot and adjust.
5) Overthinking
Dwelling on situations constantly causes us to question our approach, make unnecessary changes, and sometimes results in over optimizing the account. Staring at your account for hours will not turn performance around. More often than not, campaigns will not drive performance from day 1. It is important to allow your strategy to take shape, data collect, and make appropriate changes when the data allows you to make actionable decisions.
Final Thoughts
Like you, your industry growth is a constant work in progress. Always test, always check, and always adapt.
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