We had the opportunity to interview Neil Sorenson, who will be speaking about Enterprise PPC, Competitive Verticals, and International PPC at Hero Conf 2013.
Neil Sorenson is the Head of Pay per Click at ZAGG.com. Previously he spent four years working for search marketing agencies like OrangeSoda and SEO.com. During that time Neil managed hundreds of accounts across dozens of industries. In early 2012 Neil made the switch from agency to in-house at ZAGG to head up all paid search, retargeting, product feed management, media buying, and ping pong domination.
In May of 2012, Neil organized and created the petition against Google Adwords protesting the removal of the “rotate evenly” setting. It was arguably the most successful and wide-reaching protest to have ever been lobbied against Adwords and was one of top factors that affected Google’s decision to return the ability to rotate ads evenly to their advertisers.
Neil can be found on Twitter @iNeils
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Want a chance to meet Neil and other big names in the PPC industry yourself? Well, by attending Hero Conf 2013 you can! The design of the conference allows for a low speaker to attendee ratio, making your chances of meeting and learning from our top notch speakers in a one-on-one setting, very real! If you would like to hear more about Hero Conf, you can register or visit the Hero Conf website for more information. Sign up before Friday, February 8th to take advantage of the Early Bird Special by saving $100!
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PPC Hero: Tell us a little bit about yourself…
Neil: I live in Salt Lake City, Utah. I have a puppy who will be 1 year old in the next couple months. I’m a huge sports fan and have season tickets to the Utah Jazz and Real Salt Lake. I have a separate Twitter account for sports so as to spare my other followers all my sports chat. I’m a car guy and grew up spending most weekends in the woods, desert, or mountains in a Jeep. Lake Powell in Utah is my favorite place to visit. I love going to movies and I like turtles.
PPC Hero: Why did you decide to become an PPC professional?
Neil: Getting into PPC was as much good fortune as anything else. I was briefly working in sales for a search marketing agency and deciding that sales wasn’t really for me. My good friend was the director of the PPC department at the time and had been showing me the basics of paid search and I enjoyed what I learned. I switched departments, devoted myself to learning paid search and internet marketing, and then realized that the analytical side of the work kept me continually engaged.
PPC Hero: What has your experience in PPC taught you about Account Structure?
Neil: Account structure is absolutely one of the most important aspects of PPC. I’ve taken over dozens of Adwords accounts and when deciding if we needed to start over from scratch or if the existing account would work the account structure could usually show us if there was something worth keeping.
PPC Hero: Tell us a little about what you’ll be speaking on at Hero Conf 2013…
Neil: Enterprise PPC, Competitive Verticals, and International PPC.
PPC Hero: What features would you like to see AdWords and BingAds come out with in the future?
Neil: Can I create an Amazon wishlist for this?
- Adwords:
- Search Partner campaign separation (like we used to have)
- Better managed placement functionality
- The ability to exclude any placements that show in the “See URL List” tab.
- Faster ad review
- More communication about betas and new Adwords programs.
- Bing:
- The ability to view performance for all keywords in an account.
- More custom date ranges (why can’t I set a custom range that falls more than 2 years in the past?)
- Integrate reporting into the interface without having to go to the reports tab. For example, in Adwords, the SQR used to be found in the Reporting tab and now you can view that data right with your keywords.
PPC Hero: If you could predict where PPC will be in 3 years, what would you say?
Neil: Continuously evolving at the expense of organic traffic/results.
PPC Hero: What do you think is the most important thing to keep in mind when managing a PPC account?
Neil: Goals. What are the goals of the account we’re managing? How close are we to hitting those goals? What is the next set of goals we should be looking to?
PPC Hero: Outside of paid search and the Internet, what are your favorite ways to pass the time?
Neil: Movies, TV, riding my motorcycle, going to the mountains, hanging out with friends, traveling.
