What Does a PPC Specialist Do?

The field of digital marketing is rapidly growing and nowadays it is hard to imagine a company which could survive without being presented and advertised online. No wonder that the list of digital marketing-related professions is expanding as well. One of the relatively new specializations, which provides outstanding career opportunities is a PPC specialist. Analysts predict that global spending on digital advertising will surpass $500 billion by 2024. As the demand for digital marketing professionals continues to rise alongside ad spending, PPC specialists can expect great job opportunities and increased job security. If you are curious about a PPC specialist job description, area of responsibility and required skills, look through this brief explainer to gain insights about this role and determine if it suits you.

What is PPC Specialist role?

When you come across the term ‘a PPC specialist’, you should know that this role is related to pay-per-click advertising, commonly known as PPC. It is an entry-level position in digital marketing, so motivated novices can start their career in a relatively short space of time. The main responsibility of the ppc advertising specialist is to create, build, and execute digital advertising campaigns that match with the company’s goals and objectives. PPC specialists can work independently as freelancers or contractors, be employed by a PPC agency, or be part of an in-house marketing team. Their clients may include internal teams seeking to promote their business/organization or external clients working with agency PPC specialists.

What Does a PPC Specialist Do?

The area of responsibility of PPC specialists usually includes such major tasks, as:

• Designing and Building PPC Campaigns.

Creating a successful paid search campaign is not as simple as it appears. A PPC specialist must be skilled in keyword research and bidding, audience targeting, ad copywriting, offer design/creation, ad design, and landing page design in order to create an effective campaign. For instance, marketing for healthcare firms requires a deep understanding of specific terminology and knowledge of the most common search queries made by patients in order to effectively reach the target audience.

• Monitoring Campaign Performance.
• Analysing and Optimizing PPC Campaigns.
• Identifying CRO Opportunities.
• Collaborating with other Team Members.

After a campaign is created, the next step for a PPC specialist is to monitor its performance. To monitor campaigns properly, manage budgets, and ensure profitability, these professionals must be able to navigate paid advertising platforms, networks, and software. Some PPC specialists specialize in a single ad platform, while others use PPC management software to integrate campaign data from many platforms into a single dashboard. Close monitoring generates data that can be used to gain useful insights. PPC specialists add value to their clients by evaluating and optimizing the results of online advertising campaigns to increase conversions. This optimization may include changes to keyword targeting or bid settings, changes to audience targeting parameters, experimenting with different ad copy, changes to the value proposition or call-to-action (CTA), the addition of negative keywords, or changes to the design and presentation of the advertisement to users. PPC professionals also help to find conversion rate optimization (CRO) opportunities that result in increasing campaign success. Their suggestions quite often are related to landing pages changes and require skills in web development, graphic design, or CRO software. This is where collaboration with other team members comes into play. (Some PPC specialists can implement these changes themselves, but this is not an entry level). As mentioned above, PPC specialists typically collaborate with other marketing professionals such as social media specialists, SEO specialists, account managers, graphic designers, and others to execute complex campaigns across many marketing channels. The difference between working for a digital marketing agency or a marketing unit within a large corporation and being a freelancer is that a PPC specialist reports to a PPC manager in the first scenario. Consequently, the answer to the question ‘What is the role of a PPC manager?’ would be “A PPC manager is an expert responsible for overseeing and managing the strategic execution of pay-per-click advertising campaigns.’

Essential Skills for a PPC Specialist

Once you’ve decided to pursue a career as a PPC specialist, you should be aware of skills required for this role. Let’s have a look at some of the more essential ones.

• Ad Copywriting: PPC specialists must constantly hone their writing skills to craft unique eye-catching ad copies and create engaging calls-to-action.
• Ad Creative Design: PPC specialists take part in designing text-based and image-based advertisements for search and display networks, so they must be creative enough to produce visually appealing and attention-grabbing ads.
• Paid Advertising Networks and Paid Social Networks: PPC specialists must be familiar with leading paid advertising networks as well as the most popular social networks that are relevant to the target audience of the campaign.
• Paid Community Advertising: PPC specialists must be able to develop and execute advertising campaigns on paid community platforms, such as Reddit, Quora and similar ones.
• Landing Page Design: PPC specialists must be capable of designing aesthetically pleasing, high-converting landing pages to support their campaigns. They can leverage their own graphic design and web development skills or utilize landing page creation software.
• Communication: Effective and frequent communication with clients, managers, and team members is essential for PPC specialists to ensure continuous alignment between business goals and PPC initiatives.
• Keyword Research: PPC professionals must be skilled at selecting proper keywords to target, as selecting the wrong ones can result in poor campaign outcomes.
• PPC Campaign Analytics: PPC specialists must be proficient in using analytics software to monitor campaign results, identify improvement opportunities, and optimize campaign performance.
• Teamwork: Teamwork is the key to success, and this is true for PPC specialists as well. As members of the marketing team, they must be able to find common ground with other team members.

Experimentation and Gaining Experience

Once you have mastered the process of building successful PPC campaigns, it is crucial to spend time experimenting and gaining experience. Remember, your portfolio is your best advocate in the labor market. You can design ad campaigns to promote your own products or services, or practice in creating advertising campaigns for friends and family or gain experience through freelancing before moving on in your career journey. If you’re looking for a reliable and experienced marketing agency in Baltimore, look no further than Klik Digital, we offer a wide range of services, from email marketing services to video production, PPC and content creation. Our team specializes in delivering tailored campaigns to help you reach your audience and achieve your marketing goals.