How To Become A Paid Search Specialist

Paid Search Specialist

As a strategy, you could say that PPC marketing is trending. Not only are there more businesses looking to invest in Google Ads and other PPC ad platforms, but the companies already investing in these strategies are hoping to increase their investments in the coming years.

With more and more companies looking to hire professionals that will handle this new dimension to their marketing strategy, becoming a paid search specialist is an attractive and lucrative move for any marketing, communications or advertising specialist.

Whether you’re a fresh college graduate looking to make a big splash in an interview or an experienced marketer looking to acquire a new skill, this discussion will look at how you can begin your journey to become a paid search specialist.

What Exactly Is A Paid Search Specialist?

First things first, you need to fully understand what a paid search specialist does and why this role is important for modern businesses.

A paid search specialist primarily works with the marketing team and develops PPC campaigns. PPC stands for pay-per-click and describes the model used by online search ad platforms, like Google Ads, Bing Ads and others.

In traditional advertising, you pay for placements, like a TV commercial spot, a billboard location or otherwise. For PPC ads, you only pay when someone clicks the ad. This means that the potential for ROI is huge when it comes to PPC marketing, which lends some explanation as to why so many businesses are investing in this strategy.

When a business can routinely turn these clicks into conversions, there is a lot of revenue generated. PPC ads can quickly become a significant source of added revenue! It is the role of a paid search specialist to create PPC campaigns, monitor the results and optimize in order to achieve organizational marketing objectives.

Why Become A Paid Search Specialist?

There are a number of reasons why a shift towards becoming a paid search specialist is a smart move. As mentioned, PPC marketing is attracting more interest and greater investment from all types of companies. Even local, brick-and-mortar stores are realizing the huge potential value of advertising online! Thus, the primary reason to become a paid search specialist is because this is a very in-demand skill set!

That said, paid search specialist is a great title to add to an existing lineup of digital marketing expertises. Understanding the paid side of search marketing will actually make you better at SEO, content creation and other strategies, especially because all of these types of digital marketing utilize keywords.

Another reason to become a paid search specialist is that it is fast-paced, competitive and fun! Other marketing efforts, SEO for instance, require a lot of time. You have to build up your strategy over a long period of time. With PPC, your campaigns immediately produce results that need to be managed.

And, your PPC campaigns are always changing, which means it is never a dull moment. You always have to be monitoring the data, looking for new keyword trends, keeping an eye on the competition, etc. You won’t be bored at your desk!

There is a lot of data involved in PPC management. Another reason why someone might consider becoming a paid search specialist is if they have a very analytical mindset and love working with numbers and finding patterns and trends.

The Day-To-Day Activities Of A Paid Search Specialist

To understand what a career as a paid search specialist would look like, here is a breakdown of some of the day-to-day responsibilities of this type of marketing professional.

Creating ad campaigns: Of course, creating PPC campaigns is something that every paid search specialist has to do. One account may have hundreds of individual campaigns. Every campaign has its own goal or purpose, such as retargeting past customers, targeting a specific audience type, advertising a specific service, etc. You may find yourself creating multiple campaigns in a single week!
Writing ad copy: Ad campaigns don’t get very far without great ad copy. Paid search specialists need to be creative and strategic when producing ad copy. You have very limited room, sometimes only a handful of characters, to make a convincing sales pitch!
Testing ad copy: Naturally, some ad messages perform better than others. A/B testing is a common activity of paid search specialists that involves testing two ad messages alongside one another to see which performs best.
Emailing: This is a marketing role, while means communication is huge. Every day will likely start and end with replying and sending an abundance of emails.
Researching keywords: Keywords are a fundamental building block of paid search advertising. Every day will involve monitoring your keywords for change, exploring new keyword opportunities and removing underperforming or negative words from your campaigns.
Monitoring, Analyzing And Reporting: When all of these other responsibilities are covered, the job is only just starting. The bulk of the work as a paid search specialist involves managing campaigns. This means monitoring the ever-changing data, and analyzing it for important trends/patterns. Then, reporting those findings to others.

Getting Started As A Paid Search Specialist

Convinced that becoming a paid search specialist is the right step for you? Then, you need to know how and where to get started.

Your very first step? Get Google Ads certified. Google Ads is by far the most popular advertising platform. It also has an excellent learning center, which will teach you all of the basics that you need to know. Most jobs or clients will ask if you’re certified with Google Ads. It’s best to knock it out ahead of time.

After that, take your learning to the next level and start subscribing to PPC blogs and other resources. You have the basics down, but these pages will help you stay on top of the latest trends and strategies. The PPC marketplace is always changing and these sites will be the first to let you know how to adapt to the latest updates.

Conclusions

There is no real secret on how to become a paid search specialist. If you put in the time and learn the ins and outs of PPC marketing, including the latest trends, then it will come across to clients and in interviews with potential employers.

If you really want to shine, get some PPC certifications under your belt (starting with Google Ads) and try to manage some campaigns on your own. Experience and background are always good!