Get To Know Your PPC Team Personally

Even though the economy is rocky right now, those of us in pay per click search engine marketing are very lucky. If you’ve built out an impressive SEM LinkedIn profile, you’re most likely getting job offers regularly (if not weekly). Now, this is great from the standpoint of job security and opportunity, but it places PPC people managers and team leads in a difficult situation.

Just when you think everything is working perfectly, all of the sudden you get notice that your star player found a better opportunity and is leaving in two short weeks. As a manager, what could you have done differently to prevent this situation? Today, I’m going to discuss one of my favorite management strategies, one that can help you retain your entire team even in this competitive recruiting environment. The tip is actually quite simple: Develop a personal relationship with everyone on your team.

Break Free From Your Work and Chat With Your SEM Team

Learn and Lead

If you’re anything like me, you have a strong internal instinct to sit in front of your computer and power through work all day, ignoring any and all distractions. If you do this, don’t feel bad. The vast majority of PPC campaign managers do the same thing and it’s really a function of our role. However, now it’s time to take a step back and break free from this habit.

As you may know, I’m a big champion of attending SEM conferences at every possible opportunity. I’m going to give you the same advice here: Take every opportunity possible to break free from your work and have regular side conversations with your search marketing team. Sound crazy? Trust me, from 5 years of SEM team management this is totally essential. While you may feel like your productivity is decreasing, it really isn’t. Your entire team will be more productive and energized. After all, as a manager your personal output just isn’t that important. It’s all about your team’s total output. Moreover, this technique will work wonders for your employee retention in an industry where everyone’s trying to take them away from you! (Just remember how long it took you to train your last new employee and that quickly shows just how important employee retention is for your long term productivity.)

The Importance of Forming a Bond With Your Team

Relationships are very important to all humans. Positive relationships help us thrive. They keep the day interesting. They help us connect and form bonds with others. They help us get through challenges. They simply keep us going and give us essential social interaction. We all know how addictive social interaction can be from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

The point here is really simple: Take your relationship with your SEM team seriously. If you form a strong bond with your team members, you will experience all of the benefits of a strong relationship: loyalty, excitement, employee retention, increased productivity, and so much more.

You may be thinking, how do I build a solid relationship with my team? It’s actually easier than you think. Take a few minutes each day to chat. Make sure you can answer the following questions:

What did your report do last weekend?
What’s their favorite hobby?
What are they doing next weekend?
What do they enjoy doing outside of work?

Who Qualifies as a PPC Team Member?

I wanted to make the point here that I define "PPC team" very loosely. In my opinion, almost everyone is a team member: Direct reports, search engine reps, co-workers, superiors, and vendors. The more people you get to know, the larger the network effects of your relationships. Everybody likes a personable manager. Develop that reputation today!

Where To Draw The Line

In closing, I wanted to draw attention to a very important point: Never forget that you’re a people manager. As a manager, it’s always your duty to give both positive and negative feedback. It’s your job to call out mistakes and help your team grow. To that end, you want to develop a great relationship with your team but you need to know where to draw the line. You can’t forget you’re a people manager. The best people managers in the word walk this fine line each and every day and get the benefits of both bonds: the manager bond and the friend bond. If you’re new to this, my advice is simple: Predominantly wear your manager hat but try to spend a few minutes each day wearing the more personable friend hat. Investing just a little bit of time could make all the difference the next time your star player gets a call from a recruiter!

Image of Learn and Lead © iStockPhoto – VisualField

SEM Career Progress and Your Manager

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 22 4

When I first started my career in search engine marketing, I thought salary, title, and company were everything. Don’t get me wrong, all of these things are super important. However, at the end of the day, I now advise placing the most emphasis on selecting the right manager.

Where is Your Search Marketing Career Going?

As you might know by now, Robert Kiyosaki is my favorite financial author and mentor. One of the things he constantly highlights is the velocity of money. The rich keep their money moving. It goes from one solid investment to another and doesn’t sit still. This velocity keeps the portfolios of the rich growing. Through this lens, it’s not really about where you’re investing now, but where you’re going to be investing next.

I really like this concept because it applies perfectly to your career in SEM. Seriously! Our industry is moving very fast. The best strategies today will be commonplace tomorrow. If you’re not thinking one step ahead, you’re destined to plateau. I personally place significantly less importance on where I am today versus where I’m heading tomorrow. Now, the crux of the issue: Without a great manager, you’re not going to have sufficient velocity to achieve that next level of excellence. You’ll be stuck. While your current salary, title, and company are important, all of this is worth a lot less if you’re going to plateau in the high velocity industry of SEM (where the value of tomorrow is tremendous).

Bad SEM People Managers Will Hold You Back

As you may know from prior posts, I place tremendous emphasis on good people management. People management gets me up each and every morning! There’s nothing better than mentoring my team to success and promotion. Unfortunately, not all PPC people managers think like this. We’re in a very young industry with many SEM team leads having just a few years of work experience. I’ll cut right to the point: A bad manager can wipe all the velocity out of your promising SEM career.

How might a bad manager accomplish this? The worst PPC people managers:

Take personal credit for everything their team accomplishes
Spend little or no time coaching their team
Have low energy and are perfectly fine with a boring work environment
Rarely give their team exposure to senior management
Feel the need to compete with their own team members
Focus exclusively on themselves

Great PPC People Managers Give You Velocity

Now, how does a great SEM people manager differ from a bad one? Basically, they avoid every single thing on the above list! It’s really fundamental: The best SEM people managers give you velocity. They give you education. They give you visibility. They set your SEM career up for long-term success. They are selfless and take no credit for your work. They take full credit for your training, your morale, your progress, and your contribution to the organization. Moreover, a great SEM people manager will be your mentor for life regardless of whether you still report to them.

To close out, I’m writing this article because I have been blessed with great managers. My first manager is my mentor and friend to this day and I owe a lot of my own success (and managerial style) to him. If you take one thing away from this article, please place all the emphasis in the world on picking the right manager in your next SEM career move.

Image of Select Button © iStockPhoto – lauriek

Domain Investing and URL History

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 18 2

I enjoy investing in domains during my spare time. In my opinion, domains are an amazing investment, just like real estate before the market got crowded and efficient. Each and every day there are awesome inefficiencies in the domain market that give savvy investors the opportunity to unlock great value. However, as with any investment you can quickly lose serious money if you don’t do your due diligence. Today, I’ll discuss one of my domain due diligence checks: The importance of investigating your prospective domain’s PPC search engine history.

Search Engines Store PPC History on a Domain Level

Domain Investing

Google has been focusing on permanently removing websites from AdWords that do not adhere to their policies. Whether a webmaster intentionally violates Google’s policies or does so unknowingly, it’s actually very easy to create bad search engine history for an otherwise good URL. Moreover, when a URL accumulates bad history, that history follows it forever. It doesn’t matter who owns the URL or who’s AdWords account you’re using, the bad history will always be there. The bottom line: Don’t Buy a domain that has bad search engine history, period. I will show you how to test a URL’s history later, but let’s first illustrate the problem with an example.

Example: A Domain With Bad AdWords History

Hypothetically, let’s say Domainer XYZ buys a one-word domain in the financial services industry for $20,000. Domainer XYZ doesn’t feel like developing the site so he simply creates a "doorway page" that basically asks the user to enter their zip code before redirecting to another site that has an affiliate offer. Thin sites like this are clearly against Google’s policy. However, because masters of PPC can make a quick buck (especially if their domain is good), this type of thing happens every single day. Now, let’s say Domainer XYZ advertises this thin user experience on Google AdWords for months and make a few thousand dollars profit.

Months go by and everything is fine. However, one day Google finds out what’s going on and they assign the URL a quality score of 1. Immediately, all of Domainer XYZ’s PPC traffic dries up. Because he has a ton of things going on, Domainer XYZ decides to abandon this site and work on other projects. A few months later, Google emails Domainer XYZ and says his site is permanently banned from Google AdWords. Sound unrealistic? It’s not, trust me! This amazing $20,000 domain is now tarnished forever. Regardless of who owns it, this domain will never be valid in AdWords again. History is stored on the domain level so it does not matter who owns it or which account is used for AdWords.

Now, let’s say you’re a new domain investor and decide to buy this domain from Domainer XYZ. If you haven’t done your due diligence, you could end up with a URL that has been banned from Google AdWords without even knowing it! (Side note: If you’re happening to read this too late and this has already happened to you, I highly recommend calling Google AdWords support. Google is there to help and they may be able to help in your situation, but it’s much easier to walk away from this type of deal than hope you’ll be able to get the quality score reversed after buying.)

Google Makes Quality Score Mistakes From Time To Time

I want to point out that this is just one example of how a domain could accumulate bad history. In my experience, Google is large enough these days and has enough automated processes that innocent websites can get assigned poor quality scores as well. I’ve actually seen this several times. Thus, if you run across a low quality score website, I wouldn’t just assume the seller is a malicious webmaster. At times, it’s just a function of Google’s algorithm making a mistake. The unfortunate part: Google will rarely be able to reverse a quality score mistake unless you’re a huge spender. However, if this does happen to you, never give up! Make sure to contact Google and explain your situation. At the end of the day, they are there to help and please keep a positive and optimistic attitude.

How To Protect Yourself As A Domain Investor

Now, let’s get to the fun part. How do you make absolutely certain that you don’t buy a bad domain that was previously used to abuse AdWords? It’s actually quite easy. First and foremost, just open a Google AdWords account and send traffic to the site (even before you own it). Send traffic to the homepage, but also a variety of deeper landing pages. Invest some real time in this. Let the campaigns sit for a few days. If you’re not seeing good or great quality scores (7 or better) and are not getting consistent click volume, you may have a red flag. Important Disclaimer: Do not send traffic to the site if it’s undeveloped. If you’re buying a URL that currently just has a list of GoDaddy ads, you could do some damage to the site’s history if you send traffic.

In addition to the AdWords check, I highly recommend running your site through the Way Back Machine. Understand the site’s look and feel over the years. Was it ever used as a thin affiliate website? If so, you may have a red flag. However, I don’t like this check as much as the last one because the seller can still hide "marginal activities" underneath and otherwise solid site.

To close out, I hope I’ve helped mitigate some potential downside in your future domain investments. Due diligence can be a long process, but it’s totally worth it. Invest the time and test the pay per click validity of a URL before investing your hard earned money.

Image of Domain URL Bar © iStockPhoto – Phecs

Keeping Detailed PPC Records

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 15 1

In pay per click search engine marketing, a lot is going on at once. Even more is going on if you follow my advice around making progress in your search engine accounts. Now, if you’re like most search engine marketers, your records may be less than perfect. Today, I’m excited to discuss my thoughts around records in PPC and why they’re import both for the health of your campaigns but also your personal SEM career growth.

Good Records Will Help Your SEM Career

PPC To Do List

I’m going to jump right to the fun stuff. How can good records in pay per click help your personal career? It’s simple: Records are the easiest way to remember all the hard work you have invested when the time comes for your performance review. Pay per click is a very fast paced career. We’re getting so much done and often switching tasks so quickly that it’s absolutely impossible to remember everything you’ve accomplished. Here’s where good records come in. Take the time to thoroughly document everything you’ve done and then leverage this information during your performance review. Even better, proactively send your manager regular updates on your (and your team’s) accomplishments. One of my all time top teachings about the search engine marketing game: If you don’t proactively take credit for the projects you’ve completed, you’ll never get credit. It’s up to you!

Good PPC Records Will Improve The Performance of Your Campaigns

Now, let’s see how good records will help the performance of your campaigns. (As a side note: Again, this really is a career boost for you as well because solid campaign performance is the engine behind rapid career progression.) It’s all really simple: Too much is happening in SEM. Just think about all the changes and all the different people involved! Not only are you making changes, but everyone on the team is making changes, your search engine reps are making changes, search engines are changing their algorithms, the engineering team is regularly updating the site, and the list goes on. Keep track of everything in a detailed manner and it will greatly improve your campaign management abilities. Good records will instantly answer many of your campaign questions.

How Do I Keep Good PPC Records?

So I’ve convinced you and you’re ready to improve your record keeping practices. I’ll start out with an interesting story. When I first started out managing teams in pay per click, I used to print out every single analysis my team completed and kept them all in a binder which I carried with me everywhere. If I ever got a question about what we were working on or what was happening with a campaign, I would quickly pull out the binder and flip to the right analysis. While this is an extreme example, there’s nothing wrong with it and it only makes you look more prepared as a PPC team manager.

While I’m not carrying around the binder these days, I still take incredibly good records. Following are my favorite tips:

First and foremost, leverage your company’s internal task list infrastructure (such as Sharepoint) if they have one. If they don’t, talk to your manager and request that your company invests in one. Even if I finish a project that only takes one hour, I’ll open a ticket and then immediately close it just so I have detailed records. At the end of the quarter, you can easily look at all the completed tasks both for yourself and your team.
Second, if you’re a people manager spend at least 20 percent of your time planning, forecasting, and keeping records. If you’re an individual contributor, spend at least 10 percent of your time. While this may sound extreme, I’m a big believer in SEM productivity leverage. If you simply take a step back, you will immediately improve your productivity. If you don’t take a step back, it’s very easy to get absolutely lost in the sea of projects going on, losing your ability to see up from down.
Third, regularly send updates to everyone involved including your team and manager. Even though you’re tracking your projects in Sharepoint or whichever system your company uses, don’t assume everyone is on the same page (especially your manager). Send regular email updates on what was accomplished, what’s on your list, relative priorities, and most importantly forecasted and real numbers.
Finally, always include numbers with everything. I’m sure you already know it: numbers are everything in pay per click. As a pay per clicker, you need to become a master at forecasting. Always forecast the benefits of each project, but make sure to close the feedback loop and report back on the accuracy of your forecast. If you’re able to accurately forecast and consistently deliver results, you will get promoted quite rapidly.

To close out, I hope I’ve convinced you to keep good records and leverage them to your advantage in growing both your personal SEM career and also your campaigns. Moreover, I hope these tips provide some "quick wins" in your search marketing career. One things is for sure: I will continue to push myself each and every day to keep great SEM records!

Image of To Do List © iStockPhoto – nigelcarse

Search Engine Marketing Conference Tips

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 15 1

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Yahoo’s Ad Forum, an exclusive conference for Yahoo’s top advertisers. It was actually my third Ad Forum and by far the best one yet. I really enjoyed learning more about the Yahoo Microsoft Partnership, new upcoming releases to Yahoo Search Marketing, information about Yahoo Smart Ads, and so much more. More than anything, it was a great opportunity to network with top executives at Yahoo in addition to search marketing leaders at other large companies. I’m a huge proponent of actively participating in conferences and industry events. Today, I’m looking forward to highlighting my strategies for getting the most out of search engine marketing events.

Get Out of The Office Today

This first point is very important. In the world of search engine marketing, it’s extremely easy to get caught up in the day-to-day details. We’re so focused that we rarely get out of the office. This is exactly why it’s important to take every opportunity possible to attend industry conferences. It’s simply not sustainable to stay in the details without any breaks and networking. Special note to team leads and people managers: Make sure to get your team out of the office. It will give them a much needed break and make your team even more productive over the long run. Moreover, this is a great way to retain your team members and lower stress levels.

Speak Up at Search Marketing Events

I absolutely love this second tip because it’s all about challenging yourself. If you’re like most people, you may feel a bit intimidated about public speaking. With a hundred or so people in the audience, you might feel a bit nervous about asking questions and speaking up. My advice to you: Never leave a search engine marketing event without actively speaking and participating. Life is a challenge! You want to be a leader in the industry, right? You want to continue to grow your career, right? You simply want to feel good at the end of the day that you did your best, right? For all of these reasons, it’s very important to participate.

So how do you participate? It’s easy! Why not start small and ask some questions during the smaller breakout sessions. When you have a little more experience, why not ask questions in front of hundreds of people at the larger sessions? Once you’re comfortable in that setting, why not volunteer to speak on a panel? Next, you’re ready to lead an event!

I recently spoke on a panel to a few hundred Google employees and it was the opportunity of a lifetime. I was certainly a bit nervous before the event, but that nervousness quickly went away once I started speaking. I ended up totally owning the panel! The event was an incredible success and a big move for my career and personal brand image in the search engine marketing world.

Take Diligent Notes

As mentioned in the introduction, I just attended Yahoo’s Ad Forum. I was careful to take diligent notes during the event and came back to the office with several solid action items and a variety of other notes. I quickly typed up my notes, sent them out, and prioritized several new projects. My advice to you: Take diligent notes because solid revenue-generating action items will come out of these conferences if you listen carefully.

Network With Other Search Marketers

As you know from my post all about Growing Your SEM Career With LinkedIn, I’m a huge fan of networking. It’s a really small industry and your network means everything. Now, can you think of a better opportunity to network than search marketing conferences? I can’t! Make sure to bring business card and introduce yourself to as many people as possible. This can be a great recruiting ground as well. Another tip: Make sure to stay until the very end. At the end of these events, they often have cocktail hour. This is the best time to really network.

I hope this article helps you get the most out of your next SEM conference and wanted to leave you with a final tip: Make sure to Dress For SEM Success when you attend your next SEM conference.

Image of Hello My Name Is © iStockPhoto – klikk

Make Progress In Your Search Engine Accounts

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 11 1

Today’s tip is short, but incredibly powerful. It’s all about attitude and relentlessly staying focused on progress in your Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft accounts. Let me jump right to the tip: Each and every day, no matter how much stuff is going on, force yourself and your team to make meaningful improvements to your search marketing accounts.

It’s Easy To Get Distracted In SEM

This is really logical and obvious advice, right? After all, we’re all hired to manage search engine marketing accounts, right? Well, in theory, but not always in practice from my experience. As a search marketer, we’re really in the middle of it all. SEM as a job includes so much more than campaign management. We train new team members, reconcile invoices, prepare and deliver presentations, attend meetings, prepare roadmaps, forecast numbers, report on numbers, file bugs and feature requests against engineering, and so much more. You get the picture! In this large sea of responsibilities, it’s incredibly easy to get caught up in non-revenue generating projects.

All of the stuff I just mentioned is important. However, at the end of the day, what are you really going to be judged on? It’s all about the numbers. Let me repeat that again: Without making a material impact to the search engine accounts and driving improved numbers, all of this other stuff loses a lot of its weight. That’s why I challenge myself and my team each and every day to spend as much time as possible on revenue generating projects that directly improve our SEM campaigns.

What’s My Definition of Progress

While it’s important to work on longer term strategic projects that will generate function step growth patterns, the day-to-day progress I’m referring to here is all about base hits. Think about it. What if you can grow your business a fraction of a percent each day? Now, extrapolate that to the entire year! All of the base hits really add up into huge long-term progress. Some of my suggestions: generate keywords, deploy keywords, refine your structure, test new targeting opportunities, write more granular ad copy, refine bids on top keywords, launch new content match strategies, etc. If you look back after a few weeks and don’t see your account morphing into a much better operation, you’re not doing your job!

Word of Caution: Don’t Go Overboard and Lose Measurability

The cornerstone of SEM is the ability to measure every single thing you do. You can quickly lose this measurability if you make too many changes at once. My closing piece of advice is twofold. First, make sure to stagger your changes so that you can independently measure the success of each change. Second, keep a robust change log in case you need to roll anything back. At the end of the day, it’s all about ownership. When you take full ownership of your SEM accounts, it’s all about making changes each and every day on the path towards PPC account perfection!

Image of Progress © iStockPhoto – patrykgalka

Review of eBay’s Quality Click Pricing

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 11 10

I run a web publishing business in my free time and have found it to be just about the best testing ground to learn new PPC and SEO strategies. In fact, I credit my web publishing business as fueling my corporate career because it has given me the opportunity to learn new things that I simply wouldn’t have the time to learn at work, especially on the SEO side. Today, I wanted to discuss my excitement for eBay’s new quality click pricing.

My eBay Affiliate Program Earnings Are Up 40%

Let me cut right to the important stuff: Since October 1, 2009 my eBay earnings are up over 40% compared to my previous peak month. I haven’t made any significant changes on my end during this time period (I’ve actually been focused 100% on my full time gig) and I credit this entire increase in earnings to eBay’s new quality based pricing.

eBay Has Consistently Innovated Their Affiliate Program

eBay Profits Increasing

I’d like to start off by taking a step back and thanking eBay for their innovation. I’ve been an eBay affiliate forever. When I first started, their affiliate program was on Commission Junction. Back in those days, I did reasonably well, but must admit the program was a bit cumbersome. Since then, eBay has really stepped things up.

First, they brought their affiliate program in house and built out an amazingly helpful tracking and reporting system. Their affiliate portal alone has made a very significant impact on my earnings. In pay per click search engine marketing, accurate tracking and reporting is everything. eBay gets it and has applied that mentality to their affiliate program.

With eBay’s most recent changes around quality click pricing, they continue to push forward with the innovations and I commend them. The new system smooths out your earnings to a per click basis and over-rewards high quality clicks while under-rewarding lower quality clicks. I guess I fall in the high quality clicks bucket because my earnings have risen sharply and have been very consistent on a day-to-day basis!

My Personal Strategy on eBay’s Affiliate Program

My strategy is actually relatively simple. I built out an organic website that focuses on a niche of a niche of a niche. I totally own that niche and picked a niche that meshes well with products sold on eBay. It’s a niche that I’m personally passionate about and have personally purchased all of products I promote through eBay. I talk about my experience and offer honest and useful information to my audience. At the end of my articles, I’ll include a targeted link to the relevant products or seller on eBay. Sometimes, I’ll leverage eBay’s seller widget and include that in the article as well.

Why do I think this strategy works so well? I’m honest with my readers and a personal consumer of the products I promote. Because I’m sharing my own experiences, the reader trusts me and is more likely to make a purchase on eBay. My advice to you: Be authentic in your writing. Only endorse products that you personally buy. Speak clearly and openly with your readers. eBay’s quality click pricing will be there to reward you!

I hope this encourages you to give eBay’s affiliate program a try! I’ve read mixed reviews on other blogs and really wanted to take the time to highlight my positive experience to underscore that it’s totally possible to thrive under eBay’s quality click pricing system.

Want to learn more about my web publishing endeavors? Make sure to check out my post all about moonlighting and your SEM career.

Image of Profits Trending Up © iStockPhoto – Kativ

Increase Your Search Marketing Leverage

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 8 14

There’s no doubt about it! Pay per click search engine marketing is a time-intensive career. Look at the Wall Street trading floor. Pretty hectic, right? Now, consider a 24 hour, 7 day a week Wall Street. That’s pay per click in a nutshell. All of us in pay per click have faced the challenge of time. We never have enough time to get it all done. Moreover, our job often permits very little personal time which is just not sustainable in my opinion. Today, I’m going to go through 10 tactical tips with the goal of saving you time immediately. In my opinion, the 40 hour work week is not only possible in pay per click, but it’s preferred if all 40 of those hours are passionate, high energy, and high leverage.

Tip 1: Outsource Manual Work, Spend Your Time on PPC Process

Cube Standing Out

There are certain routine manual (yet extremely valuable) PPC processes that can be well defined with the right manager who’s passionate about good documentation. Leverage the global business economy to find cost-effective resources to focus on your well-defined processes. This is quite possibly the best way to quickly gain more leverage for your entire pay per click team! (Side Note: Documentation is a cornerstone of solid pay per click people management. I’ve written a few hundred pages of documentation during my various gigs and have gotten tremendous leverage through documentation. What’s the ultimate leverage? It’s when you can leave the equation and your team continues to function smoothly thanks to your flawless documentation.)

Tip 2: Build, Buy, and Leverage Free SEM Technology

I learned this very early on: Automation and leverage through technology is everything. In my early SEM days, I spent half my time product managing complex internal bidding and campaign management solutions. The good news: Times have changed and the off the shelf solutions are absolutely amazing and better than what most organizations could build internally these days. Moreover, the desktop editors available today make free what many companies have invested significant time and money building. The end verdict: Stay on top of the technology and leverage it to your advantage.

Tip 3: Reports and Alerts Are Your Friend

Tired of cycling through all of your campaigns and adgroups every morning just to make sure everything’s ok? Even more tired of knowing that your entire team is doing this as well? Invest some serious time building reports and alerts. While you’ll spend more time up front, it scales rather quickly. Another tip: While you’ll be able to leverage free alerting and reporting (Google’s alerts are great), I highly recommend talking to your internal Engineering and operations teams for more robust intra-day solutions.

Tip 4: Leverage Your Search Engine Reps

I view my Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft reps as extensions of my internal pay per click team! When I report on my team’s priorities, I include my reps side-by-side with my internal team. Make sure your search engine reps always have a full meaningful queue of work and your leverage will reach a new level.

Tip 5: Get Sleep and Exercise: Make Every Hour High Impact

I’m a huge proponent of the 40 hour work week. It’s absolutely amazing what you can accomplish when you’re firing on all cylinders. How do you accomplish this? Get sleep and exercise. You may even want to consider a personal trainer. My wife and I see our trainer regularly and it’s one of the best investments we’ve ever made!

Tip 6: Proper People Management and Delegation Is Key

What’s the number one pitfall I’ve seen in the world of search engine marketing people management? Improper delegation. Why? In my opinion, there are two reasons. First, most SEM people managers are young and aren’t formally trained in management and delegation. Second, we’ll often face such complex problems that it’s “easier” to solve it ourselves. As someone who takes people management very seriously, I encourage you to delegate and invest time training your team. Otherwise, you’ll rob your team the ability to learn and you’ll rob yourself the opportunity to manage and leverage your time.

Tip 7: Prioritize Your Queue of SEM Work Effectively

You arrive in the office a ton of stuff is thrown your way. You just jump into the action and start doing stuff. Sound familiar? This is a very common scenario in the world of search engine marketing because our job is incredibly real time and complex. While it may sound counter-intuitive, I strongly encourage you to spend at least 10% of your time planning. The ramifications on your productivity and prioritization will yield incredible results.

Tip 8: Audit Your Time Allocation Regularly

I’ll admit I don’t follow this SEM productivity tip too often. I’ll perhaps audit my time allocation once every year or two, typically when I find myself in a rut. My advice to you: Invest the time in this one. Seriously! Keep a log of everything you do throughout your workday for two weeks. You’ll oftentimes be absolutely amazed at the stuff you’re wasting time on and how little time you’re spending on the important stuff.

Tip 9: Leverage Every Excel Shortcut Imaginable

Excel shortcuts really add up. If you can save second here and there throughout your day, all of the sudden you could find yourself saving 15 minutes or even a half hour per day. That’s some serious time. Moreover, you just can’t call yourself an expert search engine marketer without leveraging every Excel shortcut out there! Side note: If you’re managing a team of pay per clickers, this is one of the first things you will want to teach them because it immediately streamlines their work by getting rid of the tedious stuff.

Tip 10: No SEM Project Should Take More Than 2 Hours

Rewind 5 years, Ian’s first day of work in search engine marketing. I received some incredibly valuable advice that day: never spend more than 2 hours on any analysis. There are exceptions to every rule. However I strive every single day to hold myself to this rule. The rationale: If something’s taking more than 2 hours, it should be automated, outsourced, completed by someone who can do it quicker, or approached in an entirely different way.

Bonus Tip 11: Change Your Location of Work

I really enjoy my current job because I’m splitting my time between two different offices. This change of location is really helping my productivity and focus by keeping things fresh and interesting. My advice to you: make sure to change things up. If you’ve got a flexible employer, try to spend some time working on your laptop at Starbucks one or two days a week (a strategy that really helped at my last search marketing job)!

Celebrate Your PPC Team’s Success

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 7 10

What gets me most excited about my career in search engine marketing each and every morning? There really are a variety of factors including responsibility, excitement, and making lots of money (both individually and for the company). However, above and beyond all of this is the great thrill of managing and mentoring my team. I’m passionate about people management. More than anything, I measure my personal success in terms of my team’s success (morale, retention, promotions, results, and overall career success). In that spirit, today’s post focuses on one of my favorite people management tips: celebrating success. A lot of SEM team managers overlook this simple, yet highly effective technique.

Celebrate Your SEM Team’s Success

Fireworks

Search engine marketing is just like sales. As pay per click campaign managers, we’re on the battlefield each and every day, driving revenue and margin. Things can get a little crazy. When things are going well the thrill is unparalleled. When things are not going well (especially in our current economy), morale can be low and this is where the strong people manager can make a huge difference.

My advice to you: Please, make a conscious effort to celebrate you team’s success. When someone does a great job, take a step back and really highlight their success.

Why Celebrate Pay Per Click Success?

The answer to this question is really simple. Celebration of success is the ultimate motivator. Just think about it. What happens when you get a compliment? It’s motivating and empowering. Similarly, when you celebrate someone’s success, they feel a charge of energy. The success is addictive and they immediately want to work hard and achieve more success. The feedback will also encourage your broader team because they will want to get congratulated on future projects.

Another way of looking at this: What happened when you got your last raise and promotion (perhaps when you got promoted from PPC Associate to SEM Manager)? If you’re like me, you started working even harder because you were so fired up by the positive reinforcement. Now, celebrating success isn’t going to give the effect of a promotion, but you can certainly think of it along those lines.

Why Does It Work?

I especially like this PPC management tip because most managers don’t subscribe to this model. We’ve all had a few bad managers in our careers. The worst managers take credit for all of their team’s work. However, when the team fails, they blame the team and not themselves. If you’re a good manager, you never take credit for your team’s work. You give all the credit to the people doing the work. What do you take credit for? Training, managing, and enabling the team to do such great work! Most likely, the people who work for you have had bad managers at one point in their careers. If you start giving credit where credit is due, you’ll really stand out and build loyalty and trust for life.

How Do You Celebrate Your Team’s SEM Success?

There are many ways to celebrate. By far, my favorite is sending out an email to the entire team while including key executives. I spell out the specifics of the project, the impact, and focus on the fact that the project was driven by XYZ team member. This is a really great strategy because it highlights successful members of your team in front of the senior management team, something that might not happen on a day-to-day basis (especially at a larger organization). Another idea: Why not have team lunches or dinners (on the company) to celebrate successes?

A Closing Word of Caution on Celebrating Your Team’s Success

This is an extremely powerful tool. I’d like to close out with two words of caution, however. First, don’t go overboard. As with any strategy, if you leverage it too much it quickly becomes old and loses its impact. Second, please remember to also give your team constructive feedback. You don’t want to become the manager that always congratulates but never provides guidance and feedback when things aren’t perfect. One of the things that your team will appreciate even more than celebration is candid, constructive, and critical feedback. From my experience, most people in pay per click search engine marketing want to grow their careers rapidly. This is the exact type of person that craves regular constructive and critical feedback on how to improve!

Dress Up For Your Search Marketing Job

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 5 6

While today’s post really applies to all jobs, it’s especially applicable to those of us in the search engine marketing industry because we all tend to be young. Just look at me, I’m only 28 but I’m already a Director and have been managing people for over 4 years! I’ll jump right to the punch line: If you’re in the search engine marketing industry, invest in a solid business wardrobe and dress for success. The benefits of doing so are huge.

Why I’m Writing This Post

Business Suit

I really like today’s post because it’s high leverage. You don’t have to work harder. You don’t need to acquire new skills. You don’t need to stay at the office late into the night. You only need to focus on your attire and enjoy the benefits of this low effort, high leverage strategy!

I also feel this post is very appropriate for those of us in PPC because the tendency is not dressing for success. It’s nobody’s fault. Most people in PPC tend to be young. As an extension of our college days, we’re used to either dressing casually in a t-shirt and jeans or, for the more stylish, wearing “clubbing” attire. I’ve seen it time and time again: Managers and even senior managers showing up to work in their Friday night clubbing attire. Every time I see it I know I’m going to win the competition because of my strategy around dressing for success.

The Benefits of Dressing For Success In Search Engine Marketing

Do you want to get more respect from your superiors, peers, and reports? How about faster promotions? How about more face time with executives? How about more opportunities to present? These are just a few of the benefits of picking the right attire for your SEM job.

Just think about it: You’re only in your 20s but are already in a high powered management position, potentially overseeing multi-million dollar search marketing budgets. This is quite a lot of responsibility early on in you career. (Side note: This is one of the reasons why I’m such a big advocate of SEM as a career. There’s no other path to so much responsibility at such a young age.) Now, how do you show the company, your manager, your peers, and your reports that you’re serious about all this responsibility? You dress for success. When you dress for success, you immediately inspire confidence. You immediately gain respect. You immediately catapult your SEM career to the next level.

How Do You Dress For Success In Search Marketing?

So, I’ve convinced you. Now, how do you dress for success? First, I’ll start off with the list of things to avoid. Please avoid “clubbing attire”. You know what I mean: tight jeans, tight shirts, loud colors, clothes with glitter on them, etc. I realize that a lot of these weekend pieces are expensive. However, price has nothing to do with it. No matter how expensive your clubbing clothes, please save them for the weekend. Next, you’ll want to avoid casual clothes such as shorts, jeans, and t-shirts. Unless you’re frequenting the office on the weekend to get a little extra work done, there’s no good reason to wear casual clothes. Last, you’ll want to avoid wearing the same outfit over and over. Establish a solid wardrobe with a good amount of variety. Otherwise, you might get categorized as the person with only one outfit.

Now, let’s discuss what you should wear to your SEM job. It’s actually quite simple. Pick classy, conservative clothes. Long sleeve dress shirts and slacks are optimal. The fit should be perfect, not too tight and not too loose. If your office is a bit more formal, wear a sports coat or suit. As a great guide, understand what your boss wears. Leverage that knowledge to understand how formal you should go. Important disclaimer: Never “one up” your boss. It’s important show respect where respect is due, use your intelligence to dress at your level.

This Is All Psychological

So I know you’re probably sitting there right now thinking this all sounds superficial and that nobody’s sitting there consciously analyzing your wardrobe. You’re absolutely right! However, this strategy has nothing to do with the conscious and everything to do with the subconscious. We are all humans and we judge each other subconsciously each and every day. Stand out from the crowd by dressing for success in your PPC career and everyone will immediately take subconscious notice. This is one of the easiest ways to rapidly grow your authority and responsibility. Moreover, it’s an awesome career tip because few people are following this tip in pay per click, creating an opportunity for you!