Breaking Up The Pay Per Click Grind

If you’re in the corporate PPC world, you definitely know that things can get rather crazy. After enough analysis, keyword generation, keyword deployment, bid changes, ad copy tests, landing page tests, account restructures, product requirements, and executive presentations, your head can really start spinning! I’m here to tell you that it’s all about PPC longevity. After all, longevity has been one of the cornerstones of my early success in the corporate pay per click world. Today, I’d like to take a step back and discuss ways of breaking up the PPC daily grind. Whether you’re an associate or director, I strongly encourage you to take these tips seriously. At the end of the day, they will only increase your employee retention and team morale!

Tip 1: Attend Search Engine Marketing Conferences

Daily Grind

Search engine marketing conferences have been extremely good to me over the years. They’re incredibly beneficial from two angles: First and foremost, conferences present the ultimate networking experience. As someone with well over 500 connections on LinkedIn and a big binder of business cards at home, I cannot say enough about the power of networking. At the end of the day, people are everything in terms of finding long term success in your corporate pay per click career.

Second, conferences are extremely worthwhile in terms of staying up with current trends and sparking innovation. The natural tendency in PPC is to think you know it all. Well, at least that’s my natural tendency. The problem, however, is that things change extremely fast. Even if you know everything today, you won’t necessarily know it all tomorrow. Even if you’re consistently innovating and driving the direction of the industry, a great speaker can totally spark new ideas.

Directors, managers, and team leads: My overall suggestion here is that you get your team full passes to the major conferences such as Search Engine Strategies (SES), Search Marketing Expo (SMX), and ad:tech. I’ve been at companies in the past that have unfortunately been cheap about getting full passes. I definitely suggest pushing for full passes. It’s an extremely small investment in your team’s education and morale, one that will pay huge long-term dividends. From my personal experience, I always come back from conferences extremely energized, full of new ideas, and ready to go! Thinking about things through that lens, conferences are the ideal way to break up the daily PPC grind.

Tip 2: Enjoy PPC Team Activities

I like to compare pay per click campaign managers to Wall Street traders. We’re in the details of a very competitive and focused trade. For that reason, we often forget to take a step back and get away from the computer. From my experience, team activities are always a very welcome break from day to day campaign management. Moreover, the bonds formed during team activities can directly improve teamwork within the office.

My suggestion: Plan a team activity at least once very six months and ideally once per quarter. Some great examples include go-karting, miniature golfing, and bowling. I particularly like team functions that involve actual activity because we’re typically at the computer for so much for our day. The key here is that the team activity is held during the workday and that it concludes right around the time people typically leave the office. That way, the team activity functions as a true reward. Also, team activities are always more rewarding if the company pays for them!

Tip 3: Schedule Regular PPC Team Lunches

This tip is very similar to the last one, but I suggest an increased frequency of perhaps once per month. It’s too easy to rush out of the office and grab a quick lunch, only to come back and start working again right away. From my experience, the time savings from a quick lunch does not add any value. If you actually break up the workday and increase the "fun" factor, the entire team gains immense productivity. For that reason, I highly suggest having PPC team lunches to celebrate milestones, birthdays, or really any reason at all. Another great idea: Invite members of other teams as well, it’s a great way to learn something new!

Tip 4: Proactively Assist Other Departments

One of my absolute favorite things about pay per click search engine marketing is the fact that we’re in the center of it all. PPC is an operationally intensive role, one that involves useful data. For that reason, I enjoy thinking about proactive ways to assist other departments. Some simple examples: Share your PPC keyword list with the SEO team, share your top ads with the design team, send competitive benchmarks to the partnership team. At the end of the day, there exists a plethora of ways you can directly help your coworkers in other departments. Not only will this break up your day a bit, but it will help your overall organization grow. Moreover, I truly believe that the more you give, the more you receive. Next time you need help from someone else, you can rest assured that help will be available immediately.

Tip 5: Give Back To The Paid Search Community

I created this blog to give back. I regularly enjoy acting as a reference for old reports. I thoroughly enjoy writing letters of recommendation. At the end of the day, it’s all about giving back in my opinion. The best managers in the world are your manager for life. It doesn’t matter if you’re at a different company. If someone’s a great manager, they will always support and invest in your career. This is how I view management. Unfortunately, this is against the grain of many managers out there.

My strong advice: Invest in old reports and co-workers. I’ve found this to be a very powerful way to help the community while breaking up my day a bit. Like I said in the last tip: The more you give, the more you will receive. Corporate PPC is a very small but rapidly growing community. Give back today and make a real difference, while keeping things fun and interesting.

Image of Daily Grind © iStockPhoto – BeholdingEye

Controlling Your PPC Mind

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 13 0

So it’s 2010 and you’re looking to get promoted in your PPC career. At the same time, you value your work-life balance. You can’t imagine working 80 or more hours a week, trading your personal life for promotion. Well, I’m here to tell you that you absolutely don’t need to! In my opinion, it’s totally possible to ascend the corporate PPC ladder while enjoying your personal life, on a 40-60 hour workweek. How are you going to do this? It’s simple: You need to work smart by programming your PPC mind. Today, I’m going to uncover three of my favorite mind games to unleash leverage in your PPC career.

Force Yourself To Work With Extreme Efficiency In Pay Per Click

Blue Lightbulb

I honestly wrote 40-60 hours above to be conservative. As someone who’s ultra-efficient, I totally believe that the 40 hour workweek is possible in PPC. Just think about the time that gets wasted during the day when you’re:

Surfing the Internet (unrelated to work)
Logging into your Facebook account
Taking a really long lunch
Chatting with friends
Working at a slow pace
Getting distracted and jumping between projects
Just sitting there (or even dozing off) without actively doing work

Now, just think about what would happen if you were incredibly focused the entire workday. You came into the office with the "I’m here to work hard" mentality. You actively fought against your mind when it tried to tell you to lose focus. (Believe me, my mind’s natural tendency is to defocus.) The answer is simple: You would get promoted faster and reduce the duration of your workday, dramatically.

In my opinion, all it takes is a little conscious effort and the recognition that you need to force your mind to focus. When you accomplish this, the amount of work you can get accomplished in the normal workday is astounding! While all of this is applicable to any job, it’s especially applicable to PPC because we’re often juggling more priorities than we can count while facing the pressure of hitting numbers. We’re in a situation that promotes defocus. Force your mind to focus and you’ll be on your way!

Two other tips to stay focused in PPC: First, Make sure to vary your workplace. I like to switch between my company’s two offices and even spend some time working at Starbucks. The variety really keeps my mind from defocusing. Second, take time off when you need it! PPC is like a sport, especially when you’re ultra-focused. This amount of focus can be quite draining. If you’re able to really force your mind to focus, I suggest scaling back your hours and taking off days when you need it. Your mind needs time to recover.

Force Yourself To Be In a Charged, Positive Mood Every Single Day

I absolutely love this tip. Are you naturally happy every single morning? Of course not! Even if you’re like me, in the career of your dreams, sometimes you’re tired and grumpy. It’s ok and perfectly natural. Now, I’d like to highlight another awesome opportunity to control your mind. Take a step back and realize that you’re the one in control, not your mood. My strategy: I like to hype myself up. I’ll straight up lie to myself. "Ian, you’re not in a bad mood. You’re in a good mood. You’re the man! You’re PPC Ian!" I’m serious here. After a while, I’ll believe the lie. I’ll program my mind.

Now, let me let you in on a secret. In my opinion, positivity is one of the greatest factors in promotion. Nobody wants to promote the disinterested employee. They want to promote the employee who loves their job, the person who lives for the company. It’s as simple as forcing your mind into a hyped up state even when it’s not. It almost becomes a game. How hyped up can you be when facing difficult situations? As I mentioned in a previous post, PPC perception is reality. If you’re always in a positive mood, you’re carefully crafting the best possible perception.

Some other great points about positivity in your search engine marketing career:

Enthusiasm is very contagious. You’re not only hyping yourself up, you’re setting the mood for the entire team. You’re acting like a PPC leader.
Those that have a positive outlook tend to realize their goals. When you start thinking negatively, you’re stepping away from your goals. I’m a big believer in The Secret.
I’ll consistently hype myself up before any meeting or call that involves sales. Sometimes people think I’m crazy talking to myself in a conference room but it totally pays off.

As a closing piece of advice, make sure to give yourself extra rest. It can be very tiring if you’re in a charged mood all day. You need time to recover so you can consistently deliver results.

Force Yourself To Avoid Conflict and Anger

There’s no way around it. Even if you’re a nice guy like me, you’re likely to get into a situation once in a while that has conflict potential. It’s probably not even your fault. Someone does something (either unintentionally or even intentionally) to step all over you and you’re upset. My advice: Do absolutely whatever it takes to be the bigger person. I repeat, never show emotions of conflict and anger at work.

This is very important in your PPC career. We’re naturally under a bit of stress in pay per click. We’re managing to stretch goals and have a plethora of projects in mix. Now, throw on top of that the fact that someone might not be playing by the rules and you have the potential for career disaster.

However, if you’re smart and have perspective you will always handle the situation gracefully. My two pieces of advice: First, never react right away. If you feel like you’re going to get upset, take some time to really think about it. Sleep on it. Never start sending that nasty email before it’s really well thought through. In fact, once you think it through, you will never send that email, trust me. Second, make sure to exercise regularly. If you get upset at something, it’s very easy to take out your aggression at the gym and then come back to work the next day in your charged, positive attitude.

While this is probably the most difficult mind-controlling trick, it’s the one that shows the most maturity. If you’re able to consistently work efficiently, stay positive, and avoid conflict at all costs, you are playing the PPC game to win and will be promoted to the top. These are all attributes of the most effective pay per click leaders out there. These are all mind games that are directly under your control.

Image of Blue Lightbulb © iStockPhoto – BlackJack3D

Focus on Difficult SEM Projects

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 2 2

When I started working at my first search engine marketing job, the CEO gave me very valuable advice. One day, I was working late with one of my co-workers and the CEO came by. We started talking and eventually asked him about his advice around success. His advice was very simple, yet powerful: Focus on the projects that nobody else wants to do. If you master the difficult, unattractive projects, your career will be incredibly successful. To this day, I follow this very advice and it has worked wonders for my career in search engine marketing. Today, I’m going to discuss a few ways I take advantage of unattractive SEM projects.

SEM Career Tip 1: Really Know Your Numbers

Difficult Maze

It goes without saying that you can’t be in search engine marketing without knowing your numbers. It’s an operational role, one where you’re responsible first hand for your company’s bottom line. However, there are varying levels of understanding that range from knowing that the numbers were down yesterday to knowing they were down specifically because conversion dropped 20% on x keyword and you’re working on y strategy to fix the problem with ETA z. Surprisingly, many people in SEM don’t know the numbers as well as they should and this creates a great opportunity for your career. I recommend always knowing the following numbers off the top of your head:

Yesterday’s conversions by channel
Yesterday’s CPA
Today’s intra-day conversions
How yesterday’s numbers compare to last week, two weeks ago, and the same day last year
Specifically why yesterday’s numbers were up or down
Your month to date run rate and how it compares to your targets (You have set targets for yourself and your team, right?)
Specifically why you’re above or below your targets
The same level of detail for any campaigns you might not be directly managing.

This may sound like a time consuming, excruciating level of detail and it is! However, that’s exactly why you should focus on this essential task in your effort to break away from the pack and embrace challenging projects. I promise, you will build intuition around your numbers over time and it will get easier. In the short run, take good notes and bring them with you so you’re always able to answer questions that may get asked of you.

SEM Career Tip 2: Spend 10-20% of Your Time Planning

I really enjoy this tip. While it’s super easy, nobody follows it, creating another great opportunity to set yourself apart from the pack. I can totally relate with those that don’t like planning. We’re on the front lines of operation and have infinite opportunities at our fingertips. We just want to get out there and execute. However, I can tell you from years of management experience that there is simply no substitute for good planning. Planning will make you (and your team) more efficient, improve communication with senior management, and yield improved results. Even though you’ll have 10-20% less time for the execution side of things, planning will set you up for success and will greatly improve the leverage senior management has over you (and your team) which is a huge benefit on its own.

SEM Career Tip 3: Volunteer Yourself

In search engine marketing, we all have more projects than we can handle. This relates not only to the infinite opportunities out there, but also the fact that SEM is typically understaffed in proportion to the value we drive. In light of this, most people in SEM are reluctant to sign up for more work. We’ve all been in the those meetings where action items start coming up and the meeting leader starts asking who will take them on. We’ve all been in the situation where we just want to look down and let someone else take it on. My advice to you: Fight your instincts and volunteer yourself! Of course, you can’t take on everything but leveraging this strategy at the right time can work wonders for your PPC career. Just think about it, everyone is stretched. Sure, some are stretched more than others, but at the end of the day everyone could use more time. If you step up and take on these projects in a team setting, you’re communicating that you’re an SEM leader. This goes a long way!

PPC Career Tip 4: Work Long Hours When It Makes Sense

I’m typically a proponent of working smarter and not harder. However, there are times when this simply breaks down, especially around deadlines. It’s easy in SEM to push a project off a day or so. However, if you push enough projects off enough days, you slow down the growth of your entire organization. My advice to you: Fight your bias to push deadlines out, no matter what. After you hit your deadline, then give yourself a break and get some rest.

PPC Career Tip 5: Focus Very Little Time On Beta Tests and 2nd Tiers

This is a classical PPC time trap. I haven’t met anyone in SEM who doesn’t like exploring new initiatives. There’s an affiliate marketer inside all of us who wants to uncover that jackpot. My advice to you: Focus on the big levers. Beta tests and 2nd tiers are rarely big levers. If you must try experimental stuff, try it on your off-time and consider SEM moonlighting to expand your knowledge base. I’m not alone on this, any seasoned Internet executive will tell you that they don’t want their SEM managers focused on this stuff and it will rarely reflect well on your career even though it’s super fun and appealing.

Condition Your Mind To Enjoy Difficult Search Engine Marketing Projects

While these are just five examples, I really want to highlight the recurring theme here: Consciously fight your instincts each and every day. Look objectively at the projects before you and understand if it’s a difficult or easy project. More often than not, the difficult projects are the ones with leverage. Condition your mind to enjoy the difficult challenges in SEM and you’ll quickly get promoted. I personally like to mix it up and include at least one or two easy, fun projects in my day to break up the difficult stuff. Moreover, I like to take breaks to move my work location to change my mindset. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you simply approach projects with the right mindset! After a while, you will start actually enjoying the difficult stuff and then you’ll be in a league of your own.

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!

I’m Passionate About PPC and SEM

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 29 8

I’m very passionate about PPC. I’m very passionate about the corporate career path in pay per click. There’s nothing I’d rather be doing than managing my awesome paid search team! Does this sound like you? Good! Does this sound very different from your tone and thought pattern each morning? That’s ok, but let’s work on that! This topic has been blogged about to death, but I couldn’t resist because it’s so core to my personal value. Let’s talk about passion today because I sincerely think it could get you a raise and a promotion.

Why Passion In Search Engine Marketing Counts: Your Perspective

Let’s purely look at it through your personal lens first. What’s in it for you? Before I even get to that, let’s get one thing out of the way. I’m not a psychology major, but I know from experience that passion is at least partly up to you. Every single morning, you have the conscious decision whether you want to be passionate or dull. If you’re not currently overly passionate every morning, I’m about to show you what’s it for you if you make that conscious decision. If you already get up with enthusiasm and passion each morning, I’m about to ask you to bring it up a notch. There’s always room for more fire! I’ll show you what you’ll get out of even more passion…

First and foremost, let’s talk about happiness. It’s a fact: Passion is directly correlated to happiness. If you’re passionate about your work and purpose every single day, the day will go by much faster and you’ll have a lot more fun (with a lot more energy). At the end of the day, we all want to be happy. That’s one of the most important things in life. Pay per click search engine marketing can be daunting. Sometimes it’s hard to be passionate, especially if your numbers are trending down or if you’re under pressure from your manager (it happens to everyone and pressure can be a good thing). Every single morning, take a step back and push yourself to be passionate. Write a note if you need, seriously. I can guarantee this conscious exercise will become more and more natural over time and will result in a nice bump in your happiness and job satisfaction. It’s in your hands.

Second, let’s talk about your career path in pay per click. It’s a great industry. One of the reasons I’m so passionate about PPC as a great career is the ability to grow quickly. I’m a director of SEM only five years out of college. In a more traditional industry, it would probably take me 10 to 15 years to hit the director level. Now, let’s face reality: The quick upward mobility in pay per click can cause problems because one can’t possibly learn all of the judgment of a 10 or 15 year veteran in only 5 years. This is where passion comes to play. If you’re passionate, you’ll learn quicker. If you’re passionate, you’ll emerge as a leader. What do leaders do? They rise above the naysayers and push the team forward, even when things are difficult. If you want to become a leader and people manager within pay per click, you need to consistently demonstrate passion for the industry and also the company. You need to be more passionate than anyone else. Excessive passion alone, in my opinion, can overcome management judgment that will take a bit longer to grow through experience, success, and failure.

Why Passion Counts: Your Employer’s Perspective

This part is really easy. Employers love passionate employees. Already mentioned, passionate employees increase the morale and purpose of the overall team. The output of the team is much larger than the output of any one individual. Passion from one employee can have tremendous leverage and exponential returns from an employer’s perspective. Passion can spark new innovation on the SEM team, one of the highest leverage teams within the company.

I’ve seen it time and time again in search engine marketing. There’s high turnover because people tend to burn out. In good cases, the employee decides to transition out of pay per click but stay at the current company. In the worst case, they leave not only the pay per click team but also the company as a whole. Companies want passionate leaders who can overcome this effect and retain their team. I have an awesome track record for employee retention even at companies with overall retention issues. This is one of the main reasons I’ve been able to consistently manage and grow leading PPC teams with a good deal of authority and autonomy from my employer. Not yet managing people but want to be? Invest in your passion! Managing people, but want to grow even more and be the most successful manager possible? It’s all about the passion!

A Topic Worth Visiting Over And Over

There’s a reason it’s hard to find a business leader who hasn’t commented on passion. It really works! Whether you’re already passionate about SEM or completely lack passion, there’s room for all of us to grow. Make it your purpose each morning and you’ll have more fun, get promoted faster, and add exponential value to your company! Don’t believe me? Check out my LinkedIn profile and specifically my recommendations. You’ll see a recurring theme around my positive attitude, passion, and morale-building powers. All of this has been a conscious decision, one that you can make as well.