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

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!

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