How to Become a PPC Expert With No Experience
By: Rachael. Adria Solutions
Tags: Marketing, Adwords, PPC, PPC Marketing, Online Advertising

There’s no denying that digital marketing is one of the most rewarding industries. Each year, thousands of people decide to forge new careers in digital marketing, an area that encompasses many sectors and disciplines of which PPC is just one. If you want to know how to become a PPC expert, this article is for you — even if you have no experience.

One of the most popular career choices is PPC marketing. In a nutshell, the job of PPC marketers is to help businesses and other organisations increase their brand awareness and promote their products and services through online advertising.

You might think that PPC experts have to go to university and get degrees in specific subjects to become PPC marketers. But, the truth is most PPC experts simply transition into the role from areas like copywriting or data analysis.

The following explains how to become a PPC expert if you’ve got no prior experience, but you’re keen and willing to learn:

Understand What the Job Is All About

As you can appreciate, it first makes sense to consider what you need to do if you decide to become a PPC expert. PPC marketing specialists don’t just generate traffic and drive sales for business owners; they also help to define target audiences.

Before launching a new campaign, PPC experts always have an idea of who their target audience is.

A PPC expert observes the actions of customer behaviour on a website and uses that information to determine the types of visitors, what they do, and how they interact with a site after clicking PPC ads.

You might think that PPC marketing is solely about creating paid search ads and monitoring visitor behaviour on websites. But, there’s much more to being a PPC expert. For example, PPC specialists will spend time conducting other tasks:

Configuring and optimising ad campaigns;

Writing ad copy to encourage target audiences to click through each ad;

Measuring and optimising conversions;

Running split A/B tests to help business owners make better decisions;

Experimenting with keywords to see which ones work best.

Other tasks that PPC experts get involved with include creating landing pages for each ad campaign, adding tracking code to web pages, and using technology like heat maps to help optimise the user experience for visitors and boost sales conversions.

How to Become a PPC Expert

You now understand that being a PPC expert is a multi-faceted role. You’re ready to become a PPC expert. But, how can you get started?

Build Your Expertise in One Area

The leading players in the PPC industry are Google, Facebook, Instagram, Bing, and LinkedIn. PPC experts know Google AdWords, Facebook ads, and Bing ads, among others, like the back of their hands.

However, it’s extremely rare for PPC experts to have superior knowledge of all the leading paid search platforms. That’s why you need to build your expertise in one area instead of being a “Jack (or Jill) of all trades.”

Think Outside of the Box

As a PPC expert, you will spend much of your time measuring metrics like clicks and conversions across an array of platforms. The thing is, some PPC specialists seldom translate metrics into something that makes sense to business leaders and executives.

Being a PPC manager isn’t just about the technical aspects. That’s why you should think outside of the box. Present your statistics in an easy-to-digest format that ties them to business revenue and customer value.

A PPC expert sometimes needs to think creatively to understand where to find their target customers and what interests them.

Gain Some Work Experience

Some PPC experts teach themselves everything they know. But, the one thing they cannot gain is real-life work experience in a digital agency. Working with such an organisation teaches many things like how to manage time to accommodate deadlines.

Plus, having some work experience with a digital agency will give you an insight into the things customers want from their campaigns and how PPC experts achieve those goals. Use a recruitment agency that specialises in digital marketing jobs to build your work experience.

Fine-Tune Your Spreadsheet Skills

Let’s face it: all business decisions revolve around facts, figures, and data. An undeniable way to present such information for helping with business decisions is by creating reports using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

When they’re not producing reports for clients, PPC experts use spreadsheets to deal with large datasets for purposes like slicing data, creating bulk dynamic URLs, and search engine keyword research.

Brush Up on Your Technical Skills

As a PPC expert, you will need to understand the technical aspects of websites, such as hosting, HTML and CSS code in web pages, to utilise PPC campaign assets like tracking codes and heat map codes.

Brushing up on your technical skills helps you to understand how websites work and how to make adjustments for boosting a PPC campaign’s effectiveness. Additionally, you’ll also understand things like Google Analytics limitations and the potential for PPC campaigns.

Consider Gaining Some Industry Certification

As you build up your industry experience as a PPC specialist, you should also look at gaining some industry certification.

While there are no traditional university qualifications for PPC specialisms, plenty of certification options are available from the leading PPC marketing brands.

For instance, if you wanted to be a Google ad specialist, you could consider one or more Google Ads Search Certification courses which are free.

You don’t need a university degree to become a PPC expert; there are many industry-recognised qualifications you can take online for free!

Always Yearn to Learn

Last but not least, there is a constant learning journey with PPC advertising. There will always be new marketing innovations to learn, and grasping them might take some trial and error at first.

But, learning of any new industry developments means you’ll stay at the forefront of PPC advertising. Plus, having such up-to-date skills and knowledge will make you more attractive for future digital marketing employers.

A Few Final Thoughts on How to Become a PPC Expert

PPC specialists may not have university qualifications that you’d typically associate with traditional jobs. But, you can apply your skills and experience from other digital roles and expand them to become a PPC expert.

Plus, pursuing certifications such as Google Ads certification can bolster your attractiveness to digital marketing agencies when applying for PPC ad manager jobs.