Career in PPC: Ultimate Guide [2024]

The digital marketing industry does not comply with just one or two specific skill sets in the market. Instead, it needs to be an amalgamation of industry-acquired insights, understanding the principles of strategy-making, implementation, SEO, web development, and being analytically creative. Yes, it was a mouthful, and you may have realized that having a career in PPC isn’t what other ‘standard’ jobs mean in the market. 

Global PPC is expanding and the demand is growing with the advent of digital media. The market for PPC is expected to reach  USD 28.62 billion by 2027 (Source). 

The young professionals having the doubt “Is PPC a good career?” should be well assured that yes, it is a very good career. Organizations are turning their focus on having a strong digital presence. The field is expected to grow and is here to stay.

PPC is a highly beneficial tool that helps marketers. PPC marketing helps boost the traffic to the website where you only pay for the clicks. Moreover, the sales increase and the performance can be analyzed instantly. This helps organizations to make better strategies to increase revenue growth.

What is the Career in PPC Looks Like?

• Researching keywords relevant to the company’s industry and businesses
• Selecting the highest-ranking keywords, and creating ad campaigns around it
• Optimizing landing pages 
• Tracking SEO trends according to the dynamic search-engine algorithms
• A/B Testing
• Identifying the target audience

Apart from this, PPC advertising also lets companies advertise in prominent positions on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) based on the bidding results. These advertisements drive traffic to the company website and pay every time someone clicks on these ads; therefore, the name.

Overall, there are many elements in the work of PPC specialists that hold significant value for companies – be it in terms of higher ROI and conversions. For example, PPC specialists can contribute to establishing better user engagement with their skills in keyword research, compelling Call-To-Actions, and testing. If you want to upskill yourself and climb up the corporate ladder, check out our digital marketing courses.

The PPC career path is such that the professionals start as PPC executives, digital marketing executives or SEM executives. Later on with gained experience and higher skill sets, they climb up their way to becoming PPC Experts or Digital Marketing Managers, SEM Managers, etc.

The average salary of a PPC specialist is 5.7 lakhs per annum. The average salary ranges from 3.0 lakhs per annum to 9.3 lakhs per annum (Source).

Check out: Career in SEO 

Why PPC Experts Are Needed?

• A PPC specialist with significant industry experience may help in enhancing brand visibility and generating new leads crucial to scaling a business. Companies often entrust PPC professionals with the ever-changing Google algorithm, tools, and techniques in PPC campaigns. 
• Since PPC specialists come with compelling tools for conducting timely keyword research, data collection, and report creation, brands can have their focus areas monitored every day and see results in their everyday conversions.
• A PPC analyst  analyses the growth of the ad performance and accordingly strategise, design and implement the forward ongoing campaigns.

upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you –

How Marketers can enable Sales for Success?

How Does PPC Work?

Before deciding on how to become a PPC specialist, you need first to make up your mind on the network – like Google Ads, Bing, Facebook ads, etc. While all of them may seem similar, it is essential for a PPC specialist to have expertise in one network since they are distinct from each other in a lot of ways and may work best when learned one at a time. 

There are several metrics or standards that all networks adhere to; rise and fall in these figures help you determine the effectiveness of your PPC campaign since there’s no uniform rule or technique that works in the same way across all networks. These metrics are:

Read more: PPC Analyst Salary in India: For Freshers & Experienced

1. CTR (Click Through Rate)

The click-through rate helps in understanding the rate at which the PPC ads in a campaign are clicked. The higher CTR, the higher percentage of viewers, which means the higher relevance of the advertisement to the customers. It is calculated as:
Total Ad ClicksTotal Impressions= CTR

The CTR helps organisations in understanding their customers better. It allows the organisations to measure and understand what they require which helps in reaching the target audience better.

A good CTR rating tells that the users like what they see and find it helpful whereas a low CTR rating tells that either you are not reaching the right target audience or you are not speaking their language.

2. Total Clicks on Ad

It is merely a count of the frequency of online visitors clicking on your ad to visit your website. 

3. Cost Per Click (CPC)

Refers to the exact price you can pay for each click in your pay-per-click campaign. For an advertiser, the CPC you offer would always be less than or equal to your maximum bid. It is calculated as an average of a series of bids in a period. Your actual CPC can be influenced by the competitor’s ad rank, maximum bid, and Quality Score in terms of Google AdWords. It is calculated as:

Competitor’s Ad RankingYour Quality Score+ 0.01 = Actual CPC

4. Cost Per Conversion(CPA)

 Also known as the Cost-Per-Action, this is used to estimate the real cost involved in getting an actual customer to your website and making successful conversions in terms of buying, subscribing to the newsletter, watching the product video, etc. Metrics, as such, help in achieving the real target of the advertisement. It can be calculated as:
Total Cost of Generating TrafficTotal Conversion Numbers= CPA

Read more: Leveraging Facebook Shop for Business Growth

5. Return on Investment (ROI)

Inferred by the name, it refers to the maximum profits generated from your ads in terms of revenue invested and revenue yielded. It can be calculated as:
(Revenue invested – Cost of goods sold)Cost of goods sold= ROI

6. Quality Score

 It is an estimate of your ad’s overall quality based on its keyword relevancy, and corresponding landing pages, and is directly dependent on the advertisement positions. Often, ads with higher quality scores are cost-effective; however, it isn’t used for knowing the ad rank during an auction.

Read: Top PPC Tools 

Skills Required

• Analytical mind: Since a lot of estimation goes into figuring out the numbers and statistics, you need to be comfortable in continuous analysis of your campaigns, learn from your competitor’s campaigns and draw actionable insights. 

Having an analytical bent of mind is helpful in business. The professionals can work with the data and draw logical conclusions. 

Analytical skills are highly helpful in utilising various methods to find solutions to various problems. Thus helping in coming to data-backed decisions.

• Managing Time and Tasks: One of the prerequisites to being a PPC specialist is to be apt in managing a bunch of long, crucial tasks at the same time, without missing out on anything. 

There would be times when the professionals would be required to manage multiple campaigns simultaneously. They should be highly efficient in managing these campaigns as each one of them could be important and crucial for business success. The professionals cannot afford to miss any details while managing. 

• Technical Skills: Apart from just understanding the metrics in digital marketing, you’d also need to have a more in-depth knowledge of platforms like HTML, JavaScript. You also need to have a flair in deciphering, tracking, analyzing, retargeting codes, and usage of tags in terms of the recent technology across several devices, browsers, etc. As an aspiring PPC specialist, managing thousands of rows and columns on Excel sheets should come as a breeze. Knowing the right shortcuts, formulas, and tabs can help you keep up with hundreds of functions, campaigns, and metrics.
• Creative Skills: PPC specialists also need to produce compelling ad copies, complete with intriguing visuals and relevant text to stimulate the emotions of the customers, and increase the chances of higher CTRs.
• Understanding Customer Intent: The products you sell should resonate with your customer’s needs uniquely for them to convert quickly and to keep you ahead of your competitors. Similarly, the ads you generate need to be productive and relevant in the context of your brand and the customer’s preferences. 

If the ads are not speaking the language the customers understand, then it is a big miss! PPC specialists must understand their customers and identify the correct target audience in order to achieve their goals.

Also Read: Career in Digital Marketing

• Communication: You need to channel the importance of making all of the ad elements work in-sync for that powerful-in-entirety effect for your ads to compel your customers to make the purchase. This can be done through effective communication with your team members, your brand, and your customers. 

The PPC specialists should be having excellent verbal and written communication in order to communicate well with their users as well as the teams they are working with.

• Quick Adaptation: There’s no other dynamic field than digital marketing that is changing every minute, in terms of trends, figures, and algorithms. Formulating new strategies, adopting new methodologies and setting up new campaigns comes as an everyday task that you need to keep in mind as you plan and act. 

A fixed mindset is not suitable for this industry, a professional needs to be constantly evolving their approach and learn new methods that help in better performance.

• Always Learning: The research and learning of a PPC specialist never end, even when the campaigns go right. Therefore, you’d need a constant appetite, patience, and determination to acquire daily goals, and take it to the memory bank.
• Curiosity and Experiments: With research comes experiments and trials that can help you figure out new, effective ways of completing your everyday job. 

Conclusion

Employers seek experienced, skilled PPC experts who are also certified in their network, be it on Google Ads or Bing Ads Accredited Professional. Experience brings value, and certification builds trust.

A career in PPC advertising can be overwhelming, but filled with pleasant surprises and learning along the way, mainly because of the unique amalgamation of skills and grounds it covers. It is similar to the constant trial and errors that researchers have to reach the correct answer in an experiment. The trick lies when juggling numbers, producing quirky and intriguing ad copies and figuring out wholesome campaigns become second nature for any successful, adventurous PPC specialist.

If you wish to explore and become an expert in Digital Marketing, check out MICA and upGrad’s Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing & Communication. Become an expert in social media marketing, content marketing, branding, marketing analysis, and PR.