“ Over the last 5 years, what do you believe has been the major evolution in paid search?”
Mobile has been the advertising phrase of the year for the last few years, and it definitely is.
“Search, a marketing method that didn’t exist a decade ago, provides one of the most efficient and inexpensive way for businesses to find leads.”
Pay per click advertising is known for being highly targetable and trackable. And yet, with click costs continuing to rise, reaching the right audience in paid search and paid social is more important than ever – posing a challenge for many advertisers. This makes managing PPC accounts and creating great PPC strategies an art in itself.
Our interview today is with an expert PPC Account Manager – Meet Nate Velazquez.
Nate joined Seer Interactive in 2016 as a PPC Manager. Aside from Nate’s love of digital marketing, he is also a certified personal trainer and former Track and Field athlete at Temple University. If there’s a new training method, he jumps right into it. He practices ju-jitsu and tries to live a healthy life style (minus pizza).
Nate founded an e-Commerce fitness apparel website while he was attending the University of Tampa for his Master’s of Marketing. He loves new emerging technology and tries to learn as much as he can to grow as a paid search specialist. He is a diehard Philadelphia sports fan—Go Eagles!
Sharing some of his PPC tips, it’s truly an honor to host Nate Velazquez in our Agency expert interview series:
1. How did you get into Account Management in the first place, and how did you get to where you are now ?
My first exposure to account management was as an intern while in grad school. Balancing school, a part time job, and an internship was great experience in balancing multiple projects at once. After my internship I started as an account associate at a web design agency in Tampa, worked my way up to Account Manager.
After working in Florida for a few years, I decided I wanted to move back to Philadelphia and found my current position with Seer Interactive.
2. What do you believe to be the most important PPC task you do on a daily basis? Why?
Budget tracking. With the holiday season in full swing it’s more important than ever for account managers to stay on top of budget spend and capping, so you can notify your clients of opportunities to increase revenue with additional budget.
3. What metrics are vital while proving ROI of your PPC Strategies?
Depending on the client’s business goals, generally CPA, conversions, and ROAS. Tracking CPA and ROAS helps ensure that PPC campaigns are profitable, while total conversions helps businesses to grow their lead funnel.
4. What process do you have in place for budgeting?
We have our reporting tool Aqcuisio that helps track monthly budgets, along with setting up Adwords alerts, and manual budget monitoring.
5. Are metric projections (i.e.: budget, revenue, traffic, etc) necessary when running PPC accounts? Why or why not?
For sure. Projections help to paint a picture of how a campaign can potentially perform. I’ve learned over time that most clients aren’t looking for hard numbers, but rather a range they can expect. Having upfront discussions about how projections are calculated is always helpful, too.
6. Talk about a failure or mistake that helped shape your work for the better?
In my previous role I was responsible for all aspects of digital marketing. Not communicating expectations about SEO efforts was definitely a lesson I took to heart. I try to see things from the client’s perspective, and communicate my thoughts on how performance will affect their bottom line.
7. What tools do you use to track and analyze ppc performance? Separately, what client facing reporting tools do you use?
I mostly use the Adwords/Bing interface and Google Analytics. For reporting we currently use Acquisio or SuperMetrics, an addon for Google Excel sheets.
8. Over the last 5 years, what do you believe has been the major evolution in paid search? Why?
Mobile has been the advertising phrase of the year for the last few years, and it definitely is. Consumers are using mobile devices in all phases of the buying process, from initial research and consideration to the final purchase. Businesses and advertisers took this into consideration and optimized their websites and checkout process for mobile to ensure consumers using these devices have a great experience.
9. What do you believe has been your greatest career accomplishment? Why?
Establishing a great relationship with a challenging client. I was able to take some good PPC Campaigns and turn them into great campaigns. The client was so happy they came back with additional budget, something hadn’t happened since the campaigns launched a year previously. It’s always great to hear from a client who truly values your partnership.
Today we got to know some cool PPC tricks and points to be noted while running a PPC Campaign. Going forward there are many more specialists that we want to chat with. We will resume our discussion with another expert next week.
Until then, Happy Marketing!!
