Pay per click or PPC is an essential part for digital marketing mix. SEO combined with PPC campaign will give your business quicker conversions and more traffic. After all, 64% clicks for high commercial intent keywords go to paid results on Google. Designing, launching and monitoring an Adwords campaign requires a lot of learning, experimentation and experience. Here are guidelines to hire an Adwords Specialist who can get conversions for you:

Experience

This is the most important factor to consider. An Adwords specialist must have experience handling numerous Adwords campaigns in the past. Here are the things that count as good experience:

• A professional experience at a well-known digital marketing firm is good to have. Someone who has worked a full time job will have formal training under experienced person. This is always better than someone who is self-taught.
• Consider the number of years they have been using Adwords. More number is usually a good sign. However, remember that the candidate with the most experience may not necessarily be the best. Consider this point along with the quality of work and success ratio.
• Each professional will have managed a different portfolio and may have different area of expertise. Ask if they have specialized in any particular industry or campaign type. We will talk more on different types of campaigns below.

Qualifications

An Adwords specialist will have Google Adwords certification at the very least.  Having Adwords certification means that individuals or partners have taken the exam and earned a certification in Adwords from Google. There are various specialization that one can take up in the certification:

Remember that qualification and degrees are an incomplete way to assess anyone in digital marketing. The Google certification exam is fairly simple and does not guarantee best results by the certified partner. These certifications should be looked at as minimum qualification required before assessing other skills.

You can find a certified Adwords Partner in your area here. (https://www.google.com/partners/#a_search)

Skills

These are the skills a good Adwords specialist should have:

Analytical Skills: As a PPC campaign managers have to deal with a lot of data, numbers and statistics to analyze the campaign. You need someone who is comfortable with numbers and has an analytical mind. Adwords specialist should be able to draw insights from these number regarding campaign success buyer’s behaviour. Excel skill would be an add on as it helps to draw insights from number.

Time Management Skills: An Adwords specialists has to manage campaign time limits, budget limits, A/B testing variations for multiple clients or campaigns.  This can get too much to handle without to-do lists and weekly planner.

Readiness to Change: User behaviors and Google algorithms are continuously updating and so should your Adwords specialist. He should be someone who is ready to unlearn and try out new strategies. Campaign managers often set more than one variation of ads and test for better results. He should be flexible enough to throw away conventional knowledge and change with times.

Business empathy: Simply put business empathy is the ability to put himself in your shoes and understand your business deeply. Campaign strategies and best practices may vary business to business and Ads needs to be tailored by keeping your prospective customers and business industry in mind.

Service Agreements

 Make sure you have clear answers to following questions before you sign up an Adwords specialist or agency:

• Who will be handling your account in person and what is his domain experience and certification
• What is the breakup of the cost quoted. There will be at least two components to the cost. Campaign budget and campaign management fees that the agency or specialist is charging you. There could also be other additional costs. Ask for a formal breakup of the quote
• Will the agency give you access to your Google Adwords account. And how will the account be handed over in case of termination of contract.
• What will be the reporting parameters and reporting frequency? Ideally they should connect your Adwords account to your Google analytics data and report in context of traffic from other sources. Other reporting parameters could be costs per sale, cost per click and conversion rates.

Technical Knowledge

 Check for technical knowledge of the specialist. Here are some of the basic terms for your knowledge. You can ask questions on the application of these for your business campaign:

CPC – Cost per click is the price you pay for each click on your ad.

Campaign type – There are two types of campaigns possible. One is on the search network where your ad will show up on the Google search result page. The second one is display network where your as will show on the sites and popular video platforms with content related to your keywords. You can ask the Adwords specialist on what campaign would be a good fit for your business.

Negative keywords – These are keywords that you don’t want your ad to show up for. These could be words that come along with your keywords but have no buying intent. Eg: Evening gowns to share on Pinterest

Geo-targeting – This feature of Adwords allows you to target and limit your ad to a particular chosen region only.

Remarketing- This feature displays ads to visitors who have come to your website recently and interacted with your business. Eg: Ad of Makemytrip.com on your Facebook page right after you have checked flight prices on their website.

Split A/B testing– Adwords allows you to run two of more variations of ads for the same campaign. This is for Adwords user to test which variation works better. For eg: You may keep the location as Chennai in one variation and Kolkata in another. It is recommended to vary only one parameter at a time to understand which works.

Share your goals with the prospective hire and ask them how they can help you achieve your business goals. The answers should show you a logical and attainable strategy.

Beware of one person claiming to be a specialist in all the fields of digital marketing such as SEO, content writing, content marketing, Email marketing etc. Follow the above guidelines and hire an agency/person that instills confidence in you by their knowledge and expertise.