Senior PPC Specialist - How To Hire Right One

For managers of PPC teams can be hard to hire a senior PPC specialist. This apply mostly in cases, when PPC manager has no or small experiences with running PPC campaigns. I will show you 5 must have for senior PPC specialist, so you can be sure when hiring.

How to hire senior PPC specialist

What PPC skills should senior PPC specialist have

In my experience, Google AdWords PPC skills are the most important. PPC specialist that fully master Google AdWords has no problems with Facebook ads or other PPC system. Therefore, when hiring senior PPC specialist I strongly advise to check his/ her AdWords experiences. These AdWords skills I find most important for senior:

1. Automated creation of categories 
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Small sized ecommerce can have 200 and more categories and subcategories. In many cases only a small part of categories is used for advertising. 
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Importance: The more ad groups for categories you have, the more there are profitable areas. Having only few main categories means that potential of the advertising is really limited.
What skills senior PPC specialist should have: senior PPC specialist can create hundreds of ad groups for categories in just a few hours. It can be done via campaigns creation in CSV and import using AdWord Editor. This work is time effective, precise and important for advertising results.
Control question for PPC specialist: "How would you prepare an ads for ecommerce with 200 categories and subcategories? What time would it takes?"

Note: Another partly solution for this issue is using DSA campaigns. But DSA campaigns can cover all categories only partly. To have full coverage, senior PPC specialist needs to know solution above.

2. DSA campaigns

DSA campaigns or dynamic search ads are one of the pillars of successful ecommerce campaigns. Google supports them strongly and there are many options when setting up DSA campaigns.

Importance: DSA campaigns can automatically cover a wide range of the website. This is their great strenght. Huge coverage of the advertising in a short time of set up.
​What skills senior PPC specialist should have: On the other hand, when set up without proper knowledge, DSA campaigns can be strongly uneffective. Senior PPC specialist knows all functions of DSA campaigns, works with them regularly and can prove good results of DSA campaigns in previous work.
Control question for PPC specialist: 
"What are your experiences with DSA campaigns? On what projects have you used it? Please describe used set up of DSA campaigns."
"How do you work with Exclusions in DSA campaigns?"
"Do you have experiences with creating DSA campaigns using page feed?"

​3. Dynamic remarketing

The most effective form of remarketing or "a must" for each ecommerce - AdWords dynamic remarketing.  Quite simple set up and stable results.

Importance: AdWords dynamic remarketing not only shows previously viewed products. You can enhance the result with using competitive strenghts in ads. Ad formats of dynamic remarketing look professional and they are for free.
​​What skills senior PPC specialist should have: You can set up AdWords dynamic remarketing either in Google Merchant Center or in Google AdWords using a feed. Senior PPC specialist should know both set ups. Also, for dynamic remarketing to work correctly a website code needs to be enhanced and Google Analytics needs additional update. Senior PPC specialist is aware of these too.
​Control question for PPC specialist: 
"How would you set up AdWords dynamic remarketing using Merchant Center?"
​"How would you set up AdWords dynamic remarketing using data feed?"
"What changes in the website code and in Google Analytics are necessary?"

4. AdWords Editor

AdWords Editor is a Google tool for managing AdWords campaigns. Main benefit of AdWords Editor is that you can easily make bulk changes. For example, it takes only a few minutes to update even a thousands of ads using AdWords Editor.

Importance: Campaigns for bigger ecommerce can contain thousands of ad groups and even ten thousands of ads. It is not possible to update such amount manualy, you need AdWords Editor for bulk changes.
​​​What skills senior PPC specialist should have: Senior PPC specialist fully knows AdWords Editor and uses it regularly. Best practice is to use AdWords Editor as much as possible. This way, manual and time consuming work is put to minimum.
​​Control question for PPC specialist: 
"What are your experiences with AdWord Editor?"
"How often and for what changes do you use it?"

5. Automated bidding

If you managed to get to this point, congratulations, we are at the best benefit of Google AdWords! AdWords automated bidding is a great booster for each campaigns effectivity.

Importance: AdWords automated bidding reacts on tens of  PPC signals to update a CPC and to achieve the goal (ROAS, CPA...). In fact, this is what PPC specialist would do, not using automated bidding. AdWords automated bidding saves the work of specialist and on 99% percent it gets better results.
​What skills senior PPC specialist should have: There are about 7 types of AdWords automated bidding. Each of them is used in certain situation and each has its limitations. Senior PPC specialist fully knows all types of automated bidding and its requirements and limitations.
​​​Control question for PPC specialist: 
"With what types of AdWords automated bidding have you worked with?"
"What is your experience with CPA and ROA automated bidding?"

Conclusion

Hiring a senior PPC specialist is a strategically important step in the life of each PPC agency. Senior PPC specialist with great skills not only improve the results for clients. The name of the agency also benefits of good PPC work. I really hope that this article brought some inspiration, how to hire senior PPC specialist for you.