How to Become a Freelance PPC Consultant in India?

Freelancing is a booming industry. Everyone wants to become a freelancer because it’s very easy in this technological era. Wait, is it? It’s easy to tell I am a freelancer, but difficult to sustain it and see success. Especially in the digital marketing industry like PPC consultancy, the competition is ruthless. There are PPC Marketing Consultants in every corner of India including Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai etc. It takes more than a certificate to be successful as a freelance PPC consultant in India.

What is PPC Marketing?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing is a type of digital marketing where the advertiser pays the fee whenever the ad is clicked. It is a faster way to bring traffic to the website compared to organic, of course with a cost associated it with. The amount spent on PPC campaigns would be extremely worth if more visits turn to conversions and generate sales. That is where a PPC consultant or account manager comes into play.

PPC marketing majorly constitutes of these platforms; Search Engine Marketing (Google & Bing), Display Marketing, Retargeting Ads, Social Media Ads, Affiliate Marketing and Aggregate Websites.

Search engines conduct an auction every time a keyword is searched, based on the ranking the ads, of advertisers bidding on the keyword will be shown and the advertiser pays only when a user clicks on the ad. Display marketing involves showing ads on the display network (other websites) based on keyword, contextual or behavior targeting. This platform consists of both cost per click (CPC) and cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) model. Retargeting is a type of display marketing wherein the users are targeted based on their previous visit to advertisers’ website. Social media ads are shown only on the respective social media with advanced targeting based on user behavior. This platform also has CPC & CPM model. Affiliate marketing is similar to display marketing with the difference of cost per action pay model. Aggregate websites are the platforms which give information of many service providers with or without offers. For E.g.; Trivago which aggregates hotel information across the websites and compares price.

Who is a PPC Consultant?

A PPC marketing consultant is a passionate PPC advertiser who manages all the aforesaid campaigns. PPC consultants’ job starts with understanding the clients’ business, target audience, competitors, and business’ current objective. Followed by this, the consultant has to strategize the paid campaign across different platform based on the presence of target audience on these platforms. Once the platforms are selected, the consultant has to plan the campaign with targeting, ad creatives, landing pages etc. keeping in mind the budget of the client. Once the campaign is set & live, the consultant should keep a close eye on the performance, optimize the campaign based on analysis and decide the future of campaigns. The consultant is also responsible to report the ROI of paid campaigns. It is also very important to update the client with the performance of campaigns with the help of a standard dashboard.

Technical Skills Every PPC Consultant Should Possess

To become an affluent PPC marketing consultant, it is necessary to possess certain technical skills;

Google AdWords Certified

Google being the marketing giant in search engine, advertising on Google is the major advertising requirement of most of the businesses. The adoption of the internet in this time is to an extent that even if a person is looking to plant a tree, he/she would hop to google to look for saplings. Hence, missing out on such an opportunity would be a costly affair for any business.

Google has official certifications for AdWords professionals. It consists of AdWords fundamentals, search advertising, display advertising, video advertising, mobile advertising, and shopping advertising certifications. Google also has detailed study material for every certification. The passing criteria for these certifications is 80%.

Google Analytics Certified

Behind every successful campaign, there is a lot of data analysis with the aid analytics platform such as Google Analytics. A PPC consultant must be well versed in platforms like Google Analytics to track & measure his/her campaigns.

Similar to AdWords certification, Google has Google Analytics certification in two stages; Google Analytics For Beginners and Advanced Google Analytics. The study material for these certifications is available in video and transcript format. The passing criteria for these certifications is also 80%.

HTML, JavaScript and Google Tag Manager

Having web development knowledge for a PPC consultant is very important. He/she might not have extensive experience in web development but knowing the basic will be helpful. In order to track the users’ action on the website, one has to create goals on analytics and social media platform. To do this, a java code script needs to be installed on the website either directly in the website backend or through Google Tag Manager.

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is the one-stop solution for website tracking needs. It lets one update all tags on the website through one single platform. In order to track events on the website like button click, GTM is the way to go. Google also has GTM certification and study material available.

Pro in Social Media Advertising

Every popular social media has its own ad platform. PPC consultants should be a pro in the usage of these ad platforms. To be precise, Facebook has its own ad platform such as Ad Manager. A PPC consultant should be well versed with various targeting options, creative formats, policies etc. on this platform

Analytical – Love for data & numbers

There is a difference between getting Google Analytics certification and playing with data to get insightful ideas. A PPC consultant needs to be comfortable with numbers because he/she will be surrounded by data day in day out. It will be eminently helpful if the PPC consultant has knowledge of data analysis or statistics.

Content Writing

This is not a must skill for PPC consultants, but having content writing skill will be the cherry on top. This will help to review the content developed by others and complete the content yourself when any of your freelance content writers bail out!

Know Basics Of Business

One might be a pro in all digital marketing aspects, but if one doesn’t understand the basics of clients’ business, then it is impossible to deliver great results. Hence, it is crucial for PPC consultants know the basic nitty-gritty of business’ they are handling.

Soft Skills Every PPC Consultant Should Possess

Being a PPC Consultant isn’t only about being technically sound, having certain soft skills will make a lot of difference:

Passion

PPC is an ever-changing industry, anyone without passion in this field would hardly survive in this dynamic industry

Organized

If one has an organized personality, it would be a feather on their cap in the role of PPC consultant.  In this role, one would be dealing with a huge number of campaigns, keywords, ad creatives etc. Hence being organized would be really helpful.

Time Management

If you are a one-man army handling multiple clients, then time is your friend as well as an enemy. Optimal time usage is a skill you need to take seriously.

Out Of The Box Thinking

In the day to day campaign management, PPC consultants tend to become monotonous harming their creative side. It is paramount to tap ones’ creative side to come up with out of the box ideas.

Willingness To Change & Experiment

It is already mentioned few times in this blog that how dynamic is the PPC industry. Many a time consultants become comfortable with the current campaigns and hesitate to try new features. But, it’s always recommended to experiment new features with a small budget and test the effectiveness.

Communication

Communication is not just about having a hold on a language. It is about expressing ones’ ideas and thoughts in an effective manner to the other person. This is a critical trait for any freelancer in order to communicate and convince the client to spend their budget.

How to Find Your First PPC Consultancy Client in India?

Freelancing can be compared to film industry where getting the first break is really tough. Similarly in PPC freelancing, getting the first client to trust your capabilities and handover their beloved business’ marketing to you will be hard. It takes more than PPC expertise & experience to win the first client. Some of the tips to meet your first client are;

• Create a strong social media presence for yourself. Do a lot of self-branding and show to clients when you can brand yourself so well, how well you can brand their business
• Embrace LinkedIn wholeheartedly. This will be the place where you can meet your prospective clients. That doesn’t mean, you just ping them about your services and ask them to give it a try. No more “Cold Calling” in this era. Build a trustable relationship with people, show them your expertise in your content and then pitch your service
• Before you launch your consultancy website, launch your personal blog. Write heart throbbing articles about PPC. Educate people about PPC. This will build a long-lasting relationship with your prospective clients.
• Try to do some projects for free. You can do PPC for your own business, friends’ business or an NGO. Demonstrate your expertise.

How to Grow Your PPC Consultancy Portfolio?

Once you have your first few clients on board, it’s time to look at the bigger picture by extending your horizon. Growing your client base isn’t an easy nut to crack, but not as difficult as getting the first client if you are doing a great job with them.

Along with following above-said points to get the first client, you need to make strong profiles on these freelancing portals;

• Upwork
• Freelancer
• Toptal
• Elance
• Worknhire
• Guru
• Truelancer

And many more. The catch is to choose right projects and pitch effectively with optimum pricing. Start with small projects, once you build trust, go for bigger projects with the same client.

Final Words

The world is realizing the power of PPC advertising and there are a lot of passionate people in the industry doing excellent freelancing. The key to make your place in the industry and secure PPC consultant job is to deliver results no matter what. Apart from PPC, you can also become a Google AdWords Consultant. Think of client’s business as your own business. Will you leave any stone unturned if it is about the future of your business? No right. Then don’t do it for the client as well.

Image Credits: Yourstory