Have any of you guys started PPC freelancing with no prior digital marketing experience?

[Zero-Star]

I personally think the experience you get from learning on the job, in a company, is invaluable. You may know the theory, but hands on is totally different, and you need to accumulate experience. And accumulate experience with someone else’s money and experience behind it ideally. Not to mention that actual best practice goes against many of the things Google now tell us if you want to perform the best you can. If you want to forge a freelancer career then you need to be able to retain clients, and I can’t see that happening without a year or two of experience behind you at least.

[thelaineranger]

I got tossed in the deep end of a shallow pool, if you will. My first job was with a small marketing company with several local clients running ads. The owner was running the ads until I came and rather quickly handed over every account to me. I was… not equipped for that. Account performance was bad to terrible and I frankly didn’t get the support or training needed to administer the accounts properly.

If comedy is tragedy plus time, expertise is immersion in your role plus time. I was in way over my head to the point that when I moved to another company I said ad management was off the table until I learned more. But necessity forced me back into the role, and I chose to take the responsibility seriously and dedicated myself to improving. I’ve got a lot left to learn but after a few years in the industry I think I’m a competent advertiser.

[forgottenpaw]

I started off from scratch as an unpaid intern in an agency. I wouldn’t have been able to learn the ropes without that background. They barely knew anything about search advertising and I mostly taught myself or we taught each other with our colleagues. But I wouldn’t have been able to do it alone because there’s a lot of feedback that comes to you from people even if they’ve just been in the business generally, instead of knowing the subject too well. There’s just something about teamwork that helps you learn when you’re a beginner. Maybe also that you see other colleagues’ cases and can draw your conclusions on what’s normal or not.

Plus, they did send me to some day seminars, and those are very useful for a beginner.

[Born-Arm]

I have, started working on my own store, was a real baptism of fire for myself first couple of months but turned it around incredibly once I got my head around it. Took on first client few months later and things starting to look up on both accounts

[dantiscvs]

I started learning with some free YouTube tutorials on how to run facebook ads. In the same time I begun writing a blog, which was covering psychological research in ecommerce field. That’s where I experimented with my first campaigns. Quite soon my friend offered me to run some basic campaigns for his company (for free). Then came another friend with another small campaign and so on and so forth. After a few months of friendly favors I had some experience. That’s when I applied for ecommerce specialist role in a small ecommerce furniture store. Got this job right of the bat. Renumeration was shit and I barely knew what I was doing but after a few months I mastered Google Analytics and did some more FB campaigns, seo, pinterest ads, amazon and ebay listings etc. Meanwhile I learned how to set up chatbots on manychat and chatfuel and did that as a side job too. Right now I am in an agency doing full stack marketing and still doing some side gigs. It is a lot of working hours but on the other hand having that freelancing capability gives you some peace of mind in terms of job/money security.

[Jodiefoatersucks]

In this line of work you need a 9-5 for bulls and a 6-12 to learn.

I started my own business to learn more about ppc, you only learn things as they come up

[cuteman]

No, but I tend to pick up a decent amount of clients from people who did.