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Is it hard to hire good PPC people?
Posted by on May 14, 2023 at 11:12 pmHow difficult is it to recruit people who can build truly successful PPC campaigns? And how much would you pay them if they could? Also please tell me your interview stories, what kind of people come to interview and how good are their skills normally?
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1 Reply
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It’s hard finding the right people for any role, but look at the average salaries for the position online and consider whether you want average talent and adjust the salary up or down from there.
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I’ve been struggling to find good people, I’ve been a one man show for a long time, a lot of in-house tools and automations. Definitely made it a bit harder on myself needing someone who can code and understand data science.
Better to wait though, I didn’t build the reputation I have with an average clients spend over six figures monthly to hire a subpar manager to jeopardize that.
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Good no. Honest yes.
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I’m good and honest, but not inexpensive. With 20+ years of experience I think you get what you pay for.
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There’s a lot of methods to go about it, where in you’d judge the person based on their knowledge, their questions, their responses to your questions and their authenticity.
But when interviewing, you often come across a wide variety of people from highly skilled arrogants to low skilled confidents or the other way around as well.
The best way to go about in such senario is to take a data driven route wherein you map the skills you need in a person and validate them through different methods like senario based questions, etc. But do note that the skills are not always if the person knows x, y and z but instead if they are authentic enough to admit what they know and don’t know and how they can still help your business out.
Once done, it’s all upto you to take the final judgement call based on how culturally fit you see them while ensuring they meet enough checklists of the skill requirement you have.
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The best cost near $100K / Year. The great cost $60K-$80K / Year. The good cost $45K-$60K / Year. I personally feel there’s nothing anyone can tell you how to identify between the 3. It’s like love. I do the interview and after hearing their experiences, testing them on logic & witnessing their passion ~ I have a pretty good sense where they fall (too much passion often puts you on the lower 2 levels – ad platforms suck). EX question so you don’t leave empty-handed: “Give me an example where a client would want a lead / sale with a higher CPA over lower one.”
Side note to me that matters more than any of this. It took me many moons ~ but I’ve been awarded the opportunities of “The Best.” Biggest thing I’ve learned – between those three pay levels I noted ~ success is a rate, not a guarantee. A lower level might find success (ROI) that a higher level doesn’t in some verticals / companies. It’s the experience & success likelihood that you’re paying for ~ not success guarantee. Long story short – be prudent & go with your gut.
Also, don’t invade Russia in the winter.
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Yeah, because most companies look at fiverr and think someone who can navigate the platform is the same as someone who can understand the business needs and how to convey it through landing page design and ad copy.
You should pay them like you would a good multidisciplinary business analyst and not a campaign generating monkey.
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The fact there is a ton of noobs calling themselves PPC experts or starting their own agencies makes it difficult to spot the good from bad.
Generally speaking, anyone who started their own agency at 20 something is a person who failed at landing a good job and took the agency road as shortcut to get a job and make money.
The good ones will usually spend years agency-side learning the craft before starting their own business.
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I’ve been a full time PPC manager for over 13 years and would consider myself highly experienced (not one of those weird cult of personality types that are all over the internet).
Most large clients find me through LinkedIn, specifically via a dedicated recruitment agent or an in-house recruiter who’s experienced in recruiting for digital marketing and knows what to look for.
So my recommendation for you would be to use LinkedIn Recruiter or possibly something like Upwork (but there’s a lot of dross on there), and look at people with over 10 years full time PPC experience. Those who have eaten, breathed and slept PPC.
In answer to your question around pay, if they’re really good they would have had enough time to make many mistakes (necessary learning curve on PPC) and learn how to make some excellent campaigns through happy accidental experiments. They’d need a minimum of 3 years experience. There’s no such thing as someone who simply follows best practice and does well IMO.
At that point they can get a wage of anywhere between £35k/$45k per year starting for 3 years experience.
Experienced PPC managers (more then 3 years experience)can earn up to and beyond twice this amount depending on who they work for.
If they’re highly experienced and you can’t afford them, they won’t work for you I’m afraid to say. Good PPCers are hard to find.
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There’s a pinned post at the top of this sub that outlines industry salaries for 2023.
It was extremely difficult to hire excellent PPC staff over the past 2-3 years but that is easing now with many layoffs in the sector.
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It is usually difficult to hire because people don’t ask the right questions and end up hiring the wrong person. Paid ads, and marketing in generally, is a skill and many people don’t view it that way. We have our [2023 PPC salary survey](https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/11xi72k/ppc_salary_survey_2023_final_report/) if you want to know what people are going to cost.
Asking the sub what people come to interviews and how good they are is not going to help you or anyone hire because it’s focused on the wrong questions. Plus your experience won’t be someone else’s when it comes to HR & recruitment. You should be focused on how do we get the right people in the door and how do we weed out the low quality people throughout the process. Getting there is all about writing the right job description, posting it on the right sites and using interview one to weed out anyone who is more talk than skills.
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There’s a lot of over promising going on, and a flood of people trying to break into the ppc game since 2020. The best way is you need to understand your ppc platform first, whether it be Google Ads, Facebook, linkedin, etc. Know the strategies, proper setup, recent changes etc. Or if you have 1 trusted person have them sit in on the interviews. Too many small agencies want to offer multiple services without knowing how to actually provide those services and assume the person they hire will take the reigns.
You can’t hire effectively if you don’t know how to do it yourself. We’ve worked with lots of agencies over he years and the lack of knowledge on their end was concerning and opens them up to potentially bringing in poor performers. (which ultimately they all seem to go through a lot).
Know the questions to ask, that are a bit more obscure and not easily found in a blog. Ask for in depth strategy for a specific industry you have worked with in the past. Set them up with a test client, and review their change history and adjustments to see if they make sense or are just making random adjustments. They should have an initial focus and strategy going in.
You can also have them provide an audit for an account and review the amount of details or insights they provide. This may be easier than allowing them to make changes initially.
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I think it’s difficult to impossible to tell the difference between a bad, adequate and good PPC manager until you’ve assigned them some clients and seen the results.
I hire people with little to no experience and train/promote in house.
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Usually the discussion is centered around the existing brand.
There are no specific questions that would help identify whether I would move the needle forward or not, what is a great indicator is the person who referenced the client to me and the endless number of people I could use as references. If the most well known entrepreneurs, heads of state or directors aren’t good enough references then even the most in-depth case studies wouldn’t be.
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