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PPC “foot in the door”
Posted by on December 13, 2025 at 1:19 amIs anyone else experiencing this? I’ve been working in digital marketing for small businesses for the past 6 years but none of them had/have money to run ads so it was never something I could get experience with.. the company I’m with now was about to allow me a small budget to see what I can do with it ($300/mo – I know it’s small) and then after the better half of a year taking courses and certifications to prep myself and setting up a new site for ads (subdomain), building out the backend with a lot of custom code as well to make sure everything is hipaa compliant but still able to be tracked, decided they didn’t want to take the risk and that it wasn’t the direction they wanted to go… now I’m here.. again… I know paid media is absolutely what I want to do with my career but all the jobs I see job postings for need 2-5 years in PPC. It seems like there’s no way in. The small businesses don’t have the funds to do it and want all marketing done free and the jobs specifically looking for a PPC/paid media person need years of experience. I feel so lost right now, I don’t know what to do. Am I the only person experiencing this?
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1 Reply
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You’re not alone — this is the most common PPC catch-22.
Most people get in by creating experience themselves with small test budgets, side projects, or short pilots, not by waiting for perfect clients.
Once you can show real campaigns and decisions, the “2–5 years” requirement matters a lot less. -
You shouldn’t make your ambition to be a PPC specialist.
You should make it to be an entry level media planner/buyer/etc.
Whatever the most common ground floor level role is in an agency for media buying that might be adjacent to PPC. Then you express an interest in paid search and show reasonable subject matter knowledge. 9/10 times they’ll let you develop that specialization, but never before you’re useful as a grunt footsoldier crunching basics.
If you go it alone, you have to find a young entrepreneurial business that has almost no ad presence and wants the ground floor level, then use that to get a job with tons of cred attached to unlock actually meaningful portfolio clients.
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