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Agency PPC-er here looking to transition to in-house. Any tips?
I’ve been working in agency-land for a few years. I’m done with it now and really want to switch to in-house valhalla. My experience is in ecom but I also freelance on a SaaS account so I wouldn’t restrict myself to a specific industry when looking for in-house roles.
I’d like to learn any tips from people who have successfully made the switch from an agency to in-house role. How did you do it? Do you like it better than your agency/freelance life? Any drawbacks to this decision?
Thanks!
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1 Reply
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So you are moving from a fast paced environment with a lot of learning and potential for promotions to an annoying client side job where you’ll be doing nothing half the time and playing politics with stupid lazy colleagues the other half? Nice.
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For me, I did the transition from agency to in-house by joining a large company’s marketing department as a PPC manager. I find that medium to large companies have more ppc roles compared to smaller companies. in-house roles at smaller companies will require more well-rounded knowledge digital than just ppc. In-house has its politics like any business and you might be exposed to it than in an agency.
Now i focus on lead gen (seo, sem, social, email) but i was primarily ppc for the first 10 years of my 12 year career. I did seo and email on the side as a hustle so i learned the channels on my time off.
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There are tons of in-house roles out there. I don’t think you would have a lack of choice… especially with those who hire remote. If you don’t already have a job lined up, i think it’s about finding the right company and hopefully with a product you want to sell.
Over the last 17 years, I have been on both sides of the table. In-house can be more or the same in some ways:
* Meetings: The bigger the brand, the more meetings happen based on my personal experience. People replace doing the work for meetings
* Communication: A lot more people won’t know what you/marketing does. People spend more time explaining what we do, justifying it and showing why it adds value. Don’t underestimate this role… even to a CMO.
* Politics: Like agency land. This happens a lot of places… how much depends more on the company and management at the time.
* Day 1: Unless there is a really good established team/person in place. I found all places didn’t have processes, SOPs or reporting. Building something from scratch was needed, which I personally love as you get to set the pace and vision. Even when things were in place, 50% of it was wrong as they hired someone who sounded smart but didn’t know what they were doing
* Ideation: You can usually get new ideas and campaigns approved in-house a lot faster. This is a nice perk going in-house. Especially if a brand wants to scale up and go internationalDon’t forget we have our [2022 PPC salary survey](https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/tk2tc0/final_report_ppc_salary_survey_2022/)… make sure you don’t get under paid. Our 2023 salary survey won’t be out until end of March.
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If you find something, let me know. I’ve had a bitch of a time trying to find something decent in-house. I’ve found most large companies don’t actually understand the role of an ad manager and that’s typically why agencies exist to run that side of the business for them.
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I know you’re specifically looking for in-house, but I am looking for an ecom freelancer at the moment if you wanted to do something else on the side?
In terms of your actual question, definitely consider the size. For me I think a small outfit would be quite appealing as you’d get a chance to work in a lot of areas and really carve out your own role.
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There’s plenty of in-house opportunities out there, especially if you’ve been at an agency for the past few years.
I just made this switch a few months ago after spending the last 3.5 years at an agency. A few things I would keep in mind.
– Your background makes you valuable, but you still might not get callbacks for every position you apply for. Don’t let this discourage you.
– In-house, especially for larger companies, operates a lot differently than an agency. Things move a lot slower and there’s usually a lot more people involved with decisions and implementation. This was the biggest learning curve for me.
– Connecting and building relationships early with managers/stakeholders will help you ramp up so much quicker.
– You’ll likely want to audit accounts and try to make optimizations asap. Take your time here, build an implementation plan and work with internal shareholders for a more smooth transition (helps avoid bluntly telling the current employees their doing things wrong).Hopefully this is helpful and good luck with your transition!
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Just apply for the job and get it. Plenty of in house options on the boards. I had good luck with LinkedIn when I was fishing
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Can I dm you regarding ecom experience you’ve? Would love to chat and know how i can learn more about ecom
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Hey I made this transition myself about 1.5 years ago. I had previously worked in agencies, and in house once at a startup. What I can say from my experience in house now at a corporate place is that, it is literally 50 percent more pay for a lot less work, or at least that’s how it started out. The work became a lot busier once they finally hired a manager once my previous (mentally checked out) one left. But yeah what I find is in corporate settings most boomers and just people in general don’t understand shit about digital marketing. So if you’re okay with them asking you some dumb questions sometimes, and explaining super easy things and attending some probably useless asf meetings, then you’re golden. I am happy that my manager is pushing the envelope and I have more to do, although before they came the company was already singing my praises for helping to hold down the ship myself and helping to improve results a lot by just basically doing simple, best practises and some (somewhat) advanced things. All in all what I’ll say is the more established the company, the less sophisticated its PPC program will be so you will have a lot of low hanging fruit that can be chopped off and allow for easy wins and good results. It is a bit more boring but I’ll take boring and more money over the stress of agency or start up life any day.
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