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Do low stress paid media jobs exist?
I can’t hack it anymore, especially since the economy hit. Constant negativity, open my laptop in the morning and respond to an angry email, finish the day responding to an angry email.
I hate lying to the customers and pretending their campaign is going to work eventually when it’s not. They need more than just social and a disjointed outsourced paid search team. The sale matters more than ethics, yes it goes that way in most companies but it feels so dumb and awful.
Sometimes I love this industry sometimes I have awful burnout and cry a shit ton. I want to be able to do this but not in an agency environment, does anyone have any low stress PPC jobs?
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1 Reply
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The lowest stress job I had was as in-house paid media buyer
“lowest stress” is relative, I was responsible for a lot more than PPC, had very aggressive targets to meet, weekly performance meetings and very little vacation time because I was the only buyer.
But at least I wasn’t micromanaged most of the time. Agency is a stepping stone, get the experience and bounce.
If you are working in-house, make sure they actually know what they want.
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It’s called in-house.
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I left agency land at the C-suite, took a big pay cut. 2 years later I make the same amount and I haven’t produced a powerpoint since. Never going back.
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It’s probably the specific agency/company you’re working for, more than the field in general.
Our agency (not the only one…I know of others!) offers six weeks paid vacation, complete flex work (work when you want, no defined schedule required), fully remote, a “13th salary” bonus, and a paid-for annual international retreat including spouses. We have 1-2 meetings a week. A specialist will manage from 5 larger accounts at minimum, to 15 smaller accounts at maximum.
There are lots of mid-size and large-size agencies where it’s a grind for no specific reason. There are also lots of fantastic boutique agencies where you can make really good money with a great workload.
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I’m a programmer specialising in Google/Bing Ads API & scripts. I find it pretty low stress.
I still manage accounts but purely to keep my knowledge up and have the luxury of being flexible there.
With tools, etc. as long as they do the job the client’s happy. I’m also working on a saas scripts solution ([shabba.io](https://shabba.io)) which is the eventual dream (no clients!).
You could do something similar, or even specialise in conversion tracking, attribution, etc. There’s a lot of companies out there that would happily outsource someone to handle their GA4 migration properly for example.
In house helps too but there’s no guarantee there.
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I’ll never forget my first month working in-house after being at an agency for 13 years. I never knew a day could be so . . . . slow. I had stuff to do for sure. But my schedule/workflow was mostly of my design with nowhere near the frenetic pace with constant deadlines. I was honestly a little bored at first. But once I recalibrated and my blood pressure dropped closer to normal levels I realized what I’d been living in was at the extreme, not the norm.
One benefit to agency life is that I built up a fantastic network of contacts. Even though my initial job post-agency wasn’t with any of those parties I’ve since landed in a position with a former agency colleague (whom also knows first-hand all the inefficiencies of over-booked agencies) and has built up an in-house marketing team of agency ex-pats.
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Move tech side to client success or to google
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In-house. I work in a corporative. Everything is scheduled and nothing is for “yesterday”. Search a job in a company not agency.
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You will find companies with ethics if you look.
I hate to hear about agencies who take advantage of their clients.
There are so many.
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Whether you’re in-house or agency, work for a good company that values work-life balance. And maintain strict boundaries from the beginning. Personally working on detachment has proven to be helpful in my career as well while dealing with client issues. Currently I’m in an agency role, which I’m enjoying, but with these types of positions these are the things I specifically look for:
– Well-staffed teams (ACs, AEs, and maybe SAEs in addition to the supervisor and any directors/VPs)
– Reasonable division of work (paid media managers are not expected to also be graphic designers)
– Good PTO and early release FridaysPersonally outside of this I also will not respond to messages outside of business hours, on vacation etc. as it’s a slippery slope. After this role I’m going back in house as generally they are less stressful. However when there’s a lot of work to do, expect to work a lot. Be sure to ask about these things in the interviews and read company reviews on sites like Glassdoor.
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After working for more than 5 years in this industry, I have the lowest stress paid media job.
The lowest stress paid media job is to “tell the truth”. If the campaigns are not doing well, tell them the reason why and also let them know that you are an expert and if there was any other expert, he would have produced probably the same results. Then, its upto them whether to stay with you or not.
There are millions of businesses who need online marketing in this world, one client going away will not make much of a difference.
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Why are you lying to clients when you know it won’t work?!
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I’m in my 2nd year as a Media Buyer and I’ve realized the Lowest of Stress I felt was when I started out. It’s funny but the better you get, the more stressed you’ll feel about performance and the data.
Most of the stress now comes from the management or clients about Ads not performing like how the YouTube “Gurus” show their ads performing.
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Might be time to find a new agency. I manage 5 clients spending between $25-100k/mo on a combo of Google, FB, and TT. I never feel like I have to lie about performance. It’s not zero stress but it’s remote and the stress is pretty minimal
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I worked at agencies for about 7 years, and have been in-house for the last 3. In-house is a different kind of stress, but overall more manageable. No more retention game, but it’s all on you. You will likely own search, social, SEO, website CRO, email etc.
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