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How did you get into PPC and what did you do beforehand? Did you go to college for Marketing, go for something else or no college at all?
How did you get into PPC and what did you do beforehand? Did you go to college for Marketing, go for something else or no college at all?
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16 Replies
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I had a job at Walmart at 17/18, went to college for advertising, worked a little bit in social media management afterwards. I got into PPC when I worked as a receptionist/social media coordinator for a dental clinic during school, and he handed me 3 grand and said to start running ads on Facebook.
I’m an analytical person so I went hard on research, case studies, and testing to see how it works before dumping the whole budget. We managed to reach 100+ new dental client leads on Facebook in the first month and just started from there! After that, I went into Google Ads and into obtaining other clients for it in the community.
College kind of sets you up for this one path in my experience, all my classmates were thinking they can get into big agencies right away and they forget about learning other digital skills that school doesn’t provide you with. Although I’m young, I feel I have learned a lot so far and there’s definitely a lot more to learn on PPC side. Now I’m leaning towards learning Pinterest, Tik Tok, etc.
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I went to school for 1 semester in computer science, dropped out after getting a full time job in IT, and learned on my own.
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Studied digital marketing for university, did an unpaid internship at a small digital marketing agency (social media), wasn’t a big fan of social media and couldn’t see myself doing so for the rest of my life. I finished my final year and got hired at the same agency after I graduated for ppc marketing where I learned everything on the job
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No college or uni.
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Studied journalism, political science and communication. Professional experience (chronologically):
-News Writer
-Political Campaign Manager
-Digital Ad Buyer at DC Public Affairs Firm
-Boutique Agency (commercial)
-PPC/Social Political Ads buyer (PAC)
-PPC Medium Sized agency (current) -
I went to college for IT Networking/Information Systems.
From there, I started marketing stuff with a college buddy on an autoparts eCommerce site that we opened together and did OK on that for about 5 years before I want PRO as a PPC manager
*it’s what qualified me to actually comment on it myself*
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What we really do as PPC people is almost one part understanding tech, one part understanding math, and one part understanding human psychology to be good at it, a rare combination which is why very few people do what we do well anyway.
If you start your own agency or consultancy you also need people skills to add to that mix which makes it even more rare!
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# Anyway, you may not like the answer but here is the cold hard fact of what you need to do do well and break into this market.
# Save up and start a small eCommerce shop focusing on a niche so small you can’t really f*uck it up,
I call it a ‘business on training wheels’.
stay at it until you can actually make it profitable
and then you will be able take that experience to work wherever you want making 80K a year as a PPC manager (*if thats still what you want to do*)
as myself and any one of us other agency owners would like that experience over anything else out there pretty much or any degree for that matter
to show you know what your doing
*and more important* that you are passionate about what you do which doing PPC well actually takes.
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Sell something even if you dominated it there wouldn’t be that much money in it as most people who know what there doing wont be in that niche.
Sell furnace filters, specialty cleaning supplies, whatever has some demand and very little competition in it already and you should be OK.
*Hope this helps.*
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Graduated college 10 years ago with a marketing degree. Knew nothing about digital marketing. Got an SEO job through our university career portal. Eventually became the PPC guy. Now do it in-house.
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Worked for a living since I was legally allowed to. Stumbled across it early. Put in the work, and it is what it is….
Something like that couldn’t possibly happen in this industry anymore, and sure as fuck ain’t all chronic and palm trees. 🙂
You have to find your own path captain. Fuck everyone else… What do you want? 😉
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Here’s my long story:
I did a double major in economics and psychology in college, and figured getting into advertising might be a good way to turn those areas of study into a career.
Since I graduated at the height of the Great Recession, I had to break into the industry with a lot of informational interviews/networking and ultimately, taking an unpaid internship (I can’t believe those used to be considered ok!).
This unpaid internship was where I was first exposed to the world of PPC. It was hard to keep up with all the industry jargon (and acronyms), and frankly, it bored me to tears. I remember taking the adwords certification exam (which for some reason was a big deal to the agency), and failing because I cared so little about studying for it.
After 3 months I left the internship cuz I was tired of commuting two hours a day to only do occasional keyword research and make stupid graphs in excel for people barely my senior.
Living at home, with no job, and no clue what I was gonna do to make a living, my mom (a clinical psychologist) mentioned she needed to get more clients, as well as a website.
So with my extremely limited web development skills and ppc skills, I built her a simple WYSIWYG website on google sites, and start promoting it using Google Ads.
She got a bunch of new clients, and from there, my ppc career began.
Ironically, to this day I haven’t spent a single penny on Google Ads (or any ppc Ads) to grow my small agency. I’ve gotten all of my business from referrals (partnerships and clients) and Elance (which is now Upwork).
One decade later I now have a nice small client load and I’m making good money for working really reasonable hours. I work about 24-30hrs a week. Many Friday’s I only spend doing admin work or take off entirely.
My business is 100% remote, which is definitely one of the things I’ve always been the most thankful for.
TL;DR mostly self-taught, had the privilege to live at home while I built my skills and client base during the Great Recession, now own a pretty successful small agency
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I have a degree in music. I learned PPC by doing ads for a music school that I worked at, now PPC is my full time gig
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I went to a business school, and got my majors in marketing. The education scam is such that they will teach you the fundamentals of a particular field. I learned the basics of marketing, hoping to land an awesome job once I graduate. After a month or so, I got my first internship with peanuts for a stipend, but the sheer knowledge that I garnered was fantastic and that built a strong PPC foundation within me, and that was the game-changer. That being said, I don’t think you need a degree in marketing to become a pro at PPC. I believe that almost EVERYONE can be whatever they want to be: From a Doctor to a Janitor anybody can be a PPC specialist if they have the zeal to do it. You just need to have the passion and enthusiasm to learn new things.
TL;DR: You don’t need a college degree to be good at PPC. Just keep educating yourself and stay up to date.
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Fell ass backwards into digital marketing. Got my google analytics certificate, applied for a job at a young agency and took off from there.
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Did digital marketing sales first. Got good at selling it, then learned how to actually do it. After that, I hung out a shingle and hit the phones. Haven’t looked back since.
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Studied electronics engineering, graduated with honors. Worked in the field for 3 years and hated it. Company closed and I just asked a friend for help with jobs. Ended up in ads agency. Couldn’t have worked out better 🙂 turned out to be the perfect field for me. Back when I was younger, I didn’t even know this job existed…
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Studied journalism, got a job as an SEO blogger, got a job to do Google ads and ended up loving it and working as a PPC exec and manager. Never aspired to work in marketing but I wouldn’t change it and grateful for how it turned out!
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