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how important in ppc is it in terms of soft skills vs technical skills?
like 50/50? or is it like something very dfiferent like the best ppc people are 20 percent soft skills and like 80 technical skills, where their knowledge of technical and hands on side of things is very deep and comprehensive?
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1 Reply
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The more client face or talking with external people in other departments of a company…. means more soft skills. Comes down to the role.
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Your first role will likely be very technical as you learn what you’re doing. As you move up your responsibilities will include more strategy and client communication which will involve more soft skills.
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I agree with fathom, which direction do you want to go.
People or Tech, to be a hybrid is pretty unique as one gets you out of the weeds further away, while the other keeps you in them. As long as you have good internal comms, you don’t need PPC skills to be an effective manager, your planner or buyer can give you the notes to than turn customer facing. Anything more is a takeaway, and builds up your team in support. If you know ahead of the call that it will get weedy you can have a sme in the background via chat or on the call for support.
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PPC is unfortunately a very anti-intellectualized field lately. Many young people being told you don’t need college or hard skills to succeed, you can just grind it out with YouTube tutorials.
If you don’t have a 100-200 college level understanding of calculus, statistics, economics, communications, data science… you’re not going to succeed anywhere to the degree that someone who does will.
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It’s role specific. PPC sales people or client service reps, soft. Lever pullers, analysts, QA, data.
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It depends on whether you are client-facing. If you are, soft skills will be very important, otherwise not so much as long as you can work effectively with whoever your direct manager is.
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Having done this for so long, I’d say you can get away with 30/70 soft /hard. Winning in ppc for your client makes up for the soft skills. That said, soft skills will build a better relationship and hopefully get your client to sing your praises to other potential clients.
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I hire in PPC and I can tell you that especially early on I am looking for great communication, attention to detail, self awareness and problem solving / critical thinking skills. A lot of the hard skills can be taught.
As you grow / develop or if I’m hiring for a mid-level role, platform skills and strategic thinking become way more important.
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Depends on the soft skill and where you are in your career.
Just starting out critical thinking is the most important soft skill, but is generally eclipsed by the need for technical skills.
As you become more technical the more important critical thinking will become.
Then there’s account management which involves managing and setting expectations, strategic communications, etc…
And finally, leadership skills as you grow beyond an individual contributor.
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