Interview with Sophie Logan, PPC manager at Adzooma

Today we live in a very dynamic and rapidly evolving world. If you want to be a professional in any digital sphere, you have to be aware of the latest digital trends. You can’t just wait for a suitable book or a thematic event. That’s why nowadays people trust and rely on the opinions of experts. Experts are considered reputable in their work areas and share really useful and applicable tips.

And we’re excited to announce the first contribution to our new column, Expert Opinion.

Today we will be co-managing the column with Sophie Logan, PPC Manager at Adzooma.

Adzooma is an all-in-one PPC optimization tool that helps you optimize your Google, Microsoft, and Facebook Ads in one place. You don’t need to log into multiple platforms to view your vital analytical data. You get insights that you can act on in real-time and the tiresome task of consolidating the data is done for you.

Sophie Logan, PPC Manager at Adzooma, specializes in the Google and Microsoft Search Networks and pursues a business-based approach to Paid Media Marketing.

Sophie has spoken at numerous events, including the Nottingham Digital Summit and training students at the University of Nottingham, along with having work published on WordStream and SmartBrief.

Let’s jump straight to points of interest here:

I didn’t necessarily choose to work in the PPC industry, it kind of just happened. My first role after graduating from University was as a Digital Marketing Assistant at an Apple retailer. This role provided me with the opportunity to try lots of different areas within digital marketing from SEO and email marketing, to events and CRO. PPC became my favorite discipline during my time there and was something I took with me going onto the next stages in my career.

I think as PPC tasks continue to become more automated, I think it is important that a PPC Specialist can use the time freed up from running manual tasks to be able to strategize. A focused approach on identifying trends in the micro and macro environment surrounding your account is essential in ensuring that you can continue to effectively grow an account.

A PPC Specialist should not only be able to strategize but I think it should be something that they should enjoy too. It allows you to factor in new features, ideas, and opportunities, which not only helps to develop an account but advance their own skills and experience too.

There are a huge amount of tools out there, which can sometimes be a bit overwhelming. However, focusing on what you need to actually get your job done and putting aside the rest of the noise is important.

For me, what I am looking for are tools that will help me to save time and to find out supporting data and insights:

• Adzooma
  • Minimize time spent managing Google, Facebook & Microsoft ads
  • Expert optimization, implementable with 1-click
  • Rule-based automation
  • Personalized reporting
  • Apply recommended optimizations and improve results easily
• SEMrush
  • Competitor analysis of budgets and creatives
  • PPC costs benchmarking
  • Keyword research/ find new keywords
  • Competitor discovery
• SpyFu
  • Exposes the search marketing secret formula of your most successful competitors
  • See keywords competitors have bought, organic rankings, and every ad variation within the last 14 years
• Google Analytics
  • Tracks and reports website traffic
  • See where visitors are viewing your website are from
  • See how many visitors have been converted into leads or customers
• Data Studio
  • A free tool that turns your data into formative, easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable dashboards and reports.
  • Visualize your data
  • Turns any report into a flexible template report that anyone can use to see their own data

Whilst we have a number of team members who support the wider business with data and insights, as a Marketing team, we all take responsibility for building, updating, and distributing reports.

I think that this is important because it not only ensures that we are not solely dependent on one individual for reports, but it also helps to ensure that we are more engaged with the actual content of the reports. This way we all play a more active role in ensuring that the reports are productive and worthwhile.

I have a number of reports I only update once a month, or even once a quarter, whereas some require me to have a more regular involvement, as much as 2-3 times a day. I think it is important to not get hung up on the amount of times a report is updated or reviewed. Spending the time to effectively review, analysis and make actions from a report is what is important, so it is better to spend time whenever you do use a report rather than just ticking a box.

The importance of a particular KPI is completely dependent on the intent of the campaign, which means that it is not unusual for the key KPI to differ from campaign to campaign.

To decide what are the most important KPI’s for a particular campaign, I strip the objective of the campaign back to its very basics and ask “what do I need the audience to do?'' and “how is that goal explained by KPI’s?”.

For example, if I am running a lead generation campaign then my objective is to get the audience to leave their contact details. The KPI’s which are going to portray this action are total conversions. Therefore conversions will be my most important KPI for the campaign, with relevant sub-KPI’s such as conversion rate and cost per conversion also being of importance for optimizations and performance evaluation.

For Adzooma, the most common goal for campaigns is sign ups, as we aim to drive new users to the platform. It is important to ensure that a campaign's goal is aligned with the overall objectives of the business. Every campaign that you run should be working to help the business achieve its goals.

I think that the PPC industry will continue to become more automated, with more uptake in AI across all advertising platforms. This will change the way that PPC specialists work, with manual tasks becoming a thing of the past, freeing them up for more strategic and long term planning.

We really appreciate Sophie's honest responses about her favorite tools, daily PPC challenges, as well as the actionable tips on PPC goals and reports.

We totally agree with Sophie about the future of the ad market and that uptake in AI across all ad platforms will free PPC specialists up for more strategic and long term planning.

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