If You Only Have 12 Hours To Up Your PPC Game

Lounging around on one of my favorite hangout spots on the Interwebs the other day, I came across a post from a wee young online marketing professional in the making.

He’s got some B2B clients that need help with Google AdWords and Facebook ads. He’s dabbled in both but is itching to up his game.

His question to the tribe of PPC marketing professionals on the site was this…

“If you had to pick 12 hours to devote to developing your Facebook / google adwords PPC skills, where would you apply your time?”

He got the expected chorus of “try this course” or {insert very specific yet somehow incredibly vague at the same time advice about Facebook/AdWords here}.

But here’s what I told the young lad on what I’d do with my 12 hours…

“Studying the fundamentals of direct response advertising and salesmanship… crafting offers, writing strong copy, etc.

People who can handle the technical aspects of AdWords and Facebook ads are a dime a dozen (and will be replaced more and more by scripts and AI).

Understanding human psychology and how to get people to respond will put you on a different level.”

If you or your online marketing manager/team is looking to up there game, the path to doing it is through inhaling the fundamentals of direct response advertising and salesmanship.

Study writings from guys like John Carlton, Claude Hopkins, John Caples, David Olgilvy, Gary Halbert, and Dan Kennedy. The collective brain candy from that list will get you far in marketing and biz.

Leave the technical details and tactics the ex-spurts teach to the marketing masses.

It’s a lesson unfortunately many of those who own or work at PPC management agencies have yet to learn. And it’s why many companies that hire these PPC management agencies don’t get good results in AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook advertising, etc.

PPC is about more than just knowing what keywords to put in a campaign, how to set bids, match types, etc.

A good PPC campaign is about sound marketing strategy. Understanding the audience, the message, the offers, the follow up sequence(s) that can convert traffic to sales at a good clip.

These are things most PPC books don’t cover. So, if you’re looking to up your PPC skills, study up on direct response marketing. Your bank account will thank you for it.

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Adam K
Adam K

Adam has been fascinated with online marketing, particularly PPC, since 2004 and opened his own PPC management company in 2006. Over the years he's written extensively about Google AdWords and online marketing on his own sites as well as partnered with/written for Perry Marshall, Ryan Deiss of DigitalMarketer.com and Neil Patel.