With every passing day, the size of the digital advertising industry is becoming larger than the day before. If I take a reference from industry trends, the global online advertising spends by brands is expected to account for 44.6% by 2020. Now, you can imagine at what speed the brands are shifting their advertising spends from traditional media to digital media.
A lot goes to the growing population of internet users worldwide. As the number of users is increasing, brands are spending more and more online. And, a major percentage goes to Google Ads. You can understand the reason why if you are already aware that Google reaches out to over 90% of the global internet population. Isn’t that commendable?
Yes, it is. And, this is the reason why it’s the perfect time to be a Google Ads expert.
Okay, with that preface, if you are looking to be an expert for Google Ads or similar advertising platforms, the following are the 9 essential qualities you can’t do without:
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Curiosity
That’s the power of curiosity. It makes you keep learning, every day, every minute. And that’s one of the core requirements for professionals and experts in the digital marketing industry. With a plethora of options available to market products and services online today, there’s something new in the industry every day. As an expert, you must keep an eye on it. If you don’t, you lag behind. While it can sound challenging to many, it’s what keeps true experts motivated and passionate about the work they do.
Why is Cost Per Thousand Impressions abbreviated as CPM where there’s no word with M in it?
If this question makes you do a Google search to find an answer, congrats, you are not making a mistake choosing digital advertising as your career.
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Attention
You have to be attentive while at work. I heard when you said – Come on, it’s required on every kind of jobs and businesses, isn’t it? It is, but you still are required to be more attentive if you looking to be a Google Ads expert.
Even a basic mistake that you make while setting bids, budgets, choosing keywords, writing ads or doing similar things, it can cost a fortune for the brand. Yes, that’s true. Google Ads system or any other advertising platform viz. Facebook Ads, Linkedin Ads, Twitter Ads, Bing Ads etc. is like a robot, or say your Genie in the bottle. You give it a command and it does exactly that. No blaming or beating can help undo the harm done.
But, don’t worry, it’s not that difficult. You have that quality already. The very fact that you are able to read and make out what’s being said to you right now proves that you are attentive. You just need to maintain it while working with the campaigns.
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Empathy
When I say Empathy, I precisely mean consumer empathy. The ability to put yourself in potential customers’ shoes. Being able to feel that exact problem bugging your customers who click your ads or come to your websites or apps in an effort to buy the solution, is one of the biggest virtue of a Google Ads expert.
Remember, customers don’t buy your products or services, they buy the value, the solution that the products or services in the question offer. The time is gone when several brands used Authority and Reliability as tools to sell their products. Take GE, IBM for example. You didn’t dare to question a product made by them. You looked for features and specification, not the experience like you do today. That’s the whole difference.
Modern consumers are interested in getting experience. The story matters, the experience counts. People today halt on stories, not the authority anymore. And when you have to tell a story or talk about the experience than that of features and superiority, empathy becomes more important.
If you have consumer empathy, you will be able to identify the right chord at the right time.
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Sales & Marketing Skills
Everyone is a born marketer and everybody knows how to sell. The only difference is that people who enjoy doing it, are passionate about it, do it more often than others, and are paid for it, are called sales professionals and marketers.
It means you already have the required set of sales and marketing skills to be a Google Ads expert. The only question you have to ask yourself is – do you enjoy it? Do you like it to the extent you can do it for the rest of your life happily? Give it a thought.
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Creativity
When I talk of creativity as one of the essential qualities for a Google Ads expert, I don’t mean you have to be a designer, a painter, a musician or something else similar. What I mean here by creativity is that you should have the ability to think out of the box and come up with new ideas.
You can’t always be spying your competitors and stealing their advertising strategies. It can work sometimes, but definitely not always. And doing this can make you only a follower, not the pioneer.
So, how to get this quality of creativity?
Worry Not! If you have traits and qualities mentioned above so far, creativity will come along. When you are informed well and you implement what you know and learn every day, you won’t even notice when you came up with the new idea to make your campaigns successful.
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Communication
Being a good communicator simply means you are able to express well what you know in the language you speak. It’s about understanding what your audience has in mind, their ailing points, and using words and emotions accordingly to attract, engage, influence, and get them agreed on your opinions.
Isn’t that a sale funnel precisely in the same order? You got it right.
As a digital marketer, you should know what and how to communicate at the different stage of the conversion funnel and consumers’ life cycle. That’s it, not more than that is required. Leave the rest to public speaking schools, you don’t need them.
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Companionship
As a Google Ads expert you will at times need helps from web developers and designers, of your team or of your clients. The spirit of companionship will make your better team player so that you can get things right and fast. Even if you know design and development bit yourself, it’s not always advisable to everything yourself. Delegation or a bit of coordination does not hurt.
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Confidence
Every digital marketing professionals, new or seasoned ones, has to have confidence in what they do.
There may be situations where you need to take bold decisions. Remember, when you try a new thing which you have done or seen before, you desperately need the confidence in you. Moreover, at times your strategies may not be coming up as expected, here you may need confidence in your gameplan so that you can stick to it. A lack of confidence will force you to change your strategies unnecessarily several times. As a result, what actually comes to the table may not be pleasing always.
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Patience
Finally, patience is one quality you will critically need as a digital marketing strategist. The magic won’t happen always overnight. It takes time. And in the context of advertising campaigns where most of the systems, viz. Google Ads, Facebook Ads etc. are now powered by Machine Learning algorithms which takes time to learn and starting bringing in impactful differences. For instance, you switch to automated bidding strategies and you see that the conversion numbers drop by 10% the next day, here if you jump back to the strategies you were using, you won’t be able to utilize automation properly.
Make informed decisions. And, when you are sure of what you are doing, you sometimes, only need to be patient. Give your strategies the time it needs, have confidence, wait for it to find the performance signals and actually work the way you expected.
