This article was first published in displayadsdeepdive.com
So the other day, while I was writing the article on hiring a foreign PPC, I pointed out two items that, I believe, require much more importance than the one given to it: Culture and Personal Preferences. These two mixed together give us a fundamental aspect to consider whenever we are hiring a brand new PPC (or really any type of employee): The style we need them to have.
If you’ve ever browsed through our website and got to the Find a PPC form, you must have noticed that, in the list of things we need to know in order to find your perfect match, we ask for your preferred employee style. This is really important because we are firm believers that you get your best work done when you are doing it with someone who gets you. It’s not just a matter of chemistry, but also includes many aspects all around the work ethics spectrum and also in the way you see life, so how could we explain what this style is and, even more, how can we know who matches it and who doesn’t?
There is this concept in Public Relations called “organizational culture” which basically stands for the style, image, environment, and every “culture” aspect that an enterprise (or any institution) chooses for itself. By doing so, they establish a path to be followed by themselves and anyone who represents their brand. However, this culture is not something that only exists when someone defines it, it’s culture, it’s there and it happens even if no one’s keeping track of it.
Given this situation, before hiring any PPC, you must sit down and figure out what type of person you need in order to accomplish not only the job position goals but also your big-picture company ones. Whenever you are working with someone, either your employee or an agency that you hired, you need to make sure that they are the correct type of people for you. No one’s talking about good or bad experts, this is just related to a personal preference thing and what do you feel the most comfortable and closer to succeed with.
For example, a very close friend of mine once told me this story about a girl that he’d dated whose mom had been diagnosed with almost terminal cancer in a really advanced stage, so there was really very little to do for her. Being from a very rich family, this girl and her parents went to many of the best doctors in the world’s offices to see if there existed any treatment that could help her and which one they preferred to go with. In their medical tour, they visited a doctor who was pretty much a rockstar in the field and who had saved the lives of many people that were in her mom’s same scenario, but he treated them very poorly, had 3 minutes to talk, and made them feel like he was doing them a favor and would never have time for them. Afterward, they visited another doctor, a really good specialist but maybe not rockstar-level, who spent over an hour with them and let them know that he’d be there for them any time and for as long as they needed. The girl’s family chose to go with the second doctor, even when the first one had a handbook of lives saved. This works as a perfectly good example of how people prioritize different qualities when choosing someone to work with.
Today, we are going to go through a list of different styles (specifically the ones that we offer in our form), so next time you are hiring a PPC specialist, you can make sure he’s the best fit for you. So let’s jump into it!
The hand-holding style
As the name says it, this style is all about guidance, and it goes both ways. If your company promotes a working style that involves a lot of human qualities, meaning, supporting your employees, being there for your customers, having an approachable way of managing, among many other skills. If this is your case, you’ll want to hire a PPC specialist who matches your emotional and supportive way of seeing business, not just a Display-Ad-Creating-Robot.
Educational
Are you looking for an expert or for someone who’s just giving their first steps in the Advertising field? If your working style involves a lot of time invested in guiding your employees and adapting them to your company, then you have an educational style here. The ideal situation in this case is to hire a PPC who’s looking to begin their journey in the industry, so they are free of prejudices and any previous knowledge, so you can be the one to teach them everything they need to know to handle your Ad Campaigns correctly.
High tech
Is your corporation all about constantly developing new products and taking full advantage of technological advances? Then high-tech is definitely the style for you. Basically, in order to keep your company moving and improving itself, you’ll need to look for someone who can add up to that. In this case, your perfect PPC fit will probably be someone really experienced, who has studied a lot, and who, besides knowing PPC, has some technology-related background.
High touch
Have you ever associated the term “High touch business” with expensive and weren’t very sure why? Well, here’s the explanation: High touch equals a high amount of human touch (or, you know, interaction). Basically, this works for businesses who offer deeply personalized customer service and whose clients are really interested in having an actual person (not a bot, not a machine, not an automated response) helping them and guiding them through the process. If this is your company’s case, then probably you’ll need to orientate your PPC search to people who are sociable, capable of interacting with other people, and who are patient enough to deal with them for as long as needed. Of course, the cost of having a team who’s also responsible for dealing with people will be higher than not having it.
Super automated
This working style might as well be called low-touch because it’s the exact opposite of the previous one. If your company offers bots for customer service and has a very automated system that requires little to no interaction with other human beings, then you should definitely go for this choice. Basically, in this case, you’ll orientate your search to people who are very good PPC specialists and don’t necessarily have people skills. This is ideal also for companies with low budgets because, obviously, the costs will be reduced.
Affordable
I don’t really need to develop so much at this point, do I? Basically, if you are a startup, or if you don’t have a really big budget to spend on your Advertising Strategy, you won’t be very concerned about whether or not someone fits your company’s culture, right? I’m not saying this is right or wrong, but this is for sure respectable. If this is your case, you might want to consider either a young PPC who’s just starting and learning the ropes of the business, a freelancer or you can always go for using a PPC as an affiliate.
To conclude, I believe this is one of the most important things to consider before hiring a PPC, and before hiring anyone. Basically, you can have a really nice and experienced PPC expert, but if he’s not a good fit for the style your company’s been working in for a while now, then they are probably going to be more trouble than benefits since you’ll have to work extra hard on getting them to adapt if they ever do. That’s why, as I always do, I recommend you to take a seat, grab a cup of tea and figure out the personal qualities and profile you’ll need your PPC to have because you wouldn’t want to hire someone who represents the opposite of your values, would you?