The Day in the Life Of a Paid Search Manager
Have you ever asked yourself what a paid search manager does? Maybe you want to become one, or maybe you are curious what your agency’s paid search manager does with your account. Whatever the reason, Helix House’s paid search manager Cody Maniga wanted to share with you the good, the bad, and the ugly (okay, not so ugly) parts of his job. Without further ado, Cody, take it away!
What does an average day look like for a paid search manager?
My day to day at Helix House is always changing as we take on new projects with new objectives, obstacles, industries. However, some things my day will always include are:
- Checking spend across all paid media campaigns to make sure we are on track on not over or underspending
- Checking KPIs (key performance indicators) such as Conversions, Cost Per Conversions, Cost Per Click, Cost Per Thousand Impressions, Impression Share, Click Through Rate, and using them to keep campaigns healthy.
- Quality Assurance on leads (Listening to calls, reading lead forms submitted to clients, checking sales numbers, etc.)
- Attending both internal and client meetings
- Researching and suggesting new strategies to increase leads
- Testing new Ads, Targeting, and Bids
- Finding and fixing any bugs, flags, or errors (Broken tracking, Suspended Ad accounts, Payment issues, etc.)
How do you typically start your day?
I always start my day with clients with larger ad spends. Not because they are more important than smaller clients but clients with higher spend have larger, more complex campaigns and objectives that typically require more attention than smaller ones. Also, the more a client spends, the more data comes in and that increases the speed at which I am able to optimize campaigns.
Which top three tools & websites do you use the most?
Google and Facebook ads, Google Analytics, and HubSpot.
What is your favorite part of your day?
My favorite part of the day is when I get to brainstorm new creative projects. Most of my role depends on statistics and math so when I get the opportunity to work on creative projects like social ads, programmatic ads, or landing page designs it is always exciting to see how it performs.
What is your biggest challenge?
Biggest challenge is definitely optimizing campaigns that target very niche groups. For example, it is really easy to make a campaign targeting people looking for insurance. It is not so easy to target business owners in specific industries at a company with at least 50 employees looking for insurance. In situations like these campaigns can appear to look healthy at the KPI level but have low lead quality. The challenge is finding a way to filter out unqualified leads before they click on the ad despite advertising a service they may actually want.
How do you measure your personal success?
I measure my success as a paid media manager by the success of our clients. My job is to provide leads at a 3 to 1 ROI (return on investment). If I am successful, ROI is achieved every month and our client’s business will grow. If they aren’t hitting their KPI I know there is a problem with one of my campaigns that needs to be solved.
If you want Cody to manage your Google and Facebook ad accounts, give us a call at 480-386-1686 or contact us online. He’ll be happy to lend his expertise!
Casey Watts
Casey Watts is a writer at Helix House. She has a B.A. in Journalism from Western Michigan University and transitioned out of journalism and into marketing in October 2019. In her free time, she plays too many videogames with her friends, or she cuddles with her cat, Olive.
