No…We aren’t talking about the whereabouts of Payment Protection Cover specialists but rather where have all the Pay-Per-Click gurus gone?
Pay-Per-Click or ‘PPC,’ as it is known in the industry, is an online advertising model. In a nutshell, it involves advertisers paying a fee to a publisher or website owner only when their advert is clicked on. For example if we look to Google, the king of the search engine world, their 2015 substantial revenues so far are just shy of $60M. A hefty chunk of that comes from advertising sales, proving there is a huge investment into online advertising and PPC.
That leads us to our next question…PPC - Who can do it? And more importantly, who can do it right? It seems that every marketing CV contains those three lovely ‘PPC’ letters listed under skills and experience. This is great, but in short, it’s all a bit vague. As a recruiter, it is our job to drill down into the skills and establish what experience candidates really have and over the past year, finding those specialist skills in Scotland is becoming more and more like finding a needle in a haystack.
Everyone knows there is a shortage of skills in the digital market. Just last week the BBC gave mass publicity to the fact that more than 12 million people fall into the UK digital skills gap. However, even those figures state that Scotland is doing relatively well: 80% of people have basic digital skills (okay we are talking bare minimums here i.e email/ internet access), so why the struggle to find people who have chosen to build a specialised career in this sector?
While SEO has elements of creativity involved, PPC is definitely more of a numbers game. Maybe I’m just speaking for myself here but spreadsheets just aren’t that sexy are they? Or maybe it’s that digital candidates don’t want to be specialise in case they risk pushing themselves into a niche role and limiting future career options? Or perhaps because companies are so desperate for skilled PPC candidates they treat their employees like royalty in order to retain them? Basically, I am opening this question up you.
So folks, answers on the back of a postcard- where are all the PPC specialists in Scotland? And if you are out there, we have amazing jobs for you! Check out this Head of Paid Marketing role we have right now- an incredible position with a luxury e-commerce brand who need someone to join them and head up paid marketing across all channels in line with their marketing strategy. If you like the sound of this or you know someone else who might, get in touch! We appreciate you might not be Glasgow based but maybe relocation is worth considered for a role this good!
Umair Din, Marketing Intern, Nine Twenty
For more information on this role or any of our digital vacancies, get in touch with Ainsley Millar on amillar@weareninetwenty.com or call 0141 231 1260.