If so, where will they go? Will they be able to offer any added value? And what should they know to survive?
– 3 min reading
Many marketing experts are skeptical about the future of PPC specialists – and with good reason. As campaigns become increasingly automated, the manual work that used to take up most of their time is vanishing.
The global trend of simplifying campaign management is clear, but does this mean the demand for PPC specialists is decreasing? Well, it might surprise you to know that there are currently 40 open positions for PPC specialists at StartupJobs.cz and this number is growing daily.
How will automation affect the role?
In my opinion, the trend towards automation will first affect smaller and medium-sized companies with in-house management. Bidding and working with keywords will be a thing of the past, and there will be fewer options in the advertising system to manually analyse or optimise campaigns. This means that the effective time spent in the advertising account will drop to a minimum.
These changes will mostly impact those with a narrow specialisation in smaller companies. With fewer people, there will be bigger demand to handle a wider range of activities, or they will have to accept a lower salary.
The smallest impact will likely be on PPCs who manage large budgets. From a risk and cost point of view, companies with large budgets will still pay to maintain a dedicated internal team, even if it is not always working at full capacity.
How will it affect agencies?
The costs of acquiring a new client will not decrease. And, as most Czech agencies operate on an hourly rate basis, customer lifetime value is sure to fall. If hourly rates are increased, they would lose many clients with more sensitive media budgets.
This will also particularly affect small niche agencies that focus on performance. Classic full-service agencies might start to struggle, but since they can create value for the customer in many other ways, the hours saved on PPC will simply be transferred elsewhere.
The biggest winners here will be the clients, who will simply get more value for the same fee.
What will consultants need to know?
Personally, I think this trend will help the market recovery of PPC. As a junior PPC, you can easily be filling out invoices one day and leading a campaign the next – or even start your own agency. There are practically no barriers to entry and many companies are willing to pay for it.
Performance marketing is turning into modern financial advice – If you want a business license for nail modelling, you need a guarantor. But if you want to invest tens of thousands in advertising tomorrow? Not a problem!
PPC advertising isn’t rocket science. And unfortunately many “consultants” and “specialists” don’t have a proper theoretical basis, let alone practice in advertising systems. This means they don’t hesitate to invest foreign money without a hint of self-reflection about their own abilities. Plus, thanks to automation, their minimal added value vanishes completely, followed by themselves along with it.
Specialists who ignore technological or strategic developments will soon fall out of the labor market altogether. To succeed, they will need a deeper technical knowledge of marketing activities or a good understanding of the business economy and marketing. Hence, the strategic impact on the whole business through the implementation of activities, not only in digital.
New opportunities are on the horizon
The current situation creates opportunities not only for specialists but also for the clients themselves. If they have enough insight into the market and trends, they will be able to get much more from their budget.
Agencies that single-mindedly pursue only one channel will soon be a thing of the past. On the contrary, it will not be unusual to see consultants getting involved in the marketing mix itself.
While automation may deprive those who are unprepared in their roles, it will give others a wealth of opportunities for self-development and a better understanding of the client’s business.
If you want to get ahead of the game by hiring a consultant who, besides setting up a remarketing campaign, can also identify a problem in the business model and design a solution too, contact us!
