In my six years (this month!) at Clix, I have written about A LOT of projects, tasks and updates.
I generally like to write about things that are happening in the day-to-day of my accounts because it helps to provide real life examples of what a PPC manager will likely tackle.
Lately, I have been working on a few different project management techniques to see how these adjustments can make my daily workload smoother and more efficient.
If you have growing accounts, or just like efficiency tips, hopefully you will enjoy these suggestions!
Documentation
Anyone who has worked on a large-scale account knows the value in documentation. If you don’t have it in an email or list somewhere, it’s likely to be forgotten. And that’s not good for anyone.
While email and to-do lists are great, there comes a time when you need a different tool to help with efficiency.
A few project management tools that allow for easy collaboration across organizations include Monday, Trello, Basecamp, Asana and more. Each of these has different features that you’ll want to research to see what works best for you.
Reporting
For PPC reporting, my experience is that auto-refreshing dashboards are the key to success and ease.
At Clix, we have written many posts about utilizing Supermetrics throughout the years for our client dashboards and projection sheets.
There are additional options for similar tools like Funnel.io, Sitekick, and Ninja Cat.
Utilizing an automated tool can save time and reduce the likelihood of errors in your reporting.
Naming Strategies
When it comes to reviewing performance & reporting with consistency, developing a customized campaign naming convention will save you time over and over.
It will be easier to sort the campaigns within different channels as well.
If there is tracking or UTM tagging at play, I would definitely recommend making sure your changes don’t interfere.
An example of a naming convention I recently implemented was Geography | Funnel Stage | Campaign Type | Theme. You can also use underscores or dashes to separate the different pieces. I like being able to sort my campaigns by geography, but I would recommend putting first whatever portion is most important. For you, that might mean the campaign type (Search, Display, YouTube, etc.) or the Funnel Stage (which you can shorten to ToF, MoF, BoF).
Now that you have some basics established for your overall project and campaigns, let’s hop into some of the nitty-gritty day-to-day.
Recurring Tasks
Depending on the volume of your account, you’ll definitely want to create a customized list of recurring tasks.
My teammate Abby has a great list of recurring management tasks at the keyword, ad, campaign, account and network-level along with how to determine the frequency of your tasks.
Ultimately it depends on the volume of traffic the account is seeing and what the goals are for the campaigns.
When it comes to A/B ad tests and landing page tests, I would recommend adding in consideration for statistical significance.
With regularly scheduled optimizations in your account(s), also comes….
Time Management
We just published tips on how to better manage your time and avoid burnout.
If you missed it, Kayla suggested blocking out time on your calendar for tasks that require a lot of attention (creative or otherwise); logging out of chat or email temporarily for no interruptions; saying ‘no’ or ‘not right now’ to requests that aren’t urgent; and building a parking lot of ideas that come come to fruition while you’re working on something else. For more ideas, dive into her post! It’s great and will be very helpful if you struggle with managing your time.
If Working as a Team, Play into Your Strengths
If you’re working on a really large scale account, chances are you’re working with other members of your team or people on the client side, within different departments of your own organization, etc.
Save time and make things flow better by playing into each team members’ strengths. Have someone who is great at writing ad copy? Perfect, they’ll be the person who implements the ad tests and devises new variants. Someone who really enjoys LinkedIn? Great, that will be their pet project!
Mapping out on-going tasks like this will make it easier and more enjoyable for everyone involved.
Conclusion
Project management in PPC can be a “choose your own adventure” depending on the account! I hope these tips are helpful.
What’s your go to project management tip or platform? What others did you try and move away from? Leave your comments below!
