In today’s highly competitive online market, excellent online marketing campaigns are essential for any online business’ success. These ensure that your company is visible to both your regular and potential customers.
And among those who ensure that a company’s online ads are up to the task are search engine marketing (SEM) specialists. They are paid search specialists who are responsible for managing PPC campaigns for google and other pay-per-click activities. These include planning, implementing, and managing a company’s SEO strategy.
Although SEM, as we know it today, refers to marketing via paid ads, SEM is actually a combination of search engine optimization (SEO) and paid ads. Despite this, don’t confuse an online SEM specialist job with an SEO specialist one. If you’re still confused between SEO and SEM, just remember that SEM requires paid ad strategies while SEO uses organic ones.
Because of the need for SEM specialists by companies today, there is a lot of competition for the position. To help you remain ahead, here are five essential skills you need for an online SEM specialist job.
Duties and Responsibilities.
Although I’ve touched upon this briefly at the beginning of this article, here is a more comprehensive look at an SEM specialist’s duties and responsibilities. Your duties and responsibilities include:
- Execute tests, collect and analyze data, and identify trends and insights.
- Track, report, and analyze website analytics and PPC initiatives and campaigns.
- Effectively manage campaign expenses.
- Optimize copy and landing pages for paid search campaigns.
- Perform ongoing paid keyword research, expansion, and optimization.
- Research and analyze competitor advertising links.
The salary rate for an online SEM specialist job ranges from Php 25,000 to Php 38,000 for a new full-time SEM specialist. Experienced SEM specialists, on the other hand, can expect Php 50,000 to Php 65,000.
Data Gathering and Analytical Skills.
With your duties and responsibilities out of the way, let’s focus on this article’s main topic. Let’s start with data gathering and analytical skills. Part of managing your ad campaigns is knowing whether or not they are successful in attracting views to your company’s web pages. Having these skills allows you to collect and analyze data so you can improve your company’s ads.
Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Mint, and NetInsight can help you get the data you need. But it is up to you to interpret these data and utilize them to update your present ads and make new ones.
Keyword Research.
Another skill that you should possess in your online SEM specialist job is proficiency in keyword research. Producing quality articles for your web pages is all well and good. But if these don’t appear in a search engine’s results, then you’re just wasting your efforts.
Knowing how to do keyword research enables you to construct articles that ranks in search engines. This, in turn, increases traffic to your web pages. Of course, keywords change depending on location and time. Adapting to these changes allows your articles to remain relevant longer and reach a wider audience.
Basic Copywriting Skills.
Sure, you may not be an SEO writer, but possessing basic copywriting skills is a great asset to have as an SEM specialist. Having this skill allows you to produce your own web content for your company. And it even allows you to edit the works of your SEO writers to better suit keyword research and readability.
Having copywriting skills also helps you when you have to present your data to your co-workers and client. It allows you to produce a report that is concise and easy to follow so that your co-workers and clients can better understand it.
Excellent Communication Skills.
As an SEM specialist, communication is essential for your online job. Aside from communicating with your company’s target audience, you also need to know how to talk to your co-workers as well. Establishing proper communication in the workplace helps keep everyone on the same page and reduces miscommunication issues.
When interacting with your co-workers, always remember to treat each other with respect to avoid workplace drama. You are not the star of a one-man show, where your co-workers are just side characters. You depend on your co-workers as much as they depend on you.
Tracking Trends and PPC Strategies.
And last but not least, to be successful as an SEM specialist, you must be aware and keep track of trends in social media. Utilizing these trends in your web pages can help generate traffic and keep your content relevant.
Aside from trends, you should also keep an eye on any new pay-per-click (PPC) strategies that you can use. With how fast new developments are being made in finding new ways to rank in search engines, your old methods may not be effective anymore. Keeping up with advancements helps your web pages appear more often in search results.
Conclusion.
And we are done! Here are five skills that you will need as an online SEM specialist. As more and more businesses shift to a virtual setup, they will need capable SEM specialists to produce quality ads for them. I hope that the contents of this article will help you improve in your job or increase your chances of landing one.
