ShareHave You Met…James?
James (or JC), our Digital Manager and PPC Guru has been with us for 7 years and over that time has quickly turned into our go-to Google Grants guy for our charity clients. Starting in SEO he quickly got hooked on the fast results that PPC had to offer and has built a team around him that have been taking the Digital Marketing world by storm.
What are the benefits of taking a PPC campaign to an agency like ours rather than keeping it in house?
From my experience, the knowledge sharing that happens within an agency is unrivalled. With Coast, there are so many experts across the full marketing mix that can not only enhance your current skill set, in my case PPC, but you can tap into other areas such as SEO, Email, and Social, and bring those ideas to the table for each client too. Our clients might work with a couple of specialists day-to-day but in effect, they’re also gaining access to a team of over 40 marketing specialists across multiple disciplines.
What one thing do you wish clients knew/understood better about PPC?
The importance of attribution and why the last-click attribution model just doesn’t cut it anymore. I can’t think of a single industry where only looking at the last channel interacted with before a conversion makes sense. It can really impact the decisions we make about marketing campaigns that might be driving success further up the conversion funnel. Once you start having conversations around attribution models you open your eyes to the true impact that your campaigns are having on the goals you set to measure success… and once you do that, you can really start driving positive performance.
How did you become our resident charity expert?
About a year into my life as a PPC specialist I was given the opportunity to work on a Google Ad Grants account for one of our charity clients. I really enjoyed having to re-think what I knew about running regular Google Ads accounts and adapt to a new way of doing things. Working with charity clients also comes with an overall positive feeling, knowing that what I put into the PPC account can make a difference and help improve people’s lives.
What are your top three tips for Charities?
- Make sure you’re tracking the right conversions, downloads, calls, emails, donations, sign-ups etc. You can’t optimise for success if you’re not set up to measure it.
- Set up and run a regular paid account. For high priority / competitive keywords, you may very well need to pay for them to ensure visibility. You can also then run display, YouTube, and remarketing campaigns too.
- Add audiences to your campaigns for observation. You can’t do remarketing with a Google Grant, but you can take those learnings and use them in a paid account.
Has there been a charity project that you have worked on that you have been particularly proud of?
I’m very proud to be working with Cystic Fibrosis Trust. We started working with them back in August 2016 and still are to this day. I’ve been managing the PPC account since the beginning and have thoroughly enjoyed delivering success for them in terms of increased awareness, donations, and fundraising event sign-ups. The CF Week campaign is always a lot of fun to work on and very rewarding. Every June they have a whole week dedicated to talking about different CF topics each day which then culminates in their infamous Wear Yellow Day on the last Friday of the week. The whole company gets involved every year, puts on their brightest yellow garments, and gathers for some photos which are then shared on social media. It’s so nice to plan, execute and optimise a fundraising campaign via PPC which I’m then also partaking in as well. Reporting on the fundraising performance of the campaign is even more enjoyable when you know you’ve actively contributed to donations in some way.