When was the last time you ventured onto Google and came across a list of options to choose from? Do you often see a list of sponsored ads (preferably 3-4) appearing on top of Google SERPs? 

It’s where PPC specialists or consultants come into play. 

If you’re venturing to promote the goods and services of your customers, and you’re not sure which marketing career you should be investing in, then PPC advertising is the name of the game. 

In this article, we are going to take you on a journey of how PPC advertising works. We will share with you how you can follow this career path and venture deep into polishing up your skills. 

So without further ado, let’s take a deeper dive into the world of PPC!

What is PPC Advertising? 

It’s a type of paid advertising. 

Let me break it down for you if you’re not sure how it works or if you’re new to science. 

You see, Google & Bing are the two top search engines that multiple companies use as a part of their digital marketing strategies. They often invest a great deal of their time & budget in optimizing content on specific keywords to increase traffic on their landing pages. There are two ways of optimizing content, one is through keyword research and mapping them within your content, which is technically called organic search. The other one is pay per click (PPC) marketing, where content is optimized based on keywords that are technically paid for. When they hire PPC specialists, they find out these money keywords for your particular niche and spend a certain marketing budget called the ad spend to rank your content within the sponsored section. The whole idea is to get the highest possible return on your digital investment.

What Are Google Ads? 

Let’s start with Google Ads; Google Ads is a tool that allows you to run ads on Google. 

It helps you sell products/services, raise awareness, and increase traffic to your website. A PPC expert uses Google Ad accounts, which he manages online by running ads on these accounts. 

They usually do it by creating and changing their ad campaigns at any time. Such changes often refer to your ad text, campaign settings, and ad budget optimization. 

The whole idea is to optimize these elements to ensure the Google Ad performs effectively. 

What Are Bing Ads?

Let’s break down Bing Ads; Bing Ads (now part of Microsoft Advertising) is a platform that lets you run ads across Microsoft’s search network.

Think of it as a way to promote products/services, build brand visibility, or drive clicks to your site—similar to Google Ads, but on Bing, Yahoo, AOL, and partner sites. A PPC pro uses a Microsoft Advertising account to manage these campaigns, tweaking bids, adjusting ad copy, and refining targeting in real time.

Just like with Google, you’re in control: you can update ad headlines, shift budgets between campaigns, or test different keywords to improve performance. The goal is to optimize every piece—whether it’s audience targeting, ad scheduling, or landing pages—to get the most bang for your buck.

One key difference? Bing Ads often tap into an older, more desktop-oriented audience and can be cheaper per click. Plus, they integrate with Microsoft’s ecosystem (like LinkedIn or Outlook). It’s Google’s quieter cousin—less flashy, but still packs a punch for the right audience.

So, more or less, with Bing Ads, it’s the same game, just different playground. 

How to Become a PPC Specialist – A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Sharpen Your Analytical Skills: Turn Data into Decisions

PPC depends on data. With Google processing more than 3.5 billion searches on average, your job is to go through different PPC metrics such as CTR, conversions, and quality scores to spot trends. For instance, a keyword that has a 10% CTR but zero conversions signals a form of mismatch between the ad and the landing page. Maybe, you have designed a landing page for a service of enterprise app development, and you’re running ads on legacy modernization, which is altogether a part of enterprise app development, but doesn’t constitute all of it. Today, we have many tools such as Google Analytics and Excel, which can help you decode essential patterns. Once you have successfully decoded patterns, you can run A/B tests and check for statistical significance using a calculator. Just don’t celebrate yet, a 15% CTR bump is something good, but not quite good enough, or just receiving 50 clicks on an ad… you can do more. 

2. Keyword Research: Find the Right Audience with Precision

Almost 15% of Google searches are never-before-seen queries. And therefore, you need to evolve your keyword strategy. You can do this by running keyword research on SEMRush or Google Keyword Planner to identify useful intent-driven phrases. When performing keyword research, you need to take a mix of approaches such as long-tail keywords (for e.g. “what are my best legacy modernization option under $1,000”), which can often drive half of conversions at a reduced cost than terms which fall in the short-term category and are more likely to be generic. 

For example, a SaaS company reduced CPA by 40% by targeting “CRM software for small businesses with affordable subscriptions” instead of following a broad term such as “CRM tools.” 

Note: You can always focus on transactional keywords “Buy” for sales and “how to” for informational queries, depending on your particular search requirements. 

  1. Craft Ads That Convert: Creativity Meets Testing

Do you know the average Google Ads CTR is approximately 3.17%? So when you’re designing one, make sure your copy offers a better hook and it offers it fast! You can always use urgency terms such as (“24-Hour Sale!”) or you can choose a pain point such as “Tired of Slow Wi-Fi?” or simply emojis, such as (up to 30% CTR lift for Gen Z). Test different headlines, use variable CTAs, and check for useful extensions – for example, a brand simply added a price extension to boost one brand’s CTR up by 20%. The A/B test results significantly showed 500+ clicks per variant. Remember that a great copy is always a blend of good psychology merged with useful data. 

4. Landing Pages: Where Clicks Turn into Customers

In fact, recent research shows how a poorly designed landing page killed the best ad. A brand and its creatives spent hours creating the perfect graphic design, only to realize that the conversion rate for the ad (which was supposed to be around 2-5%) was not achieved, but instead decreased a great deal! Just because the ad showed a pricing grid instead of offering customers a “Free Trial,” or leading the expert to a direct user to a signup page. If you want to turn clicks into returning customers, you can simplify the form by reducing unnecessary fields from your ad from regularly used five to three. According to a Unbounce study, someone who implemented a similar practice saw a 50% increase in conversion rate with such a simple shift. In fact, a fitness brand swapped its entire stock of photos and replaced them with customer videos, which lifted its sign-up percentage by 120%. When you prioritize speed, mobile-friendliness, and add a clear value proposition, you simply hit the jackpot with PPC marketing. 

5. Budget Like a Strategist: Maximize ROI, Minimize Waste

Many small businesses spend around $9,000 to $10,000/month on Google Ads but often struggle with getting the best results. What they really need is to wisely spend every dollar and make it count. They can start with allocating budgets to high-ROI keywords – for example, if you’re working with a brand for “luxury watches,” you can bring 500/saleata per 100 CPA and prioritize it. You can use automated rules to pause campaigns by setting your personal parameters. You can state that your CPA can exceed $50, or your daily budget can hit as much as 80%. For example, when you’re running an eCommerce store, you can aim to achieve 6:1 ROAS. A survey of a bakery presented an opportunity for cutting down CPA by 35% by simply replacing the term “cakes” with “gluten-free wedding cakes,” and eventually resulting in maximizing ROI & reducing waste. 

6. Master PPC Tools: Efficiency Through Automation 

Around 73% of marketers save 5+ hours weekly with automation tools. 

If you’re seeking a career in PPC advertising, you should start with Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising certifications. You can then layer in your certificates with tools such as Optmyzr for automating bids or SpyFu to spy on competitors. For instance, a travel agency used Google’s Performance Planner to predict a 35% traffic spike before the holiday season began. As a result, they were successful in running campaigns that rewarded them correctly.  For example, there are platforms such as LinkedIn Ads which offer users unique targeting (e.g., job titles) for running better B2B campaigns and attracting better leads for their business, and so on. 

7. Reporting: Build Trust with Data-Driven Insights 

With 89% of the marketers claiming that transparent reporting strengthens their overall client relationship, reporting has become an essential task. If you’re trying to become a PPC strategist, what you need to do is find a way to build trust with the system, and this can be best achieved when you leverage data-driven insights. You can start with something as simple as tracking KPIs such as Quality Score. A good quality score is one where you aim for 7+ and gain better impression shares. You can also use Google Data Studio or Tableau to visualize trends. According to a recent study from a client, a simple implementation helped with achieving a CTR jump from 2% to 4.5% after monthly reports. In monthly reports, it was found that underperforming ad groups started performing better overall. Therefore, when you’re trying to run PPC ads, it’s advised that you always link metrics to business goals: “Your 1,000 ad spend drove 20leads, averaging 1,000 ad spend drove 20 leads, averaging 50/lead.”

8.HTML/CSS Basics: Small Tweaks Leading to Big Impacts 

Although not optional, it’s interesting if a PPC advertiser has some hands-on knowledge on coding skills. Instead of waiting for long hours for someone to resolve their landing page bug fixes, they can be better equipped to perform those minor fixes themselves. At times, there are subtle elements such as countdown timers (“Sale ends in [timer]!”) without waiting for a developer to respond to a query. You can learn the basics via Codecademy, such as adding a hyperlink, image tags, or CSS for button styling. For example, one brand increased conversion by 18% with a simple embedding of HTML-based timer. It’s not just about tweaking the sites for speed & relevance, but it’s how versatile you can be overall when it comes to PPC. 

Final Tip: Stay Ahead in the PPC Game

Google updates its algorithm 500,000+ times yearly. 

Follow blogs like Search Engine Land, take free Skillshop courses, and experiment relentlessly. For example, Performance Max campaigns now use AI to auto-optimize ads—test them early. PPC success isn’t about perfection; it’s about adapting faster than competitors. 

Final Thoughts

Becoming a PPC expert isn’t just about running ads—it’s about mastering data, psychology, and strategy to turn clicks into revenue. If you can analyze trends, write punchy copy, build frictionless landing pages, and stretch every marketing dollar, you’re already halfway there. The rest? Practice, test, adapt, and never stop learning.

Ready to turn every click into a paying customer? 

Let Rank Hive craft PPC campaigns that actually perform.