Anyone doing Adwords/PPC in a big corporate setting?

[pizzafari]

I was laid off the first week of Feb, and started my new job the first week of March. In my 1 month of "freedom" I interviewed with a handful of companies, one of which was a med-pharmaceutical company which needed a Web Marketing specialist, and part of the job was maintaining their Adwords campaigns. It was pretty rudimentary, just the Web interface (no Adwords Editor) and they were using the same keywords for both Search and Content networks (a no-no). No keyword tool, just an excel spreadsheet with words that seem to have been guessed at. The campaigns themselves were only to drive traffic to their websites, which in themselves were mainly for branding and informational purposes. There was no direct relationship to be made between PPC and actual sales.

I was a finalist, but somebody else with years more industry experience than me got it. Fair enough, but still, it got me thinking, it was the only "corporate" environment which I had seen with any kind of Adwords/PPC program happening, and it was nowhere near as fine-tuned as the stuff that's going on here. (The job I eventually got has no PPC at all).

So my question, is there anyone here who does Adwords (or Adcenter or Yahoo) PPC in a traditional big corporate environment?

 

[stussy5555]

I used to until I told them I couldn't afford to work for them anymore.

When I started they had some dipshitty PPC campaigns setup with a god aweful web site. Within a year I had produced an additional 7 million in revenue for a 10 million a year department within the company. I got a 10K raise, whipty fucking do - and then basically started doing my own shit.

Most corporations don't have a clue of what they are doing, most managers are aweful, and the longer I was employed, the more I realized how bullshitting gets you further than skill set. BSing and kissing ass aint my thing.

 

[nvanprooyen]

I have / did for almost 8 years in both travel and retail. The last few years I wasn't directly involved in the day to day of managing PPC (I oversaw all online marketing functions).

Like Stussy said, if you're reasonably good at this stuff a lot more money to be made in AM or consulting (or some combination of both) than working for someone else.

 

[EvanCPC]

As an Affiliate Network Director of seven years, I can tell you this - my experiences in working with 'corporations' such as Vonage, Netflix, Blockbuster, Sears, Playboy and (formerly) Ford were borderline laughable when it came to PPC. By and large, their internal efforts were low value and unscalable, whereas my affilaites would consistently outperform and outplace the companies themselves (who presumably hired the brightest, most 'educated' and 'qualified' souls for these positions). The more intelligent advertisers realized that the quality and volume produced by these 'lowly' affiliates outdid their internal efforts and they allowed the search traffic, albeit in a monitored space. However, some companies (ARE YOU LISTENING Sears & Vonage) put the kibosh on external search efforts to 'control' their space, even to the detriment of their bottom line.

Moral of the story here is that those of you that are working in this medium daily are more qualified than the MBA-laden hirees at these companies.


Ev

 

[pizzafari]

EvanCPC, that's an interesting story, is it because independant affiliates pay much closer attention to (almost obsessively) perfecting their CTR/CPC's that they outperform the internal corporate efforts?

 

[elucidex]

I'm an ecommerce manager for a corporation, right now I manage a lot of the adwords, but I've been trying to hire someone to manage adwords campaigns for a month now and noone is qualified in this area.. if you're in western new york let me know. From the people I have interviewed, it sounds like a lot of companies do a half assed job at it and just get lucky because competition isn't fierce..

 

[pizzafari]

I'm an ecommerce manager for a corporation, right now I manage a lot of the adwords, but I've been trying to hire someone to manage adwords campaigns for a month now and noone is qualified in this area.. if you're in western new york let me know. From the people I have interviewed, it sounds like a lot of companies do a half assed job at it and just get lucky because competition isn't fierce..

I guess thats the catch22, anyone who's really, really good at this is going to be working for themselves?