How Paid Search Managers Can Work Smarter, Not Harder

By Tinuiti Team

Jan 10 2018

As an eCommerce paid search manager, you know your success depends upon being efficient day-in, day-out. After all, if you’re going to push a real-time lead generation strategy, then you must be able to read and react to your customer's needs every time. However, with so many lead generation strategies to employ, and so many different digital marketing campaigns to manage, how does a paid search manager stay on top of it all?

You’ve likely heard of the saying “work smarter, not harder.” Well, it’s often easier said than done, especially when so much of your time is spent managing incoming requests. In fact, your time is driven by your customers, and they can easily ruin a forward-looking plan any day of the week. So, to help you better manage your time and become more efficient, here are several tools that will cut down on manual work and keep you focused on the task at hand.

Using Chrome Profiles to Cut Down on Login Times

You know how much IT hates it when you use a post-it to list all your passwords. Yep, it’s a big no-no. So, instead of having to remember every password for each of your client’s accounts, you can simply use Chrome Profiles to easily navigate and toggle between each customer. This tool allows you to create customized startup pages so you’re all logged in and ready to go. No more straining to remember your username and password and no more requests to reset your credentials.

Organize Customer Info with SimplyFile for Outlook

SimplyFile is one of several filing solutions available to paid search managers, and while there are other options, in our opinion, nothing tops this resource. This is the ideal solution for those days when you’re inundated with emails and simply can’t keep up. Try their 30-day free trial. This one-click email filing solution for Microsoft office will clean up your inbox, direct emails to their appropriate files, and empower you to turn messages into appointments and tasks.

An Excel Plugin that’s a Real Time-Saver.

Isn’t it amazing how reliant paid search account managers are on Excel? No matter how advanced your CRM, at some point you’re going to have to download all that data into an Excel sheet. Unfortunately, nobody ever seems to have the time to create Excel shortcuts – that is until now.

Kutools is an Excel plugin that combines over 200 advance functions in Excel, and it will save you hours of manual work, data entry and extrapolation. You’ll no longer have to create manual formulas or double-check those formulas. This tool will simplify your tasks with a few clicks. Here are some of the most helpful solutions based on our experience.

Currency Conversion: This is especially helpful for account managers with customers in different countries or situations where a client’s Adwords account is in CDN dollars, but your budget, metrics and analytics are set up in US dollars. With one click, you can update to the latest exchange rate, and the remaining cells are updated.
Concatenation Ninja: You’ll no longer have to create complex concatenation formulas to merge search terms together or amalgamate other critical data. With Concatenation Ninja, you simply create columns of search terms and use the “list all combinations” tool to quickly create every possible combination of search terms within your list.
Data Validation Criteria Rules: This insightful tool helps you prevent duplicate data while also comparing that data in a few easy steps. You’ll no longer have to mess around with formulas when data-mining critical customer numbers.
Removing Spaces, Changing Text and Split Names: A single click of the "Removing Spaces" icon and you’ve removed unwanted boxes and empty spaces. The "Changing Text" tool allows you to instantly change text from uppercase to lowercase, proper case or even sentence case. Finally, the "Split Names" feature allows you to split up a keyword phrase into separate cells of single keywords.

Google Analytics Benchmarking and Word Stream Benchmarking:

You know not all industries are the same. Managing multiple clients in multiple markets takes research. You need to know the market’s most common search terms, your customer’s competitors and what steps need to be taken to improve your customer's SERP whether that be through organic or paid search. Ultimately, you want to hit the ground running, and the following two solutions help you do exactly that.

Word Stream Benchmark Article: This is content at its best. The article provides invaluable data into multiple industries and markets. It breaks those markets down by click-through-rates (CTR), conversion rates, cost-per-acquisition (CPA), and cost-per-clicks (CPC). Not only are you provided with a plethora of data, but you can use that data to benchmark your own metrics and KPI for future customers.
Google Analytics Benchmarking: Google is always providing publishers and advertisers with essential free tools, and they’ve yet again provided a critical tool for paid search managers. This benchmarking solution allows you to segment data by channel groupings, locations and devices, while also providing engagement metrics like bounce rates, time on page and number of pages per session.

Digital Advertising Preview Tools

Have you ever had a customer that just couldn’t visualize what you were presenting or describing? If so, these advertising preview tools are just what you’re looking for. Karooya Expanded Text Ad Preview Tool allows you show what that text ad will look like live. Google Rich Media Gallery – Ad Formats allows you to view future Google ad formats from a single interface. You can get a live preview showing layout, fonts, images and text. You can also go through the setup steps and review case studies and success stories for every single ad type.

Draw Inspiration from Galleries

Finally, draw inspiration from the latest ad formats. Granted, your eCommerce, fashion and retail customers likely don’t have the budgets for a full-blown Hollywood-style extravaganza, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the creative juices flowing. Google Rich Media Gallery Showcase shows the top ads from its rich media catalog, while Moat Google Display Ads will give you insight into your competitor’s most recent creative ads.

Get accustomed to each of these tools. They're great time management tools and they can help you get that new customer relationship off on the right foot, while also helping you manage the daily grind that comes from being a paid search manager.

If you want more insight on how to get that new customer relationship off the ground, then read E-Commerce Insight: Top 8 Shopping & Feed Tips.