Get To Know Your PPC Team Personally

Even though the economy is rocky right now, those of us in pay per click search engine marketing are very lucky. If you’ve built out an impressive SEM LinkedIn profile, you’re most likely getting job offers regularly (if not weekly). Now, this is great from the standpoint of job security and opportunity, but it places PPC people managers and team leads in a difficult situation.

Just when you think everything is working perfectly, all of the sudden you get notice that your star player found a better opportunity and is leaving in two short weeks. As a manager, what could you have done differently to prevent this situation? Today, I’m going to discuss one of my favorite management strategies, one that can help you retain your entire team even in this competitive recruiting environment. The tip is actually quite simple: Develop a personal relationship with everyone on your team.

Break Free From Your Work and Chat With Your SEM Team

Learn and Lead

If you’re anything like me, you have a strong internal instinct to sit in front of your computer and power through work all day, ignoring any and all distractions. If you do this, don’t feel bad. The vast majority of PPC campaign managers do the same thing and it’s really a function of our role. However, now it’s time to take a step back and break free from this habit.

As you may know, I’m a big champion of attending SEM conferences at every possible opportunity. I’m going to give you the same advice here: Take every opportunity possible to break free from your work and have regular side conversations with your search marketing team. Sound crazy? Trust me, from 5 years of SEM team management this is totally essential. While you may feel like your productivity is decreasing, it really isn’t. Your entire team will be more productive and energized. After all, as a manager your personal output just isn’t that important. It’s all about your team’s total output. Moreover, this technique will work wonders for your employee retention in an industry where everyone’s trying to take them away from you! (Just remember how long it took you to train your last new employee and that quickly shows just how important employee retention is for your long term productivity.)

The Importance of Forming a Bond With Your Team

Relationships are very important to all humans. Positive relationships help us thrive. They keep the day interesting. They help us connect and form bonds with others. They help us get through challenges. They simply keep us going and give us essential social interaction. We all know how addictive social interaction can be from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

The point here is really simple: Take your relationship with your SEM team seriously. If you form a strong bond with your team members, you will experience all of the benefits of a strong relationship: loyalty, excitement, employee retention, increased productivity, and so much more.

You may be thinking, how do I build a solid relationship with my team? It’s actually easier than you think. Take a few minutes each day to chat. Make sure you can answer the following questions:

What did your report do last weekend?
What’s their favorite hobby?
What are they doing next weekend?
What do they enjoy doing outside of work?

Who Qualifies as a PPC Team Member?

I wanted to make the point here that I define "PPC team" very loosely. In my opinion, almost everyone is a team member: Direct reports, search engine reps, co-workers, superiors, and vendors. The more people you get to know, the larger the network effects of your relationships. Everybody likes a personable manager. Develop that reputation today!

Where To Draw The Line

In closing, I wanted to draw attention to a very important point: Never forget that you’re a people manager. As a manager, it’s always your duty to give both positive and negative feedback. It’s your job to call out mistakes and help your team grow. To that end, you want to develop a great relationship with your team but you need to know where to draw the line. You can’t forget you’re a people manager. The best people managers in the word walk this fine line each and every day and get the benefits of both bonds: the manager bond and the friend bond. If you’re new to this, my advice is simple: Predominantly wear your manager hat but try to spend a few minutes each day wearing the more personable friend hat. Investing just a little bit of time could make all the difference the next time your star player gets a call from a recruiter!

Image of Learn and Lead © iStockPhoto – VisualField

What gets me most excited about my career in search engine marketing each and every morning? There really are a variety of factors including responsibility, excitement, and making lots of money (both individually and for the company). However, above and beyond all of this is the great thrill of managing and mentoring my team. I’m passionate about people management. More than anything, I measure my personal success in terms of my team’s success (morale, retention, promotions, results, and overall career success). In that spirit, today’s post focuses on one of my favorite people management tips: celebrating success. A lot of SEM team managers overlook this simple, yet highly effective technique.

Celebrate Your SEM Team’s Success

Fireworks

Search engine marketing is just like sales. As pay per click campaign managers, we’re on the battlefield each and every day, driving revenue and margin. Things can get a little crazy. When things are going well the thrill is unparalleled. When things are not going well (especially in our current economy), morale can be low and this is where the strong people manager can make a huge difference.

My advice to you: Please, make a conscious effort to celebrate you team’s success. When someone does a great job, take a step back and really highlight their success.

Why Celebrate Pay Per Click Success?

The answer to this question is really simple. Celebration of success is the ultimate motivator. Just think about it. What happens when you get a compliment? It’s motivating and empowering. Similarly, when you celebrate someone’s success, they feel a charge of energy. The success is addictive and they immediately want to work hard and achieve more success. The feedback will also encourage your broader team because they will want to get congratulated on future projects.

Another way of looking at this: What happened when you got your last raise and promotion (perhaps when you got promoted from PPC Associate to SEM Manager)? If you’re like me, you started working even harder because you were so fired up by the positive reinforcement. Now, celebrating success isn’t going to give the effect of a promotion, but you can certainly think of it along those lines.

Why Does It Work?

I especially like this PPC management tip because most managers don’t subscribe to this model. We’ve all had a few bad managers in our careers. The worst managers take credit for all of their team’s work. However, when the team fails, they blame the team and not themselves. If you’re a good manager, you never take credit for your team’s work. You give all the credit to the people doing the work. What do you take credit for? Training, managing, and enabling the team to do such great work! Most likely, the people who work for you have had bad managers at one point in their careers. If you start giving credit where credit is due, you’ll really stand out and build loyalty and trust for life.

How Do You Celebrate Your Team’s SEM Success?

There are many ways to celebrate. By far, my favorite is sending out an email to the entire team while including key executives. I spell out the specifics of the project, the impact, and focus on the fact that the project was driven by XYZ team member. This is a really great strategy because it highlights successful members of your team in front of the senior management team, something that might not happen on a day-to-day basis (especially at a larger organization). Another idea: Why not have team lunches or dinners (on the company) to celebrate successes?

A Closing Word of Caution on Celebrating Your Team’s Success

This is an extremely powerful tool. I’d like to close out with two words of caution, however. First, don’t go overboard. As with any strategy, if you leverage it too much it quickly becomes old and loses its impact. Second, please remember to also give your team constructive feedback. You don’t want to become the manager that always congratulates but never provides guidance and feedback when things aren’t perfect. One of the things that your team will appreciate even more than celebration is candid, constructive, and critical feedback. From my experience, most people in pay per click search engine marketing want to grow their careers rapidly. This is the exact type of person that craves regular constructive and critical feedback on how to improve!