When PPC Campaigns and other elements of your online advertising strategy in general start to really develop, you might need to consider hiring different PPC Managers to fulfill different roles. One of those roles might be a conversion optimization manager, or simply a conversion optimizer.
A conversion optimizer is someone who focuses entirely on generating more conversions for you from your PPC Campaigns, while other members of the online advertising team devote their attention to separate issues.
Choosing the right conversion optimization manager is an essential and important task. It pays to take the time to investigate into the best ways of hiring a conversion optimizer, which is why this article is designed to highlight five specific areas to analyze when going through the hiring process with a number of candidates.
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How to Choose a Conversion Optimization Manager
Imagine that you are in the process of hiring a conversion optimizer and you are looking for some advice about how to approach the interview and select the right candidate for the position. Use the following five pointers as a way of choosing the right man/woman for the job…
1. Find out what your conversion optimizer would choose to optimize first.
One of the first things to do in an interview with a prospective conversion optimizer is to find out how they go about choosing what to optimize first when working on a new PPC Campaign with a new company.
In general, it is a good idea to find a conversion optimizer who responds to this question by asking you the right kind of questions. An effective conversion optimizer is someone who asks questions (the right kind of questions) in order to be able to understand what is necessary and effective for your business and your campaign.
For instance, an effective conversion optimizer might begin to decide what to optimize first by quizzing you and your marketing team about the following:
- Which campaigns have been the most successful in the past?
- Which have been the least successful?
- Which search engine queries generate the highest traffic?
- Which keywords have the lowest bounce rate?
- Which have the highest bounce rate?
- How do these data points intersect with the company’s plans for future directions as a whole?
2. Quiz your conversion optimizer about audience segmentation and how best to approach it.
Learning how to separate and segment your business’ audience is an important task for any conversion optimizer. If a conversion optimizer knows how to break down your audience into smaller and more specific sections, he or she will then also be able to focus different areas of your PPC Campaign on those particular audience segments with more success.
An effective conversion optimizer, when approached with a question about audience segmentation, will want to ask you questions about which audiences are most important to your business and why and how your business already goes about segmenting them.
An effective conversion optimizer will highlight a variety of different techniques to use in order to identify different segments of your audience, such as analyzing the information gathered from form-filling, purchase history and the behavior adopted by different users on landing pages.
3. Delve into the successes, failures and observations of past A/B testing that your conversion optimizer has experienced.
One of the most important things you can do when interviewing a prospective conversion optimizer is to quiz them about their experiences of A/B testing.
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Let your candidate talk. Allow them to explain to you in-depth how they have approached A/B testing in the past, the successes and failures they experienced and the ways in which they used the results of their tests to help them make effective decisions for their companies’ campaigns’ futures.
Find out about the hypotheses which motivated the tests that they ran and be suspicious of anyone who is uncomfortable about discussing the failures that they have experienced in A/B testing in the past. Someone who doesn’t wish to discuss their failures should send out huge warnings to you and your company.
In addition, be very careful to discuss the differences between controlled and uncontrolled variables in testing. Find out how they deal with uncontrolled variables and if your prospective candidate insists that there are never uncontrolled variables in their A/B testings, send them packing. They are either not to be trusted or very inexperienced.
4. Ask your conversion optimizer to comment on his/her thoughts concerning brand consistency against experimentation.
The interesting thing about quizzing a potential conversion optimizer about the trade-off between brand consistency and experimentation is that the essence of conversion optimization lies in experimentation.
Without experimentation, conversion optimization doesn’t actually exist. A conversion optimizer must be allowed to experiment in order to make improvements to your PPC Campaign. However, the disruption to brand identity and brand consistency can sometimes be detrimental on other levels.
This is why it is always interesting to find out what a conversion optimizer feels about the balance between the two styles. When listening to what your potential conversion optimizer has to say, you will know whether or not this candidate is the right candidate for your business.
There is no right and wrong when it comes to finding the balance between brand consistency and experimentation. Choosing the right candidate will be based on your company’s individual outlook and needs. Therefore, making time to discuss this area of PPC Management at the interview stage is an essential part of the conversion optimizer selection process for any company.
5. Make sure your conversion optimizer has had experience in dealing with a HiPPO.
As a way of wrapping up the interview, ask your conversion optimizer to discuss whether or not they have ever had to deal with a HiPPO and if so, how they ended up managing the situation.
What is a HiPPO? If the conversion optimizer doesn’t know, perhaps they lack the experience that your company deserves. However, for the benefit of the company managers who are reading this article, a HiPPO is an abbreviation which stands for “the highest-paid person’s opinion, emphatically presented without regard to testing or analytical data.”
How does a PPC Manager handle the person who is paid the most bucks? How does a PPC Manager handle the opinions and weight of a person without PPC management knowledge but who affects the final decisions made within the company, even when they haven’t considered the data presented to them?
It’s a tough one and it is important to hire a conversion optimizer that is going to be able to deal with these situations in the most effective way possible for you and your company.
Again, there are no right and wrong responses to this particular question, but by simply listening to what your candidate has to say about their past experiences and their approaches to situations of this kind will give you an idea as to whether or not they fit the bill for the kind of company you run.
Conversion optimization is an essential part of your PPC Campaign. Make sure you interview for it well.
