Last Updated on 2021-01-03 by ppcguybklyn
For those who have no practical experience in digital marketing, if they want to enter the industry, the Google Ads certification is usually listed in the preparations. But how much of the knowledge learned from the Google Ads certification course can be applied in the workplace? How much do the recruiters in the United States value whether the interviewer has considered certification? In this article, I will analyze how this certification can help inexperienced job seekers, and discuss the degree to which American workplaces value Google Ads certification based on my experience.
The use of Google Ads certification
The biggest use of Google Ads certification is to introduce how Google Ads works and what advertising can cover. It will guide beginners step by step to understand the four different types of advertisements: search, shopping, display, and video. Each advertisement type has corresponding teaching courses to introduce basic concepts. The most important thing is that the certified teaching courses are completely free. As long as you have a Google account, you can watch these teaching content and get certified.
Of course, just like other technical certifications, the use of corresponding knowledge does not mean that you can have excellent performance in practical operations. Google Ads certification can make people have a basic understanding of keyword advertising, but there must be no way to replace practical experience. If you want to know the exact account operation skills and methods, you still have to manage the advertising account yourself. Having Google Ads certification can only prove that the candidate has basic knowledge.
Should inexperienced job seekers start with Google Ads certification?
So if today a job seeker who has no advertising experience at all, but wants to find a related job, should he or she get the Google Ads certification first? I think the answer is yes, and the reasons are rough as follows:
Indispensable basic ideas
Although there is no way to obtain practical experience by getting the certification, the certification provides a very important and indispensable basic concept. The difference between keyword advertising and other marketing jobs is its unique operating principle (keyword matching, bidding mode, advertising type, etc.) and a large number of proper nouns (CTR, CPA, CPC... etc.). If you don't learn these things in particular, a person with no experience cannot understand them. However, if you want to skip this basic knowledge and directly operate the account to accumulate practical experience, it may take a lot of time and advertising budgets. Therefore, it is important to have these basic concepts before operating the account.
Detailed commentary article
The benefits of the Google Ads certification test are not just the certification itself. In addition to the teaching courses, there are many further readings of Google Ads Support for reference. These articles are very good learning resources. Many of the deficiencies in the teaching courses can be supplemented by these articles. I think these articles can be of great help to beginners who don’t know much about the industry. If you can take the time to study these articles, then for interviews facing related job vacancies or jobs that you will encounter when getting a job, It will be a lot easier.
Will American candidates give priority to those with Google Ads certification?
Before I found my current job, I submitted thousands of resumes in the United States. I applied for a lot of agency and In-House vacancies. After I started working, I also helped my department to interview new people. Based on my experience, to answer this question, the answer is also yes, and there are two reasons behind it:
Employees in an agency must pass the certification
When recruiting talents, online marketing agencies will give priority to those who have Google Ads certification, because as mentioned earlier, certified people have a certain basic concept, even if they have no relevant experience at all, after starting work It will definitely be easier to teach than someone without certification.
At the same time, if the agency wants to obtain the Google Partner Badge and use it as a selling point for attracting customers, Google has stipulated that the agency’s employees must pass the Google Ads certification. So, most recruiters will hope that the recruited employees can obtain certification in advance.
Most In-House positions will require agency experience
In the United States, most companies that open an In-House PPC advertising position will give priority to applicants with agency experience. Because the company’s keyword advertising needs are so large that it needs to open a position by itself, instead of looking for a relatively cheap agency, it will definitely hope to find more experienced candidates. In other words, if you have no experience at all, it is very difficult to find In-House vacancies. Most people will start with agency jobs before switching to In-House.
Apart from certification, how do beginners accumulate experience?
We discussed above that practical experience is very important for talent recruiters. Some people even think that the people they find do not need to have Google Ads certification, but they will give priority to those with more practical experience. But how can people with no industry experience accumulate relevant experience?I wrote a similar article a while ago.I think we can use the following channels to help ourselves:
- Practice keyword research using Google Trends and Keyword Surfer
- Observe and practice copywriting
- Learn how to use Google Analytics to analyze traffic
- Create your own Google Ads account to familiarize yourself with the account environment
I think the most important of these four points are keyword research and ad copywriting. Because these are the basic skills of keyword advertising, few people would be willing to hire those who have no knowledge or experience in these two items. If they can provide Keyword research and copywriting exercise examples for recruiters to refer to, these will be a great plus point.
When interviewing for preliminary positions, most interviewers are more concerned about the applicant’s understanding of the relevant fields of the job, so creating a Google Ads account to adapt to the account environment is a good learning opportunity, although there are many concepts of keyword advertising can only be learned by running an advertising campaign, it is still very helpful to know what functions of this platform can be used for answering related questions during interviews.
Conclusion
I personally encourage inexperienced people to learn the basic concepts through Google Ads certification because this is a good starting point. Using the courses provided by Google to lay a solid foundation will definitely bring many benefits to the interview and future work. Of course, all of this is based on the willingness to spend time reading the certification courses and related articles, instead of just searching for an online answer to get the certification, and then saying that you have learned it all. This will definitely not help in the long-term development of this industry. We still have to learn these concepts that we skipped to save time. Obtaining certification through the course is definitely one of the best channels for beginners to get started.
