Book Review - Ponderings of a PPC Professional by Kirk Williams

REVIEWER: Robert Craven
AUTHOR: Kirk WIlliams

Coming out of 2020, the first of what I am sure will be several agency books has appeared in the form of Ponderings of a PPC Professional – A Collection of Philosophical, Yet Practical, Observations to Help You Win at Pay-Per-Click Marketing by Kirk Williams.

So who is Kirk and why should we spend time reading his book?

Kirk is the owner of ZATO, his micro-agency focused solely on paid search advertising, and has been working in digital marketing since 2009.

He is on the board of the Paid Search Association.

He was named one of the Top 25 Most Influential PPCers by PPC Hero from 2016-2020, primarily because of his PPC writing for various industry publications.

Pre-Covid, he was an international conference speaker training PPCers on all things paid search (especially shopping ads) from Seattle to Sydney to London.

He has chosen to share how he feels about the PPC world in an open, honest and frank way. He may be struck off some people’s Christmas lists for his frankness about how the platforms sometimes behave.

A quick intro

This book is not all about Pay-Per-Click tactics or technical aspects of account creation and management (the what). It is more about the framework of philosophy (the why).

Kirk takes his years of experience managing PPC accounts and navigating the complexities of building his agency to share insights and learnings. It is aimed at both someone who is beginning in the world of PPC and the tried-and-true expert hoping to find new insights into common problems.

The content

I think the chapter headings summarise the journey this book takes you on. And the by-lines explain his angle.

Chapter 1 - Personal, Timely, Intent - The Keyword is the True Power of Paid Search

Chapter 2 - The Purchase Funnel - And Why It Matters in Paid Search

Chapter 3 - Advertiser Data Rights - And Why This is a Core Battlefront for Marketing in this Decade

Chapter 4 - Data and Automation - And When They Don’t Get Along

Chapter 5 - Don't Strangle the Funnel - When Optimizing PPC Campaigns Kills Businesses

Chapter 6 - Invest In Other Channels - You MUST Spend Money Outside PPC if You Want to Grow

Chapter 7 - Bidding Rules Rule - Understanding PPC Bidding Rules and Automation

Chapter 8 - Attribution is Terrible – But It's Important. It's Complicated

Chapter 9 - Attribution Continued - (Improper) Attribution Can Destroy Your Business

Chapter 10 - Growing PPC - Or, the Tenuous Balancing Act of Profit and Revenue

Chapter 11 - Crisis PPC - Advertise the Benefits, Not Just Facts, Especially in a Crisis

Chapter 12 - Starting a Consultancy - Going it Alone. How to Start a Solo PPC Consultancy

Chapter 13 - The One About PPC Pricing - Let’s Settle This Once and for All...Or Not Really

Chapter 14 - The One About PPC Contracts - To Contract, or Not to Contract

Chapter 15 - Avoiding Bad Clients: Tough Talk - How to Identify (and Avoid) Bad Clients

Chapter 16 - In Conclusion - You Can Go Home Now, We're Done.

Kirk has tried to be honest and straightforward in the book. He talks well, and not so well, about the various platforms and how they have impacted the independence and freedom of agencies and the ability of agencies to work on behalf of their clients.

His style is conversational and slightly controversial. He doesn’t accept everything, that’s for sure. You will have heard many of his arguments (or debates) in the bar at the conferences you attended pre-Covid. He brings those issues to light:

• AIDA is alive and well.
• The decreasing lack of data being handed to those paying for it.
• The best marketing won’t fix a bad product.
• PPC is limiting and does not solve all your marketing problems.
• We need to be OK about not having attribution figured 100% - sometimes, trust your gut.
• Focus on the benefits you bring (especially in a crisis).
• Be clear about the difference between revenue and profits for you and your clients.
• Get back to marketing, worry less about attribution and get back to building a brand.
• How to avoid bad clients and clues to who to avoid (a great list).
• How most pricing models will stop you being paid what you are worth.

In many ways, this is a book in praise of marketing and how PPC can contribute to it. He is not slavishly obsessed with PPC to the detriment of all other tools. That is refreshing.

Finally, there is an appendix that gives you some of the backstory, his personal challenges in 2020. I am not a great fan of sentimentality but I found that reading of his challenges made the book a more rewarding read. It made more sense knowing, and being reminded of, how 2020 has been so tough for so many people, each with their own individual story.

Read this book – there will be something in it where you will shout out, “Yes, of course…this man is so right!”