From ‘Flow State PPC’ to Going Biddable - Meet Liz Su
Liz has forged a path combining search and social. We caught up with her to find out more
Liz joined Kinase in 2018 as a maths graduate, stepping into the world of digital marketing with a strong analytical foundation. After completing the Kinase Academy, she began her journey as a Paid Search Exec. Over the years, Liz has steadily progressed within the team and is now a Senior Account Manager.
Over the past year, Liz has expanded her expertise to include Paid Social, gaining a broader appreciation of how biddable media can be unified to drive results across the customer journey. Her client portfolio has included several luxury brands, initially starting out on Oliver’s Travels. Over the past five years, she has been dedicated to the Watches of Switzerland Group and their evolution, supporting their expansion into new channels and driving the development of their accounts.
Q: Liz, you’ve been here 7 years next month! What do you like about your job?
I really love spreadsheets. Crunching numbers, doing forecasts, building reports - I love it all. When I get stuck into it, it’s so satisfying. I can find that three hours have passed and I’ve not even snacked. I also really love training people: passing on the knowledge. It’s so rewarding when you see it finally clicking with new trainees and they start coming up with their own ideas. I think we do training really well here at the Kinase Academy.
“I really love spreadsheets. Crunching numbers, doing forecasts, building reports - I love it all. ”
Q: I think it’s called “flow state” or to use the technical term, being “in the zone”. But… do you think there’s less opportunity to lose yourself in Excel nowadays? Do will still need to click on the green “X”?
No, I don’t really. Excel is so versatile. You can do anything with it. Yes there’s more automation now, but there are still numbers to analyse and that takes a human being looking at spreadsheets. The machine can perform calculations but it can’t, for now, interpret them. What are the numbers really saying about the business challenge right now? It's essential that we have the skills to assess and draw conclusions from data and think of ways to present data in a way that's digestible to clients.
Q. How do you teach people Excel? How would you guide someone who is not a “natural” and hasn’t used it before in their degree for example?
In my experience, people tend to learn best when using it in practice where they're able to apply it themselves. Setting actual client related tasks and working together has proven to be a great approach, especially when combined with encouraging a no-stupid-questions environment!
Q. Turning to your other favourite thing - training! What advice would you give people starting out now?
I think it’s realising that training is never over - you have to be willing to learn new things. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been doing the job. There are always new things to learn and you have to be patient and take the time to learn. You also have to be patient with yourself if you find that you don’t get things immediately. I’ve been learning how to manage Paid Social…
Q. So you’ve been working on the wonderful Watches of Switzerland account for the whole time you’ve been at Kinase - initially on PPC only but more recently on Social too. How did a PPC expert like you find moving into a new Channel?
It’s really good having that PPC perspective. PPC and Social are very different channels but they complement each other so well. Having a single team working on both channels really improves the synergy - within the team and with the client. The client has one team to go to!
Q. What surprised you most about Social when you first started learning about it?
That there is so much focus on the creative side - at least compared with PPC. Or how PPC used to be. The analysis of the creative goes deeper. There are more conclusions you can draw from creative analysis. With search, even though there is more focus on creative with PMax etc, it’s more about trusting the machine to optimise.
Also there is so much variety in the creative to use and to test - with different audiences, across different platforms and across different stages of the funnel. When you are used to just Google it’s interesting that the different social platforms have very different demographics.
Q. What attracted you to this job in the first place?
Being a shopaholic! I’ve always loved shopping online and noticed I was clicking on ads - and I thought “why do I click on that link and not another?”. It all started from that.
Q. What if digital marketing didn’t exist?
I’ve always loved animals. When I was younger I wanted to be a zoo keeper - and so I think I would do that. Looking after pandas! Giraffes! Or maybe a cat cafe.
Q. A cat cafe really appeals to me too. I love cats! They are so good for stress - because they just don’t care! What keeps you going when work is hard?
I know a lot of people say this - but it’s my team. We are genuinely so friendly - but more than that, we have a very nurturing mindset. We are never afraid to ask questions and to answer questions. No-one ever looks stupid, we all help each other.
We have high standards to match the high standards of the clients. But we’ve developed ways to keep the standard up and that’s through close collaboration. Nothing is ever just on one person.
We have lovely clients and they are very forward-thinking. Always willing to try new things, take fresh opportunities to keep them ahead of the game. That’s a huge positive, always testing new products and features, especially when competition is so fierce.
Q. What new features and developments are you excited about for the future?
The whole “biddable” side of things is exciting - getting the big picture on PPC, Social and other channels. It’s so valuable to be able to connect things and see things holistically. And now I can make spreadsheets for both PPC and Social.
The industry as a whole is very different from how it was when I started - but a lot of the same skills are needed to do well. Critical thinking is important: being able to understand the data and its underlying meaning. Why did we see these results? It’s more than just numbers and describing numbers changing.
Q. Will keywords die?
That’s the way it’s going with Google’s new Search Max … but clients always want some level of control, and levers to pull to respond to targets and trading conditions. For example, they want to protect their brand. So it’s difficult to see a world where keyword targeting is completely gone. And we’ve been talking recently about how Google is going back in the other direction in some ways - back towards control. So in Demand Gen you can now segment by platforms in reporting and even in bidding.
Q. It’s a game of push and pull! Finally what do you like to do when you’re not working?
Travelling! Asia is my new favourite destination. I went to Japan and Thailand recently - and Vietnam is next.
Read more from the Kinase blog
