Bastien Rabaute
was nominated by Mark Bissoni in June of 2021.
How long have you been working in PPC?
I started PPC in 2012. I had some experience in 2006, with the first company I started, not as an agency, but as an advertiser.
How did you get started in PPC?
In 2012, I had a business which was not working and wanted to pivot. A friend of mine had a client who needed someone to work on his Google Ads campaigns. I had little experience but was eager to learn. During those 2 months, I read everything I could find on Google Ads and PPC management, and asked questions on all the forums. I created a Google Ads account and launched my own campaigns to test and learn. I started to work on the client’s campaigns and we had results. The client was happy. Another came, and another one, … The adventure was on and continues today.
If you went to college, what did you study? If not college, do you have any other degrees or certifications?
I did very different studies: a degree in physical measurements, another one in mathematics and computer science, one in innovation management and some sociology courses. I don’t use today a lot of all of the technical knowledge I learnt then, but it was interesting and help to structure your mind. The sociology courses help me to better understand a group psychology and the move of the needs of the clients of my clients. My tech studies and work in computer science are very important to create scripts, apps and even analytics.
What was your first job that involved PPC?
My first encounter with the PPC world was on the advertiser side. In 2006, my girlfriend and I created a company called Mademoiselle Design where we designed lamps, curtains and cushions. Our first entrepreneurial journey. We started to use some Google Ads to push our products. Google Ads was not what it is today. Unfortunately, the company didn’t work. We closed it and decided to go traveling in Australia for one year. A good decision for a new beginning.
What is your current position and how long have you been in it?
I actually owned a PPC agency called Jabiroo, in France started in 2012. We work with plenty of different businesses from restaurants, plumbers, startups, ecommerce and sometimes multinational companies.
What kinds of things do you currently handle or manage in PPC?
We mainly manage search, display, shopping on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. This year, more clients are interested in Youtube ads and Facebook Ads.
I also manage different tools dedicated to PPC management:
- Sunnyreports : a tool we create to ease the reporting for small accounts, the ones which don’t need big Data Studio dashboards.
- AWQL.me: when we were making Sunnyreports, we needed an AWQL console as Google didn’t provide one. We made one and decided to push it publicly, for free. It’s still free today. Plenty of companies use AWQL.me to check their queries before to script it or for different needs, even some Google engineers!
- Pushmylead.com: that’s the latest service we launched. It instantly sends the leads from the lead form extension straight to your inbox. Convenient, especially if you don’t have a CRM to do that. We are going to mainly improve the tool in the next weeks.
What are you most proud of in your PPC career?
Working in PPC these days is sometimes not easy. Nobody loves ads. But I explain often that our work is helping small companies to compete with big companies, to get more business, to create jobs. I explain that we are not here to spend in any matter the money of our clients and our goals is to craft the better ads for our clients and people who will see them.
The first time a client (a carpenter) told me that we saved her company with our work and now she was going to recruit. That’s the moment where I think I was useful.
What, if anything, do you wish you could “do over” in your PPC career?
I wish I had learned more on graphic design and psychology and also more time scripting (not now in 2021, but in 2015) to save time to learn more interesting things.
If you could give advice to someone either considering or just starting out in PPC, what would that be?
Be curious, learn continuously. Never think you are right and others are wrong. Share your knowledge and meet people online and offline. Our jobs evolve really fast actually. We have to learn new things, we have to work differently. It scares, sometimes it’s hard but exciting. We have to adapt to our working environment and not fight against (I blame myself for having been too critical on the move for automation enforced by Google for example).
Are you interested in speaking opportunities? If so, what topics are your jam?
I love digging into the specific problems of my clients, to try to find new creative ways to find opportunities. Not sure, I am able to speak to a native english audience (French are not renowned for their aptitude to speak foreign languages!).
Anything else you’d like to share?
Even if in France, since 2012 I get all of my Google Ads and industry news and updates on US / English media (Search Engineland, PPC Hero, …).
I discovered PPCChat with Matt Umbro. I was really happy to find a community with people having the same daily questions as me. It’s great to have the support of a community, from people we certainly never meet (but it could be great!), from all around the world. It is all the more important in PPC because in front of us we have Giants which impose their vision and their rules.
Being able to discuss our daily problems, to share knowledge, to speak weekly is very important for me (and also my colleagues)
So thank you for the work with PPC Chat.
Where can people find you to connect (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)?
I am connected every day on twitter, the only social network I really use. Feel free to drop me a tweet or PM. @bastien31
I also have a Linkedin profile but I don’t connect often. https://www.linkedin.com/in/bastienrabaute/