AdWords Certified Professional
- digitalmarketingpro
- Oct 10, 2016
- 3 min read
Upon passing the exams, you become an AdWords certified professional. As an AdWords certified professional, you can:
access your certification status for each exam on the certifications page within your Partners profile. The certifications page doesn’t display your passing score, just the ‘passed’ status with the validity period for each of the passed exams.
view/print a certificate of achievement for completion of the exams by visiting your ‘Profile’ page and clicking the ‘AdWords Certified’ link beneath your profile photo.
enable your profile to be viewed publicly by scrolling to the ‘Public Profile’ section of your profile page. Selecting ‘Public’ next to ‘Share with’ enables profile visibility. You can share your profile page URL with clients and co-workers.
Once you are AdWords certified, you may choose to:
Apply for a job at an advertising agency: Upon acceptance by the agency, your Partners profile can be affiliated with the company profile and contribute towards that company’s “AdWords certified partner” status. If you choose to leave the agency, you can simply unlink your account from the agency and move on, which allows you to retain your AdWords certified professional status.
Provide account management services to customers.
A candidate who passes the exams can still provide great AdWords account management service whether they are an “AdWords certified partner” or not.
Becoming a Google Partner
Only an “AdWords certified partner” is able to display a Google Partner badge. Becoming an “AdWords certified partner” means that the company is meeting certification,performance, and spend requirements specified by Google.
The Partners badge requirements include:
meeting Google’s spend requirements of $10,000 in 90 days;
having at least one AdWords certified professional affiliated with the company or agency;
accounts must be managed with a clear demonstration of best practices and high-quality results.
In turn, the reward of achieving this status and badge is a public listing on Google Partner Search, which can generate many new leads for a company or agency.
If an ‘AdWords certified partner’ should fall below the minimum requirements set out by Google, a communication will be issued to allow the company a time frame in which issues should be addressed. If it is still deemed that the company has fallen below the standard after this time, the company can lose its badge.
However, losing the badge does not mean that the company has been removed from the program; it just means that the company can no longer use the badge or be displayed on Google Partner Search as an “AdWords certified partner”.
Upgrading
There is nothing stopping an AdWords certified professional from setting up a company profile and affiliating with their individual profile.
Account management performance and various other factors are continually measured, and will be displayed on the ‘Partner Status’ page. This includes the status bars and minimum performance markers. These measures are designed to help a company work towards meeting Partner guidelines. Meeting Partner guidelines is not essential to working as a solo PPC account manager, but if a company does meet the guidelines, it automatically becomes a Google Partner.
Partner Incentives
In addition to badges, there are other Partner incentives such as:
Offers
Issued through the Partners portal, promotional offers are only available to qualifying members. These are designed to aid in achieving new business. If offers are available, they can be found by clicking the “Promotions” link in the left hand navigation panel of the Partners program portal.
Leads
Along with the badge comes the ability to appear in the Google Partner Search listing. The leads that result from this can be managed by clicking the “Leads” link in the left hand navigation panel. Admins are notified of new leads via email every time a new lead is received. It is expected that these leads will receive a response from the company in a timely manner.
Insights
Within the Partners platform, users can also find ‘Insights’. This collection of product training, industry research, and case studies provided by Google promises to bring up-to-date information and guidance on Google advertising products. The main idea behind this is that these resources should aid companies in growing their business.
