Interview with Kinjal Gohil – SEM Expert

After interviewing various experts in the digital marketing space, today we have an SEM Manager Kinjal Gohil with us.

Search Engine Marketing is extremely important in digital marketing & this is the first Expert Speaks interview with an SEM Expert.

Who is Kinjal Gohil?

Kinjal Gohil is currently working as SEM Manager at iBraine Digital.

She has an amazing & inspirational journey.

Kinjal is a college dropout and today she is confidently handling Search Engine Marketing. She loves her job and is extremely hardworking.

She is a perfect example of a young girl who faced a lot of hardships in her personal and professional life & has excelled due to her dedication, passion and spirit of not giving up.

Without wasting any further time, let us hear from SEM Expert Kinjal Gohil herself.

Interview with SEM Expert Kinjal Gohil

#1. Kinjal, tell us something about yourself

I started my career with various job roles like CSE, Admin, BDE, Media Marketing Head, etc.  in different companies, which helped me to hone skills like corporate communications, understanding clients’ requirements, problem-solving skills, handling escalation smoothly, and yes self-confidence.

And currently, I am working as SEM Manager at iBraine Digital and have 4 years of experience in digital marketing.

I have completed Marketing Marketing from NMIMS and Advanced Diploma in Digital Marketing from Operating Media. Operating Media is one of the top digital marketing training institutes in Mumbai.

I love creative arts and am passionate about everything I do in my professional as well as personal life. I contribute the best of mine to the growth of business and make sure I open new avenues for generating more business profits.

#2. What are your responsibilities as an SEM Manager at iBraine? How does your day at work look like?

At iBraine as SEM Manager, I handle paid marketing promotions on search engines, social media platforms, which includes planning, execution, managing the team, implementing strategies, and budget management.

My day at work looks like:

• Overlooking the day-to-day accounts and team performance
• Delegating tasks and setting a deadline for my team
• Track, analyze, report and identify the trends of the ongoing campaigns to improve the performance.
• Managing the campaign expenses and adjusting the bids to maintain the ROI.
• Suggest and develop new strategies across multiple channels.
• Keeping the team updated about the new and upcoming insights about digital marketing.

And much more….

#3. Kinjal, you would have faced a lot of challenges in your career till now. What are the top 3 challenges you faced? How did you overcome them?

Challenges are an important part of everyone’s life, which helps you to learn, become stronger and develop your personality and grow your intelligence.

The top 3 challenges that I faced in my career –

(i) Understanding marketing metrics

During the start of my career in digital marketing, understanding the performance metrics and detailed reports were the most difficult and confusing part. I had to create strategic insight reports to improve the campaign results.

Reading blogs was not just enough to suggest and come up with a new plan. So then I started relating metrics with campaign objectives and group them together. This helped me to understand reading performance.

(ii) High formula-based detailed reports

Reports which have lots of formula based selections and after combining multiple reports make your “ONE PERFECT REPORT!”

This was like a nightmare to me, where I couldn’t understand where these data were coming from? Which sheet? Which formulas?

So that’s when I had to learn in and out of Microsoft Excel overnight. It’s true that practice makes a man perfect. I used to practice every day for my internal reports, create those chart reports, pivot tables which have multiple filters, and so on.

(iii) Implementing a new strategy by maintaining the quality results

When you want to start with a new strategy without hampering the existing campaign performance is a bit difficult but it’s possible. It’s like doing some work with your brain’s idea without letting your heart know about it.

I started implementing a new strategy that did affect the existing performance in terms of higher CPC, CPA, etc. But since I was implementing them in short intervals after analyzing the different criteria like adjusting bids, placements, keywords, etc. the campaign successfully optimized and adapted the new strategy and started performing better with great results.

There is always some innovative method that you discover while self-learning. So I really suggest everyone to first try to understand and solve very calmly because challenges we always panic, start getting stressed or can’t deliver our best.

Always start with small changes in the campaigns which are in your control to reassemble to old one setup. Making big or multiple changes at once would really go wrong and it’s not recoverable completely.

#4. What is the future of Search Engine Marketing as per you?

Search Engine Marketing has always been the best platform that gives relevant leads/sales for almost every industry.

84% of a user’s journey starts by searching about the required product or service on the search engine.

As per current marketing trends, platforms have started implementing automated bidding methods or machine learning campaign options. This will help to reduce a few manual optimization works on campaigns.

With the advent of technology and the high use of digital marketing, the future of SEM is great.

#5. A lot of people get confused between SEM and PPC. Can you explain the difference between SEM and PPC in simple terms for our readers?

Basically, PPC and SEM are almost synonyms and promoted via one source/channel that is search engines (Google or Yahoo).

In better words, marketing on Google and Yahoo includes paid and organic processes on the search engines. In paid marketing, it’s known as SEM that’s Search Engine Marketing. In organic marketing, it’s known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Further looking at SEM, PCC is a marketing model which explains that an advertiser has to pay for each click.

PPC is a quicker solution to show your business ads on the top of search engines and above the organic results.

So to conclude this difference between PPC is a subset of SEM. Pay Per Click marketing method can be implemented on Search Engines like Google and Yahoo or on Social Media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.

#6. Kinjal, you have done a marketing course from NMIMS. Tell us more about it. Was it helpful? What did you learn in it?

I have completed a Marketing Management course from NMIMS. This course had many learning modules like business law & communication, consumer behaviour, and sales management, etc.

This course has helped me to develop many skills like understanding consumer behaviour, improve communication skills, how marketing strategies should be structured and improve sales management.

Yes, the course was helpful and as we all know that along with work experiences, some theoretical knowledge is equally important to grow in any industry like fundamentals and principles of marketing management.

#7. What advice would you like to give to young girls through this interview?

Some of the best pieces of advice that I can share with young girls out there are:

• You have to move out of your comfort zone to achieve your dream, but remember that the journey is not easy and it includes many hurdles where you have to prove yourself. 
• Always be a learner, as the key to success is growth, knowledge, positivity, confidence and focused vision.
• Plan out every small milestone before you start working on accomplishing them more and better.
• Don’t let anyone underestimate your vision, because you are always surrounded by your well-wishers + negative people. So take motivation from your well-wishers and try to find the feedback from negative people’s conversation, which will help you to improve and fill in the gaps towards your dream.
• At any stage, be ready to listen to the feedback, insights and ask/express your perspective to the table, no matter if you are the youngest.

#8. Kinjal, some SEM success tips that work for sure?

1. Define your campaign goals and results that you want to achieve and choose the right marketing platform.
2. Focus on measuring and tracking the key performance which helps your campaign to grow a level up.
3. Never make multiple changes in the account/campaign together, which may become difficult to understand and analyze the performance.
4. Keep implementing A/B Testing with new strategies within the campaigns
5. Be updated with the marketing trends, tools, strategies, and never stop learning.

Success tips are good but you can only understand when you actually implement them in your life or career.

#9. On a lighter note, do you cook? What are some favorite Gujarati Dishes that SEM Expert Kinjal Gohil cooks well?

Well, yes I love and enjoy cooking a lot. Almost all dishes are my favorite but when it comes to some desi gujju dishes, I love a mix of multiple flavours, spiciness with a pinch of sweetness.

Some dishes which I love to cook are dal-dolkli, khaman dhokla, khandvi, etc.

#10. That’s Great Kinjal. As you know about this initiative “Expert Speaks” which is about bridging a gap between experts like you and digital marketing enthusiasts, what are your views about this initiative?

I think this is a great initiative where different experts can share their own experiences and viewpoints with everyone. I want to thank Jainish for considering and making me a part of this initiative. Thank You.

Conclusion

Thank you Kinjal Gohil for this amazing interview. It will definitely help a lot of people out there. Your words were honest and you have genuinely shared your experience for the benefit of digital marketing enthusiasts.

I really liked the tips that you gave to young girls. I hope many girls reading this will be inspired by your story.

I would like to convey my regards to the wonderful readers who are reading this.

You can connect with Kinjal Gohil on LinkedIn –
linkedin.com/in/kinjal-gohil

If you have any doubts or questions for experts, then please do mention them in the comments section & I will ensure that you get answers for them from the right experts.