Training Program at Hanapin Marketing
New Employee Training
At Hanapin, it's important for new employees to feel comfortable in their new position as soon as possible, whether they've had previous search marketing experience or not. To accomplish that, we have an extensive classroom-style training program that eases you into the role by teaching you the basics of SEO and PPC, introducing you to the "Hanapin way" of generating results for our clients, and familiarizing you with our unique and progressive office culture.
On your first day, you'll receive a syllabus that covers your 12-week training period. For each day, we outline the topics we'll cover along with the reading assignments due before each white board training session with a senior member of our team. After the session, you'll be assigned actual client work, which will be turned in for review so you can learn and make adjustments before implementation.
Here's what you can expect during your training period:
- In addition to SEO Boy and PPC Hero, you'll read lots of industry blogs to learn the lingo and catch up on the latest industry news.
- Be a silent attendee for client meetings and status updates to understand the nuances of how we handle interactions with client, to learn how we set agendas, and to see how we work with clients to drive results for them.
- Practice what you've learned by working on actual client work and receiving real-time feedback on your assignments.
- Receive lots of constructive feedback from the team on your progress learning SEO and PPC and your professional development.
- At the halfway point of your training, you'll take an assessment test to identify areas for improvement and to ensure you're internalizing the training and applying it correctly in the proper situations.
- Towards the end of training, you'll start your transition from assignment-based work to self-directed work. You'll be assigned a client and under the supervision of an AE or Supervisor, you'll be responsible for determining the strategy of the account.
- Once your training is complete, you'll take certification tests for Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter (costs are covered by Hanapin)
The goal is for you to transition into managing clients on your own. The entire team will be here to help and guide you along!
On-Going Training
The search marketing industry is constantly changing, which makes it interesting and keeps us on our toes. We're committed to professional development and to staying on top of the latest industry news and applying new SEO and PPC techniques to optimize our accounts. Here's how we continue to learn and keep up with the industry:
- Read industry blogs on a regular basis.
- Write about new developments on SEO Boy and PPC Hero.
- Attend industry conferences and seminars.
- Register for relevant online webinars.
- Share knowledge and expertise with each other on a daily basis.
- Account and website audits from your peers.
All-Day Training Sessions
In addition to the on-going training opportunities listed above, we also conduct an all-day training session every month. These employee-led sessions allow us to keep pace with the rapid-fire changes the search engines make.
In the morning, we assign specific topics to research individually, which helps avoid 'groupthink.' Then, in small groups, we brainstorm to ensure we're on the same page and flesh out any additional information.
We'll order in lunch, and then in the afternoon, begin presentations. We'll do 1-2 presentations on SEO and 1-2 presentations on PPC. Additionally, there's 1-2 more sessions that help us improve other skills, perhaps exercises to enhance our client communication or tips and tricks for Excel. We'll end the day with company updates and a 360 session to identify ways to improve next month's session.
Results
Employees receive 150 hours of training in the first year and 100 hours in each subsequent year, easily placing Hanapin in the top 1% of all companies in the world in terms of training hours.
With our classroom-style training program, we're able to train someone with zero skills and transform them into world-class account managers, which allows us to be as competitive as venture-backed firms in major metro areas. Our best success story is hiring someone with a zoology degree who worked at animal control for Monroe County. A year after going through our training program, she was able to handedly manage our largest client!