Tips for being a good Account Manager in AdTech

An Account Manager is a professional who is responsible for the everyday management of a client’s account. It is a position that has long-term prospects. You can start to develop yourself as a Junior Account Manager and gradually grow until you can take on responsible roles, such as a Key Account Manager, managing more important accounts.

It is a common profile in the advertising industry with a variety of specializations. These include those required to work in an AdTech company. In this post, we are going to focus on this type of company in particular.

Let’s look at the essential requirements for becoming an Account Manager in AdTech.

You may also be interested in:

1. How to be a good Demand Account Manager in AdTech
2. This is the role of the Supply Account Manager in AdTech
3. Steps to becoming a Performance Account Manager in AdTech

What hard skills do you need to work as an Account Manager?

In terms of education, to work as an Account Manager you should ideally have a background in areas of education such as Advertising, Marketing, Technology, or Data. If you have studied Data Science or any technical field, that may be a huge bonus for the area of integrations. Whereas, if you have previous experience in similar positions, you will already be well on your way.

The customer service and assistance aspect is also essential for the Account Manager role. It may even be more important than the specific technical skills of the AdTech industry that can be acquired over time if you are willing to understand your client’s needs and look for the best way to boost both their business results and those of your own company.

To be a good Account Manager you should have excellent customer service skills.

In any case, don’t worry if you have studied something completely different and are thinking about changing direction in your professional career. You can always specialize by doing a master’s degree in advertising technologies, user acquisition, monetization, or programmatic advertising, depending on which branch you are most interested in.

Beyond the training, the day-to-day work of an Account Manager consists of:

• Managing your portfolio of clients
• Building trusting relationships with them in the long term
• Analyzing data on a daily basis to detect new opportunities and optimizations
• Manage day-to-day technical incidents related to integrations alongside the tech team
• Report results to your line manager in the company and the client

Day-to-day work involves developing, or ideally already have, these hard skills:

1. Commercial and consultative skills.
2. Analytical skills and a command of data tools such as Spreadsheets.
3. Control of essential metrics and industry terms such as CPM, Fill Rate, Win Rate, CPI, and Floor Price…. Additionally, in companies like Tappx, profiles with knowledge of SDK and oRTB integrations like Prebid and Amazon TAM are highly valued for the Supply Account Manager role. In terms of the Performance aspect, a command of MMPs like Appsflyer, Adjust, Branch, or Kochava, among others, is a bonus.
4. Strategic vision and goal-oriented to define an action and growth plan tailored to each client, their market niche, and target audience.
5. Handling of the CRM used in your company. At Tappx, for example, we work with Hubspot.
6. Advanced level of English: since this is a highly internationalized industry, having a high level of spoken and written English is essential.

Tappx Account Managers have proven to have these skills. This is how our customers rate them.

The soft skills that all Account Managers must have

In addition to the essential technical knowledge to carry out your work as an Account Manager, this profile requires a series of equally essential soft skills. They include:

1. Empathy: knowing how to listen to and understand the needs of your clients is vital. You should see things through their eyes, think like another person in their team and know how to apply their feedback.
2. Communication: knowing how to report results to the client, how to make suggestions, and how to tell them they are taking the wrong approach or convincing them to go down a different route. This skill will mark the success or failure of your personal and commercial relationships. 
3. Sincerity and transparency: to strengthen your relationship and improve results, you should both speak clearly and exchange reliable information. It is the only way of progressing on a solid foundation and achieving real results.
4. Curiosity and interest: as an Account Manager, your modus operandi should be about constantly searching for new business opportunities. This means trying, testing, and researching new optimizations, channels, and formats…Continuously asking yourself how you can improve, and looking for information from specialist sources or even talking to other colleagues in the office will help you a great deal with your work.
5. Proactivity: proposing new ideas and always having an open mind favors the relationship with the client and marks the way toward good results.
6. Can-do attitude: showing receptiveness and willingness to try and implement different strategies, even if it’s for the first time, is an extremely positive value that makes the difference between a good Account Manager and a brilliant one.
7. Organization: given the number of tasks, ideas, and communications you have to manage each day as an Account Manager, you need to be an organized person. You can use tools like Asana, Trello, or Notion to keep track of the progress of everything you do and see what tasks you have pending, or use the classic pen and paper method to ensure you have everything under control.
8. Reaction capacity: finally, knowing how to stay calm and think clearly to find the best response in urgent situations and in the event of potential conflicts or misunderstandings is also a soft skill that will help you a great deal in your work as an Account Manager.

What about you? Do you meet these characteristics and believe you can become a good Account Manager? In that case, here at Tappx, we would be delighted to find out more about you. Here you can find all of the employment opportunities we currently have open and apply for the one that best suits your profile. If you don’t find your position open at the moment, you can also send us your CV to people@tappx.com.