Today we’d like to introduce you to Zaid Ammari.
Zaid, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
After graduating with a finance & banking bachelors degree in 2009, I started my career working at an international bank. We had strict hours and were penalized for the tiniest mistakes. I was not able to provide additional income to my household or save any money so the outlook was starting to look grim.
At that time, Facebook was just launched and was gaining momentum. That made me realize that if I wanted to become independent, the internet was the way to go. I had no idea what I will be doing, but I knew that I had to do something different to change my future and the internet was where I had to do it.
A few months into the job after and researching the market and saving money from birthdays and using old savings accounts – I decided to create an open marketplace focusing on selling cars. That drove me to meet with a lot of developers and programmers. It turns out – I had no were near enough capital saved up to pay for such a project and it will be impossible to keep up with the maintenance costs. That did not stop me. I decided that would build it myself and I would use the money to learn instead of paying for it.
I joined an intensive coding programming for 6 months in 2009, going to classes every day after work. After class, I would go home and work on my website. Beginning of 2010, I had my first site up and running. It was a miracle and I started working on it day and night. To start making money though, the rest of the world had to know about it so marketing was the next step. Asking all the developers and programmers I had met before about it, they had no experience with marketing and eventually started ignoring me due to lack of funds.
Growing frustrated with all the effort I had put in to build the site but no way of marketing it. I decided that I would do it myself again.
Unfortunately, there were no in person classes about this subject. I started reading online, joining every kind of forum I can find and adding everyone I could to Skype to get any amount of knowledge I can.
Eventually, by the end of 2010 I was able to rank my website on Google page #1 which brought me plenty of traffic and additional income.
At that time, I found out about Google’s AdWords Certified Program. They were charging $50 for the exam and if you passed – you will be a Google certified individual. I jumped on that opportunity and studied for all 3 exams they had. I passed all 3 and started setting up my own test accounts to play with. Due to new regulations for car import/exports – my website was rendered useless and there was no way around fixing it. I had to shut it down in early 2011. It was a very hard blow, but I learned a lot of lessons along the way.
I arrived to Los Angeles in 2011 knowing that California is the place to be if I ever wanted to be a successful online entrepreneur. I found a job on craigslist solely using my Google AdWords certifications and quickly grew within the company to become an employee in 2012. In 2013, I had learned so much in online marketing and was growing tired of playing an employee position. I opened my own website/small agency in 2013 having one client and now it’s grown to a team of 10 people all around the world with over 100 HAPPY clients.
Looking back at all the struggles I faced, I decided to share my knowledge with others as to help them find their way and started creating courses on every online platform I can find. To date, I have 2 successful courses, “The Ultimate guide to retargeting” & “Competitive Tools: How to beat your competition” with combined 20,000 students across the globe. I also do free monthly webinars and in person courses for those who like the face to face interaction.
Free webinars and paid courses can be found here. Anyone can enroll for free! http://learn.zaidammari.com/
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The only thing that was smooth was the plane ride to LA. If it was all smooth then I don’t think I would have ever made it this far. I learned a lot along the way and realized that you can never succeed if you don’t know what it’s like to fail. I always tell my students, if you are going to do something – learn it first, test it (maybe fail) then test again until you succeed.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about PPC Masterminds – what should we know?
Simply put, we specialize in data driven digital marketing; focusing on analytics and actionable insights from data to provide long term success with ROI in mind. We are mostly known for our top class PPC, SEO and Analytics campaigns.
We are most proud of our client retention rates. Once we get a client, it’s hard for them to leave because of all the value and honest recommendation we provide
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Honest and transparent communication with clients. We are not afraid to tell clients the hard truth – even if it means we might lose them because of it. I truly believe that if you are honest and straight forward with your clients (or anyone you are trying to help) – they will appreciate it and thank you for it in the long run. That and the fact that we have successfully increased revenue for over 110 clients through our digital efforts. Every business is different (just like their owners) and data points differ with each of them, therefore we research and asses each client/business case by case and provide recommendations based on their budgets and spend with long term success in mind. We are in the business of increasing ROI through data driven digital marketing efforts. There is no standard price for that!
None of our clients worry about the money they spend with us, because they know it is reasonable and affordable given their current business standing. We never ask for outrageous amounts or promise the world. Being realistic and honest is how we grow and help our clients grow.
Contact Info:
- Address: 5042 Wilshire Blvd., #32009, Los Angeles, CA 90036
- Website: http://ppcmasterminds.com
- Phone: 4246258608
- Email: info@ppcmasterminds.com
- Facebook: facebook.com/ppcmasterminds
- Twitter: twitter.com/ppcmasterminds
- Other: learn.zaidammari.com
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
