EP322 - When Wrong Conversion Goals Led to Right Insights ft Reva Minkoff

Anu Adegbola:

Hello and welcome to PPC Live, The Podcast, formerly known as PPCChat Roundup. My name is Anu, the founder of PPC Live, and if you're used to hearing advice from PPC experts about how to ensure that we are keeping up with the ever changing landscape, don't worry, you are still in the right place. But instead of relaying what the PPC experts are saying, I'm bringing the PPC experts to you every week I'm going to be speaking to a different PPC expert about their biggest F up, but also how they've turned.

Things around, we'll share what was disappointing, what was surprising in terms of like, you know, client reactions or even people from their team and you know, where the support came from. And just some really great anecdotes that really help them be the experts that they are today still in the industry.

Today, I have the delight of presenting to you, Reva Minkoff, who has been writing for PPC Live for a while. So you might have seen her writing, but now you're gonna hear her speak and talk about a f up that she made, but also not even it. What makes it not even a big f up? It was an f up that turned into such an opportunity.

She pivoted it into an opportunity and the client loved it and they still work with her till today. So yeah, this is really a big lesson on how to pivot, how not to panic when you're see an error and how to pick out an opportunity from something that has seemingly gone really, really wrong. So yeah, let's go speak to Reva.

Anu Adegbola (01:35.793)
Hello, Reva. Welcome to PPC Live, The Podcast. 

Reva Minkoff (01:39.276)
Thanks Anu, thanks for having me. 

Anu Adegbola (01:41.071)
It's such a delight to have you here and thank you for the quick turnaround. I think I asked you like last week to do it while you're enjoying a lovely time off from work. yeah, this is like your first, is this your first like your Monday back to work after your holiday? Yeah, okay, cool. Well, let's kick it off with a great interview here. So to introduce you guys to the wonderful Reva Minkoff, she's a very experienced digital marketing expert. 

Reva Minkoff (01:56.15)
Yeah, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (02:09.193)
specializing in paid search, SEO, analytics, social media, with actually an offline marketing background. So quite a varied experience here. Very much a wide passion and specialties in, you know, all like the whole like analytics, the full marketing sphere. And how long have you been in the industry as well? I like asking people that, so people know that they're listening to long time experts here. 

Reva Minkoff (02:35.32)
18 years. 

Anu Adegbola (02:36.361)
18 years, same as me, happy anniversary, happy 18th, right? Right, time flies. Yeah, yeah, time flies. Sometimes I like, I'll be like, asked me and I was like, wait, I need to, I need to start remembering the year I started, because I lose track of the count sometimes. 

Reva Minkoff (02:39.646)
Yeah, it's crazy. It's been a long time. 

Reva Minkoff (02:55.832)
Totally. I mean, it depends too. Like, do you count the first marketing internship or do you start with the, you know, digital marketing? 

Anu Adegbola (03:01.577)
Yeah, to when you actually started getting a proper job 

Anu Adegbola (03:04.517)
and when you actually had a proper pay, pay, pay, pay, you got it. Yeah, no, I know what you mean. Another very interesting aspect to Reva's life is that she's got very varied interests, which I love. She has interest in journalism, event planning. So, you know, the panic I get every time I'm about to run a PPC Live event. Entertainment, sports. 

Reva Minkoff (03:06.262)
Right, right, right. 

Reva Minkoff (03:10.498)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (03:28.231)
and dance passions on the side. Tell me about the dance. I wish I feel like in another life I could have been a dancer. 

Reva Minkoff (03:35.608)
So I started doing ballroom dance. My parents made me learn, my dad made me learn from my bat mitzvah, so I would be able to dance with him at the bat mitzvah. So I started taking dance in, yeah, I guess middle school. And I kept doing ballroom for a couple years throughout high school, like for a years there. And then in college, I did it again. And then when I, so I was on the ballroom team for four years in college. And then when I moved to Chicago, 

Anu Adegbola (03:42.217)
Right. 

Reva Minkoff (04:03.896)
dating guy who was a ballroom dancer. So I got very involved in their studio. was spending like 20 hours a week, you know, dancing for the first couple of years I was out here, which was great. So I, I really, I really love dancing. So I'm kind of trying to do different, different types of it. It's always a thing, that thing I'd love to do more of if I had more time, time and resources, right? I would dance. 

Anu Adegbola (04:08.946)
Wow! 

Anu Adegbola (04:13.373)
Yeah 

Anu Adegbola (04:21.266)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (04:24.776)
blast. 

Anu Adegbola (04:28.033)
Right. mean, isn't that a quote? If I had unlimited time and resources, I would dance. Like, that is just such a joyful thing to do. So you still do it. Do you still? 

Reva Minkoff (04:39.926)
Yeah, I mean, have a, 

Reva Minkoff (04:41.637)
need to get back to it. Like I need to go to the studio and, you know, take a ballet lesson. I haven't done ballroom as much recently. It's a lot harder when you don't have a partner. But, but it would like, it's something, again, it's something I'm kind of have on my list of things to revisit and do more of. It's like the next chapter of my life, you know. 

Anu Adegbola (04:49.577)
Sure. 

Anu Adegbola (04:57.289)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (05:00.769)
Okay. Well, I'm really hoping for you that you can get back to it and you find the opportunities to do it because yeah, I definitely think it's a very, very lovely thing. Mine is more like freestyle and just being like, oh, I hope the rhythm is in my DNA. I've never actually done any like official like proper like training like you did, which I think is absolutely wonderful. 

Reva Minkoff (05:21.4)
Well, 

Reva Minkoff (05:22.681)
during the pandemic, I went back and like to revisit a ballet, which I hadn't done 

Reva Minkoff (05:26.124)
since I was seven. So that was kind of fun. Just to use the virtual lessons. was just dance was a really good way to kill time during the pandemic. 

Anu Adegbola (05:28.487)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (05:31.122)
Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (05:35.721)
I'm sure. Absolutely. 

Anu Adegbola (05:37.401)
I'm sure that sounds really great. So anyway, enough about our love for dancing. Let's get into what we really want to talk about. like talking, starting up conversation with something that just people kind of for a second go, wait, what's this podcast about? So I'm going to tell you guys what this podcast is about. It's, we are going to talk about, you know, F-ups that experts have experienced. And I loved, um, I really love what Reva is really going to share because as we said, I've 

Reva Minkoff (05:51.394)
Thank you. 

Anu Adegbola (06:02.885)
I've started really saying and I want to drum that into every, but he said, we never leave on a defeated note. This is not, my God, I screwed up. And that ended my career. This was more, yeah, we made a mistake but here was the opportunity. Here was the lesson. Here was the, how we pivoted. And Reva has a great story for us today. I really feel so yeah, Reva what's the F up you'd like to share with us today? 

Reva Minkoff (06:24.6)
Cool. So I think it was about two years ago, we had some incremental from a client to run some campaigns at the end of the year. And we had been hoping to get them to test Performance Max, because this was two years ago. So again, still sort of in the early days of PMAX campaigns. And so we set one up for the client, we set them up for a few different products. And for one of them, we realized about, I want to say a week or two in, 

Anu Adegbola (06:40.445)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (06:53.492)
might even have been a month in that we didn't, when we were setting up the conversions, we had listed everything on the account as primary, not just their key conversion. And so the account was recording and optimizing for, location. Conversions. So get directions, calls to store, store visits, which were, are not the client's main KPIs. they've always been sort of bonuses that I've used to show the value of the account, but really they care about. 

Anu Adegbola (06:59.273)
Mmm. 

Anu Adegbola (07:10.576)

Anu Adegbola (07:21.897)
Mm. 

Reva Minkoff (07:23.721)
website clicks in certain places. So did they click this conversion button on the website, which is what we would typically use. So what had happened is instead of, we noticed it because we looked at the campaign and the numbers looked amazing. And I think they were under a dollar, which our first time running a PMAX campaign was really exciting. They were like, I don't know, say 75 cents. I it was really great. And then we looked at it and we realized it wasn't 75 per cent, sorry, 75. 

Anu Adegbola (07:46.12)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (07:51.554)
cent conversion, like cost per conversion for a button click, it was a 75 cent conversion for a store visit, get direction or call to the store. And that's not what we have typically been using as a success metric for them. So it was a little bit alarming. You know, we'd been doing well on it. had been, it was, was a test that was, we had a lot of eyes on it because it was incremental. We really wanted to. 

Anu Adegbola (08:17.192)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (08:19.96)
you know, to do deliver, to deliver good results for the client. And we didn't want to have a problem or anything, but we also realized that we could just sort of turn it into a test. So we sort of said, well, you know what we, you know, we set this up, you know, this wasn't, um, I think we said, you know, it wasn't, uh, wasn't necessarily intentional, but what, you know, we, but we set it up, uh, we made a mistake and what we were finding instead is that we've like been optimizing towards these things. And what we've learned is that PMAX can get you these for really, really cheap. So is this something you want to do? 

Anu Adegbola (08:28.89)
Mmm. 

Anu Adegbola (08:47.826)
Okay. 

Reva Minkoff (08:50.776)
And when the incremental expired and we were looking at planning for the next year, you we still said, Hey, maybe we should keep this on. Like, we want to see what the gains from this are? You know, does this make sense? It seems like there may really be a value here. And again, like we've now learned that PMAX can drive these for at a very, very efficient rate. If they're a value here, all the ways that we've always thought they were a value to the program, et cetera, et cetera, you know, let's run with it. So it turned into a really cool. 

Anu Adegbola (09:10.537)
Mm. 

Reva Minkoff (09:20.377)
opportunity to get a learning that I think we wouldn't have otherwise 

Reva Minkoff (09:25.099)
necessarily been able to test, certainly not at that point, that we've been able to use as foundational learning in building the program. So now, since that time, we were able to eventually launch and run PMAX campaigns. They are set to a button click, which is great. 

Anu Adegbola (09:26.962)

Anu Adegbola (09:29.863)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (09:35.357)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (09:45.576)
Thanks. 

Reva Minkoff (09:45.662)
but we 

Reva Minkoff (09:46.293)
also, still know we have this information in our back pocket that if we ever wanted to do more with location extensions, we could, and for them, part of the challenge has always been, measuring, as a, they're a CPG client. So it's all part of the challenge has always been measuring, you know, what the revenue is from that and driving the value and all the measurement piece. But we know if we could sort that out, like we have a really good case study here. We think that there's something we can do here. 

Anu Adegbola (09:48.762)
Thank you. 

Reva Minkoff (10:11.998)
you know, how can we measure it? What can we do with it? So it's been, it's been really, it was, it was a very scary couple of moments when we realized this had happened in a very scary few weeks when we kind of thought about, well, hey, what are we going to do? Cause I don't want to turn it off if it's doing really, really well. But also like this isn't what it was supposed to be doing. You know, but I want, like, I want to be honest with the client. 

Anu Adegbola (10:24.201)
Mm. 

Anu Adegbola (10:32.327)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (10:37.368)
But I also want to do what I do right by the client, make sure that we're, you know, being as efficient as possible with their spend and spending their money correctly. and obviously it's always scary to say, Hey, you know, we made a mistake or we like, this didn't work out the way we intended. but I think just by sort of focusing less on the, we didn't mean to do this and more on the, well, this is what's happening. And, it's doing really well. And I mean, this is a really interesting find that like we can build on. 

Anu Adegbola (10:50.089)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (10:59.335)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (11:03.421)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (11:07.143)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (11:07.73)
I think we were 

Reva Minkoff (11:08.351)
able to take a sort of scary no moment and turn it into something that's really been a positive and a learning for the client where I was telling you like I'm still not sure they know we didn't do that intentionally. Which like 

Anu Adegbola (11:20.457)
But you said, 

Anu Adegbola (11:22.928)
you did say that you told them, you mentioned, 

Reva Minkoff (11:24.729)

Reva Minkoff (11:26.731)
Yeah, I definitely at one point said no, like admitted like no, we didn't mean to do that. Like we weren't, you're trying to do this, but like we did this instead. But since we have it. But I think just in general, right, we didn't, we didn't dwell on the, it wasn't supposed to be this way. We just tried to focus on, well, like, this is what happened. But like, what are we going to do from? 

Anu Adegbola (11:45.383)
Yeah so and how did the client like you know receive that news because did it did did it feel like they were like wait wait wait what do mean it didn't work or did they just go okay great you have a you have a plan okay great did they just move ahead with you on it or did they kind of be like can you explain further 

Reva Minkoff (12:06.448)
they, they moved ahead pretty quickly over what had, over the actual ins and outs of what had happened and like the incorrect setting and all of that part. you know, much more onto the strategic business questions, like, well, do we want to have it set up this way? And what does this mean? And does this offer value? And, you know, what is this really saying? And, and what's the, like, again, what's the story? What's the business case here? and sort of the analysis of that, which I think was really the big. 

Anu Adegbola (12:17.553)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (12:36.08)
you know, main question anyway, as opposed to getting stuck in the, well, you know, what do you mean you didn't do it this way? And how come these other three were this way? And this one was this way kind of thing. so, so it was, it was, it was good. Cause I think that, really, I always advocate on like seeing the forest through the trees, right. And really focusing on what's best for the client. And I think as PPC providers, right. Like how can we be the best stewards of the client's money? 

Anu Adegbola (12:38.835)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (12:45.629)
Hmm. 

Anu Adegbola (13:05.479)
Mm-hmm. 

Reva Minkoff (13:05.565)
How do 

Reva Minkoff (13:05.825)
I spend the money the best? How am I most efficient? How do we make sure that they achieve what it is that they're trying to achieve? And so I feel like in this case, we worked with for a long time. We had a lot of trust already built up, which is what's helpful too you. But I think it made it a lot easier to move smoothly from what happened to, well, what does this mean? 

Anu Adegbola (13:08.254)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (13:20.231)
Hmm. 

Reva Minkoff (13:29.518)
Let's think about those business questions. Is this something we want to do? 

Reva Minkoff (13:34.046)
Is this something that's valuable for the business? And going from there. 

Anu Adegbola (13:36.125)
Yeah, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (13:38.687)
Fantastic. Now I'm going to ask question that is not actually usually on the list, but I know you are going to be able to answer this because you've kind of even touched on it already because I've had conversations with other paid search experts or even in some of our PPC live events where, you know, there've been a bit of like a discussion, let's call it, between people who are saying that, clients... 

Anu Adegbola (14:01.321)
are not even clients don't care about the CPCs and those like, you know, those, those tiny metrics, it's the clients just want to make sure that you're delivering towards the goal. And some people are like, Oh no, no clients want to know what kinds are always asking, you know, they don't want their CPCs increasing. don't want these different metrics increasing. But I feel like from what you're seeing here, your client was like happy to know that because they, you know, they were a trusted client, you guys are a trusted partner for their paid search activity. 

Anu Adegbola (14:30.895)
you understood what was important to them. So can you speak to that as well? Can you speak to like, you know, what's important to a client and that people should remember even if like they make a mistake, what do you feel is important to a client? 

Reva Minkoff (14:45.812)
Yeah, so I totally, I think the most important thing to a client, right, is, I mean, are we achieving their goals? Is the program achieving the client's goals? And by achieving the client's goals, I really mean, it moving their business forward? So it's different for everybody, right? We've had some people where that means more traffic. We've had a lot more people where it means more conversion or more revenue or a great ROI or 

Reva Minkoff (15:08.685)
some combination of the above, right? More sales in various forms, more leads, more qualified leads. And it's all, that's why I think it's so important to know and to have a good understanding going in of what success means to the client. What does success look like and what's important to them? Because that's what'll set you up, right? To be able to then, when these things happen, go back and say, hey, you know, it's this. So I remember, I mean, 

Reva Minkoff (15:34.04)
The worst mistake I ever made was not this one. It was my first PPC job after college and I was running, I think it was display. I don't remember if was display or search, but I do remember that for, I think it was Minnesota, I forgot to set the targeting to the state of Minnesota and it ran to the whole country and it was a weekend. So I set it and so then it ran for three days before I caught it again on Monday and it spent a lot of money. 

Reva Minkoff (16:04.348)
and I really thought he was going to fire me and that was going to be, you know, the end of that job, like sincerely. But I remember even just in thinking how I thought about that, it was still like, well, okay, I know, like, we don't want to be in all these states, but if you look at it this way, we still got 20 conversions in Minnesota and we still, and I'm like, you are in these other states. So even though wasn't the campaign for California, we did get, you know, so I think it's really about understanding what it is the client 

Reva Minkoff (16:34.826)
wants to achieve. that, and I never made that mistake since, right? Cause that was so mortifying. I often tell my team now, even like my junior members, look, sometimes you're going to mess something up and like, you'll never do it again. It's okay. You know, you have to learn, learn this way. But I think, I think, yeah, I think under having a good understanding of what, what the client's trying to do will help you pull the good things out of the bad things so that you can really focus on again, like. 

Anu Adegbola (16:36.051)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (16:39.58)
Of course. 

Anu Adegbola (16:59.005)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (17:02.496)
what's most important to them. Cause I think that it really, the CP, I mean, it matters if the CPCs are going up, if that's making the cost per lead more expensive or if that's making the, the ROI lower or if, but, but in general, like it doesn't really matter. you know, as long as you're turning it into, into again, what they, 

Reva Minkoff (17:21.504)
what needs to be happening on the backend, especially cause something like CPCs going up is something you can't control nine times. 

Anu Adegbola (17:26.491)
No, 

Anu Adegbola (17:27.902)
no, no, no. I mean, it's industry wide. It's like the whole of advertising wide. doesn't even matter what vertical you're in these days. That's what the numbers are saying. That's what the reports are saying. Like the CPCs are going up. So yeah, focus on the efficiency on those clicks that are hitting your landing page. If they're expensive, make sure they work as well as possible. feel like a network and that's 

Reva Minkoff (17:52.938)
Exactly. 

Anu Adegbola (17:54.833)
That takes a lot of not just seeing PPC as its own channel, work with the different teams, web developers, CRO, all those kind of people. 

Reva Minkoff (18:04.9)
I mean, that's why that's literally how I've grown the business because I realized pretty quickly that like you couldn't, I can run the best search campaign ever from a metrics perspective. From a front end metrics perspective, I can have a great click through rate, low CPCs. It looks wonderful, but if the traffic's not converting on the backend, it doesn't matter how great my search query report is. 

Anu Adegbola (18:13.097)
Mm. 

Anu Adegbola (18:25.48)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (18:31.751)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (18:32.632)
So that's 

Reva Minkoff (18:33.232)
when I realized you have to kind of look at SEO and CRO and a number of these other things, email, you know, just to start really making sure you have a full understanding of the whole experience. Because if they're, all we can do as marketers is get them there. Like we can't force them to drink. 

Anu Adegbola (18:42.631)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (18:48.361)
Yeah, yeah, nice. 

Anu Adegbola (18:51.341)
No, no, yeah, you can bring them to the to the what did it was that saying you can can bring a donkey to water bring a horse to water but you can't force the horse to drink. So yeah, do your best to bring them to the water I guess is the bring that's correct bring the right horses to the water. Yeah. Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (19:04.344)
So that if I bring the right horses to the water, diversity, I bring diversity horses to the water, then you 

Reva Minkoff (19:12.264)
know, so I just always try to bring the best, the best people to the right place, best people to the best place and hope for the match. 

Anu Adegbola (19:16.733)
Yeah. Nah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (19:21.057)
Yeah, absolutely. So now looking back on that, I feel like, you know, he said it in the air, but I just want to clarify the whole issue with like the location targets, it was like setting the targets to location. Setting the goals, sorry. Yeah. Setting the goals. That was... 

Reva Minkoff (19:35.032)
was setting the goals. Yeah, the goals. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (19:40.425)
I hate to nitpick about this and make this seem like a, my God, the memories. It was something you did? Or was it like someone like a team thing? 

Reva Minkoff (19:49.88)
I think I did it, but I'm not 100 % sure if it was me or someone else. I caught it. 

Anu Adegbola (19:53.711)
Sure, but like you and you picked it, but you picked up, picked 

Anu Adegbola (19:57.223)
up, you caught it. That's great. And, like, what do you feel like was missed kind of thing that, you know, like if you, you, if I know these kinds of mistakes, you know, and I think the biggest thing to take away is the what to have, what to do after the mistake happens, but even like to possibly prevent this kind of mistake happening, what would you look back and yeah, do differently? 

Reva Minkoff (20:18.562)
Totally. So yeah, 

Reva Minkoff (20:21.114)
I think there are a couple of things with this kind of thing. they're really surprisingly easy to have happen. I think as Google keeps changing the interface on the campaign setups, especially if you're doing one that you are not super familiar with. Cause this was our first time testing P max, you know, again, years ago when like we were just doing it for the first time. You have to really make sure you understand what they mean when they're asking some of the questions that they're asking for. 

Anu Adegbola (20:45.342)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (20:46.008)
because this whole question of like, what do you want to optimize towards? think they were, the thing was like, what do you want to optimize towards? And was like, well, yeah, these would be great. 

Reva Minkoff (20:52.408)
Not like set my whole CPA based on these. Like I really, like it was like, I really care about this one, but these are also important. And it wasn't really the way the question was phrased. Again, I understand what they meant now, but I think the first time setting it up, um, that's why I said, I think it might've been me. I mean, it's possible to somebody else and they may like, but from my perspective, the way the question was phrased was not. 

Anu Adegbola (20:52.776)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (20:57.372)
Yeah 

Reva Minkoff (21:16.265)
was not very clear and like they were the goals and this whole thing even since then that Google has done with campaign goals versus like the goal. Would you like your account goals to be the default goal or is it the campaign goal that's using a different goal? Like sometimes the language gets a little tricky. So I think it's just really important to make sure that you're, you know, that you're keeping an eye on it. And I think the other thing was also using the segment. So using the breakdown by segments to look by your conversion type for the campaign to make sure that the conversions coming in. 

Anu Adegbola (21:23.496)
No. 

Anu Adegbola (21:29.885)
Jesus. 

Reva Minkoff (21:45.536)
are in fact the conversions that you want to have coming in and that are driving the story. So those are sort of two learnings I think I feel like I had from just playing with the campaign type that again at the time was new to us. think anytime you're dealing with a new campaign or a new platform, you have to like really double check those things. And then I think the other thing is just the QA piece, just building a better QA process, right? Like it's so easy on a lot of these campaigns to make, I mean, on any campaign setup to make a mistake. 

Anu Adegbola (22:12.851)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (22:15.274)
It is, I think, easier to make a mistake than it is not to make a mistake, just the way that they're all set up. And so, you know, I've tried to say, how can we break down the process more to you? How is it not just like set up a campaign, but it's, you check this? Did you check this? Did you check this? Have we checked this? Like, is this, you know, like all of the different little pieces in putting something up so that ideally, you know, you're more likely to catch the step sooner than later. 

Anu Adegbola (22:19.003)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (22:36.701)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (22:41.597)
Yeah, yeah, 

Anu Adegbola (22:43.587)
absolutely. 

Reva Minkoff (22:44.332)
And what I learned from my 

Reva Minkoff (22:45.094)
one from before is never launch on Fridays. 

Anu Adegbola (22:47.685)
Yeah, yeah, you know what, that was your first job out of uni, yeah, you said, out of college. We can forgive you for that. Like if it's a mistake you make 10 years into your career, I'd be like, what's wrong with you? You're not heard of that one? But first out of uni, totally can be forgiven. Totally, absolutely, I think. 

Reva Minkoff (22:49.414)
That's it, everybody. 

Reva Minkoff (22:54.454)
Yeah, I mean, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (23:11.433)
You know, and even like what you were saying before earlier on about like how it can be get so confusing. know that's another conversation that I've been seeing like several times. People are like, Oh, you know, in the year of 2025, it's so easy to set up Google ads campaign. So easy. Just put a P max together keyword, brookie act. it's like, no double check everything. It's probably even harder than ever because you can just easily set. 

Anu Adegbola (23:38.119)
the wrong goals, easily set, it's like easier, more easier than ever as you said, to actually make a mistake and to actually do the right thing because of all the different, and they're like, just put all these settings in place and we'll do the rest. And it's all now it's like, Lord, what that rest is. Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (23:52.344)
I feel like now it's become especially, right, exactly. 

Reva Minkoff (23:54.744)
I feel like with everything now it's become especially easy. You know, just keep this box checked that we've pre-checked for you and we'll be able to edit your videos, you know, and expand your content. like, there are some clients where that is an absolute no way, you know, in hack, are you touching the video content 

Anu Adegbola (23:57.577)
Mm. 

Anu Adegbola (24:08.103)
Yep. Yep. Yep. Right. 

Reva Minkoff (24:11.16)
we created? You know, let us do, you know, give us permission to write ad copy or automatically expand this or add keywords here. 

Anu Adegbola (24:15.901)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (24:18.712)
You know, Google no longer, like, never really drew attention to negative keywords, but now it really doesn't draw attention to negative keywords. You know, so there's a lot of stuff where if you aren't, if you haven't thought out all the steps ahead and all the potential like potholes and kind of problems you could have in all of the steps ahead, like it's really easy for something to go wrong. That's why I think it's more of question of like, how do you deal with mistakes? And like, you never want to create an environment where they're not like, 

Anu Adegbola (24:25.479)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (24:37.117)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 

Anu Adegbola (24:43.24)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (24:47.826)
people are too afraid to make them because if they were too afraid to make them they'd never launch anything. 

Anu Adegbola (24:51.785)
Yeah, yeah. You cover a question I was going to I love the fact that you've loads of questions by me just asking one question and I love it because another thing I do like to discuss is about how do you create actually an environment where, you know, new staff members are not just scared to not do anything and why is it important to create that environment of... 

Reva Minkoff (24:59.96)
you 

Anu Adegbola (25:16.116)
Don't be scared of like, you know, making mistakes. Don't be like, you don't want to do anything because you will never do anything right. If you're always scared that a mistake will end your career, will ruin your career. You've just got to, you know, make sure you're building that environment where people are like, okay, I'll try my best. And when a mistake happens, this is what I do kind of thing. And this is what I learned. And you'll never probably make that mistake ever again. 

Reva Minkoff (25:38.328)
Exactly. 

Reva Minkoff (25:39.728)
Yeah. And we tried to put something in place in our team called Friday Fails, where we talk on, where on Fridays in our team meeting, we talk about, you know, fails from the past week. And they can be personal or professional. You know, someone's like, Oh, I locked my keys in the car. Right. Like, you know, so, so we've had, mean, they've been everything from, you know, I got in a car accident to, you know, I launched this campaign and forgot to set X, right. 

Anu Adegbola (25:42.99)
okay. 

Anu Adegbola (25:48.413)
Yeah 

Anu Adegbola (26:02.544)
Yeah 

Reva Minkoff (26:03.468)
Or, or showing up here or, I mean, 

Reva Minkoff (26:07.8)
number of issues. So many things, right, that could go wrong and that have gone wrong, but it's helpful because then I'm like, I want people to feel comfortable sharing so we can all learn from each other's mistakes and that like there's an understanding that everyone makes mistakes, even me. You know, like all people make mistakes and so I just think you can't... yeah, if you try too hard to be 100 % perfect all the time in this, you're gonna be 

Anu Adegbola (26:12.808)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (26:16.253)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (26:27.165)
Yeah, it's cathartic. Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (26:37.048)
too scared to try anything new. 

Anu Adegbola (26:39.433)
Can I ask your permission for something? You know how there's a PPC Live WhatsApp group, which is so very kindly joined recently. I really want to do a Friday fails thingy. I love that to see how the whole community, see who's bold enough to go, yeah, this was a mistake I made guys, don't make a mistake. Cause we will learn so much from each other for that. Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (27:00.064)
It's so helpful because some of them are really like, 

Reva Minkoff (27:02.216)
yeah, they did add this new button here or like this is auto-checked. You know, so it's, and it's also helping us catch things right for our clients then. When we're auditing somebody's thing to, hey, let's make sure we go and we double check and we really make sure, are you sure this isn't on location and presence in or like is it or interest in or like, is it just on presence in? Like, are you really sure? Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (27:06.461)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (27:10.685)
Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (27:23.069)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, 

Anu Adegbola (27:26.918)
yeah, we're gonna start Friday Fails. I'm gonna start that as soon as possible. 

Reva Minkoff (27:29.214)
I think 

Reva Minkoff (27:30.672)
it's a great idea. So yeah, by all means. 

Anu Adegbola (27:32.935)
Thank you. Thank you so much for that. So we want to round up the story. I'm not sure whether we'll get into like our extra questions, but it's absolutely fine because that has been such a like a brilliant, brilliant journey about a, an f up that turned very much into a triumph. They're very much turning to an opportunity. And are you still working with that kind even? Till today? Look at that. That's, that's just so amazing. So. 

Reva Minkoff (27:53.12)
Yeah, we are. 

Anu Adegbola (27:57.841)
If someone is going through this issue right now and have done, have had that kind of problem, 

Anu Adegbola (28:01.925)
what's, or is having that kind of problem right now, what's your advice to them? 

Reva Minkoff (28:06.722)
So I think, I mean, I think the real, again, with any of these issues, right, the real question is how do they tie back to the client's goals? Like, what are, and what are you learning? Like, how do you turn the failure into a learning? You know, how do we drive it forward? One of our clients, actually that particular client is always like, I want to make sure we talk about fails as well as successes, because we need to learn from what's not working as well as from what's learning, like what's working. And we can learn just as much from what's not working as we can from what's working. 

Anu Adegbola (28:24.744)
sure. 

Anu Adegbola (28:27.497)
Absolutely. 

Reva Minkoff (28:32.696)
And I think that's really, really important, which again, is probably part of also set the right environment to be able to have these conversations and to get these learnings out and to be able to like continue to broach this issue of, we have this data here. We know we can do stuff with it. Do we want to do stuff with it? What's the business case? What would we need to make this really work? You know, all of that. I think that, yeah, I mean, again, this could happen to like anyone can make these kinds of errors, but the real... 

Anu Adegbola (28:34.761)
Mm-hmm. 

Anu Adegbola (28:47.966)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (28:58.784)
important thing is to figure out how it ties back to the client and how they can take something positive from it. Not just, I won't check that box again, but like while it was checked, you know, this is what I learned. 

Anu Adegbola (29:03.677)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (29:09.981)
Yeah, absolutely. That's really great. I love that takeaway for everybody to take. Literally make sure that you are on top of what your client's business goals are. Make sure you're moving the needle in that area. And even when a mistake happens and that might give you a hiccup, try and tie it back into how you're still gonna move the client's business forward. And yeah, that will be definitely, you'll be able to move on with that. 

Anu Adegbola (29:34.985)
Yeah, we're kind of closely, roughly coming there to the end of this episode, but I'd like to talk a bit because you very kindly also said that you're gonna write about this, 

Anu Adegbola (29:47.4)
maybe even for the PPC Live blog about, you know, like AI, I think it's AI max, like, and you know, yeah, right? And what... 

Reva Minkoff (29:52.394)
AI math. With my hesitations 

Reva Minkoff (29:55.338)
around AI, I got to do it, but yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (29:57.265)
your 

Anu Adegbola (29:57.645)
hesitations because you know the f up because I imagine it's very tied up with like the f-ups that you've seen about how people use AI and just use automation. So yeah, why do you have so many hesitations about AI max and yeah, how does it tie to like people's f-ups? 

Reva Minkoff (30:14.136)
So yeah, so I mean, I've seen so many cases where it's so easy for something to be running that shouldn't be running. you know, one of my favorite examples that was also an FUP, but again, it wasn't intentionally an FUP is I decided to test the dynamic site like extensions, but it was a client where they only want to advertise certain products and the site like extensions ran for every product. So first I removed them. 

Anu Adegbola (30:41.405)
Yeah 

Reva Minkoff (30:44.24)
you know, on the account level. And then I realized I think I had to go down to like the ad group level. I was, I mean, I was removing them down, you know, for every single campaign, every single ad group, like, please don't advertise this thing anymore. And then I realized that I couldn't tell Google to not add it back. So, so if I, you if I said, don't advertise for, I don't know, water bottles, right, it didn't mean that it wouldn't like then call it bottle or just 

Anu Adegbola (30:51.013)
It's going down now. Yep. 

Anu Adegbola (30:59.995)

Anu Adegbola (31:06.226)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (31:10.345)
or that it wouldn't do it on any campaigns moving forward, it wouldn't do it like on that campaign again, maybe, but like, maybe not. So I just, I had to go away from dynamics. you know, I moved away from dynamic site links extensions after that until I can give it guidance. and that's really kind of where I am on a lot of the, like where a lot of my hesitation is. Cause I've seen stuff like that where it's, it's not like it was bad or wrong or like hurt something. 

Anu Adegbola (31:13.063)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (31:23.471)
Yes. Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (31:34.05)
But it wasn't in line with what the client wanted. It wasn't the right message. It wasn't the right time. It wasn't the right place for that message. wasn't the right budget for that message. And, you know, it was going to be making those, adding those things in faster than I could take them out. And I feel like that way is often true with some of the expanded broad match stuff where it just, it's so hard to catch like all the different things being added. Some of the ad copy where it wasn't always as clear about what was being added. 

Anu Adegbola (31:42.003)
Mm-hmm. 

Anu Adegbola (31:50.481)
Yeah, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (32:02.206)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (32:02.744)
or it's added and then you're going back to the client saying, Hey, who just added these four lines? Are you okay with them? Like, are these on brand guideline? And if they're not, like it's running and you have to hope someone didn't see it while it shouldn't have been run. Like just, so, I mean, I, I think there's, I think there's like a lot of great stuff with AI. The algorithms are work, you know, have done some really great things in terms of how the ads are serving and serving things more efficiently, but like stuff like the expansions and create, like it's, is really scary to me. 

Anu Adegbola (32:08.293)
Yes. Yes. 

Reva Minkoff (32:30.11)
after that experience where I realized just how much I was going to need to control it. 

Anu Adegbola (32:34.824)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (32:35.473)
Yeah, I think, you know, Google underestimates how much and you know, you'll talk with Ginny and God love Ginny, she does try to help us a lot. I even think more recently have been giving us some of that bit of like visibility so that we can have more of the control and they just seem to be this pedantic like, we want control and Google like, God, you can't be controlling everything. But actually, but actually when their business goals in play, when there's things that absolutely, you know, affecting revenue, when they're things 

Anu Adegbola (33:05.407)
that don't meet compliance kind of thing. most companies have their legal departments is going, my God, that's not how that ad should show, or that's not how that site should show. So yeah, those things are very important for sure. 

Reva Minkoff (33:19.065)
Yeah, 

Reva Minkoff (33:19.385)
mean, just think, know, almost everyone I've every basically almost every brand we've ever worked with, right, has brand guidelines to some degree. I work with hundreds of companies like everybody has brand guidelines of some kind and everyone has things they want the money to go towards and things they don't want the money to go towards like add dollars and everyone things to your point has things they can and can't legally. So so I just think you have to be careful. 

Anu Adegbola (33:25.342)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (33:33.821)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (33:41.597)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (33:46.198)
Like, and, it's, if you leave it up to AI and it goes wrong, you're still going to be held responsible. Like that client's still going to get fined or, you know, like, mean, or in trouble, right? It's not just, well, Google did it. Like Google's awesome. 

Anu Adegbola (33:50.089)
Mmm. 

Anu Adegbola (33:55.527)
Yeah. Nah, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (33:59.181)
Yeah. Yeah. Google are dealing with their own like, you know, legal cases. They're not going to care about your little problems. No. 

Reva Minkoff (34:04.184)
And they're not going to be, it's not going to come back on them. You can't 

Reva Minkoff (34:08.03)
say to the legal team, well, Google just did this or say, well, why did you set up to do it that way? 

Anu Adegbola (34:10.343)
Yeah. Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (34:12.481)
Yes, absolutely. 

Reva Minkoff (34:13.954)
So, 

Anu Adegbola (34:15.399)
Well, Reva, 

Reva Minkoff (34:15.675)
yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (34:15.919)
thank you so much for that very amazing, amazing insights. All of those things that you just said just, just makes sense to me. I just, you know, I, one would say, of course I knew you were going to say that, but genuinely I feel it really objectively. think it really does. And I think that the things that really people should remember and really pay attention to that we're not in the whole like, it's so easy to put a PPC campaign together. It were so easy. It's so easy to make a mistake in a PVC campaign right now. So really, really watch out for that. 

Anu Adegbola (34:45.245)
Well, before we let you go, you know, we're going to come back to that fun question that you said that you were not necessarily prepared to answer yet. If your PPC 

Anu Adegbola (34:55.961)
career were a movie, what would be the title? 

Reva Minkoff (34:59.726)
man, I kind of want to say the long and winding road. 

Anu Adegbola (35:05.179)
Why not? Why not? 

Reva Minkoff (35:07.319)
Yeah, I feel like it just, it's all kind of, it went on an unexpected journey, or what's the habit, an unexpected journey, right? It went on a journey that I don't think I expected, but it ended up where I wanted it to 

Anu Adegbola (35:14.247)
Yeah 

Anu Adegbola (35:17.191)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (35:20.744)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (35:23.259)
Yeah, it did end up where you wanted it to be. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, that is very great takeaway. Yeah, so far. And look, I think the future is bright for you, honestly, with I feel like, Reeva, I want to see you on more stages now. Now you've done this. You've got, you've got such a great, great knowledge, such a great grasp of what's important for us in the industry, for the clients. 

Reva Minkoff (35:26.466)
Yeah. 

Reva Minkoff (35:29.667)
So far, at least, right? 

Reva Minkoff (35:38.882)
Thank you. 

Anu Adegbola (35:47.303)
I think some people, only talk about one side. Some people only talk about what's important for advertisers or they'll talk about what's important for clients and they've got the grasp of that, but like how they're doing things is not necessarily the best way, but I think you've got a lovely, well-rounded view of like, and the fact that you've got such a lot of that breadth of knowing that PPC, I always fall in love with the person who's gonna like, yeah, it's not just about PPC, it's about working with other [channels]. I'm like, yes, it's like music to my ears. 

Anu Adegbola (36:13.449)
So it's really great seeing that you've got that lovely breadth of experience and I love that that that view of the other channels. But yeah, on that. 

Reva Minkoff (36:21.196)
I'm happy to 

Reva Minkoff (36:21.777)
help anyone at any time, you know, speaking or writing or looking at accounts or anything else. Like this is, I just love making sure that good products get out there to the right people. 

Anu Adegbola (36:33.897)
Amazing, 

Anu Adegbola (36:34.897)
amazing. Well, I'll definitely be helping you to make sure that people hear more from you because yeah, you're definitely a great voice that the industry should hear more from. My pleasure. Well, thank you so much for for being with us today and yeah, take care. I'll speak to you soon. 

Reva Minkoff (36:41.336)
Thank you. That means so much coming from you, so I really appreciate it. 

Reva Minkoff (36:52.739)
Sounds good, talk to you later. Thanks everybody. 

Anu Adegbola:

Thank you so much Reva, for giving us that very enlightening, story about how you switch so quickly from seeing a mistake going to a client and saying, Hey, here's the opportunity. Here's how that mistake showed us that you're performing. This is how we should actually do come, you know, come across a campaign and, you know, approach P max and how we should actually run a P max campaign.

So yeah, think about that. Maybe you know, that thing that was a mistake, you just turn it to, call it a test. And there's always a learning to be had in a test, even when the results are not great. So. Yeah, I don't know whether you might want to sugarcoat it and cover it up in like, oh, we were gonna test that all along.

Or you wanna come outright and just say, that's not what we actually expect to do, but we are actually now gonna test that. It's up to you. I'm gonna leave your conscience to decide what pathway you do. Is that, so yeah, that's really great. And yeah, remember the whole world of AI, you know, approach it with caution.

There are just some cases where it's not going to work. It's not about complaining and being annoyed by it is. Just won't work. And yeah, look out for Reva's article where she actually really shares where the likes of AI Max just will not work for some kind of clients. So yeah, for all the information about that fantastic episode and that chat and the full transcript and show notes, just go to podcast.ppc.live. In regards to our fantastic events.

Our next one is going to be October the 22nd. That's gonna be the last one of the year. Tickets are live. This is not a drill. Tickets are live. So go to ppc.live. We've got three fantastic speakers. We've got Stephanie Caldecott, who's a marketing manager at Circus PPC digital. We've got, Basak Odemis who is a digital marketing manager herself, a PPC manager.

Founder of Make Digital, she's gonna be speaking about AB testing and we've got, Neil Baker, who's from Tug Agency who's gonna be talking about the future of PPC, which is Oh, amazing, what we should be talking about when it comes to the last quarter of

the year. So yeah, make sure you join that. Go to ppc.live. Early Bird Ticket Sales are live. I've set an automation for the, that to end on a certain date in a few weeks to go up. So it's not like, it's not gonna be relied on my memory. So prices are gonna automatically increase at some point, so you wanna make sure that you don't miss out.

Before I leave you as well, I'd love to, share that, that I am doing, PPC mindset coaching. So if you'd like to have a session with me or have several sessions with me to talk about, how to really get over all your worries and your anxiety and really push through with your fantastic ideas and bring them to life.

And just to take charge of your career as a whole. Get in touch with me. We'll have a half an hour free session, to talk about what you need. And then we'll take it from there. So just go to themarketinganu.com to get more details about that. Yeah, so I hope you've enjoyed the show this week and I look forward to bringing more PPC f ups and Triumphs next week.

Bye.