EP326 - Clients We Should’ve Fired Sooner ft Sarah Stemen

  📍  📍  📍 Hello and welcome to PPC Live The Podcast, formerly known as PPC Chat 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 have been saying,

i'm going to be bringing the PPC experts to you, and every week we are gonna be speaking to a different PPC expert talking about their F ups, but [also] how they turn things around and how they've continued to be a success in our industry. Today I have the delight to have Sarah Stemen join the podcast today, and she's gonna be sharing her experience with working with different kinds of clients

and how emotion can get involved in how you decide what you're going to do for a client when you decide that you're gonna stop, following a solution that's really not gonna be in the best interest of anybody. So yeah, we really need to be careful when working with some clients that we just like, or some clients that just really think that we are the best solution for them and just being able to put our foot down.

So we speak to Sarah about how to do that, how to get around that, and some lessons that we're probably familiar with, but I'm sure some lessons that are gonna be brand new as well. So yeah, let's go talk to Sarah.

  📍  📍 Hello, Sarah. Welcome to PPC Live The Podcast. Hello. Hey. Ah, it's so good to have you on the show. Yeah, Sarah is such, such a good friend. It's just one of those that I can't believe we've not met in person yet. That has not happened. That is still on the books to happen. But yeah, Sarah's one of those

experts in the field that is just so I feel reliable your thought leadership that you do. We talked about it a little bit earlier on that I, I'm just so excited to see what you have to share with us on LinkedIn. It's not one of those try random things that you're like. Okay. This person just wanted to write, you actually share real knowledge and real impactful experiences of how to excel in our industry.

You've got 15 years of experience in Paid Search passionate about creating and executing effective online marketing campaigns. But a strong background in Google Ads, Google Analytics, and SEO. I love that we have that in common. I started in SEO as well. And a certified Google ad search and display professional. And yeah, it was just funny and I was looking through experience.

Earlier on I was thinking about what fun fact, can I pick a pick about Sarah and right in the middle, sandwiched in between having great paid search experience and then great paid search experience afterwards, you are a fashion consultant at some point for about 10 months.

Tell us a little bit about that. What drove you into being a fashion consultant for a little while. I was staying home and I loved these clothes, right? And I think when you're a mom and you wanna wear comfy clothes, you go to what everyone else is wearing and this brand was all the rage.

And so it was actually like an MLM. So you buy in, so you buy your inventory and you report up through a pyramid structure essentially. And then, by you joining, they get paid. But I joined, I bought all my inventory, and then unlike a lot of people, I ended up doing really quite well on it.

I bought a patio for our house. Wow. And to be fair, I learned a ton about social media because I, my entire business was online. Yeah. Yeah, you could either sell online, going live in a Facebook group, or you could sell by packing up all your inventory. And I was saying earlier that I had, about $17,000 in inventory.

So I had, full clothing racks of taking up half my house. Wow. And people could either come to me and shop in my house and they'd set up an appointment online, or I would pack up all my inventory and go to their house and set up. Yeah. Or I could just sell online. And being an online marketer, I went the online route.

I did have people come into the house a lot, but I liked going and doing it online. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Oh that's such an interesting an interesting break. I think sometimes I look at my experience and it's yeah, paid search, paid search, paid search. And for me, what makes it interesting is that I have moved around quite a bit for different, worked in different comp companies, so have you, which is what keeps it interesting.

But sometimes I do wish oh, if I wasn't doing paid search, what would I be doing? I think maybe I would've done some dancing, singing. I've been like something artistic like that. I would probably do something with like yoga, be like a workout teacher or something. Yeah.

I also, I did some substitute teaching too, during a period of time. Yeah. But I would say, like with the LuLaRoe, I forgot one thing is I would always do an outfit of the day. Yeah. That's, I put on the actual outfit and it didn't matter if it was three X, I would tie a belt around it. I'm definitely not, a three X, I would make it look cute and I would pose and be like, this is how you can wear this.

Yeah. So I did in a lot of ways, like the content that I do now, yeah. Everyone could not wait. They would join for my outfit of a day. Wow, okay. Yeah. I'd be like, oh, sold. That's so cute. Yeah, that is that's so interesting. Like very transferable skills. That's the thing. The beauty about doing, digital marketing is like, yeah, you never know where you can showing up online, putting my face on camera and being like.

Do you want the shirt? It's gorgeous. Yeah. And you also put your face on camera still with our lovely friend Ameet Khabra. You guys do the how often do you, you've got a YouTube channel, what's it called? Tell us a little bit about that one as well. Yeah. So we started PPC Gals, and the goal I will say was to like publish every single week.

But totally my fault, we do not publish every week because I am like, my hands are so tied with the kids over the summer. It's tough. So Ameet, if you're listening, I'm sorry. I'm a terrible business partner. But she hasn't yelled at me yet. No. Ameet got a, it is got a big heart. She's definitely understands.

And now I'll definitely send this episode to her. She can watch your apology . She's definitely gonna listen to this. I'm sure she'll be like, you have time for Anu you have time for me. Oh bless. That would be lovely. So anyway, let's not delay our listeners any much longer. We know what this episode is about.

We are talking about PPC F ups that we've all experienced, loads of experienced. I think it's only one person that's gone. No, I Anu I don't wanna. I don't wanna talk about mine just yet 'cause she's very early in her career, which I totally understand. This is a very vulnerable kind of thing to do.

So I really appreciate you, Sarah, for coming on our podcast to share some of your experiences, we never leave on a defeated note. This is talking about the f-ups, but also how it turned around, what it has taught you that makes you a great marketer today. So let's get into it. Sarah, what is the f-up you'd like to share with us today?

Actually, it was funny, I thought about another one while we were chatting, but maybe we could get to that one. But I would say just taking on a client and like taking all your time and the client's time to like really build out an account, right? This is usually a client that's coming to you wanting to try paid search for this business they built from the ground up and in your heart of heart

from all your experience, you know that this isn't gonna work. But you continue anyway. I think that's a mistake. It's a mistake to take on as, a specialist with a reputation to uphold. I also think it's a mistake if you're working as an employee or a contractor for an agency, and I also think it's it's a mistake on the business owner too, but it's usually tied in like the emotional

investment that everyone's put forth. Yeah, I'm absolutely. So let's take one of those cases that you've experienced. Yeah. Like how much let's say investment financially specifically, would you say was lost in one of those experiences of where you invested too much and then you ended up realizing that, that had gone wrong.

I would say the first time it happened was probably like 10 to 15 years ago. And I was an employee for an agency. And it was like very crystal clear because the landing page almost read as like a very long form letter. That this was never gonna work. And it ended up so it would probably have been the hourly rate of a couple months.

'cause it was back in the time of these huge campaigns where we'd build out every keyword, all the ad copy. Yeah. So easily probably $10,000 - $15,000 that the owner would've been in the hole. And maybe more, and the ads couldn't, didn't even get approved. Oh, Google wouldn't even approve the ads because they were just making false claims all over the place.

It was selling a medicine online. So there were just so many red flags. But the owner was just so determined, felt like their product was like the it thing. Didn't actually even have the emotional wherewithal to recognize the claims that were being made were very outlandish and false.

Yeah. In fact, the owner had gone and I'm gonna say found like pseudo celebrities to, verify but not like a celebrity, like this wasn't even like somebody or I would recognize Yeah. Yeah. So maybe like an internet celebrity, like it was like, did they have that back then?

Maybe lower, maybe like somebody that was an astronaut. Oh, wow, okay. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So who sold? Who was the person in your agency that went -  sure, let's speak to this client. Were you the client contact or client contact? Yeah. Yeah. So the sales team, probably under a quota.

Yeah, at this time I also, it was an agency that was so well known that I think people were asking to work for the agency, so I think it went two ways. So you had a sales person that maybe was ambitious, combined with a client, essentially begging the agency to take on their business because they felt like this was gonna be the best of the best.

As in they wanted, they were desperate for the agency to take on their business, correct? Correct. Yeah. Because they were like, you guys have amazing skills. We've heard. Exactly. And then the agency as well, your agency were also like, they couldn't say no to the client. Correct. 'cause the client just was like, oh God yes.

Yeah. Because and I think you and I, we, I remember. I don't know if you do, there were times when I'm gonna call it like there was a bit of a celeb factor in the PPC world, with the people that had access to the information. Yeah. People that, especially 10, 15 years ago.

Yeah. Like absolutely. There were certain agencies that produced enough. Content at a time when content and the information wasn't accessible to anyone in the street corner. Yeah. They had the ear of Google and they were putting enough out that people did, clients did chase them. There were waiting lists.

Yeah. Because this was also the time of 25% retainers. Yeah. Spend, it's the headache. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The, oh yeah, the, when we wanna talk about integrity in our industry. It used to be really bad. It's not completely gone. No. It's, yeah. It used to be really bad. Oh, that is such a shame.

It's someone like who, there's a client service person who has gone, Hey, we've got this account. Yeah. Did you see it? And straight away you knew? Oh yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause you can see if we take even something like the claims, which, never got approved through Google.

One, we recognize that, but if you even table that and put that aside, that landing page experience was arguably really terrible as well. Yeah. Yeah. And you think about like the bar, for a human being to purchase a medicine online, right? Like a medicine for something like let's just hypothetically say like pain.

Yeah. Or. So I think, knowing that like pretty rational human beings aren't gonna purchase medicine online, even if it was a perfect CR road landing page. Then you add into it the fact that the landing page was just really cumbersome and then you add to it, the false claims, which was the final straw.

Yeah. And the client just. Understanding that this wasn't gonna work, because by the time you got on the phone, and this was back again when you could pick up the phone and call Google, and you call the rep and you talk it through, and yeah, you just. They were like, we can't approve this.

Yeah. This is why. So you tried, so you looked at this account? Oh yeah. Even though you've were like, you knew it wouldn't work. You thought you'd try why? Of course. Because you would be surprised what could get approved. Okay. So especially in Bing. So I did have enough experience, 'cause we also ran supplements in general.

Okay. That we had like human growth hormone that was working in Bing. There was also, I can't believe I'm saying this, but if you called a rep at Google and you kept calling, sometimes you'd get a different rep that would let you through. And you could get something approved if you got the right person on the phone.

And so it was back in the day when things could, you could make things happen. You really could try. Oh, wow. Okay. So it was worth our effort. Yeah. So you were like, it was gonna be worth the effort. And then how long did it take for you all to be like, actually, no, let's stop it. Like how long did you guys go on with this?

For how long did you keep the client? Probably two to three months. Okay. Through a full build out. The account was built out in Google, ready to launch, just disapproved. . What's your advice to folks who like, they, I, it's it's, I feel that we've, hopefully, I'd like to believe that we've gotten far in our stage of the digital market or evolution and, all the different quality checks, Google and Microsoft pull into place that people don't even try.

Although today I, in like our WhatsApp group and the PPC Live WhatsApp group, someone mentioned about how they were starting an experiment and Google were like, oh yeah, you can't make sure that an ad type that has been deprecated is not in there. And clearly there was an expanded text ad in there, which has been deprecated, and he's like, why am I getting this message?

And I'm like. Because you're using an ad type that's deprecated. I don't understand why you're confused, right? You don't, you're don't, you're doing something that's wrong. And you're surprised that Google has not had a problem with it before. Anyway. Anyway, I'm rambling on too much about that.

So I, what I'm trying to say is that hopefully we're in a stage where people understand the rules. They create landing pages that are quite optimized, that kind of thing. But in case there is someone out there who's feeling like seeing that actually this campaign will not work. What's your advice to them?

Should they wait two months or do something about it straight away? Would say just really like document those conversations? I think that's really important is to document that. I think oftentimes as the specialist and the person doing the levers, like the person who is making the ultimate decision whether or not to keep the client is usually, an agency owner.

Or somebody, a manager. And so I'd say just really document, like I had this conversation, I said this wouldn't work. Here's my business case as to why I don't feel like it's work or gonna work. And then just say, I'm open to trying this. This is what I'm going to try. Yeah. But you have to know that I do not think that this will work.

And I think that those are very important conversations. Yeah. And I would say that documentation, because again, yes, I had this happen. I guess a year or two ago, where I knew it wasn't gonna work. And again, it was same case. You had an owner that was just so absolutely sold on the fact that it was and it was like not thinking clearly.

Yeah. When I said 'cause they had it work in a similar fashion in a different city, but the business model was different. So in that case, they were asking people to set up appointments. Yeah. Versus the new model that they had, without just closing, they were asking someone to purchase a product.

And so that the purchase, the product versus the appointment, that's a fundamentally different conversion path. Yeah. And so they were convinced since the end result was the same thing. Yeah. The product purchase versus the make an appointment. Yeah. Yeah, they were convinced it should work in the product situation, alright, but it didn't, it did not work.

It was, and also the solution, the product was in the couple hundred dollars range. Yeah. Versus the appointment might be like 20 or 30 bucks. Yeah. And so you had a, another factor is a price change. You had so many moving pieces. Yeah. And so to explain like this is why it won't work. Yeah.

And then furthermore, like when I googled this business model, there were, like articles written on like the USA today, why this business model had been tried and never worked. Yeah. Yeah. And like it had so many layers. So many layers. It had so many layers. Like in the end it wasn't like the product wasn't accurate.

There were just so many layers that there was documentation. Yeah. But you couldn't take that person be like, here's a USA article that I wrote. You had to just allow them to see that data. So I would say that's another thing, don't be afraid to open up the account. 'Cause in this case, we were able to get the account running. Great. Okay. And, open it up and I could review the search terms and be like, these are the exact search terms that your audience is typing in, like this matches, this is your exact client, but they're not converting. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And so I would say document and then use data. In the first case we didn't have the data 'cause we couldn't even get it approved. Yeah. In this case we were able to get it approved. We had the data, it was the business model. Yeah, absolutely. 'Cause I also I'm really passionate and really care about.

Paid search advertisers right now understanding what their place is in terms of communicating certain things to clients or not communicating certain things to clients or where they know that, okay, done all my bit. Because I think some people can feel like, it's not necessarily their space or they've got a bit of an imposter syndrome in terms of being the one that speaks up, whether it's to their manager or to their client.

What kind of confidence boost can you give someone right now in terms of if, when they face this situation and they feel like it might not be their place or, oh, I might get fired for something like this. Why is it important to be the one that says that I am confident that this is a mistake and, how does that benefit that person's career?

I would say it, it's like the old adage of like if, and I wish I knew the quote, but it's like, to love something, you have to realize it could be lost.

Oh gosh. I would say, just. You have to be able to exercise your authority. Yeah. It doesn't matter your age. Somebody posted something the other day, like in a totally different vertical. An influencer who runs a YouTube channel about productivity and living a good life. And she posted something the other day and it really resonated with me.

And she was like talking about how when she was younger, she always wanted to have authority when she spoke, and she never really felt like she had that authority. And then as she got older she felt like people respected her authority more. And I hate to say it, but like I do feel like ageism is definitely a thing.

Like definitely it is. It is hard to listen to a 20-year-old or a 30-year-old. Yeah. Versus somebody like me that's got the grays, like I've been there. I have the battle scars to show that I've been there. And so I think I would say practice while you're young. Yeah. And know that eventually

the respect will come. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually but it's always your place to, to stand up and say that. And I think it's always your place to document, but that's why a company is gonna fire you 'cause you spoke the truth then I'm sorry, that's not the place for you. Yeah. I, it is just an unfortunate side of our industry.

Yeah. And if you're working for an agency, that'll just take clients knowing that they're not gonna work out. Yeah. Be careful and you're not, you don't necessarily wanna work for that kind of agency anyway. And yeah, we've, I've had that with previous guests who has gone the whole, yep. Yeah, we made a mistake and then we fixed it, and then all of a sudden they're like, oh, we wanna leave, because we didn't like that you did this, blah, blah, blah.

And then even, because they had still access to that account the next agency that worked on that account flopped just have just the performance just be going worse and worse. So it's never the be all end all because you speak up and decide that, look, this is the right thing to do, and then them leaving doesn't mean that you've done a bad job.

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's exactly and it kinda, so like we had been talking about what advice would you have? So I would say I actually have, and, 'cause I had thought about this after you talked about this, like I actually have a real mess up that I made.

And I still to this day don't know was it a real mess up or maybe I'm just in denial or have PTSD. But the, like it was, I was working in a very large account and the store visits, so I believe we were tracking and if I recall, I can't even recall like the full picture, but like I believe we were tracking for store visits.

Yeah. But if you look in the store visits column versus the conversion store visits, there's some type of nuances there. Yeah. And whatever it was, I think I had removed one of the store visits, conversions, so we weren't like fully optimizing for that. And we were supposed to be, and I got, screamed at and yelled at.

And I would say for something like that, if you genuinely mess something up because you don't know it, I would also say apologize, but maintain your integrity. Yes. And also, not only that, but maintain not only your integrity, but your like. Your knowledge base. Not everyone in this industry at this point in time knows every single type.

Like I know like Brooke runs app accounts. Like I wouldn't know all the nuances between running like a download apps account and how to make sure my conversions line up. Yeah. I would say I'm stronger on the e-comm side. When it comes to like conversions and running e-comm.

'cause I have that experience that I would say on the lead gen side, if you got me into validating all the HubSpot conversions and offline conversions and uploads. I would have that vulnerability and potential to mess that up. Yeah. Without bringing in a certified tracking expert. Yeah. And if I hadn't been running store visits

I am very vulnerable to making a big mistake in a spur visit account. Yeah. Because they just don't have that volume ex of experience along these specific verticals. Yeah. Yeah. And so I would say if you make a mistake because of that, own it. It doesn't mean you're a poor paid search practitioner.

It doesn't mean anything. It means like you didn't have that depth of experience with a nuanced conversion at best. Yeah. Frankly, very rarely do you see people have a level of depth of experience with that one? Yeah. Like most, I've talked to people decide, I didn't even know I could optimize for store visits.

Oh God. Really? Mainly don't know like the nuances with how they work with radiuses, yeah. Interesting. Okay. That has been like, so much in, in depth knowledge on that mistake, thank you so much for sharing that, Sarah. And as I said, I'd like us to tangent off into like different kind of mistakes that we are seeing and something that has been like a recurring theme of different experts that have been sharing so far is the whole mistake of.

Focusing on roas. So return on ad spend. And yeah, someone has wrote an article for PPC live . Ameet has talked about it. Frederick Vallaeys has talked about it. Several others have talked about it, and it's actually surprising, like why, what is with this or what everybody really talking about it right now is there something that we are seeing at the moment that people are just really focusing on What is that whole, being wary about focusing or you're putting all your eggs in the ROAS basket, what's that big mistake going on and what's your advice to people about it?

What's funny is I didn't actually know what other people were talking about it. I actually considered that to be like like a lazy post. Because it's something that people have been doing for forever in my mind, but really what it comes down to is and I think this started when we were like, we're performance marketers.

We get the performance at all costs. And I'm like, you're you're shortchanging yourself. If I wanted a 15 ROAS I could just buy all brand and here's your roas. Let's be happy and clap our hands. But that's not helping the client grow. A non-brand campaign, I'm sorry to tell you, but it may be around a one or a two roas depending on the industry.

Yeah. And so you have to have. Sorry for the people that hate brand, a brand campaign, a non-brand campaign and sorry to say, but some YouTube, some discovery. Yeah, maybe, if you're not using display, some programmatic, you need to have a full marketing funnel. And so by chasing ROAS day after day and seeing that's the ultimate.

Your short changing any type of growth that you could have, and it puts us in a real bind. And then as an industry, when you're saying oh, I could get your ROAS to like a six, a seven. Like, how are you doing that? That's not, and growth doesn't happen that fast.

Like it's a slow process of building, the feelings of a brand and. Immeasurable things that aren't gonna show roas. Yeah. And so it creates this like poor expectation Yeah. In our industry. And then you have clients that like, I'll get a call from one and I'm like how often are you changing agencies every seven months when they are not meeting the roas?

Yeah, this isn't a good expectation. And so yeah, I think it hurts our industry. I think it hurts. The brands that are chasing this. Yeah. And I think it hurts and reduces us as like practitioners as true marketers. Yeah. And so what is, in terms of the metrics of that what are the other metrics people should be looking at that will be more, or what alongside ROAS should be, will be looking alongside?

So lots of different things like on a YouTube, like you're gonna have to spend enough to be able to do this. But like brand lift studies are available. They're getting more and more accessible, I'm sorry to say, but the spin level is pretty high on those. If you can't do a brand lift study, I think a lot of what they've been doing with brand and being able to take brand out of Performance Max and leave it as a peer brand, just look at are the branded searches growing?

So look at your account over time and see are you getting a higher volume of branded searches? Yeah. And then that should be like a like tertiary sign that you're growing 'cause more people are actually Googling your brand. Yeah. I hate to say it, but what does like overall site traffic look like?

Sometimes the and again, when it's something as subtle as like just how people feel about a brand or unaided brand awareness and some of these like marketing concepts sometimes they're not as set in stone. As we think Yeah, as we think, you could look at things like view through rates of, is your creative interesting enough that people are viewing X amount on your videos Yeah.

Like on your YouTube videos. So there's just little metrics that will indicate success of the creative. Yeah. But at the end of the day, you can't tap into my brain and say what, how does Sarah feel about the gap? Yeah. Yeah. But brands know that. So I would say like those types of things, look at something that shows some type of growth.

Yeah. That's not that scale. It's I always compare it to working out like maybe my scale isn't budging, but maybe I'm sleeping better at night and I feel good. Yeah. Yeah. That's progress and that's how brands work too. And I think what has been another thing that has come up with, different experts and the PPC live events as well, is the whole, even the concept of micro-conversions.

Yeah. Like the different, the different thing, the different stages of like, where it's not just about the ROAS, but like the journey and the behavior and if it's something that's positive that previously, that has led to, good customer, good lead and you know that those are the kind of different micro conversions that you wanna make sure you optimize towards.

'cause that leads. To. Yeah. Yeah. More people are setting up for your newsletter. More people are downloading your recipes. Yeah. More people are interacting with your brand. Yeah. In a positive experience. Yeah. Those are different. I would agree. Different touch points. Fantastic. So now going on to another tangent of one, one of the favorite topics of the industry.

Ai. Yay. We have to do that self. What are the biggest mistakes you think that are being performed in terms of AI and not just the let's go beyond. 'cause we know AI is being, being misused as, the be all and end all in terms of solutions. And people just think that it'll do everything for you and it should be your assistance, but going into a little bit more

deep diving into maybe like specific examples of a particular tactic that people use that they feel like that's the AI way. And so they, and does broad stroke use it? What's like a mistake that you've seen that Oh, that annoys you? The OG mistake is, relying too heavily on the automated suggestions, right?

That's the OG of AI in a lot of ways. Yeah. Although I would say there's the differentiator of AI or machine learning, but essentially saying yes, get rid of my duplicate keywords or taking a suggestion as the holy grail. Yeah. That's in the interface.

'Cause those are, essentially AI powered suggestions. Yeah. And then I would also say we all talk about using AI to write your ad copy, just blanket taking those suggestions. Yeah, it's, that's tough, 'cause it's just so boring. Yeah. It's so boring. But, you can use it like I would say to categorize.

Like a fantastic way is if you take all your keywords and have it thematically, group them. Especially if, you take over an account and there's 50 keywords in one ad group, I'll dump 'em all into AI and say, can you thematically group these, give these nice yeah. Yeah.

So there's different things for sure. In any way in terms of like my writing that I do for Search Engine Land i'll have the news in my head, or I'll have the news piece in on an document knowing it, all the information is there, but I just don't like the order that it's in correct.

Ai don't pick from anywhere else. This is my whole document. Pick from this news, and all the details are in this one document. Yes. Now make it sound like. Yes. X, Y, Z kind of thing. And it does that great 'cause yeah, you are the source and you're just getting to organize it. But when you start making AI your source, I think that can be dangerous.

Yeah. That's always yeah. A little bit of a thing to be wary of. So we've come. Quite to the stage where I'm like, yeah, we actually, let's touch a bit, a little bit on this before we close out because what I think I actually like talking to my guests about the importance of speaking about mistakes and why that's important.

We get a lot of people on our LinkedIn, algorithm going, I want this client I make this X amount of sales. I, I did this, we did that. It's all success stories and all the good things that you're doing for clients, and I get why you do that. That, you show your good work,

other clients, prospective clients think, oh yeah, I wanna work with that person. But why is it also important to actually, for our industry, talk about where fops have been made and, especially even like advice from managers where juniors feel scared that they need to just do things well all the time.

What would your advice managers to encourage, their, the people that work with them to be like, not scared to speak about their mistakes, to them to be able to approach them with their mistakes. Yeah, I would say it, it's like you have to create that safe space to allow people to experiment. We all grew up in this industry together, and so we've made the mistakes.

You haven't lived unless you've reorged an account and the reorg makes, performance tank and you had no idea why it was working before. So I think it's like keeping maybe that appreciation for your roots and not setting other people up to be perfect. Yeah. Would be like, that would be my advice for like managers is keeping that open door.

And then as far as being like brave enough to communicate. It's like the old you had made the comment like my, my hooks are good, but it's I used to do this. Until X, Y, z, like you, you have to show people transformation. Yeah. And if you are, more experienced and

you're wanting to grow up in your career like you have to be able to get somebody through a transformation. Yeah. So I used to focus on impression share until I realized that's a fake metric. Definitely. Like until I realized I could just go and pull back all my match types and not be as aggressive enough for the client, and then I could get them their high impression share.

Yeah. So I think that whole, like I used to think, and transformation shows people the depth of your knowledge. Yeah. More than I got, blah, blah, blah roas. How'd you get there? I love that point. Like literally showing your transformation actually helps to show the depth of your knowledge and the depth of your growth of where you actually, what you actually learned, what is the new thing that you're bringing and how you, how your transformation has happened that people should pay attention to you literally if you don't have depth of growth.

Yeah. What's the point? What's anyone really hiring? Then someone who can, go to Yeah. Do a Google exam and just be like, oh yeah. I'm gonna show you what I learned right from the Google exam. We actually want depth of understanding and depth of like why it's different things need to be done a certain way.

Yeah. That comes from the mistakes. Yeah. Yeah. That all comes from the mistakes. Yeah. Someone, this was, this came from my husband. It was like a whole this is why, someone is paid, a couple hundred thousand and they're like, I'm not paying you because of what you're doing right this minute or some certain skill.

I'm paying you because you've been through the storm. Yeah. And survived. When shit hits a fan, like this is how that is experience, amazing. That is experience. On that note, there's no better way to leave that conversation. Thank you much so much for that, Sarah. And but before we leave, I'm just gonna ask one non PPC question.

A nice fun question that every Oh, my guests love. If your PPC career were a movie, what would be the title? I was thinking about this, I was like, okay. No. Risky business. That's an audio. Yeah. Taking on risks. I love taking on risk. And why, because of, yeah. You feel your career is all about taking on risks.

Yeah. I mean I've, yeah. All the time. I went out on my own multiple times. I think when you hire me as a consultant, I'm absorbing that risk of managing your money in an account like you're taking on that. For the client and being compensated accordingly, hopefully. Yeah. Yeah.

Everything is risky business. Amazing. Thank you so much for that, Sarah. It's been really great to have you on the podcast today. For people who wanna follow your great hooks, your great posts online, where can people find you? A LinkedIn? LinkedIn is my primary platform. Yeah. And then you can also visit YouTube as well.

Yeah. PPC Gals amazing. We'll share the link in the show notes, so please, yeah, go check that out. That'll be fantastic. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, amazing. Sarah, thank you so much for Thanks. Have a good one. 

  📍  📍 Thank you so much, Sarah, for sharing that fantastic and very honest story about working with different kind of clients and how they, it can be difficult, but also talking about the mistakes, about looking at ROAS and how we focus on, one single metric definitely so many different micro conversions are important when we're coming to performance. For any more information about that, for lots more information about that, go to podcast.ppc.live for the transcript, for the show notes, for all the details, and to find the link to where you can get you hear from Sarah and Ameet, two fantastic guests of this podcast.

Yeah, for PPC Live events, yes, we've got, we're coming up to like in less than a couple of weeks, probably by the time that you're listening to this, we are going to be having the next PPC live event. Third year anniversary. It's going to be fantastic. It's gonna be on the 31st July. And not just that, we are got, we've got a passing through the UK's Collin Slattery who is founder of Taikun

 and they recently did this fantastic report showing about how.

Hidden terms can be negatively affecting your performance. So you know how you have in your search query report, those others, those keywords that you see about your clicks impressions and revenue. And then there's the others, other search terms that shows your clicks, impressions and revenue, but you can't see which particular search terms are driving that performance.

And they did a test with over like a million pounds worth of, across their agencies or of course their clients showing about how those. Other search term performance is how to actually dragging down the performance of most campaigns and be not being able to exclude them is really a detriment for any client or any brand.

Yeah. Colin is in town and Colin has kindly said that he will join our panel on the 31st of July to talk about that report and talk to us about how we get around that. Is there a way of getting around that, of really being able to exclude the. Those terms that we can't see. So yeah, I hope you're there for that.

Tickets are live. It's gonna be a lovely barbecue event. Gonna be a lovely rooftop event even as well. So we'd love for you to join us for that. So just go to PPC Live for that. Before I leave you as well, I've got I'm booking PPC mindset coaching time. So yeah, if you want some time to book some of my time for that, go to themarketinganu.com to get more details about that.

So that's it for today. I hope you've enjoyed the show, and I look forward to bringing more PPC f-ups and triumphs next week. Bye.