EP327 - Black Friday Blackout: When Ad Schedules Go Wrong ft. Ayisha Yousef

Anu Adegbola (00:04.925)
Hello and welcome to PPC Live, The Podcast. My name is Anu, the founder of PPC Live. And if you're used to hearing 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 going to be bringing the PPC experts to you. Every week, I'm going to be speaking to a different PPC expert about their biggest effort. 

Anu Adegbola (00:30.963)
but also how they turn things around. So we're never leaving things on a defeated note. This is all about learnings and how to ensure that you don't make the same mistakes. So this week we had the fantastic guest, Ayisha Youssef, who has been a speaker at PPC Live. so any audience members who have been to PPC live, you know what she's about. You know she's all about e-commerce and really driving growth for e-commerce clients, especially, and she talks about a big Black Friday f-up 

Anu Adegbola (00:59.761)
So yeah, that was really brave of her. We're really grateful for her sharing that story because that is not easy to share. So yeah, we learn about the things, the dos, the don'ts, and who was supportive, who was surprising with her, and how she just really turned it around and still ended up having a great relationship with her client. So let's go speak to Ayisha. 

Anu Adegbola (01:22.721)
Welcome to PPC Live the podcast. 

Ayisha (01:26.291)
Hi Anu, thank you so much for having me. 

Anu Adegbola (01:28.673)
It's such, it's such a pleasure. Ayisha has always been just such a brand, a brilliant, like joyful person. That smile you see on your face. I have not seen Ayisha without that smile ever. And I love that it was when we met in Manchester for Charlie Brennan's, performance MCR that we actually realized that we live next to each other, almost next to each other, like in the same neighborhood. we're like, we've got to hang out. So it's really nice to have someone in the marketing world. 

Anu Adegbola (01:58.369)
who lives like maybe like 10, 20 minutes away from me. And if I'm all stressed out and I need to meet someone in person, which I love, I can do that with Ayisha. But yeah, more about the lovely lady Ayisha you've got in front of you. She is a paid media e-commerce specialist, helping more recently, most recently the likes of Iceland. She's very values led and a performance focus and she's very passionate performance marketing specialist with 10 plus years experience. 

Anu Adegbola (02:27.113)
top global agencies. And what do we mean by top? We're talking the likes of Essence, MediaCom, Tug Agency. We've got Mindshare on there as well. So yeah, really being successful at helping them in. We're talking from a manager to account director level. And right now she's also set up her own consultancy, What Matters Media Limited, as a performance marketing consultant to especially help, you know, women led brands who might be 

Anu Adegbola (02:55.911)
overlooked by some of the bigger agencies who feel like, they're not, they're not doing what, what matters for them. So she's all about, you know, really helping those kinds of brands to get ahead and succeed in the field that they're in. so yeah, really, really great expert to have with us today. 

Anu Adegbola (03:15.571)
Ayisha as well, fun fact about her. She loves paddle, playing paddle. And it's been a very tough time to get me on the same schedule as well. She's been trying hard. I love that. How did you get into playing paddle? That cause it's almost like a sport that I think to myself, I'm not, is it tennis? Is it not tennis? Like, what's it like? Tell us a bit about paddle. 

Ayisha (03:37.769)
Oh, it's so good. You need to come and play. I was actually playing this morning down in Catford in the rain. But it's very easy to get into. And if you've played anything before that's a racket sport, so tennis, squash, badminton. But I feel like it's most like table tennis, like ping pong. So we all played that before. So it's just like a big ping pong. 

Anu Adegbola (03:58.611)
Okay? Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (04:03.475)
It's like, yeah, it's like paying like big ping pong ping pong on a bigger, bigger scale. Big ping pong. That's like 

Ayisha (04:06.461)
Big ping pong. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (04:12.769)
a paddle, a paddle company should use that as their branding. Big ping pong. so anyway, let's get into talking about, you know, what we're here for. Like, really grateful again to all my guests, especially you Ayisha for being brave enough to talk about, you know, an F up that you've experienced. It could be something recent. could be something. 

Ayisha (04:17.544)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (04:32.683)
from way back, we're all hearing about successes on LinkedIn and the likes, but I think we learn the most from when something went wrong. And I don't think there's any expert, like the true experts, our true gurus that, you know, wouldn't admit that, yeah, there were times that they did F up and, know, from rising back up from those challenges that led them to being the expert today. So yeah, let's take it over to Ayisha. What F up would you like to share with us today? 

Ayisha (05:03.289)
Ooh, well, there's plenty to choose from, that's for sure. So the f up that I've chosen to speak about today was a few years ago, and of course we're not naming names, but I was agency side and it was at one of the larger agencies as well. And it was, I'll set the scene. It was Q4. Yeah, I will tell you my story, yeah. So it was Q4. 

Anu Adegbola (05:18.411)
Hmm. 

Anu Adegbola (05:27.019)
The Earth's at the scene, tell us a story! 

Ayisha (05:33.425)
We were in Black Friday week and it was a part of the strategy to remove the ad scheduling from some of our campaigns that turned campaigns off at certain times. Cause historically those are not good times for us, but as we know, people search up very different times during Black Friday day, Black Friday week. So I had instructed the team. 

Anu Adegbola (05:35.489)
Mmm. 

Ayisha (06:00.559)
I had a team of about six or seven people at the time. And I just said quite simply, please, will you remove the ad schedule from our top six markets for the remainder of the weekend? And they did exactly that. Now, I think it's one of the things as we get into more automation, some of the newer execs, the more junior execs don't really know the nitty gritty so much or like the manual side of the campaign. So they did that. 

Anu Adegbola (06:16.596)
Okay. 

Ayisha (06:30.281)
and they removed the ad schedule and any of the PPC old timers like myself knows that that means that your ads won't be running at all because they just removed it. So we're just putting a zero throughout all of the days of the week and all of the times they removed it. So those particular campaigns didn't actually run for the whole of that Friday and because yeah, big f up 

Anu Adegbola (06:40.129)
Okay, wow 

Anu Adegbola (06:53.133)
wow. 

Anu Adegbola (06:56.299)
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So it didn't, and how was it discovered? How's that discovered? 

Ayisha (07:01.737)
It wasn't 

Ayisha (07:03.038)
it wasn't actually discovered until the next day. So the next day it was discovered. So 

Anu Adegbola (07:06.037)
Okay. 

Ayisha (07:09.351)
because it was only on a selection of campaigns, not the whole account, some of our alert systems didn't send a signal because, you know, some of our alerts were like, okay, so if there's zero impressions in this account, then send alert. But of course there was impressions, there was clicks, there were conversions. It was just much lower. 

Anu Adegbola (07:14.113)
Okay. 

Ayisha (07:31.729)
And because performance was very good and some of our other campaigns were still working hard, we overlooked these particular sets of campaigns through our top six markets. So. 

Anu Adegbola (07:37.781)
Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (07:45.397)

Anu Adegbola (07:47.478)
so we're talking, it's, so it didn't, what is it, you said that you set the schedule and then the day after you guys set that schedule, you guys, noticed the error. So it's not like it was actually, you guys then put it back up running while Black Friday was still able to, no, so does that things. 

Ayisha (08:06.735)
It missed the whole 

Ayisha (08:07.873)
night Friday. 

Anu Adegbola (08:08.987)
We missed the whole of Black Friday, so it was only noticed like let's the day after Black Friday had ended kind of thing on the set. my Lord. Okay. Who picked up on it? 

Ayisha (08:14.865)
on Saturday. On the Saturday. 

Ayisha (08:21.961)
So it was actually one of the managers and we were looking at the day performance, because we had to check in on the Saturday which, you know, of course that's what you do when you work in e-commerce. And it was very much like, oh, you know, these, performance was good, but it wasn't amazing. And then when we started to think about why is this? And I just had that sudden, it's like the opposite of a light bulb moment. 

Anu Adegbola (08:49.119)
Yeah, 

Anu Adegbola (08:49.69)
yeah, well, where the blood rushes out of your body and you're literally just like a bit of fear hits you. Yeah, I know. 

Ayisha (08:57.747)
the fear 

Ayisha (08:58.567)
and I was like, I know what this is. I know, I know exactly what this is because we started to see this certain type of campaigns. Just, you know, those are the ones that, you know, weren't getting the, the traffic, the conversions, whatever. And it was in that moment. knew exactly what had gone wrong. This very short sentence to do list, you know, going through everyone's to do's for the, for the, for the week. And it was, please, can you remove the ad schedule? 

Anu Adegbola (09:27.391)
yeah, yeah. yeah. 

Ayisha (09:28.371)
and that's what did it. And in that moment, 

Ayisha (09:31.288)
yeah, the opposite of a light bulb, I actually physically felt sick because I realized how bad that was. 

Anu Adegbola (09:36.129)

Anu Adegbola (09:39.032)
yeah. Yeah. So how did we go about trying to solve the sort of the issue? Like, or how did you go about letting the client know even what was the experience with your manager as well? 

Ayisha (09:52.869)
Yeah, so in that moment, I knew that I had to escalate it and tell my head of department. But I just took a moment to pause first. took a moment to pause, had a look at the accounts and started to quantify what the actual issue was. Well, first of all, I put those campaigns live again, get them live. And then I just 

Anu Adegbola (09:59.073)
Hmm? 

Anu Adegbola (10:14.493)
Yes, of course, yes. 

Ayisha (10:18.009)
started to quantify. And once I got a bit of an understanding, 

Ayisha (10:22.985)
I immediately wanted to bring in my head of the department. So I had to text her because remember this was a Saturday. I had to text her and be like, hey, I'm so sorry, something pretty bad has happened and I just need you to be aware of it. And yeah, I just had to go through all of the reasons why, why it was overlooked, why the alerts didn't work and started to quantify it. 

Anu Adegbola (10:30.472)
Yeah, of course, yeah. 

Ayisha (10:51.517)
And what we did is just work together. Obviously I was doing the work, but you know, under their instruction, just to make sure that you're on the same page, just to get ready to present the findings, what went wrong and have a bit of a solution of how we can be better in the future, ready to present to the client. First thing on Monday morning. 

Anu Adegbola (10:56.907)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (11:10.793)
Okay. And how did the client take it? 

Ayisha (11:14.501)
Well, they were not happy, but they weren't really mad either because it was only a certain selection of campaigns and they felt that those campaigns were not as important as the other campaigns that continued running. And the way that me and my head of department framed it was, well, we can have a look at a bit of a test of like 

Anu Adegbola (11:17.855)
No. 

Anu Adegbola (11:21.172)
Okay. Okay. 

Anu Adegbola (11:32.991)
Right. 

Ayisha (11:42.533)
what the impact would be without these campaigns and how the other campaigns interacted. So, you know, I did a lot of work over that weekend and that's kind of like how we teed it up to them. We owned up to the mistake, but we gave them some learnings from the mistake and some of it. So it wasn't, it wasn't that bad. 

Anu Adegbola (11:55.073)
Mmm. 

Anu Adegbola (11:57.761)
Yeah 

Anu Adegbola (12:03.635)
Okay. So you framed it up as to actually, this is the information we've gotten from it. This, yeah, this, was not intended for these campaigns to not be live. and even like in terms of the performance for Black Friday's where, where targets missed like revenue targets and that kind of stuff for like, cause I imagine every time during Black Friday, there's a whole, this is what our goal based on what we did last year or the year before. 

Ayisha (12:14.32)
Mm-hmm. 

Anu Adegbola (12:32.693)
were those numbers okay or was it really off? 

Ayisha (12:35.645)
We 

Ayisha (12:35.865)
actually, yeah, we actually just about hit our target and we had a bit of an underspend because we didn't spend on these particular campaigns. So even though it was really important and it felt like the end of the world when it happened and it's still the biggest F up that I've been a part of just because it was a complete oversight. And that's the scary part, just complete oversight. 

Anu Adegbola (12:39.061)
Wow. 

Anu Adegbola (12:42.848)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (12:50.239)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (12:55.638)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (12:58.549)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (13:01.441)
Mm. 

Ayisha (13:02.671)
we actually managed to frame it and that they still hit their targets. We haven't spent sort of all the budget and we've got some learnings from it. And more importantly than anything, 

Anu Adegbola (13:14.261)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (13:16.193)
this was like, had multiple brands of this particular client. And luckily, this is going to sound bad, but luckily later on in the week, one of their other brands really had a real f-up 

Anu Adegbola (13:20.363)
Mm. 

Anu Adegbola (13:31.295)
Okay. 

Ayisha (13:31.655)
And 

Ayisha (13:31.795)
that saved us because then they had to change what they were looking at from us to them. 

Anu Adegbola (13:35.497)
Yeah. Yeah. Refocus, 

Anu Adegbola (13:39.09)
refocus. Absolutely. And I think that is also something that is really important. Like that's what we even started with saying this. Everybody's going to make an f-up every every so often. And so whilst you're sitting here thinking about, my God, I've messed up. Somebody else has done it and everybody has actually forgotten about your error And now we're refocusing on someone else's. 

Anu Adegbola (14:01.329)
F up and that's now becomes, you know, you're all of a sudden you become yesterday's news. Yesterday's like, you know, like, what is it today's news is tomorrow's fish and chips rapper, right? It's like, yeah, like, yeah, we don't care about that anymore. We don't care about that anymore. Another person has made another royal F up. need to try and fix that as well. So that's, that's really nice to hear. It sounds like you had a very supportive manager who didn't also give you a full like, you know, like 

Ayisha (14:11.101)
Yes. 

Ayisha (14:18.034)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (14:29.134)
make you feel if we feel worse than we're already feeling. I feel like that sounded like your manager was quite supportive. Am I right? 

Ayisha (14:35.207)
Yeah, they were pretty good. And I think for me as well, like they really wanted to know who was it in my team that made this error. And I just made sure that I didn't, I actually refused to give a name. I think I can be like managers, my managers, like pain in the butt sometimes, but I wouldn't, I didn't give them their name because at the end of the day, I instructed the team this exact. 

Anu Adegbola (14:45.587)
Okay. 

Ayisha (15:04.595)
had a manager with them. And when I actually told the team, you know, what had gone wrong and what the error was, they didn't know. They didn't know that they had made a mistake because they didn't have that knowledge about ad schedules. 

Anu Adegbola (15:15.859)
Yeah. Yeah! 

Anu Adegbola (15:20.449)
That's very, honestly, I think that is very kudos to you to say that you protected your team. was like, you realize that you are the ones that gave an instruction. you know, your manager then going like, who was it? Who's the one that did it? Who's the one that messed up? Like, yeah, I've said that on previous episodes about fact that when issues like this happen, yeah, maybe at some point you want to make sure that the learning gets to the person who did the thing. But 

Anu Adegbola (15:47.689)
you know, finger pointing the whole blame, like, okay, let's see who's it to blame. Who are we going to tell the client that was the person like, that's not important. I actually fixing the issue. How do you communicate to the client so that they see it as a positive story and not, you know, is, is, is what is really important. So kudos to you, Ayisha. Like, I love that. I love that. that's such a sense of integrity. That's someone with amazing integrity that, that, you know, I hope people are listening to this ongoing. 

Ayisha (16:06.505)
Thank 

Anu Adegbola (16:16.905)
I want to work in a team where I have a manager like Ayisha who's gonna protect me when something like that goes wrong. Because like, and I get it. I feel like even in this way, you've even presented this story. You've been very, very like brave and very mature to be like, I gave the instructions. So technically maybe I should have probably, okay, in fact, let me not even write your story here. Let me let you tell it. Like. 

Anu Adegbola (16:44.533)
How did that make you feel in terms of, what did that teach you in terms of instructing your team in terms of how to implement certain actions? Let's have you tell that. 

Ayisha (16:54.769)
Yeah, that's 

Ayisha (16:55.55)
it. know, especially agency side, it's so fast. We've all got so much to do. And then e-commerce and Black Friday, you know, we've got a massive stack of a to-do list, each and every single one of us. And I kind of had it in my head. And I think that's what haunts me more than anything. When I said to remove that ad schedule, 

Anu Adegbola (17:10.369)
Mmm. 

Anu Adegbola (17:16.64)
Mmm. 

Ayisha (17:19.857)
You know, I, you know, I said to the manager and then it got to the exec and I was like, do you know how to do it? And because my team were very good, I almost just, I just believed them a bit, which is, is great to, to believe them for sure. But I, I hadn't seen them work with ad schedules before and I didn't want to be like a micromanager. So I didn't show them, but I had it in my head that I wanted to show them. 

Anu Adegbola (17:27.648)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (17:43.061)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (17:47.593)
exactly what to do, but then I got really busy. So I guess it's quite hard to sort of move on from it because you think, I wish that I had show done that one thing. But I guess the main learning from it is that even if your team is really good and very successful at the time. 

Anu Adegbola (18:03.36)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (18:11.347)
Don't overlook sometimes as a manager, actually showing them the basics, even if they say, yes, I know what you do, what I'm doing, it's okay, and just go, actually, well, I'll just show you. And if you know already, then that's fine. But I'm just gonna, it literally takes 30 seconds, I'll show you. And I wish I had done that, because obviously it would have saved me at least a whole weekend working on it, that's for sure, and a lot of stress. 

Anu Adegbola (18:22.965)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (18:30.399)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (18:36.713)
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, yeah, we need to remember that for, you know, just like it was Black Friday, you know, I would say that if it was going to be like, you know, a BAU kind of day, it's not as important to be like, let's make sure we got it right. But like on Black Friday's kind of thing, holidays, you know, there's that times when you're like aware things are going to spike up. Double checking people's work. It's not a, it's not a, you don't trust your team. It's like, 

Ayisha (18:43.443)
Mm. 

Ayisha (18:55.497)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (19:05.309)
Mmm. 

Anu Adegbola (19:06.495)
You want to make sure that when your manager goes, is, it been done right? You are not just relying on, okay, I'm sure it has been done right because I know my thing, but you check as well. And I think that, yeah, that's a big lesson for like with, with managers. think we can do the whole, my team are perfect. And yes, you are. But when it's like key dates, black Friday, big holiday, all eyes need to be on the, ensuring that the right thing has been done. 

Ayisha (19:08.934)
Thank 

Ayisha (19:16.091)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (19:23.657)
Mmm. 

Ayisha (19:31.997)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (19:35.051)
for those special cases. Yeah, yeah. 

Ayisha (19:37.073)
Yeah. That's the 

Ayisha (19:38.505)
interesting thing though, because the exec did have their manager check, but they, thought that it was right. They did, they both just didn't know. So, but yeah, there you go. Things happen. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (19:44.767)
Yeah... Yeah... 

Anu Adegbola (19:50.089)
Yeah, there you go. Hey, we're learning things happen and how 

Ayisha (19:53.175)

Anu Adegbola (19:54.464)
do you do things differently based on that story? 

Ayisha (19:57.869)
I just show people how to do things sometimes, especially if it's these more like sort of like older style things. You know, I think that newer execs and managers are very good with strategies. They're fine with creatives, but these more older style, even like campaign types, slightly older ones like DSAs, maybe they're not as quite as good as them. They're probably more... 

Anu Adegbola (20:05.089)
Yeah 

Anu Adegbola (20:12.225)

Anu Adegbola (20:23.307)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (20:26.473)
familiar with like PMAX. Sometimes the, yeah, ad schedule is definitely a good one. Like any of these things that are a little bit more hidden. What else? Some of the ad extensions as well. Sometimes they're not using them as much. And I think maybe it's okay to be slightly micromanaging when it comes to Black Friday as well. 

Anu Adegbola (20:36.982)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (20:43.401)
Yes. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (20:54.025)
Yeah, 

Anu Adegbola (20:54.706)
yeah, exactly. Slightly micromanaging when it comes to like, yeah, the big events definitely is a good, is a good way to, to have us and that, part of the story. yeah, Ayisha, thank you so much for sharing that story. Now let's switch the spotlight to, you know, as a consultant, you might have seen accounts, maybe even when you first took on Iceland 

Ayisha (20:56.489)
What? 

Anu Adegbola (21:16.685)
or others, big f ups that you've gone, seen other advertisers are doing. 

Ayisha (21:17.907)
Mm. 

Anu Adegbola (21:21.633)
2025 that you're like, guys, we should have stopped doing this by now. This is not the right way to approach this new technology. could be an AI thing, ideally an AI thing, but it doesn't have to be. What's a big f-up that you think that we experience, that you've seen other advertisers experience? 

Ayisha (21:40.741)
Yeah, I mean, so many come up, you know, I do audit quite a lot of accounts and some of the same things that happen over and over again. So it's like one would be segmenting campaigns too much. That is still happening. You know, I just audited an account last week and they have too many campaigns without 

Anu Adegbola (21:45.002)
Yeah? 

Anu Adegbola (21:55.741)
Right. Okay. 

Ayisha (22:07.185)
And I don't know what the difference is because it might be all products, all products, all products in each of the campaigns, but like slightly different audience targeting. So it just seems like too much of a dilution of their campaigns, especially when they're not getting that many conversions. I see that happening all of the time over segmentation of campaigns. 

Anu Adegbola (22:17.729)
Okay? 

Anu Adegbola (22:24.705)
Yeah 

Anu Adegbola (22:30.035)
over segmentation for sure. so, so yeah, so, so let's, let's, let's teach people a few things here. So when you're talking about 

Anu Adegbola (22:37.542)
like audiences, what's your best practice right now for that? 

Ayisha (22:42.365)
mean, unless you have a meaningful reason to segment your campaigns by audience type, then we should really be taking slightly more of an approach for Google ads, slightly more similar to meta ads these days. So really starting more broad. 

Anu Adegbola (22:48.865)
Hmm. 

Anu Adegbola (22:57.355)
Okay. 

Ayisha (23:01.649)
and then learn and only if it's needed and required for your campaigns, then segment by audience. And for that, would be really, if you really didn't want to be targeting, say for example, your existing customers, that's something that I see quite often, which I think is good. But otherwise, 

Ayisha (23:24.381)
targeting all of your products and then just having like a competitor audience and then the same all of your products and with no competitor audiences, I think the benefits of actually having all of your data together in fewer campaigns would outweigh the segmentation between the two. It's not really required. 

Anu Adegbola (23:45.441)
Yeah, 

Anu Adegbola (23:47.663)
yeah, it's not really quiet. Yeah, exactly. So it's, it's not about just going through a template of like, okay, that's how people, other people are doing it. So I'm going to do it this way. Actually look at your data, look at what your data will make sense for your data, for your audience, for the volume that you're seeing for different audiences before you actually think about segmenting it out. Right. Yeah. 

Ayisha (24:07.347)
Thank you. 

Ayisha (24:10.601)
Yeah, especially 

Ayisha (24:12.141)
if you have like a smaller account, you you're maybe getting just about 30 conversions per month. Maybe you're only spending 1,000 pounds, 2,000 pounds, something like that. It's very unlikely that you'll be segmenting by audience type at that level. 

Anu Adegbola (24:30.857)
Yeah. Yeah. No, go on. Sorry. You were going to say something. 

Ayisha (24:34.779)
And as well, just to lean into the AI part of that, obviously, you know, this is predominantly because we're all using bid strategies, right? That's the best way to, win in an auction now. And the more data that you can give that bid strategy, which is set at campaign level, the better it's going to perform for you. So instead of having. 

Anu Adegbola (24:37.311)
Yeah, please. 

Anu Adegbola (24:42.976)
Mm-hmm. 

Ayisha (24:55.753)
say 15 conversions coming through this campaign, 20 conversions through a different campaign, have them all going through one and you'll get better performance out of it because the bid strategy has more learnings to feed its AI technology and actually find those people regardless of the audience based on if they're gonna convert or not, which is your primary objective. 

Anu Adegbola (25:19.297)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, that totally makes sense. And, um, yeah, okay. Now just going generally into the talk about how much we do talk about these errors that we make. Um, I don't know about you. Um, I don't see it's, it's mostly about the wins, the, you know, I'm doing, you know, AI max is working well for me. 

Anu Adegbola (25:40.837)
We're getting the conversions or I'm hitting to my revenue targets and I'm hitting all of that kind of thing. Why is it important for us to talk about 

Ayisha (25:45.661)
you 

Anu Adegbola (25:48.872)
when things go wrong. 

Ayisha (25:51.173)
Well, I just think that it gives a more true picture. You know, me and you like to have a good chat, Anu, hearing this stuff all the time. And it could even be like, you know, I've won five clients and I've got them 10x more ass in like two days. Anyone knows that that's, that's highly unlikely. It doesn't sound truthful. This is Disney world. So I think just being more authentic is, is really 

Anu Adegbola (25:54.507)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (25:57.376)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (26:12.843)
Yeah, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (26:17.217)
Mmm. 

Ayisha (26:20.325)
a good start for it. And then as well, we can learn so much more from the things that don't work well. And rather than just talking about the bad thing and then again, like patching it up to have this like positive story and just like, well, actually sometimes bad things happen and they are just bad and we learn from it and we move on. the only real learning is that I'm not going to do that again. I've got something in place to not. 

Anu Adegbola (26:28.715)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (26:41.663)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (26:47.199)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (26:49.059)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (26:49.317)
not 

Ayisha (26:49.537)
everything needs to be this sort of sort of Disney world, you know, sort of story where it's trials and tribulations and then the positive endings sometimes just actually that was rubbish. And I've learned not to do that. 

Anu Adegbola (26:55.519)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (27:01.577)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (27:06.32)
Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of things that goes on in the world and it's important that we give that true picture because we, then, you know, fail the people, the newer generation coming in, trying to join paid search thinking that, my God, it's, know, it's going to be an easy way for me to do stuff. Nothing's going to grow. then when something goes wrong, they feel like they're an absolute failure and could quit the industry. 

Ayisha (27:28.446)
Thank you. 

Anu Adegbola (27:29.611)
So yeah, it's very important that we give a true picture about how this goes. And, you know, I touched on it earlier on the way that you gave such great managerial skills here, there, you know, protected your team. What's also a message to like managers to actually, you know, help juniors not to be too 

Anu Adegbola (27:49.947)
afraid about making a mistake that it makes them not even test anything because they're worried that they may make a mistake. How, what's your... 

Ayisha (27:54.857)
Mm. 

Anu Adegbola (27:58.133)
What's your tip for managers to encourage their team to be willing to take tests even though it might lead to a mistake? 

Ayisha (28:08.187)
Yeah, that's it. And I think it's a really tough one, especially again, agency side. I think there's a lot of pressure on managers and new managers. you know, I took a few years before I got to manager level myself. I actually chose quite strategically to progress to senior exec before manager, which I think sometimes is missed out. Well, I got to learn. 

Anu Adegbola (28:13.494)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (28:35.061)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (28:37.235)
from a good manager before becoming a manager myself. You know, I felt like I was very ready for it. So I think just before managers sort of chase the extra bit of salary and chase that promotion, just, you know, really make sure that you are ready for that extra responsibility, because I actually think that middle manager in a PPC team of, you know, maybe six or seven or larger is probably like the hardest job. 

Anu Adegbola (28:40.586)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (28:54.806)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (29:05.729)
Mmm. 

Ayisha (29:06.409)
So 

Ayisha (29:06.729)
just because you're in the middle, you you're doing the work and you're responsible for the work and you do the strategy too. I think before you step into that role, make sure that you are really ready. And I think having the right people around you in terms of a senior that will support you is really important. So they need the support and then really to give their team. 

Anu Adegbola (29:12.971)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (29:27.435)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (29:36.411)
You know, people make more mistakes when they're anxious. So if you make your exec or senior exec feel supported, that you're there with them on the journey, then they're going to make less mistakes. If you are riding them and that you're chasing them all the time and you're telling them negative things, quite often, 

Anu Adegbola (29:40.917)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (29:52.385)
Mmm. 

Ayisha (30:03.207)
I don't think that's going to get the best out of them. So I think just creating a positive work environment and relationship with the juniors in your team that is more about learning, but you know, that's my style of being a manager or more of a coach. And that works for me. I think you'll get better results out of people and they'll be quicker to move on from their mistake as well. Whereas if they're in a negative mindset, they do something wrong and then inevitably as a manager, you have to. 

Anu Adegbola (30:11.233)
you 

Anu Adegbola (30:25.877)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Ayisha (30:31.977)
call them out on it and show them how to improve. If they're feeling down in the dumps already, they're gonna sit with that for longer. And you know, in PPC world and agency world, you need them bouncing back and moving forward fast. 

Anu Adegbola (30:33.162)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (30:44.577)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 

Anu Adegbola (30:47.037)
That is such a great way, you know, to, approach that, like, especially the whole, if you make your team feel anxious, the more mistakes they'll make for sure. That is such an important point. And also the fact that we're always just like, yeah, like, well, I'm an executive. I need to be a senior exec and then next a manager and an account director. It's almost like that whole template. And it's almost like the same way of like how we should not look. 

Ayisha (30:57.405)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (31:07.165)
Yeah. 

Ayisha (31:11.602)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (31:12.129)
I, know, what the template is for paid search and cause it can lead to the wrong way. Figure out what works well for you is the same way in terms of career in the, in digital marketing of like, figure out what's going to work well for you. Some people are not built to be people managers and that is not a bad thing. You know, some, but some people are just amazing, like individual like topic managers. They know how to really deal with like a particular area of digital marketing and they just want to be the 

Ayisha (31:27.101)
No. 

Ayisha (31:35.657)
Thank 

Anu Adegbola (31:41.633)
best at that and they know how to really drive the company forward by really implementing, you know, a certain kind of like aspect of the department. And I think it's, it's, it's important that we realize the difference and not force everybody into that career of people managers when they don't necessarily want it or they don't need to. Um, so yeah, don't necessarily always feel like you need to jump the, the, um, the normal, the, the, the, the already pre-stated the prefix. 

Anu Adegbola (32:10.891)
fixed like career ladder that's already set for you, actually figure out what works best for you. And that's how you succeed. Yeah, what did you say? Yeah. Yeah, right. Amazing. You know what? That, yeah, there is no rush, right? There is no rush guys. Take your time. Make sure you're learning. 

Ayisha (32:18.289)
Mm-hmm. No, just agree and mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There's no rush. 

Anu Adegbola (32:32.893)
You've learned everything in the area, in the level that you're in before you wanna go ahead because 

Ayisha (32:37.854)
Mm-hmm. Exactly. 

Anu Adegbola (32:40.265)
Yeah, 

Anu Adegbola (32:40.646)
more money, more troubles, more issues, more problems, more responsibilities, right? 

Ayisha (32:43.533)
I want to see the extra £5,000, 

Ayisha (32:47.013)
£10,000, whatever it is, if you're not ready. It's not worth it, the sleepless nights. 

Anu Adegbola (32:52.117)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (32:53.599)
Yeah. Yeah. The working on a Saturday. You don't want to be doing that. Like, my God, right? I, I don't remind me. I plan on sleeping this Saturday. That is what I'm going to be doing. No, no black Friday issues to be worrying about this season. Not yet. Anyway, not yet. Look. 

Ayisha (32:56.649)
And now we just do that for fun Anu! 

Ayisha (33:07.721)
Good for you. 

Anu Adegbola (33:15.797)
That has been such a fantastic chat Ayisha. I was so grateful that you've been on this show with us to share that. But before we leave, we have a very lovely non-PPC question, just a nice chill. If your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be? 

Ayisha (33:17.341)
Mm-hmm. 

Ayisha (33:26.397)
We. 

Ayisha (33:35.045)
Well, luckily he sent the question to me before because I've got, hopefully, quite a fun answer to this. So mine would be kind of like a parody of 50 cents movie, which would be get clicks or die trying. 

Anu Adegbola (33:41.601)
it is. 

Anu Adegbola (33:49.779)
Ayyyy 

Anu Adegbola (33:53.441)
We should be dying trying to get clicks. We're not saving lives here. 

Ayisha (33:54.953)
It feels like it. 

Ayisha (33:58.835)
Yeah. So it'd be like a storyline of a PPC battling rising CPCs, dodging Google updates, bit of hustling for revenue in ROAS. And yeah, a lot of jeopardy in there, but you you sort of prevail until the end. 

Anu Adegbola (34:03.619)
my god. 

Anu Adegbola (34:08.992)
Wow. 

Anu Adegbola (34:11.795)
Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (34:18.901)
Amazing. Yeah. Well, I feel, well, 

Anu Adegbola (34:20.882)
if you felt like that's what you've been doing, well, I can't, I can't be like, that's not your story. Get clicks or dye trying. Well, I'm glad that you've not died trying. I hope that you find a more chill way of getting through the industry. But that's, but that's a really great. 

Ayisha (34:31.753)
you 

Ayisha (34:36.656)
Yeah, that's it. 

Anu Adegbola (34:39.681)
great title to leave us with. And where can people find you and where next will we be seeing you speak? You've done some fantastic speaking engagements as well on PPC Live. We're so grateful for that. So, but yeah, where can people hear from what you're doing? 

Ayisha (34:51.753)
Mm-hmm. 

Ayisha (34:55.795)
So you can find me on LinkedIn, just my name Ayisha Yousef. i post regularly on there about different Google updates, test findings, et cetera. I will be at the next PPC Live with Anu in a few weeks, inshallah. 

Anu Adegbola (35:10.941)
Yay, October 

Anu Adegbola (35:12.45)
22nd, guys, go buy your tickets. 

Ayisha (35:14.833)
That's it. And then I'll also be at SEM Stories up in Edinburgh. So if anyone is around in Scotland or fancies a trip up north, I will be speaking there in the thick of Q4. 

Anu Adegbola (35:27.965)
Amazing. Yeah. And that's October 29th. I remember that date because that's also my birthday. So I'm sorry. I wouldn't be able to cheer you on. I'll be on a birthday trip, but I'm sure that yeah, anyone who's around Scotland or thinking that, yeah, let me check out what Scotland is like. That's a great event to attend and you will not be disappointed. I'm sure about that. So anyway, on that note, thank you so much Ayisha for joining us today. And yeah, I hope you guys have loved hearing her story. 

Ayisha (35:33.265)
I know. We'll miss you. 

Ayisha (35:56.819)
Thank you, Anu, really appreciate it. 

Anu Adegbola (35:58.953)
No worries. 

Anu Adegbola (35:59.702)

Anu Adegbola (36:01.6)
Thank you Ayisha so much for that great insight about the do's and don'ts of, you know, the activities leading up to Black Friday, especially if you're a leader, especially if you're a manager and amazing tips there for managers on how to really look after your team and not throw them under the bus when something goes wrong. I imagine that anyone else that is thinking, where does Ayisha work? I'd love to work there so that I work, um, so that she's my manager. 

Anu Adegbola (36:30.28)
Yeah, that is certainly a good thing to think about. Maybe go check her LinkedIn and try and find a way to join her team. Anyway, for all the information about that fantastic conversation and the full transcript, please go to podcast.ppc.live for the full episode and to leave any reviews or ratings and what you think, any feedback about this or any past episodes. We'd love to hear from you about what you think. 

Anu Adegbola (36:57.332)
So yeah, PPC live is happening in two weeks. If you're listening to this on the day of our day of release on Wednesday, it's in two weeks, exactly on the 22nd of October. So we hope that you can join us for that. Just go to ppc.live. We've got a fantastic location in Shoreditch with Tug Agency. We've got some fantastic speakers. We've got Basak Odemis, we've got Neil Baker and Stephanie Caldecott. 

Anu Adegbola (37:24.288)
We're going to be talking about a variety of ways to really prepare for 2026, whether it's testing, thinking about the future of PPC or just how paid search works in the fantastic ecosystem, ecosystem of digital marketing up today. So you'd want to come for that. So yeah, just go to ppc.live for that. Um, before I leave you as well, I'd to share that I'm also doing, um, PPC mindset coaching. So if you want to go to themarketinganu.com, you'll be able to get details about to how to book my time. Just, um, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (37:54.376)
You can have a free initial consultation meeting, but anything else about what you want to discuss and many challenges that you're having and just how to get out of your own way for amazing opportunities that could be lying ahead of you. So yeah, go to themarketingannu.com to book my time. So yeah, I hope you've enjoyed that episode and I look forward to bringing more PPC F ups and triumphs next week. Bye.