EP328 - Account Structures & PMax Fails ft Susan Yen

Anu Adegbola (00:05.915)

Hello and welcome to PPC live the podcast. I'm your host Anu, the founder of PPC Live And if you're used to hearing advice from PPC experts about how to ensure that we're keeping up with the ever changing landscape, don't worry. You are still in the right place. But instead of me relaying what the PPC experts are saying, I'm bringing the PPC experts to you every week I'm going to be speaking to different PPC experts about their biggest F up and how they turned it around because 

Anu Adegbola (00:34.967)

Our, the best of us in our industry have not reached there by making no mistakes and no failings. Like you might see all of the LinkedIn. there is up. It's a path filled with loads of F ups. So I get our brave experts to come speak to us about some of theirs and give you their learnings so that you don't make the same mistakes. I have the delight of speaking to Susan Yen, at this time who I met in San Diego for the Brighton SEO that was out there. 

Anu Adegbola (01:03.553)

And, know, I'd been following her for a while, but once I met her and just saw her energy, was like, I need to introduce her to the PPC live audience. So, yeah, we're going to be talking about, some FFs that she's experienced, whether, between account structures and PMAXs and how, especially in the age of automation, building accounts is not as straightforward as you'd think. So yeah, it's a really interesting story and we have lots of laughs in it. So I hope you enjoy. Let's go speak to Susan. 

Anu Adegbola (01:33.986)

Hello Susan, welcome to PPC Live the podcast. 

Susan Yen (01:37.286)

Hey, thank you for having me. I'm so excited. Let's catch up again. 

Anu Adegbola (01:39.806)

Me too. 

Anu Adegbola (01:41.676)

I know, yes, and very much so. So again, Susan and I, what did I say there? Very much so. Very much so. As Susan and I, had the best time in San Diego, where we're at in San Diego for Brighton SEO. was a fantastic event. Susan was speaking. She did a great job amongst the other, you know, loads of like hero conf, you know, speakers. 

Anu Adegbola (02:07.68)

up there. That was my first one to go out there. San Diego is beautiful. Even in like late September, when the sun was out, I was out in sun dresses, having like a tea on a balcony. felt so lovely. It really is. But you live in also like a almost sunny all year round part of the world as well in Texas, right? 

Susan Yen (02:15.976)

Gorgeous, it's so nice. 

Susan Yen (02:30.157)

Yes, Texas. I escaped the New England weather because last year was the last winter I could live through. I ran away. 

Anu Adegbola (02:38.934)

You ran away and, and you ran away 

Anu Adegbola (02:42.748)

from Boston. Was it there? 

Susan Yen (02:44.859)

I ran 

Susan Yen (02:45.089)

away from, so I lived in Boston for a bit and then lived in New Hampshire and then, so I went from New Hampshire to Austin, Texas and while it's getting cold over there, I am outside enjoying this lovely weather. 

Anu Adegbola (02:54.316)

Okay. 

Anu Adegbola (02:58.868)

living your best life with the heat, man. Look, 

Susan Yen (03:00.454)

I hope yes. All set. 

Anu Adegbola (03:01.62)

we work hard all the time. We need to be able to choose the, we're allowed to choose the weather we love that we're going to experience all year round. You know, I love that for you. So good for you. So yeah, let's rein it in because we've been chatting a while now. We've not even introduced you to our lovely listeners. So Susan Yen is a results driven PPC strategist and team leader with eight plus years of experience. 

Anu Adegbola (03:28.012)

developing and managing high performing accounts across Google, Bing, Facebook ads and Instagram. So we're talking paid and social. She's led cross-functional teams, specialists, mentoring specialists and speaking at conferences as yeah, you'll have gathered from the fact that she spoke at San Diego, at Brighton SEO and loves to write about, you know, producing educational content. She's got a deep expertise in full funnel. 

Anu Adegbola (03:55.48)

performance marketing, campaign strategy, team development and data storytelling, and is passionate about growth testing and building brands with purpose. love that because, even that came in into our conversation before we started recording about how, you know, in your career at some point, you'd love to be with a brand that where you can look at the full funnel, the full, not just PPC, not just one channel. And everybody that just looks at that silo and just looks at their channel, it's irritating, it? 

Susan Yen (04:23.91)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (04:25.35)

It is. It's especially if, if, uh, cause everything is, always say this on so many conversations, it's a holistic approach, you know? It's not just if you can't put all your eggs in one basket, as many people would say. So if your people see doesn't work that you gotta, we gotta figure out, you know, the whole. 

Anu Adegbola (04:32.343)

Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (04:38.284)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (04:41.632)

Yeah, 

Anu Adegbola (04:43.112)

you got to figure it out. now Susan's fun fact, which I absolutely love. Susan is like royalty here, especially like the royalty that we have in the UK. Like God rest her soul. got, if you, UK listeners, you might remember the queen had two birthdays. So does Susan. Susan has two birthdays, one in January and one in July. Now I'll let you tell the story. How did that come about? 

Susan Yen (05:11.614)

So I was born in South Sudan and came here as a refugee and we didn't have any documents. And I came here before my parents did and I didn't know how to speak English at all. So when they were asking me when my birthday was, I don't even remember celebrating my birthday. We just celebrated everything. So they decided to make up a day and a year. So my sisters and my cousin who also came here, we all have January 1st, just a different year. 

Anu Adegbola (05:18.552)

Hmm. 

Anu Adegbola (05:28.407)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (05:41.665)

Right. 

Susan Yen (05:41.902)

And 

Susan Yen (05:42.062)

then four years later, my parents, my birth parents came to the United States and we're celebrating what we thought was my birthday. And they're like, no, what are we doing here? have, gee, that 

Anu Adegbola (05:52.14)

What? 

Susan Yen (05:54.648)

is not when your birthday is. It is in July. So, but I am, I like to celebrate both, but I do like the whole birthday month. So I feel bad for the people in my life. Now there's two months I take up. 

Anu Adegbola (05:58.066)

hilarious. 

Anu Adegbola (06:08.344)

May, 

Anu Adegbola (06:09.445)

you're just giving them a good reason to celebrate. I don't feel bad. I don't feel bad. Yeah, yeah. We need more things to celebrate. The world can seem so dark and miserable sometimes. We need to remember that there things to celebrate and as much as we can do that, let's do it. I'm all about birthday months as well and October is mine and I'm going to be traveling at the end of it because I love myself and I love my life. 

Susan Yen (06:12.738)

Yeah, you have to. You have to find ways to celebrate everything. 

Susan Yen (06:19.694)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (06:38.232)

work hard and therefore I need to treat myself. So yo birthday week, you probably won't get a podcast episode. Let me just pre one folks, but I'll be back. I'll be back after a week and I'm sure you guys will celebrate with me and understand. cause yeah. 

Susan Yen (06:53.496)

We'll 

Susan Yen (06:53.687)

be cheersing. We'll cheers you on your birthday. 

Anu Adegbola (06:55.744)

Honestly, 

Anu Adegbola (06:56.334)

have a champagne on October 29th. Have a glass of Prosecco champagne. If you don't drink it's fine. Yeah, no bubbles. Nice sparkling water. Like, you know, please celebrate on October 29th. That'll be fantastic. Anyway, enough of that. We've been speaking to over five minutes and we've not even started the fantastic show. I just thought to myself in our pre-chat, I didn't ask about what mistake that you're going to share about, but anyway, I'm sure it'll be interesting. I'm sure we'll learn. 

Susan Yen (07:01.806)

Bubbles. 

Anu Adegbola (07:25.592)

Lots from it. I'm excited for you guys to hear from Susan. I'm so grateful to her because yeah, it is not, it is not easy to just be like, okay, let's, let's talk about the mistakes and everything. if I, sorry, I do need to throw in this anecdote. And I was like, I was going to post about it on LinkedIn. I saw this lovely Instagram video of this guy trying to learn how to like spin a baton kind of thing. And it looked like, like 

Anu Adegbola (07:55.224)

thick one, like we are not just talking like some light stick, like a thick one. And you could see like the mid, the video was like two minutes long. So it's, there was like 10, 15 tries of him just messing up and hitting his arm and everything. And he are like, Oh God, that dude is in pain. But of course in the last few seconds we saw the clip of him actually doing it. And I was like, you know, you, cause that when you then did it, Oh, it looked easy. 

Susan Yen (08:08.335)

you 

Susan Yen (08:16.204)

Mm-hmm. 

Anu Adegbola (08:22.616)

because we'd seen the mistake. I literally was like, well done to that guy. After all that trial and all the mistakes he made and all the fumbling, he got it. And I'm like, his fingers must be in pain, but he's the victory from getting it. So that's why I'm live. It just made me think of why I love doing this podcast because I'm like, you hear about all the mistakes and maybe, and we see the successes that our fantastic experts are 

Susan Yen (08:37.177)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (08:50.443)

now. So. 

Anu Adegbola (08:52.438)

You know, imagine for yourself that even though you're, you're sitting here going, God, yeah, I made a mistake yesterday. I made a mistake the other day. That, that, that doesn't have to stop your journey. That doesn't have to stop your journey. And, these conversations about how we pick ourselves back up, the mistakes our experts have made so that you don't make the same ones. and to just give you yourself confidence to keep testing things out. So I'll hand it over to Susan. Susan, what F up would you like to share with us today? 

Susan Yen (09:16.115)

Okay. 

Susan Yen (09:19.812)

Well, I've had more than one. That's okay. We took it as learning lessons. think one of the, the one, like account structuring is something that I think people, and of course me, myself is, is not everything that you try and the ways that you structure something always makes the most amount of sense for, for that business or especially choosing the campaign types. But 

Anu Adegbola (09:24.801)

Yeah? 

Anu Adegbola (09:43.768)

Mm. 

Susan Yen (09:47.872)

As you're doing those account structures, there's always these automated things that you might miss and it just goes and spends. Clients but it's in a way that isn't great. So then of course, you your account structure looks great. From the outside, you have the reporting calls with your clients and you're seeing, this is amazing, these are great. And they, we can't figure out, know, where these results are coming from because you didn't structure it appropriately. So I always try to make sure, you know, to talk to the clients because they'll tell you. 

Susan Yen (10:17.38)

basically how to structure because their website is structured as such. I, I always tell my teammates and like, you don't work too hard on trying to overly, you know, sometimes you're like, I'm to have so many different types of ad groups and instead of segmenting them out and make them a little more granular so you can see the results better. Cause sometimes you're just stuffing a bunch of things in here. Cause we have a lot of dealerships and we'll do new and used vehicles, but 

Anu Adegbola (10:21.207)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (10:44.993)

You can't just do new and used because then you have different makes and models within those. And we're trying to figure out, you know, which cars and which types of cars are producing the most of amount of results instead of we're just getting very general, like here's used and new. And I'm like, no, let's figure out, I guess, the root of what is actually working for the audience and for the people in order to do that. We've got to do a better structure than just kind of generalizing certain things. And as PPC people, sometimes we're moving too quick. 

Susan Yen (11:12.867)

when we especially set up those campaigns. And to me, your structure is your foundation. And if you mess that up, you kind of have to start all over again. So I also did that with the P Performance Max too. would run and was like, you know, let's just run everything on PMAX that we all. 

Anu Adegbola (11:13.111)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (11:32.396)

So even if it's might be that that PMAX story, because what I'd like to do with you and the audience is actually take us through the whole, you know, discovering the error Sorry, like I feel like, and this is why I'm very grateful to our guests, because it's like, don't know, I know it might be unlocking some memories that you've managed to get away from, but sorry, 

Anu Adegbola (11:55.873)

we're gonna bring them back to the surface one last time. 

Susan Yen (11:58.627)

I'm not 

Susan Yen (11:59.641)

gonna be fast. 

Anu Adegbola (12:00.066)

So like, 

Anu Adegbola (12:00.697)

like, like let's zone in on one particular story and love you discovering the error who, how did you speak about it to the client? How like, let's like do that. Let's, let's do that. Give me one example of like, like that. 

Susan Yen (12:10.883)

Susan Yen (12:14.424)

I don't know how I ended up on the PMAX bandwagon and I am I speak on like PMAX is so great and that's all my usual my speaking engagements are usually about promoting PMAX and how it's great for lead gen and it is love-hate relationship with it of course so when I first came out I you know I didn't want to test it out didn't want to run it because I don't I want insight into the metrics 

Anu Adegbola (12:30.573)

Right. 

Anu Adegbola (12:37.793)

We don't know it. 

Susan Yen (12:40.17)

And then I had a newer client that spends a lot more money and I manage those clients and we set everything up on PMAX. And now we're over here talking about the traffic has increased drastically. The results are really great only to basically find out that those leads are not that great. And the traffic that's coming in, it's really hard to control. 

Anu Adegbola (13:05.419)

Okay. 

Susan Yen (13:10.078)

I don't know whether they're coming in from a display. that's pro- I'm assuming they just- whatever. and you weren't able to add negatives, now you can, and those content exclusions weren't really there. There's a lot more restrictions or, control than usual, but I would like more. So that was the thing is we also messed up on our conversions were not fixed appropriately. So PMAX is a conversion based campaign. And if- 

Anu Adegbola (13:19.448)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (13:26.104)

Yes. 

Susan Yen (13:39.818)

your conversions, if you're not already driving high quality conversions, you shouldn't run PMAX. And that was my mistake was not as so ignoring it, but saying, you know what, these, these conversions are good. They're okay. But not that they are correct and they are high quality leads. And I did not check with the team on what that quality looks like. And I just kind of, you know, worked off of whatever was already running. so yeah, so when they were, I was looking at the numbers and I'm 

Susan Yen (14:09.75)

So excited to have that monthly call with them. And they're like, no, Susan, we did not get this many numbers of leads. We got like three. it's, you now, we wasted a lot of money and that's a different kind of conversation where, you know, we tried something, it didn't work. And that's thousands of dollars worth of, now we gotta go back to square one and kind of retry again. But that's always a difficult conversation. But I did tell them, I was like, this is a newer campaign. 

Anu Adegbola (14:25.602)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (14:39.456)

Here's transparency of what this might look like. But that is something that I definitely missed was what is a conversion tracking setup look like? Because there were some page use stuff that I missed that normally it wouldn't even be in there. And then of course, Google always just adds random. 

Anu Adegbola (14:42.52)

Okay. 

Anu Adegbola (14:53.014)

an option. 

Anu Adegbola (14:55.956)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Susan Yen (14:57.621)

conversions that if you don't 

Susan Yen (14:58.931)

look 

Susan Yen (14:59.241)

and you don't check. Yeah, so there were some hidden stuff in there that I just always check your conversion track. I do it on a monthly basis now to make sure that nothing new is coming in there and I'm aware of what is changing, of course. So that was definitely a big one and they were not happy about that. But I think again, the conversation is this is 

Anu Adegbola (15:19.672)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (15:23.819)

We're always testing things and we're always trying to figure out what works for them and what doesn't work for them. And I think if you preemptively let them know that this didn't work. So we did end up switching some of the campaigns over and we started thinking about PMAX as a different entity in its own. It's a different part of the funnel altogether from display to search. yeah, learn my lesson there and that it takes a lot more time to set up PMAX. Take your time. 

Anu Adegbola (15:35.041)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (15:44.311)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (15:54.081)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (15:54.379)

take 

Susan Yen (15:54.639)

your time with it. It's not search, it's not display, it's not just, and I was too busy going, I can, you know, this is really easy. can just throw in a bunch of stuff and have that software do its thing. yeah, so we learn. It's not. 

Anu Adegbola (16:02.38)

ta ta ta. 

Anu Adegbola (16:05.784)

yeah, you're like, 

Anu Adegbola (16:10.106)

and what is like, you know, cause I was like getting insights of us too, as well, what your relationship like is with your, with your manager, the person, cause those kinds of meetings, do you have them with the manager there or you're the senior person, the senior person on those calls with the client? 

Susan Yen (16:30.091)

So normally because I have my own manager and then I manage clients but then I manage people that manage our clients. So I kind of do a little bit of both where I'll have conversations with my manager about, know, hey, this is something that happened or this is what's going on. This is the structure. But and then of course, like if my team has similar issues where we have a client that something happened, we messed up. How do we resolve it? And my thing is always the transparency aspect of it. 

Anu Adegbola (16:35.159)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (16:58.712)

is from the onboarding to whenever we always send clients the structure that we're talking about, the type of campaigns we're going to run, and then what is our goal? Like, what are they trying to accomplish? Because our job is to make that come true. So it's always an interesting conversation. But it's just like, what did we learn from it? And how do we move forward and provide a solution to the clients? Because that's ultimately what they want. Like, not everyone's perfect. So they're like, OK, we messed up. Take accountability for it. 

Anu Adegbola (17:11.212)

Yeah. Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (17:22.284)

Yeah, so. 

Susan Yen (17:27.559)

And then how are we going to solve this and make sure we keep an eye out and we don't make this mistake? Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (17:33.378)

Same mistakes. Again, 

Anu Adegbola (17:35.779)

yeah. So they are from the beginning of the conversations with them, what I'm hearing is that you impart the importance of like that you guys will keep testing things kind of thing. And so they have understanding of the scope of possible things that will go wrong. yeah, so speak on that. Could you please speak on that for like our audience? what, why is that important? And when should people really do that in terms of? 

Susan Yen (17:55.479)

Yep. 

Anu Adegbola (18:03.328)

ensuring that people are ready for things possibly going wrong. 

Susan Yen (18:07.306)

Yeah, I think that they should do that at any point at um, especially in the beginning, uh, every, honestly, every monthly meeting, reporting call that we do, we make sure that because this is like, we don't know that some things that I don't think are going to work, work for those. we can't 

Anu Adegbola (18:24.778)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (18:25.787)

copy and paste strategies from like a different company, different audience or similar. They might be doing the same things, but 

Susan Yen (18:33.343)

It's going to be a little bit different. It's a different brand. So what works, what we think might work, might not always work. There's different budgets. And I think too many times people come in with expectations. They may have gone to a conference and they're like, oh, I met this person and you guys are going to give me results tomorrow. And it's just resetting those expectations and saying, Hey, look, this is, we, this is where we're reaching out to people and we're marketing to people and people change. 

Anu Adegbola (18:41.794)

Mmm. Mmm. 

Susan Yen (19:02.312)

they evolve, there's different needs, there's different ways to search and shop for things now. And we need the data and in order to collect that data, there's gonna be some mistakes that like, that's what's gonna show us that, what I did did not work because the data that we've received is telling us that we need to go in a different direction. Not every single marketing strategy you create is going to work again, because people are just, people are different and they're unique. So I always say it's from the get go. 

Anu Adegbola (19:02.412)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (19:07.009)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (19:32.607)

always be transparent in that not everything we try. And hopefully you're working with an agency that does want to try things all the time, because you can't also get stale. So if they're not telling you that, to me, I'm like, then they're not trying to push the envelope on your marketing goals and your business growth. And only, mean, my mom would always say in order to succeed, you might have to skid your knees a couple of times to figure out, you know what? I did that, I rode the bike, maybe. 

Anu Adegbola (19:39.928)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (19:56.715)

Mm-hmm. 

Susan Yen (20:02.302)

And yeah, I try a different way, know, these are the paths that I shouldn't take. every month, we're always telling them, hey, look, this is what we did, this is we tried out, these are the results, this is our next set of steps. And that's just the process, always reassuring them and always telling them that, you know, we're always going to be trying to do, like an account could be performing really, really great, but there's always more that we can do, always more that we can try out. And I think at every level, you should always be telling your clients. 

Anu Adegbola (20:02.358)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (20:22.04)

Mm-hmm. 

Susan Yen (20:31.954)

hey look, we're gonna test this thing out and I think it's gonna be great, it might not. Just so that if it does go wrong, you've already had that conversation with them and you're not over-promising something that may not work. 

Anu Adegbola (20:46.07)

Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of the, especially the full, the, either with the performance maximum or the account structure one, are you good at being the one that spots the mistakes? Are there been occasion where it was someone else in the team that went, Susan that that thing you did that went wrong? And how has that gone? 

Susan Yen (21:10.034)

Yeah, I think because I manage a team is normally my conversations. If I do have to get on a call, it's usually something happened that was done over here. And again, it's still, think it's, it's still the re because we train our team to take accountability for things. And my one ask for everyone is always like, mistakes are going to happen. What you can't be doing is hiding it. So 

Anu Adegbola (21:20.799)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (21:37.741)

Sure. 

Susan Yen (21:39.378)

It's always like, okay, let's talk to the client and see what solutions can one can we provide. Taking accountability first, then what are solutions that we can provide for them? What are we going to do to fix this problem? Sometimes you can't fix a problem and unfortunately we have to give them refunds for things because again, we did this and it's more of an education thing where we will, my teammate and I will. 

Susan Yen (22:07.517)

schedule a meeting to go over, know, hey, is there a reason why you made this adjustment? Because I don't want to be talking at this person because they did that, made that decision for a reason for that account. And it just may not have been the best decision for that account and they just didn't see it. And that's why you always have another 

Anu Adegbola (22:18.392)

reason. 

Anu Adegbola (22:24.183)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (22:25.617)

set of eyes on the account sometimes because not everything again, you think is going to work. like, they may not have known. And that's usually it is that they missed it. Like, 

Susan Yen (22:33.681)

when you add keywords, automatically is broad match. And if you are rushing through things, and that's why you don't watch things on a Friday, if you're rushing through things, now you have a bunch of broad match and you haven't, it's like a couple of weeks go by, cause you're like, I'm gonna let it, I've launched a campaigns, I'm gonna let it do its thing. And then you go in there you have a bunch of broad match stuff running and you're now wasting a ton of just money. So it's just. 

Anu Adegbola (22:37.578)

Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. 

Susan Yen (23:00.407)

making sure repetition is talking to the clients and you know taking accountability for it and then us being like, okay, we're going to work on this together internally and use it as more of a lesson thing. Like we do five minutes of PPC just to be like, hey, let's not forget these things to double check. And, but again, they may have made the decision really, really thinking that that was the right thing to do for that account. And I'm not going to ever blame someone on, know, like you made a decision and it just wasn't. 

Susan Yen (23:29.872)

the right way and that's fine. That's it. So, yeah, just calm and stay safe. 

Anu Adegbola (23:30.402)

right one. 

Anu Adegbola (23:32.832)

Now that, 

Anu Adegbola (23:34.553)

that's good. That's good. That's, that's great managing managerial tips for people right here on how to deal with the team as to, you know, I've said that in like previous episodes of like when the issue happens, don't start the priority shouldn't be who do we blame. It should be what's the solution. Why was, why did the mistake happen? How do we avoid it? You know, for future was it. 

Susan Yen (23:53.885)

Thank 

Anu Adegbola (23:56.684)

you know, was this something that you saw somewhere? Was it a best practice that someone mentioned? Be careful about best practices, you know? It's not the same. It's changing all the time. So yeah, just being patient with the team that you're managing. Before we get to the next stage of like the whole talking about, let's mistake that we've seen in AI, you know, how would you like to just, you know, in terms of like the takeaways from the story in terms of what you want people to leave people with remembering? 

Susan Yen (24:00.757)

Okay. 

Susan Yen (24:03.74)

Yup. 

Anu Adegbola (24:26.036)

in terms of like, especially like how you do things differently based on those particular mistakes that you've made. 

Susan Yen (24:33.116)

I think always take your time with structuring whichever there's going to be so many there's just always so many changes happening with whatever platform you work on. Take your time setting that stuff up. Yes, we have AI and it can help us write these ads. It can help us do all these new things and stuff. But if we're rushing through the foundation of how we create our marketing strategies and our structures, mistakes will 

Anu Adegbola (25:00.492)

Hmm. 

Susan Yen (25:02.319)

tend to happen a 

Susan Yen (25:03.519)

lot more that could be avoidable And just understanding also that we are in an industry that is ever changing and we always want to continue to push the envelope and always be testing. it's okay if something doesn't work. At least you tried it and we learned from it. mean, Performance Max now is getting better because people are trying it and they are giving feedback to Google and Bing. 

Anu Adegbola (25:06.093)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (25:18.861)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (25:30.972)

on those platforms to make them better, to make us better at our jobs and make better decisions for our clients. So definitely take your time and always just keep pushing the envelopes. 

Anu Adegbola (25:40.0)

Amazing. 

Anu Adegbola (25:40.52)

Yeah, take your time guys. And I think one acronym that I like to add to our long list of acronyms is like ABT, always be testing. Always be testing. So yeah, guys, remember that. Always, always be testing and propose everything as a test proposal so that even if something goes wrong, we can be like, well, this is what we learned from it and we know not to do it that way. And that's always a valid response. 

Susan Yen (26:03.478)

No. 

Anu Adegbola (26:07.98)

So anyway, let's get into taking the spotlight, the shining bright like investigatory light off you. Let's take it, move it towards, you you survived it, well done. Let's now look at our industry and to, you know, maybe like accounts that you've taken over or just in general from what people, you know, talk about, you know, lot of people will be like, this is how I do things, this is how I do things kind of thing. 

Anu Adegbola (26:34.34)

what are you, would you say are the big F-ups that people are making in terms of like, yeah, paid search right now, especially with the whole using it with using AI, especially are there any things that stick out to you? 

Susan Yen (26:46.971)

This is a terrible thing to I'm a very honest and transparent. I think people, we're getting lazy. I think. In that when we get clients that come to us, you can tell that yes, things can be automated, which is really great. But in some instances, we are using that too far of an extent. 

Anu Adegbola (26:55.147)

Okay, yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (27:05.848)

Mmm. Mmm. 

Susan Yen (27:14.043)

where that human touch in our ads and the way that we run our marketing strategy still needs to be there. And we can't just, know, it's supposed to be an assistant, it's supposed to help make our jobs easier, it's not supposed to do all of the work. So we are getting upset at these campaigns that aren't working. I'm like, well, that's because you're depending solely on this algorithm and this ad to do the work for you. And that just doesn't work out. Our ad copies are starting to look very generic. 

Anu Adegbola (27:28.301)

Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (27:36.247)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (27:43.802)

because you can tell you went on whatever you copied and paste. And now when you're looking on searches, everything looks very, very similar. And it's just as I don't think it has quite there yet with making things that unique. So and you just can't, if you're going to give it instructions to give you ads, give it instructions to give you good quality ads. So I think that that's thing is we're getting a little lazy. needed to start paying closer attention to and be intentional. 

Anu Adegbola (28:03.341)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (28:06.658)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (28:13.986)

with how we utilize those platforms tonight. 

Anu Adegbola (28:14.05)

Hmm. 

Anu Adegbola (28:17.89)

For sure, like it's an area of like this whole like AI revolution that I'm going to really be like honing in on, know, coming months, next year is actually about how the role of the expert and how it takes actually a PPC expert or an SEO expert or graphic designer expert to actually use these AI tools. And you can tell when it's an amateur that has used 

Anu Adegbola (28:47.48)

the tool because of the output. And I think people are feeling like if they're like, oh, they're getting away with it, they can do so much more because they've just used AI even because, and you literally go to yourself and you look at the output and we're like, we know you just copied and pasted this because this is not, this is not, this is not it. We're not using critical thinking and analogy that I really want people to sit with is like when we're a student and especially those like 

Anu Adegbola (29:14.168)

the ones of us who are like really that high performance, high achievers kind of ones among us, you know, you you might, you'll do a homework or you'll do a piece of work that you've been given and you know the standard of work you've put in and then you send, know, you hand it in and maybe you're expecting an A and you come back with a B and you're pissed. Are you literally going back to the teacher going, sorry, I gave my best into this. 

Anu Adegbola (29:41.438)

all night, I did all my research, I quoted people, I'm like, you know, because we know the quality. If you're not handing a piece of work that you know the quality, now, you know, AI is going to take that away from you. And it's just going to be like, I don't know, like what's, why should anyone read the work if it's AI's work? It's not, it's not your work. And, and right now, can you even if the, if the teacher gives you a B or C, 

Anu Adegbola (30:10.84)

Can you argue because it's not your work? if you want to argue it and the teacher then goes, well, okay, explain yourself, explain all your reasoning. Can you? If you cannot explain the reasoning behind the product that the AI has given, you've done a bad prompt, you've not instructed it well, because it takes an expert to see that the output is at the high quality level that it should be. 

Susan Yen (30:14.956)

Mm-hmm. 

Susan Yen (30:31.032)

Mm-hmm. 

Anu Adegbola (30:39.736)

So if juniors are using AI, I think it's very dangerous because they don't know what good quality should look like. You know, so they'll, they'll do a prompt that sounds nice and they'll look at it and they'll be like, well, that looks good. So now more than ever, I really think that, you know, AI has its place after you've learned the fundamentals of whatever industry that you're working in. I think that is absolutely important. 

Susan Yen (31:06.712)

Mm-hmm. 

Susan Yen (31:10.073)

I don't know if, you know, when you're in middle school or preschool education, whatever, is in the math classes, they would say, show me your work. You can't just show me the results. You need to show me how, the steps and that it, so, because it proves that you put in the effort and you put in the work and you know how to get to this result. And with AI, everyone's doing this thing where they're just, I want results quickly without putting in that. 

Susan Yen (31:38.776)

work and you can't explain yourself if you haven't fully. I think especially like, because I have four sisters and they're in school and that like how did you get from point A to point B and even in reportings when you explain to your clients how, what are the results, what did you do, what happened and then you know you can't just have AI like and if you don't know you're like oh you know this thing did it for me. 

Anu Adegbola (32:01.016)

It will happen. 

Susan Yen (32:08.364)

hard to explain. then they go, well, then why do I have you? 

Anu Adegbola (32:12.696)

Yeah, yeah, 

Anu Adegbola (32:14.996)

yeah. I mean, if you're using AI to make what you have, because obviously, especially when you're a reporter, and that's a very good example, like, you know, if you just go, oh, AI, these are the graphs, give the client the summary. Actually, you should have gone through that, a brain dump of what you think the summary is. 

Anu Adegbola (32:36.576)

And maybe AI cleans it up and makes it put it in like, okay, so let's start with this bit that you said, and then go onto this bit and then let's tie it all together with this bit. It's all your thoughts put in a nicer format. If you make AI think for you, I think one of the biggest failings or where the biggest area we're being caught out is because it's called artificial intelligence. We're like, it's intelligent. 

Susan Yen (32:46.805)

Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (33:05.002)

is intelligent because there's intelligence there so it must be intelligent enough to do what I should do better than I would and you're like no! 

Anu Adegbola (33:15.288)

Yeah, that's another way. Maybe I'll do a talk. We called it wrong. We named it wrong. AI artificial intelligence. Everybody just thinks that it's because it's because it's intelligent. That's good enough. So. 

Susan Yen (33:22.835)

I'm one. 

Susan Yen (33:27.479)

It's 

Susan Yen (33:27.679)

funny because everyone will say, I use AI, I use AI. And it just gets thrown out there. And I'm like, what do you use it for? How do you use it? You 

Susan Yen (33:37.599)

can't just promote yourself as an agency or a marketer who says, I use AI and that is your selling point. I want to know how you're utilizing it. Are you utilizing it to design stuff for your clients? What are you? Because there's so many different parts of AI and every single platform has 

Anu Adegbola (33:49.377)

Yeah. 

Susan Yen (33:56.438)

their own versions of AI and it's just, it's insane when people don't want to clarify or can't clarify how they utilize this thing. I'm like, do it. You could say you use it for everything. That's okay, but that sounds a little, um, not sure how I feel about that, but figure out it's just, yeah, I'm just throwing it out there and hoping for the. 

Anu Adegbola (34:10.53)

Yeah. Yeah. What, what, yeah. What's the point of you? 

Anu Adegbola (34:17.146)

That's yeah. So, you know, I, I think a message we can leave, you know, audiences with is like, the manager's role is still very important. Expert's role is still very important. Learning the basic learning the fundamentals, especially when you're like, start building a team, the junior team, teach them the paid search fundamentals before you start telling them. 

Anu Adegbola (34:39.96)

This is how we, where we should use AI. I hope the order, the order of the training for people is continue to be good, continues to be good. So yeah, Susan, this has been a great conversation. I made sure to ask Susan at the beginning going, I hope you don't have a hard stop because we will just chat away. But yeah, I feel that that's some very great lessons that we've given people with. 

Susan Yen (34:43.124)

Yes. 

Anu Adegbola (35:08.56)

but yeah, let's, let's round up now, but just before we're, before Susan leaves us, she knows the question that's coming up. If your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be? 

Susan Yen (35:16.726)

Susan Yen (35:25.129)

I don't know if anyone has seen there's a movie called the proposal What it's yes Yes, and it says I think the adventures is not I'm gonna call them adventures the situations that go through where it's like this tug-and-pull Game and they're learning about each other as as they you know get to know 

Anu Adegbola (35:29.022)

yes, the war with Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock, yes. 

Anu Adegbola (35:40.855)

Yeah 

Susan Yen (35:47.078)

one another and his flying family a little bit more and it's just funny so it's there's like certain situations where you know you have really good days and they have really good situations that they happen and they understand each other so to me like that's the metrics of just you're always trying to get you know you're always trying to learn and there's always going to be like really good funny moments and there's going to be moments that you might want to crawl in in a ball somewhere i think at one point she's on the boat and she's talking too much and flies off the boat 

Susan Yen (36:14.678)

So there's gonna be moments where you think something's gonna work and it just doesn't and the grandma's just doing wild things and that's your client always like keeping an eye on you but they're a little crazy. So it's just, I think the bad's like the closest because it brings out every aspect of in terms of the turmoil that we go through and the goods and the bads and the understanding. At the end, I'm just a hopeless romantic. it always, and you you make that decision, she makes that decision at the end where she's like, you know what, I'm actually gonna be honest. 

Anu Adegbola (36:37.218)

Hey! 

Susan Yen (36:43.727)

and then tell everyone the truth because I love what I do and that's what we should do and he's like I agree and it's just a nice that's like my favorite moment that makes the most amount of logical sense I guess as a comparison. 

Anu Adegbola (36:57.288)

I used 

Anu Adegbola (36:57.789)

to be a hopeless romantic and I don't know I've gotten a bit of a cold heart now. I'm like not the villain of the story. not all like men suck. Let's go down there. love men of grief. Some men of grief. 

Susan Yen (37:01.902)

No, we need to 

Anu Adegbola (37:18.648)

Let's call it that like yes, this is correct And even like a fun comedy with Ryan Reynolds check it Susan thank you so much for that. That has been such a great conversation and if we people want to find You know more deal the learnings you've been actually replacing some videos as well even on LinkedIn as well recently I've given it away 

Susan Yen (37:21.175)

The book is definitely interesting. 

Susan Yen (37:29.653)

Great. 

Susan Yen (37:46.521)

Yeah. 

Anu Adegbola (37:47.286)

Where can people find your great learnings that you share? 

Susan Yen (37:51.523)

You can always find me on LinkedIn, Susan Yen, and then on our website, Search Lab Digital on PPC Real Talk. My website is also called PPC Real Talk, so that's where you'll see the videos. You'll see 

Susan Yen (38:03.998)

tons and of blogs I've written. There's also the slides from my previous presentations that are also there. All the resources and just throwing them in there and that's where they live. So feel free to check those out. 

Anu Adegbola (38:06.146)

Nice. 

Anu Adegbola (38:10.135)

Nice. 

Anu Adegbola (38:15.72)

Amazing 

Anu Adegbola (38:16.341)

and when you have time we'd love to get you to write for the PPC live blog if that's possible. We don't mean... Amazing! 

Susan Yen (38:22.004)

I think we can find some time. Between me watching the proposal again for the 500th 

Susan Yen (38:27.144)

time, I will check. Of course. Thanks for having me. 

Anu Adegbola (38:28.888)

I love it, I love it, amazing. Thank you so much for that Susan 

Anu Adegbola (38:34.754)

Pleasure. 

Anu Adegbola (38:37.115)

Well, I told you that there'll be lots of laughs, didn't I? That was a fantastic conversation I had with Susan. I really, really enjoyed it. I hope you did too. And remember, really, it's all about being patient when you're building these campaigns and being aware of, you know, those sneaky little settings that Google will add that was not there a week ago. So yeah, let's not, you know, be, you know, deceived into thinking that, we're living in AI world like, 

Anu Adegbola (39:06.127)

You know, everything is automated, you know, performance max, so easy to set up is not always easy. and it's not that it's not, but it's not easy. It's not as simple as you might expect it to be. So take your time, be patient with setting those campaigns up for all the information and the full transcript of that fantastic conversation. Please go to podcast.ppc.live and you'll get all the details for it and how you can find Susan on LinkedIn. Also, yeah. PPC live [go to ppc.live] events is 

Anu Adegbola (39:35.691)

All very much on our doorstep now, if you're listening to this before October the 22nd, there's time for you to buy a ticket and join us in East London with Tug agencies, Tug Agency's fantastic offices, rooftop office. I know it might be cold, so it's not going to be like a balcony kind of networking time, but they've still got fantastic views from up there. So I really love it if you could join us for three fantastic talks, some networking times. 

Anu Adegbola (40:03.257)

We might even have the likes of Boris Beceric coming, joining us all the way from Germany. So, and yeah, he's one, there's an expert in his field. He keeps people so engaged on LinkedIn with some of his memes but also very, very insightful feedback on like the audits that he does and the experiences he has with clients. So yeah, you definitely don't want to miss that. You might even get to meet someone that could be a future employer, someone that could, you could be working with as a freelancer. 

Anu Adegbola (40:32.013)

Awesome brands in there. For agencies, we're giving two free tickets. If you're an agency and that you're coming for one free ticket that you've bought, we're going to give you a promo code to get two free tickets for a brand, client that you work on. yeah, just go to send an email to hello at ppcliveuk.com if you're an agency coming and you'd like a free ticket for your client. So yeah, hope to see you then. Before I leave you, I'm also delighted to share that I am taking on coaching clients. 

Anu Adegbola (41:01.381)

for mindset coaching, so PPC mindset coaching. And yeah, if you just go to themarketingannu.com, you'll be able to get all the details for that. So yeah, please join me. Yeah, go on themarketingannu.com for that. That'd be great. But yeah, for now, I hope you have enjoyed the show and I look forward to bringing more PPC F-ups and triumphs next week. Thank you. Bye.