EP341 - When ‘I Don’t Know’ Isn’t Enough ft Andrea Cruz

Anu Adegbola (00:10)
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 from 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. Every week I speak to a different PPC expert about their biggest F up, but also about how they've turned things around, the lesson they've learned and how they decided to do things differently that led to the success of their career.

And again, I can't think of anyone, you know, as successful to give you such a brilliant story as my guest this week, Andrea Cruz. She, yeah, from the US is the head of B2B at Tinuiti a very fantastic, long lasting agency. And she just shares some of the lessons of even things that she's done repeatedly that after a while she realized was a mistake and

Due to mentorship, she was able to turn things around and do things better, especially when it came to communications with her clients. So yeah, let's go speak to Andrea.

Anu Adegbola (01:12)
Hello Andrea, welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Andrea Cruz (01:16)
Hi Anu, thank you for having me, it's always a pleasure to connect with you.

Anu Adegbola (01:21)
it's such a, such a delight. Like I was, I was saying about how you are, you are doing the PPC live branding better than me with your gorgeous red jumper and your pink, the pink love size. We know that you're getting ready for Valentine's day. So thank you very much for reminding, especially the guys who are going to watch this. They're now going to go, Ooh, ⁓ I need to remember to ask to get something for my girlfriend or wife. So.

Thank you. Thank you for helping the, ⁓ the people in relationship out there for us. That's so amazing. and yeah, Andrea is one of those people where, who I have absolutely followed react religiously, like on LinkedIn and Twitter and Twitter was Twitter. I liked the way, what was it that Kirk said, who I interviewed, he's like, Twitter was great. X is not, you know, and it's like this, but that's the cleared extinction. Twitter was such a lovely space for the PPC.

environment and community and think a lot of us have now moved to LinkedIn and do more stuff on LinkedIn then. Like do you still hang out on Twitter at all?

Andrea Cruz (02:24)
⁓ Rarely. I still haven't. ⁓ I know a lot of people close their accounts. I kept mine and I would go in there and once in a while ask people something. Because there's people I have on Twitter slash X. I don't think I know who they are. So I've kept some of those relationships there. Because I think that's a wonderful thing that the internet did for all of us. How did we all get connected even though we're in opposite sides of the world? Your case and mine.

Anu Adegbola (02:25)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it was

just those COVID years for me, especially like 2019, 2020, I really got in depth and figure out, found out all the folks in the US who do paid search. That's how I got to know all of you guys. And then we had that whole, the wonderful in-person meeting in Boston last year in June and to just be like, ⁓ you're real and hug people actually in person. That was really wonderful.

Um, but yeah, guys, yeah, my, my, audience usually are like, I know you're rambling on again, introduce us to your wonderful guests. So let me do that just now. Andrea is an award winning B2B digital marketer and thought leader with a proven track record in speaking, publishing, driving innovation on a global stage. is absolute fact. She's recognized as the world's, as one of the world's top

expert and has, and, ⁓ as one of only 13 LinkedIn certified marketing experts in North America with more than 15 years of experience, she specializes in building effective strategies for large scale B2B accounts, leveraging a solid foundation in data analytics, project management, and operational consulting. She's known for hands-on approach and delivering value across the functions from international purchasing.

to process optimization, which is why you're the head of B2B in Tinuiti. Yeah, head of B2B of digital marketing there in Tinuiti. You've had such a fantastic career. You're one of those, whenever you share that new title you've hit, I'm like, yeah, well deserved, about time. Because like genuinely, it's like, yeah, about time. Of course you're of B2B, who else is it gonna be? You've been doing great work for such a long time. How does that make you feel?

Andrea Cruz (04:41)
I want to say that it's always weird to talk about myself in that sense because ⁓ I get the pleasure in backstage, let's call it like that, we talk about this of how I'm doing what I love. Very appropriate. But I wake up in the morning and I'm happy, I get to work and I get to work with people that are passionate about it.

Anu Adegbola (04:45)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, you really do! You really do. I love doing this thing.

Andrea Cruz (05:07)
that will geek out about how we are the best division at Tinuiti, no questions asked, because we talk about B2B and people keep thinking, B2B, that sounds so boring, it's so slow. There's groundbreaking work that is happening in B2B and how we are positioning ourselves and our brands to be better. ⁓ So I always find it exciting when we're looking at maturity curve and it's a...

Anu Adegbola (05:21)
Wow.

Mm.

Andrea Cruz (05:32)
a brand that is really nascent but they willing to let us go in and do a relift of everything they're doing and think differently. So that's always very exciting. ⁓ as a personal story, I struggled a lot when people told me, Andrea, you're so passionate about what you do. And I didn't notice it at that time. I thought it was just doing my job. It took me years to come to the realization.

Anu Adegbola (05:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Andrea Cruz (06:00)
that it was true, that I am actually a little different than some people because I wake up and I want to do this and I want to learn about it and I want to be better about it and how do we change perceptions and I think that's something that's different about me.

Anu Adegbola (06:04)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's fantastic. do tend to relate with that kind of passion. because it's, people will be like, why did you start PPC live? Like, you mean, it's, you have a job and it's not, and it's because I don't know, there's so much of it that I feel that we should be doing and talking about it. And I want to feel, I always feel like I want to be like in charge of my career and just be like,

I like this thing I'm doing and I'm doing it well, not for the paycheck. Yeah, the paycheck is important. you know, I make sure any late invoices I chase, but you know, most of the days of the month, I'm just doing the work because I'm literally like, this has to be done this way. we have to do it better. no, no, no. This is the better way. Not just, I'm just going to do what my manager told me to do. It's, it's, there's something more to that. And that, that's what gives you longevity in any industry.

Andrea Cruz (06:49)
I would agree.

Anu Adegbola (07:11)
and makes it worth it because at the end of the day, you spend like, I don't know, 40, 50 years of your career and you just did what your manager told you to do and took home a paycheck. I think that sounds like a very boring way to live the life. I hear people like, yeah, are doing something that they do wake up in the morning and go, yes, yes, I get to do this. I was saying, we were talking about earlier about how is it possible to be stressed about doing something you enjoy? And I feel like we can get like that, you know, cause it's like.

So first thing you think about when you wake up and it's like, that might not be healthy. People might hear that like that is not healthy, but look, we enjoy it. It's fine. We, we manage it with our, with our health. But again, another fun thing that I'm actually going to leave you to say it because I like introducing tell you you saying a fun fact about my guests. So Andrea, what is your fun fact?

Andrea Cruz (08:00)
So this is weird but when I lived in Venezuela I would go to this gym to train and you know do weight lifting and all of that and I became a model for personal trainers to put in their posture so you would go into the gym and you would see a poster of me training. ⁓ So I did that for a little bit back in the day so that's my fun fact unrelated to my work today. ⁓

Anu Adegbola (08:19)
Wow. Wow.

Wow.

my God, unrelated to

the career. love that. But like, how did they approach you? And were you like immediately, yes, yes, I'd love to do that. Were you guys that confident? You're like, yeah, I'd look good in a bikini, on a poster. I don't know, on a spot.

Andrea Cruz (08:33)
Yeah.

I was like

19 years old. It was a different time. A different time, different body too.

Anu Adegbola (08:46)
Right,

were all very confident when we were 19. We all very confident with our body at 19. I know, I know.

Andrea Cruz (08:53)
And

I think social media wasn't as big as today. think today would be even more intimidating because it would not be poster and things like that. It would be like online and I think that feels different. I am that all that it was posters and not social media.

Anu Adegbola (09:00)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

⁓ gosh. Wow. But yeah. And how long did you do it for?

Andrea Cruz (09:07)
So, yeah.

It wasn't a long time. Let's call it six months. Because it was like a marketing campaign that some personal trainers were doing for their own collateral.

Anu Adegbola (09:14)
Yeah. well. Yeah. ⁓

amazing. I'm sure you brought a lot of business for that. Those that personal those personal traders. That's the thing, right? Because they're like, ⁓ look, like that's what you do to get the business. Now, I don't definitely don't see those kind of posters anymore. I think they'll they'll be like, yeah, or the you know, the whole objectification of things might be a bit of an issue. But well.

Anyway, let's get into what that fantastic conversation is going to be about as, as our audience now know, I get some of the best people in our industry now feel to share some big mistakes that they've made just to hone in on that fact that a mistake does not mean the end of your career. It doesn't mean, my God, your failure and that's it. You know, you can always turn things around and we get the best stories and we get the best learnings from when things

go wrong and in this way, you you can hear about some mistake an expert has made so that you don't make it and you know, you can make your own individual unique mistake, but not the ones that have already been made. So yeah, I'm going to hand it over to Andrea now to share with us. What is the F of you'd like to share with us today, Andrea?

Andrea Cruz (10:30)
Yeah and I'll say too, I've learned in my growth as an individual that the mistakes I've made too are I don't think if somebody would have told me I'll just be careful with this if I would have avoided them ⁓ but I appreciated the people that helped me get through it so the quote-unquote mistake I want to talk about is something that actually happened to me repeatedly

Anu Adegbola (10:48)
Mmm.

Andrea Cruz (10:59)
as I kept advancing in my career. Because there was a point that I was no longer the sole person managing, for example, a paid search campaign. I don't know the day to day of some of the accounts we're handling because they are very large. In smaller accounts, it's easier to have that conversation, understand all the ins and outs. So one thing I noticed is as my career was progressing, and accounts go more complex, is I would have clients

Anu Adegbola (10:59)
Okay. Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (11:26)
coming and say, hey, you guys are doing this incorrectly, or this is not right, or you guys promised this and I was expecting something else. And I would freeze in some of those cases, because I didn't know the exact answer. It's very difficult to go from being the day-to-day person that implements, has all the communication back and forth with the client, to now the person representing a team that is doing a wonderful, fantastic job, especially when they come very hard at you.

Anu Adegbola (11:39)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (11:55)
That was very difficult for me. And

I encountered that more than once where I would freeze in a moment. And what I've learned is with a lot of coaching from a lot of people, who was my beautiful manager for years, Emily Kanoff, two more senior people like Jesse Eisenberg here at Tinuiti, how do you protect your team? Because you know that they're doing the job. And sometimes,

Anu Adegbola (12:17)
Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (12:18)
Clients are just pressuring you. That could be one. Two, they have a piece of the story but they don't have the full puzzle. Yes, we told you we're gonna achieve this but then a thousand other things change. So which ones can you come up with? One thing that also helped me a lot in my career is listening to what your rebuttal is to the situation and buy yourself some time. Can you explain me more about that?

Anu Adegbola (12:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

Andrea Cruz (12:47)
Can you double that

Anu Adegbola (12:47)
Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (12:48)
on that? So you can get that time that you need to put your thoughts together and actually speak back an answer. Because sometimes you just need a second to collect what you are hearing and actually be able to provide something back. ⁓ That was something also as a person that English is not my first language. ⁓ No, I don't think in Spanish, but I need like an extra second to connect.

Anu Adegbola (12:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

and

Andrea Cruz (13:13)
my Spanish brain with the situation, with the risk, with what I know, with, with, with, with. I just need to buy myself some time. So how do I buy myself time to then be able to provide an eloquent response back? Does that make sense?

Anu Adegbola (13:17)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, absolutely. So to just clarify, the mistake is, let's say you're working with a client, they, the result has gone bad or even just something, they have a question, you don't have the answer for them and you just decide not to respond to that. Is that what you're trying to say? What happens? What's the thing that happens kind of thing? So a client is asking about something, is it good or positive or, and then

you don't have a response so you don't respond. What, what is the mistake that happens?

Andrea Cruz (14:00)
say, I know I would not respond and that would create problems because you know a lot of times in your career they tell you it's okay to say I don't know. That's not always true. That is not always true especially as you get more senior in your career. You are expected to have a point of view. You are expected to be able to provide something back. So when you say

Anu Adegbola (14:03)
Okay.

Yeah, yeah, that's a question. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. To know.

and then

Andrea Cruz (14:25)
let me get back to you and talk to the team. That sometimes doesn't fly anymore. There's a point in your career where saying I don't know, it's not always a good idea. Depending on the situation too.

Anu Adegbola (14:30)
That's not funny.

It's not a good idea. Okay. So yeah.

So do you have an example of the time where you, you didn't respond and how did the client react? What was the point that made you go, Oh my God, I really made a mistake in this, in doing it this way. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Andrea Cruz (14:49)
they were furious. They were absolutely furious. Yeah,

yeah, it was evident that they were furious. ⁓

Anu Adegbola (14:58)
as in they'll

come back with like follow up communication and then just because you're nervous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in those moments, were you the one that then in, you know, how, so yeah, in this moment you've realized you've made a mistake, client is angry. How do you keep your composure?

Andrea Cruz (15:01)
the body language, the tone, changes. It goes bad very fast, quickly.

In Spanish we say you swallow hard. In other words, you know you made a mistake but you are in the situation and now you have to pivot at the moment. ⁓ Does that make sense? saying? Does it translate somewhat? Yeah, and I am a very emotional person. That's my...

Anu Adegbola (15:22)
Okay.

Okay. Okay.

Yes, no that that absolutely makes sense and yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you

Andrea Cruz (15:42)
whole thing. I like to say I'm really good at my job because I don't like conflict so I never let it get to conflict. And sometimes when you go into those situations you just freeze and it happens. It happens and I think again as you progress in your career sometimes saying I don't know I'll get back to you is not an okay answer because there are things you must know period.

Anu Adegbola (15:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

complex. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

is not a good, yeah.

Yes,

yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so in those moments, like what's, what is like a good timeline? Because I'd actually argue like, this is something, especially when working in agencies that it's actually, I, you know, I want to make sure that we, we, send out a very good and clear message of, yeah, don't say you don't know, but also don't necessarily respond within seconds with a bad answer. So what is.

Andrea Cruz (16:32)
Yes!

Anu Adegbola (16:35)
What is like the good timeline of like, yeah, think for a few minutes, but not a few days. What is like a good timeframe of like, okay, you've done, you've responded quick enough, but you've already also given yourself time to think.

Andrea Cruz (16:49)
Yeah, ask questions back.

Anu Adegbola (16:51)
Yeah, okay, so straight away even ask questions, follow up questions. Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (16:54)
Yeah, and I personally have

questions already prepared in my brain.

Anu Adegbola (17:00)
Okay.

Andrea Cruz (17:01)
Hell me a ton.

Anu Adegbola (17:03)
So what kind of pre-prepared questions, regardless of the issue someone, a client is going to come up, you know, will be good to us.

Andrea Cruz (17:09)
Can you clarify

what you meant by X? What is the timeline that you were hoping for? What was the timeline the team communicated? Are you aware of anything that you know about the situation that can give more context so they can talk to you about why they don't agree with whatever they were aware of? ⁓ There are a lot of things like that that you can create your own questions.

Anu Adegbola (17:12)
Okay.

Okay.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (17:36)
to actually

be able to buy yourself time and create a response that makes sense in the situation as well.

Anu Adegbola (17:43)
Okay, all right. And in these kind of moments, you also like mentioned some really the people who were really helpful with you in terms of helping like, you know, mentoring you and and were there some people who kind of were like the challenge, I think apart from the clients asking the questions, who are the people who could be challenging that you might not think to think of at the moment that could be the ones that that gets in the way? Or is it usually just a

a client and you situation that that happens that has happened before.

Andrea Cruz (18:14)
No,

the culture of Tinuiti we don't have that feeling of. You did something wrong. I'll give you another example that happened in a previous life. But it's always about understanding what's going on and how we're going to fix it. I think having that solutions oriented helps a ton, especially if the team surrounding you has that same mentality. It's not about blank because we are already in this problem.

Anu Adegbola (18:25)
Good.

Yes.

Mm. Mm.

Situation,

Andrea Cruz (18:42)
So how do

we move from where we are to where we want to be? And I think that's also a great piece of feedback for anyone that's a manager. Sometimes we hyper fixate on how did you got here and why did you say that? And why was the answer? It's like, does it truly matter? At this point, where are we and where we want to go? Sometimes that's usually just the best way to approach things forward. Yes, you have to document all of that.

Anu Adegbola (18:45)
Yes.

Yeah.

and

Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (19:10)
But it's really important to think about that. Okay, I don't care about those details, but what do you need out of me to be able to get you to where you are? And does that align where everybody's happy? We are happy, clients are happy, team is happy. And sometimes that's a balance that it's difficult to strike. But having that solutions oriented and identifying what are the priorities that we need to solve on both sides usually leads to a happier team, a happier client and better results.

Anu Adegbola (19:20)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely. Yep. I agree. Um, and let's say we want to give people a, um, kind of like clues in terms of what to expect from a client, because I feel like some of those questions, you can preempt it. You can maybe look at your dashboard or do something and be like, the client is going to ask about this or the client is going to ask somebody, is there any way of preparing ourselves to kind of be able to preempt?

Andrea Cruz (20:01)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (20:10)
when a client might have a question.

Andrea Cruz (20:12)
Yeah, and have a brief. Do you also understand what is the market landscape the client is in? With AI and the wonderful news, I think it's easier for team members to actually put briefs together when you have like a notebook alone, which everybody has access to. Can you upload all of the reports and have a manager or a person more senior coming and actually ask questions? How is the industry doing? What are the latest news about the competitors?

Anu Adegbola (20:14)
Yeah.

Yes.

Andrea Cruz (20:41)
What are the latest earnings reports? There's so much information right now that it's available and everything can get summarized by you. It might not be perfect, but it will give you an idea of the market, current state, and then talk to your client about, to your team about where things are at and where do you want to move them forward. And also, if I can solve a problem for you guys today, what is that problem?

Anu Adegbola (20:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (21:07)
⁓ I always

like to ask that question. If I can solve one or two things for you guys, that it's a roadblock, what are those?

Anu Adegbola (21:14)
Absolutely. That's actually a really great way to definitely that preempts, you know, because they are thinking they might be like, we have this issue. if you already like try to even pull it out of them, it builds trust. It's bells better. I'm like, my God, this is someone that actually cares about not just the whole, the clicks and the revenue and the traffic, but actually what's actually going to make a difference to my business. Yeah. That's the, so is that kind of thing that you'd say like, how often should that kind of conversation.

come up, should it be like maybe, I mean, I'd definitely say when you're onboarding the client, but like, how often should you ask that question? What are the roadblocks that you feel that we should help you with?

Andrea Cruz (21:56)
So I don't like to put a timeline on it because I think there's people that need those touch bases sooner than others. And it's a personality thing. So based on that, and you do your own discovery of the people you get to work with, So you can start by playing with them. It can be too soon, but it can be too late. So what is that sweet spot? And again, depending on the company, it be every month.

Anu Adegbola (21:59)
Mm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (22:26)
Some companies are okay doing it every three months. ⁓ And you won't know until you've done it a few times. Because you don't want to be the person that it's checking in every month and they're not that type of person, but other people do really care. Taking a step back often and figuring out what to do.

Anu Adegbola (22:28)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Yeah.

I'd actually also advise that because this is something that I don't know someone, previous manager has told me about is like, ask, actually be like, look, we'd love to check in and we'd love to know how, what your roadblocks are, that kind of like, big picture, how often do you want that communication to happen so that we actually discuss the ways that we can help with your overall strategy because

the best way to know how to work with your client is to ask them. Cause I feel like some agencies have too much of this template of like, this is how we do it. I will do it with every single client. And then some clients are just not happy. And then you're like, you need to be able to be flexible with these things.

Andrea Cruz (23:24)
Uh-uh.

Yeah, I know

one thing I always like to ask my team before I talk to a client too is where are we failing? Because I rather I rather hear it at first on my team because nobody's perfect and we make mistakes and or sometimes we test something that we thought it was going to work and it doesn't it happens right? That's why it's called an experiment because we're gonna quote unquote play around and figure it out We were going with the best intentions, but it doesn't always pan out

Anu Adegbola (23:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (23:59)
So

sometimes even recognizing, even if the client doesn't know it, you're recognizing, we know this went this way, and this is what we're going to do forward. I just wanted to know that I am aware of it, and the team is aware of it, and we want to do something different. It just builds trust, because we're all humans and individuals. So if we always talk about the good, good, good, then to me, it's sketchy at some point.

Anu Adegbola (24:06)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

Andrea Cruz (24:27)
things go south sometimes and it might be for variety of reasons like we had this product launch and we were very excited about it but we had a competitor that also did that thing and it was ten times better because of these reasons so if we want to do something try it again these are the things we want to change. Even having that conversation proactively not because the client is asking you but because you know it's right that helps with trust.

Anu Adegbola (24:38)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely, absolutely. And because you actually even just touched on it, sometimes I would ask this a little bit later, but you know, about the fact that mistakes happen. mean, that's the whole point of this podcast. It's the whole reason why I get guests to come up to talk about the mistakes have happened over 30 guests have come up. they are, we're not short of people who have experience with mistakes happening. And right now I'd like you to like direct this to like managers, leaders.

as to why is it important for us to discuss mistakes? You know, I think we've talked about it from the point of view that we always learn, but I think you pointed out something very key there. It's actually to help clients as well, isn't it? So yeah, why, why is it important? Can you touch on that? Talk about that. Why is it important to actually instill kind of like this, this energy in your, your team to not be afraid to test things, to not be scared of like when a mistake happens.

you know, to not feel overwhelmed that, my God, this might be the whole end of my career. Why is it important to actually, you know, not be afraid that mistakes will happen?

Andrea Cruz (26:01)
you can't avoid them. It's gonna happen. So why keep links like a secret, gated, that nobody can know about? When you can't avoid somebody else doing something else. That's why we have post mortems, which has been in the industry for forever. So I always find it interesting when people think about post mortems as, I'm gonna be blamed on something. It's not... don't focus on the people, focus on what happens.

Anu Adegbola (26:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (26:29)
And how can we avoid this from happening again? And if you keep a tracker of people's errors and mistakes and accidents, it will allow you to also see bigger trends. Things that are happening at scale and you don't know it until you realize, ⁓ shoot, this actually has happened to three people in the past, let's call it quarter. And I think also something that I don't think...

Anu Adegbola (26:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (26:52)
companies and managers do a lot is recognizing your own mistakes. It's not just, team, you go and talk about your mistakes, but I am exempt. You can't play it like that. You can't play it like that. Because then what is your authority and what are you actually instilling? If you cannot say it, you know what? I actually went through that again as well.

Anu Adegbola (27:01)
No, no, no, no, exactly. Yeah. No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (27:16)
This is how I messed up in my experience. Let's try something like this. Or do you agree? Have you experienced this before? How can we work on it together? Because we are not perfect.

Anu Adegbola (27:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

No, no. And that's the biggest way of giving your team the confidence to not, to not hide their mistakes. They're like, okay, my manager knows about the feeling of, you know, going through a mistake. Actually, I feel shitty about myself right now. Let me get her help on so that I can get over that and get back to focusing on the work instead of, my God, I just made a mistake. Like you want, you want a leader who can empathize with you of like going through.

going through a hard time of going through mistakes. So yeah, so what's your, we're gonna not talk about like the industry making mistakes, but like, just like you to, as to finish that bit, this part of like, so what's like the one takeaway you'd like listeners to take from your story of like, like communication with clients?

Andrea Cruz (28:12)
I'll say again mistakes happen. The more you prepare for a situation the better it's gonna go in general One thing I like to do I don't know if I should say this but it's true one thing I like to do is I actually like to write how each people like to be treated There's people that like to be short answer. There's people that are okay with a big timeline There's people are not

Anu Adegbola (28:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (28:38)
So are you considering all of that before you go into a meeting? ⁓ I like that a lot. And again, how can you be resourceful with all the information that's available out there today for you to have the best information possible and going to that client situation? Are you being open and honest? Are you recognizing that not everything is perfect? And how do you keep that solutions oriented mindset?

Anu Adegbola (28:41)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Andrea Cruz (29:04)
to focus on this is where we are and this is where we want to go.

Anu Adegbola (29:08)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a great way, great way to put that. Now going on to, you know, I'm sure Tinuiti get new business every once in a while or even like a lot of times and you then do like an audit before you take on the client to see what needs to be done. And you find maybe like several mistakes. You're like, my God, people are still doing that. That's what the last agency suggested kind of thing. What are some of like the big mistakes that you feel some of the agencies?

are still making or maybe consultants that might be making that you're like, oh, we should have stopped doing that. especially with the expertise in B2B, it would be nice if it's like, yeah, something that's related into the B2B space.

Andrea Cruz (29:49)
The one that I hate the most when I see it, it makes me cringe is when I see our CPCs are super high. CPCs, CPMs on B2B are super high in general. When I see a campaign that's a good campaign and then the budget is so low, they get two clicks a day. It makes me so furious. It doesn't matter if it's LinkedIn, Microsoft, Google. It doesn't matter which way it is. If you're getting two or four clicks a day, you're not gonna get a conversion. I don't care. I don't care what you are doing anywhere else.

Anu Adegbola (29:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (30:17)
don't know why it makes me so upset about it. So that one is very personal to my heart.

Anu Adegbola (30:20)
Yeah.

But

how about if it's like, it's simple, like they don't have the budget. Do you just advise don't run those kinds of campaigns if you don't have the budget? Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (30:29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And sometimes it also happens, it's because we are in LinkedIn and we're in Meta and we're in TikTok and we're in Reddit and we're in all of these places, but then you are spending a thousand dollars on each. No, no, you're spreading yourself. That one also makes me mad. You're spreading. I understand that everything is fancy and I understand your competitors are everywhere. But if you don't have the budget, you can't get results out of anything.

Anu Adegbola (30:38)
Yeah, too many.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, spreading yourself too thin. Yeah.

Yeah.

No, no, no. Interesting, yes. I saw the passion, I saw that. The passion come out of those ones. Yeah, guys, look at your budget, spend it wisely. Don't put yourself everywhere. And if you can't afford a channel, don't put money in it. Yeah, don't do it. It's not the end of the world. Yeah, there just some channels that deserve, yeah, a required channel, because the performance will always be bad. You're never going to be actually able to see the true,

Andrea Cruz (30:58)
So that will make me matter. Now I have two things that make me matter.

Don't do it!

Anu Adegbola (31:26)
This is how this channel works for me. How about in terms of like how people are using AI? think like AI is like the... Still thinking about what you hate. I love it. I'll give you some time to calm down. You're like take deep breaths. My God. I can imagine you just thinking about your last audit you did. You you saw it in your latest audit. Didn't you?

Andrea Cruz (31:31)
laughing because I'm thinking about when I see

Anu Adegbola (31:50)
I love it. That is me. Yeah. It's why you're still thinking about budgets. Let's talk about AI. AI, an AI revolution. know chat GPT ads is being tested even right now in the US. But like what are mistakes in terms of how people are using AI that people should be, you know, that people should be wary of or that you're trying to yourself, you're trying to avoid doing?

Andrea Cruz (31:51)
What was the question about why I already lost Trigotha? We need to go back.

⁓

I don't know if this is quote unquote a mistake, but thinking that AI is just to summarize stuff or upload a spreadsheet and spit something you back, it can do so much more. This is where I was three years ago. I was like, people talk about AI, but you can't do anything with it. That's not true anymore. That is not where we are. ⁓

Anu Adegbola (32:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (32:42)
I actually have a team member, his name is Matt Davini, wonderful guy. He came to me with, he created through AI Studio, actually a thing that connects to Google Apps, and it will do an audit for you. And we will give you the tables with data. And you know, people are doing things, Simon Poulton at Tinuiti he created a Slack group for people when he's trying to figure out, and he...

Anu Adegbola (32:55)
Okay.

Andrea Cruz (33:08)
He did this wonderful thing. He's like, this is not probably applicable to work. But I learned you can do this. And he posted his children, I don't know, let's call it soccer or baseball. think it was dates and times that they have practiced. You can put it into Gemini and tell it to add to, it was a PDF, and to add it into your calendar. I didn't know you could do that. So the ways people are actually using and experimenting with AI is changing. So if you're just using and...

Anu Adegbola (33:30)
Okay.

Andrea Cruz (33:37)
for asking basic questions, there's so much more you can do within. So go out there.

Anu Adegbola (33:39)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess we're in the world of,

you know, people are talking about AI agents now. And if you don't think about what agents could be, why you're still thinking about it, just, you know, prompting it for a question to give you an answer. You're the one that's going to be left behind. You're the one that's going to be like, Oh, AI is not good. You know, I, and I know people need to be careful. I saw someone write about the fact of like when people, people still using AI for us.

Andrea Cruz (34:01)
100%.

Anu Adegbola (34:09)
Chat GPT therapy and literally my brain goes, yeah, yeah, no, no, know AI can do so many things, but no, get a real therapist. That is not where AI, the direction that AI should be going into for usage in my opinion. So yeah, we really need to be careful with it.

Andrea Cruz (34:13)
Sure.

say

if you as marketers if we don't trust AI fully to make an assessment of something which is valid why would you trust your health to just a machine you always want I think the machine can help you get there unrelated I was in the ER recently and I was thinking there when I'm there just waiting for the results and they're trying to figure out what I have I was like

Anu Adegbola (34:43)
Yeah.

Andrea Cruz (34:57)
I have to assume if it's not happening right now, it's going to happen soon where they're just going to plug your symptoms and AI is going to tell them what you have. And then the doctor based on you and how you look and feel, they're going to say, yeah, this makes sense. Which is how I think we should be using AI for a PPC management as well.

Anu Adegbola (35:09)
We'll come, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, a hundred percent. The one thing I've been saying, oh my God, so much is like, it's the experts that need to be hind. It should be a doctor using AI to try to diagnose their patient, not just some lay person who's sitting there going, I have these symptoms. Tell me what I have. Like, no, no, you'll still need a doctor to confirm and say that.

Andrea Cruz (35:29)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:41)
Yes, that sounds about right. I mean, I know some people are using it to like a friend of mine was like, I used AI to diagnose, know, this how doctors had ignored me. But I think you then should then go, look, I've done my diagnosis. You take it to a doctor so that they can be like, they might not have time. And that's the thing. AI should help the experts free up their time, but the experts should still be having their eye over the final results and to ensure that.

when it's applied, it's applied properly kind of thing to where it's going to be used. Same with marketers. It should be the marketing experts that should be using AI and so how to implement it with ads, GPT ads, LinkedIn ads, whatever kind of ads and not just a lay person who's like, yeah, I've got a business. I'm just going to use chat GPT to create my campaigns. You're not going to create a good campaign.

Andrea Cruz (36:30)
sometimes

there might be something that you didn't think about and it tells you this is a rare situation but it could be this.

Anu Adegbola (36:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

absolutely. Andre, you have given us so much of your time and we're so grateful. You've given us just a fantastic, amazing story. I love that you brought your passion for what you do into this, into our stories. And we absolutely love it. But before we go, our last final, very fun, non-PPC question. If your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Andrea Cruz (37:06)
Can it be a made up title or does it has to be? ⁓

Anu Adegbola (37:08)
Of course! No!

It can be made up! Totally made up!

Andrea Cruz (37:15)
A passionate girl?

Anu Adegbola (37:16)
Okay. I love it. Yeah. And we know why you love what you do. You love it. Yeah. You've got, you've got the passion for this industry for sure. And you've got passion red. I feel that red that you're wearing. It's a very passionate color. I like you're very, yeah. Tell her that I absolutely love it. I complimented it like 10 times.

Andrea Cruz (37:23)
⁓

I'll tell my mom she gifted me this sweater last year

We will send you one,

if we find that we'll send you one.

Anu Adegbola (37:41)
⁓ I love it. I love it. Seriously. It's so cute. But yeah, a passionate girl, a passionate girl of B2B marketing. Love it. And yeah, if when, if people want to hear about your passionate thoughts about the industry, where can they find you?

Andrea Cruz (37:45)
Thank you.

They can find me on LinkedIn under my name Andrea Cruz and then yes I still have my ex account as we mentioned that's at Andrea Cruz 92 and if you have questions about tenure you can always visit our website. It be a pleasure to hear from you.

Anu Adegbola (38:05)
We'll forgive you.

Amazing.

Amazing. Thank you so much for that, Andrea. And yeah, that's been such a great chat to have with you. Andrea, I look forward to catching up with you later on this year, hopefully in Boston. I know. All right. It will. Thank you. Bye.

Andrea Cruz (38:23)
So excited, well done. It's gonna be great.

Anu Adegbola (38:30)
Thank you so much, Andrea, for that fantastic story and those great lessons of how to deal with clients, how to ensure that communication line is open, even though you might not have an answer, direct answer for your client, and even though that you might be thinking, how do I buy myself some time? Sometimes that's what you need, to buy yourself some time to ensure that you give the right information.

to your client, like just silence and saying nothing to a client or doing the whole, don't know, especially when you've got quite a generous paycheck coming to you, isn't quite good enough and we should be able to recognise that and we should find ways to share information, show our knowledge, even though we might not know exactly the answer to the exact question that we're being asked. So yeah, there are definitely many ways around this and we should definitely be being creative to find those answers that...

you know, a client actually wants, which might not actually be the question that they asked, but actually going for actually the answer that they need to hear in that moment. So yes, that's a really great lesson that we got from Andrea there. So for more information and the full transcript of that fantastic discussion, please go to podcast.ppc.live to get all the details there. So yeah, back on our PPC live events, our first event of the year went off without a hitch.

We had so many fantastic audience members. We had Nils Dave and Kat Sale know, sharing some very important information to help with our career, to help with, you know, lead quality when it comes to, you know, B2B kind of advertising and Nils, the scripts master himself, sharing some really, you know, really useful scripts that we can use for our e-commerce advertising. So yeah.

I'm sorry that you missed that if you did and for those who came, thank you so much. But if you did miss it, we've got the online version happening on the 18th of February. So that's next week, Wednesday. So whenever you're listening to this, I hope you still have time. You you should still have a few days by the time you're listening to this to, you know, catch that or catch that live and to be able to get a live, we're to do a live Q and A with Dave and Nils as well. They're going to be joining us for a live Q and A, which that would be great to have.

⁓ to participate in that, to come with your questions. But yeah, it will be also available on demand if you can't join us live and you'll be able to see that whenever. So check that out on our YouTube page. And also before I leave you, I am delighted to share that I am taking on coaching clients. Yeah, and if you go to themarketinganu.com, you'll be able to book some time with me to book a discovery call to figure out what you need in terms of things like building your confidence.

trying to deal with salary negotiation, trying to deal with a manager that maybe is micromanaging you and you just want to, you know, want to get him off your back to show that, you know, you are in the right position. You were the perfect person for this job. So yeah, let's have a chat so that we can figure out what to do, how to take this journey, your journey further and ensure that you're taking control of your career. It's time that we start really working on building our career and working on the job of our career, not just the job of

doing a job, a nine to five job. So yeah, get in touch with me so that I can help you with that. So yeah, I hope you have enjoyed this show and enjoyed this episode. I look forward to bringing more PPC F-UPS and triumphs next week. Thank you.