EP347 - The PPC Decision That Cost More Than Performance ft Amy Hebdon

Anu Adegbola (00:11)
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're still in the right place. Every week I'm speaking to a different PPC expert about their biggest effort this time. So not just, you know, advice about what they're doing in the accounts. It's the really interesting stories.

In-person participant 1 (00:11)
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're still in the right place. Every week I'm speaking to a different PPC expert about their biggest effort this time. So not just, you know, advice about what they're doing in the accounts. It's the...

really interesting stories

that we go for here. We're sharing how the mistakes happen, what has been disappointing, what was expected, what was not expected, people who are helpful and people who are not. This week I speak to the very lovely Amy Hebden who is an international speaker and leads a fantastic agency, Paid Search Magic. Paid Search Magic, I knew that, I definitely knew that. Yeah, she leads the Paid Search.

Anu Adegbola (00:37)
that we go for here. We're sharing ⁓ how the mistakes happen, what has been disappointing, what was expected, what was not expected, people who are helpful and people who are not. This week, I speak to the very lovely Amy Hebden, who is an international speaker and leads a fantastic agency, Paid Search Magic. Paid Search Magic. I knew that, I definitely knew that. ⁓ Yeah, she leads the Paid Search

In-person participant 1 (01:05)
our agency paid search magic

Anu Adegbola (01:05)
agency, Paid Search Magic.

In-person participant 1 (01:06)
and yeah she shares a couple of stories as well about you know some mistakes that happened early in her career how she felt about it you know just things that she will do differently so that you would make the same mistake all right let's go speak to Amy

Anu Adegbola (01:07)
And yeah, she shares a couple of stories as well about, you know, some mistakes that happened early in her career, how she felt about it, you know, just things that she will do differently so that you would make the same mistake. All right, let's go speak to Amy.

Anu Adegbola (01:21)
Hello, Amy. Welcome to PPC Live the podcast. It's such a pleasure. Yeah, just before this, Amy and I were chatting and we're talking about how she does so many amazing talks. We met in person. It was so lovely last year at SMX Advanced. ⁓ It was really great. talks were one of the words that people loved. And she was like maybe saying that she might be taking a break from speaking and I'm really trying to convince her.

Amy (01:24)
Thanks so much for having me.

Anu Adegbola (01:47)
even after this did not do that. Cause we really need to hear from more experts like Amy. you've got such a fantastic and unique perspective. And actually, and this is a surprise. I wasn't going to say this. And I just remember this now. I've got a special thanks to Amy, because when I started working for search engine land, you know, it was a new role to me. And just out of the blue, I got a LinkedIn message from you, Amy, just saying, know I love your articles and I love what you're doing. And my God, you know, when sometimes

Impostor syndrome hits you and you just need to see that. It's where someone that has no ulterior motive just goes, you're doing a good job. And that just, ⁓ meant everything to me. So thank you very much for that.

Amy (02:27)
Well, thank you

for all the work you do over there. It's incredible.

Anu Adegbola (02:31)
Thank you. So yeah, I know my audience feel like, know you do this all the time, you just have chats and you've not even introduced us to your guests. So let's introduce Amy. Amy is a very much renowned, long-running paid search expert who has decades of experience running results-driven SEM campaigns, trying to very much achieve aggressive CPAs and CPLs across the pharmaceutical industry, financial services, tech.

consumer retail, restaurants, hotels, et cetera, has audited more than a hundred accounts certified in Google AdWords, analytics, market motive, Metclabs, these are even brand names I have not heard of, has experience in social media, SEO, landing page testing, content marketing, display and email marketing. And I'm seeing even more of that from PPC experts, especially the ones I really respect that.

have that wide variety of knowledge, which is very important, especially with the whole AI world coming into that whole broad knowledge of knowing how the other channels work, even though you specialize in paid search. So really great one to see. Fun fact, so Amy and her husband are going to be raising quail. I have never heard of anyone who raises quail. how's your research going on with that? Are you quite hopeful that you'll be able to get it right?

Amy (03:51)
Yeah, mean, apparently quails kind of tend to have a death wish. And so that's the scary thing is that they're, they, they die very easily. So we're trying to figure out how to give them the best environment possible. So that doesn't happen, but, but we're excited to have them because the roosters are quiet, which means you can have male quails opposed to chickens where we can just have chickens and not roosters. And so can be a little more self-sustaining that way, even though you get smaller eggs.

Anu Adegbola (03:55)
no... ⁓ no...

I like

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you're going to go out of your way to try to raise, you know, a new, new kind of animal, you should do the research to make sure that you know how to keep them alive. Cause you were saying earlier on that some people just write on Facebook that saying that they just gave them some kind of food and they died and they don't know what to do.

Amy (04:32)
Yeah, if you just buy an animal, you, I don't know, buy a toy, then you're like, I didn't figure it out. And so it died. Like that's way too high of a consequence. Like you have to know what you're getting into.

Anu Adegbola (04:41)
Absolutely, know what you're getting yourself into, which I will say that it's a very great translation of her skills in paid search. She's all about knowing what you're getting into and helping us do that as well. And yeah, going on to what we're gonna talk about next, like, know, Amy proposed two stories and I was like, the second one really grabbed my attention because it one of those cases where it puts yourself in a difficult position.

Even though you felt you were doing the right thing at the time. And sometimes that's how mistakes look like in that moment. You do think you're doing the right thing and you're going to do the right thing by your, by your customer. yeah, thank you so much, Amy, for being able to share the story with us. This is something that a lot of us I'm sure we'll learn from. So yeah, please take care of Amy. What's the F up you'd like to share with us today?

Amy (05:26)
Yeah. So like you said, it's something that at the time I thought I was doing the right thing, which was that we were in a situation where the, the creative team had decided to run creative. That really was not compatible with Google ads. There, was a gym, a fitness wellness, ⁓ I guess, a fitness center gym, and they were using a campaign. What they were trying to promote was like really just like bodybuilding and just, had.

Some creative that was not suitable for, it was not family safe, right? And it wasn't a big deal. was like, wouldn't necessarily look at it and say, that's pornography. But Google was, Google was saying, we're not going to run this because, you know, it's exposing too much skin or whatever. And, and it was just kind of like people were a little glossy and oiled up and whatever. And they just didn't like it. It didn't look like gym to them. So we kept on not being able to run the creative. And so this, you know, it's a continued problem throughout the campaign. And so we'd be pushing back, you know, for the client.

Anu Adegbola (05:58)
Yep.

Bye.

Mm.

Amy (06:24)
But then the person who was our point of contact was very, very junior person and just did not have the ability to manage or to negotiate that situation. And so he'd be like, well, the creative team likes it, so run it. like, okay, but we can't. So one time we all had this big hands on where like, you know, we're talking with the CEO, the C-suite, the leadership team and everyone was there.

Anu Adegbola (06:29)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Amy (06:47)
And were doing our report about here's what's going on. And like, these are the people where you have to say, here's what paid search even means, right? Because they don't know. like, well, what's the difference between that and SEO? So everyone, you know, the higher ups are all there. And so I'm like, here's, I'm going to make my case about why we can't have this creative running anymore. And I did, you know, I was able to convince, you know, to get the attention of the leadership team of like, this is not appropriate. We need to rethink this strategy because this doesn't work on Google. So.

Anu Adegbola (06:52)
Yeah. Yup.

Mm.

Amy (07:15)
I thought, okay, you know, I did what I needed to do. But what actually happened is that the other team that was like producing all this creative, they did not share that opinion that that was the right thing. They felt like I really threw them under the bus. They went and talked with my manager afterwards and you know, and had this special meeting and saying how I was inappropriate. And it didn't like I didn't get in trouble with my company. But I did absolutely like this was a team that I would have liked to continue to work with. Like there were good people. And I kind of

Anu Adegbola (07:23)
Mmm.

Amy (07:41)
burned that bridge with them that they didn't like the way I handled it. And so it was not the right approach. Like I wasn't thinking through everything. I was just trying to get my point across, but kind of it came at a cost.

Anu Adegbola (07:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's, that's annoying. at what point is, was it just, was it months later or was, was there a point even maybe it was when the meetings were happening that made you think, no, I shouldn't have done that. At what point did it really hit you that that wasn't the right strategy to go ahead with?

Amy (08:12)
Well, I'll be honest, like during the meeting, like they did not seem happy with what I was saying. And I didn't care because I knew, you know, that was their response this whole time was like, you don't get to dictate what creative does. I'm like, but I'm running the, you know, like there's no point in doing this creative that is incompatible with Google. So the fact that they were like pushing back, like I had known they would push back because they, they always had, they always defended their choice. Right. Because

Anu Adegbola (08:27)
Hey.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Amy (08:39)
they had essentially the buy-in of leadership because leadership didn't know about this other issue. But it wasn't until they had scheduled this meeting with my boss, I'm like, man, this isn't just a difference of opinion that got worked out. This is like, just lost that chance to work with this other potential referrer of business that they didn't want to work with me anymore.

Anu Adegbola (08:53)
I'm gonna make some...

Okay, so were you taking off the accounts, you know, or?

Amy (09:04)
No, no,

I mean, because, you know, my my team didn't really care. Like they, they stood by me in that decision. But it was it was just that as far as my my relationship with people on this other team was, you know, compromised after that.

Anu Adegbola (09:11)
Okay.

Okay.

And did that affect any like future decisions or like any recommendations you'd make? they still take... So you kept working on the account. There are different decisions to be made about different creatives after that. Did they pay more attention to what you were doing or would they go around you for comms? How did they deal with the situation in terms of working with you after that?

Amy (09:46)
That's a good question. And at this point is like nine years ago. So I'm trying to remember like, if there are any specific things, you know, it's more like what more like lost opportunities that I remember than like, ⁓ that, you know, like it came back to bite me. don't remember anything specific like that, but there definitely could have been that I just like, thankfully blocked out. Like, I don't know about you, but like my mess ups keep me like worried about it all through the night, every night. I'm like, remember I did that dumb thing. So if I'm able to forget something.

Anu Adegbola (09:53)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Go.

Absolutely. Yes. Yes.

Amy (10:15)
Thank goodness.

Anu Adegbola (10:16)
I know, I know, which is why I'm always so grateful where people that are, you could come and share these stories because it's, it's, it's that kind of thing that makes you think, God, can't believe you did that, but you've put it in the bag and you've moved on from it. So yeah, this, this, this podcast, I don't know. I do know it kind of brings a bit of PTSD for some people. I feel like I need to apologize to people for that. ⁓

Amy (10:38)
And just to be clear, this is not the worst thing that's ever happened. This

is just something that's different than maybe what your listeners have. I've made a lot of mistakes. Like you said, I had to choose which one to do. It's not like, oh, one time someone got mad at me at the end. Like there's, there's real stuff, right? But, but this is probably a little bit different than the normal, like, oh, I messed up on a setting or I let something go for too long.

Anu Adegbola (10:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And so what do you do? what, what could you have done differently? Cause it's this, this, this whole podcast is about let's learn from it. You know, what would, what's the different strategy or different approach you feel you should have done in that case.

Amy (11:14)
Yeah, I think I really should have like considered my stakeholders better. You know, they are a stakeholder. They're not just someone I was trying to like strong arm into seeing things my way. Like they had buy-in from someone else who had given them approval. So what I should have done is like work within like, okay, they have a different perspective on this. I should have like been really, really objective and considered how potentially emotionally.

Anu Adegbola (11:22)
Hmm.

Amy (11:37)
charged it can be to say, you're running porn. know, like that's not, that's something people are going to respond to, but I don't necessarily need to play that card. You know, I could have, I could have absolutely said, Hey, here's why we can't run these, you know, like run it up the chain. And, know, even in, the big meeting, just kind of be very, very objective with it and say, here's the problems are handling it. You know, I think the creative team is doing a great job. What can we do to make sure that the creatives that we have to run and the landing pages we have to run for this.

Anu Adegbola (11:43)
Yeah.

Amy (12:06)
are in compliance and really focus on the compliance part of it rather than saying everyone's ignoring this thing we have to do. I could have been a lot more, I'll say a better sport about it. I could have taken a better approach.

Anu Adegbola (12:18)
Okay,

interesting. again, to be fair, think even with these kinds of mistakes, they're nice positives to get out of it. Like I picked up on the fact that you said that your team were still on your side. They really were behind you. They understood why you gave that advice. How did that make you feel? And why is having someone in your corner in those kinds of moments kind of important?

Amy (12:44)
I mean, if they hadn't, like if they had just been like, it would have really surprised me because they hadn't said anything up until then. And so if they're like, someone else had this reaction. So now we're going to think, you know, cause they're all in the room with me. And so now we're going to have a problem with it. would have, I would have felt a little bit less of their willingness to like have my back, you know, if it changed the minute someone else said something, but I mean, they're, they're pretty consistent. So that was nice.

Anu Adegbola (12:49)
Sure.

sure.

Mm.

Yeah.

It's nice to have that. It's nice to have that consistent support. Do you, do you feel that it was in a way, mean, like, it's not even necessarily about the fact that, they knew that you were given the right advice, but also in terms of the fact that the way you went about it, did any of your team questioned you in terms of like, look, Amy, know why you gave that advice, but

We should have done it XYZ because obviously they had meetings with your manager kind of thing and your managers took those meetings. Was there any feedback that the manager then gave to you for what you could have done differently?

Amy (13:45)
No, and I didn't get any feedback from them. like, I honestly, felt vindicated. I felt like, what I did was fine. It wasn't until like later, you know, years later, I it was, I felt bad that like, that's too bad that my correct decision resulted in this burn bridge, right? That's kind of how I saw it at the time. It wasn't until later, I'm like, you know, I didn't have to have taken that approach. I could have gone about it differently and probably got the same result. And I mean,

Anu Adegbola (13:46)
No, not really.

Okay.

Yeah!

Yeah.

Amy (14:12)
at a certain point, I think you do have to decide to escalate something. And you do have to say, am I willing to burn this bridge? Am I willing to light it all on fire? And I would say often that answer should be no. Like you need to really have a good justification for it, for that answer to be yes. Because we always think we're right. We always think like, it's all just about the account. And a lot of times it is about relationships and not just the account. So the better you can be, the more tactful, the more empathetic you can be about communicating that.

Anu Adegbola (14:15)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Amy (14:39)
the more skilled you are in getting it to happen anyway, right? You don't have to like go nuclear or whatever.

Anu Adegbola (14:44)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, people have gone more nuclear and pastoral as I've heard where it has ended in properly burnt bridges and yeah, firing and leaving the job. But in a way, you know, are you, are you happy that you

stayed on at that company? mean, cause I don't know. I sometimes do get, you know, you spoke about the fact that sometimes you make a mistake and sometimes you just wish you could be like, okay, let me just leave because I'm never going to come back from this and the whole environment is a little bit, or was it just, what they're like one of the other clients you work on. it didn't, it didn't take up a lot all of your time.

Amy (15:21)
Yeah, it was it was one of probably eight clients I had at the time. It wasn't a big deal as far as that goes. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:25)
Okay. Okay. All right.

Yeah. Okay. Cool. Um, actually we have time for this. I know you spoke about actually two, two things that you were going to bring up. Can we also bring up that, that second mistake that you, you talked about? Is that okay? About how there was an account that didn't go like ready to go. Yeah.

Amy (15:40)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. So

this, is about, this is before I was working at that company. So this is like, we're looking at 12, 13 years ago now. ⁓ I was doing contract work for one company that I was moving States to start working for a different company. And I just had a lot going on. I was like, got engaged at the time. There's this like, just a lot of stuff was happening.

Anu Adegbola (15:51)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Amy (16:06)
And

then one of the accounts that I was working on, was someone else who was working on it too. And it was like a low touch, low maintenance accounts. They took the other person off. They're like, okay, Amy, you're in charge of it this month. I'm like, okay, great. But then nothing happened with it. I didn't check in on it. I didn't bill them. I want to be really clear about this. This is not a case where I said, hey, I worked on it for a bunch of time. didn't, I did not bill them for anything for that client because I didn't work on it at all. And then two thirds through the month, probably the 20th, we got a notice that

Anu Adegbola (16:12)
Mmm.

Amy (16:34)
It was one of those accounts that had an insertion order, like, um, where, you had to have like a signed insertion order every so often in order for like you to be able to spend. was like a really weird kind of archaic setup, but the insertion order had expired and I hadn't gotten a notice about it. And so like nothing had to run for like that far into the month. And so like, I didn't say anything had to run, but like, I should have been so much more accountable for that than I was. was just like,

Anu Adegbola (16:38)
Bye.

sure.

Yeah.

Amy (17:01)
of putting hours in and like, know, whatever. And I didn't, I hadn't taken care of that. And so because the other person was off of the account and it was just on me, it was like a hundred percent my mistake. And it looked, it looked bad, you know, that, cause the client was still charging, like my client, the agency was still charging their client for management and like no management had gone into it. And yeah, yeah. So it was not good.

Anu Adegbola (17:20)
Yeah. Right. Okay.

So did that result in dropping performance? If so, that means the account wasn't running during a period of time. At what point did the client then figure it out and go, well, what's, what's, what's happened during this time period?

Amy (17:41)
I mean, it wasn't until the end of the month, the client, was, okay, it was a lower touch client, but they were very hands off. Like this, this was one of those, like they had no idea what was happening within this particular part of the business until they got a report like two months later that told them. And then there was some, there was like a woman whose entire job it was to put together the report and it took her like a month.

Anu Adegbola (17:49)
Okay.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay.

Ciao.

Amy (18:09)
You know, and so it wasn't like they were like seeing sales go up or down. It was just like, by the way, how in. the fact that it hadn't spent indicated that it hadn't been managed. That was really the only thing it wasn't, it didn't affect their business really. I know this sounds weird, but like it was not like it was, it was a very indirect relationship between what was going on in paid search and what their actual business was doing.

Anu Adegbola (18:11)
Okay.

It didn't affect. Yeah.

Okay, okay, cool. So they still made their sales target that didn't make too much of a huge difference. like, how did you so I knew I don't to figure it out. Or was it like the your contact that was like, wait, what's going on here?

Amy (18:45)
You know,

I honestly don't remember how it came up. They might've figured it out when they got like this insertion order and like, Hey, this thing needs to be resigned or else I got it. And I was like, wait, that means it hasn't been running. Like if it might've been like my Google rep, like reached out to me and it's like, Hey, this thing needs, you know, like we're flagging it now three weeks later. One of those things.

Anu Adegbola (19:02)
Okay. Okay.

so I'm like, how long a period was it offline for? No, it was about three weeks.

Amy (19:07)
It was probably like three weeks, they could say. It was somewhere

between like three weeks and the whole month. was somewhere around there, like where it's like not just like, yeah, we missed it, but it was two days later. You know, it like the majority of the month had passed when we caught it.

Anu Adegbola (19:19)
Yeah.

So what's your big lesson from that one? Like what would you advise on ways to avoid things like that?

Amy (19:23)
I mean, what they-

I mean, I was just, I like looking back, I'm like, how is that me doing that? Because like it's, it's so, it's so weird that I just felt no accountability for like the management of it. Like if I remember right, I didn't report directly to the client. I was just like doing this backend stuff and they had like a different like client manager that reported. just, think I just felt too removed from the process. And so was just like, yeah, I'll help out or whatever, but like I would never ever do that. You know I mean? Like that's, and what they did is they're like, all right, well,

Anu Adegbola (19:42)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Amy (19:57)
We need to manage this better. to their point, I mean, they also dropped the ball, right? They didn't have anyone actually on their team that was able to do it, which is why they're subcontracting this out. They didn't do any sort of check-ins or anything. So they should have been a lot more accountable too. I both of us, like, I'm not trying to excuse what I did at all, but like when you subcontract with someone, you have to have a check-in at some point, you know, like that needs to be going on.

Anu Adegbola (20:03)
Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sure, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Amy (20:25)
So then they got to be like really, a really particular with, okay, here, here's our new, like, you know, guard rails and like every single week we had to like say, here's how many impressions they got here is how many clicks just so they could like make sure something was running. So, I mean, and fair enough, like it was a little overkill, but you know, they didn't know how to do anything else. And so that's what, cause they didn't know paid search versus again, why they had to outsource it. So I was like reporting them all these dumb numbers, like with weekly calls and stuff, but.

Anu Adegbola (20:32)
Great.

running.

No.

Yeah, yeah, those are the days those are the days earlier in your career when you're literally like, you know, you wish you were. It's not just about the paid search person's knowledge. It's about the people managing and knowing how paid search works with other channels and knowing what they should be hearing from it. It's almost how I even see that how we need to be working with AI about how if you don't understand what good quality information is.

Amy (20:53)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Right.

Anu Adegbola (21:18)
AI can give you any bunch of nonsense and you just be like, well, it's AI, so yay, copy and paste. And you've got to be careful not to be the kind of person that does that. rounding up this part of the story, we're going to move on to talking about other mistakes that you've seen in our industry. But before we do that, what's your takeaway that you want to leave our audience with?

Amy (21:24)
Right.

I mean, everyone makes mistakes and hopefully the further along in your career, the easy it becomes to look back on it and not feel like that defines you because it doesn't need to. But it's hard at the moment to feel like not defined by something because you probably define yourself by being really good and not making those mistakes. When you do, it's really hard, but it does get easier the more distance there is. And it's just part of the growing process and everyone does it.

Anu Adegbola (22:05)
Absolutely. Exactly. And that's the thing everyone does is the best of us have made mistakes. That's where you, how you get your best learnings. That's how you know what guardrails to put in place. And, so it's not, there's no point really like just going over it and mull it over it too long. Just try to learn from it. I'd say, and just move on. but things that people and our advertisers may not have moved on from.

in terms of what you might have seen and accounts that you've audited. You said you've audited quite a lot of campaigns and accounts. What are some of those big mistakes that you regularly see that, especially in, let's say 2025, 2026 is still very young, but like in 2025, you feel that we should still really should not be doing this. Yeah. What are some of your favorite mistakes, let's say.

Amy (22:50)
I mean, I feel like the biggest mistake is that people are so tactic focused in what needs to be a strategy in an objective driven field, right? Like it's like, ⁓ what should my bid be? It's like, who cares? What is your landing page? I don't know. Like what? Like we need to be like so focused on what, you know, what the searcher needs, like what the goal is of the account, how well does the landing page solve that problem? You know, like what's whole sequence of conversion?

Anu Adegbola (22:55)
Mmmmm ⁓

Yeah.

⁓

Amy (23:18)
And it's just so easy to focus on like, well, let me just get the right, the right little setting set up. And then that's it. It's like, you can have that all be great and still not get conversions because you're missing like this huge other part. And that's, I see that over and over and over again. It's like, we're in the weeds of something, but what's it's, it's that, ⁓ Stephen Covey quote, you know, where like the manager is like getting people to like chop down trees and it's the leader that

climbs up the tree and looks around and says, hey, we're in the wrong jungle. Like anyone can have someone like, you know, using machetes to chop down a tree, but are you chopping down the right trees? Like it's just, we're just in the wrong head space a lot of the time.

Anu Adegbola (23:52)
Like, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. think like in a lot of like, especially when, ⁓ a lot of people started getting into consultancy and kind of work, I feel it was easier to sell like your tactical skills. Like I, you know, I'm great with optimizations. know all the updates that are going on in Google ads and that kind of thing. And sometimes I feel sometimes it's harder to sell what your strategic capabilities are kind of thing, which is.

Which it's now that's in a skill in itself, being able to sell what matters to people. But it's definitely very much more important that we do that because especially with AI taking all the, you know, especially like the easy tactical stuff away, you know, what is left for you to do if you have not, if you've not solved what your strategic capabilities are. So like going into like, you know, specifically with AI, what are some of the most of the biggest mistakes that you see?

Amy (24:36)
Thank

Well, I think you just kind of hit on it when you just could have AI produce anything. like, it sounds good. AI wrote it, right? the thing that's kind of always in my head is this TED Talk that I heard a while ago that was someone saying, how does it feel to be wrong? And people are like, it's embarrassing. ⁓ it's, know, shameful or whatever. And like, no, that's how it feels to find out that you were wrong. Being wrong, it feels exactly the same as being right.

Anu Adegbola (25:15)
Yeah.

Amy (25:15)
And when

you have AI give you an answer, like that sounds right. Like it's designed to create something like, yeah, that sounds right. It could be a hundred percent wrong, but it feels right. Cause that's what it's trying to do is to give you something that sounds like it could be the right answer. So the more you know about a subject, the more you're to be able to poke holes in what you get or say, Hey, yeah, this is actually really good or no, it's not. But if you don't know anything, like that sounds right. And then you don't even know how far it is, how far removed it is from like any sort of source of truth, you know?

Anu Adegbola (25:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. No, that's a very fair point. it's the feeling, the finding out, the feeling of finding out that you're wrong is what annoys us. Like even like the stories that you shared, when you doing the thing you were doing, telling you like, you know, in that meeting saying that, no, the creators is wrong. You know, you were doing the right thing in that moment. It's finding out that you went about it the wrong way that made you then go, you know, and there's such a difference because we don't

We never think we're wrong. I think I've definitely had meetings with people when, when like, I feel like it's someone who's like my manager is most senior to me and they're asking me like, you know, so what should you have done different than like, if I knew I'd already be in the same spiral right now. I know how it feels. I have no idea though. The things that I've been doing are so wrong. Can you tell me what has been wrong so that I can change it? So.

Amy (26:26)
Right. Right.

Anu Adegbola (26:36)
Yeah, some of those meetings that with managers need to be better and just straight to the point and stop making it a mind field of like, guess what you did wrong? I'm like, everything. I think I did everything wrong. Can you just tell me what it is? God, because yeah, the imposter syndrome can be strong, can be strong in our minds if we're not careful. But even talk, what I also like talking about in terms of like these kind of situations, have you managed people before? Yeah, you've managed teams like

Amy (26:45)
All right.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:05)
What has been your experience with people who have made mistakes? do they, what's your experience? Do they tend to hide it away or are they more open about it?

Amy (27:18)
mean, it totally depends on the person. It's easier to work with people who own up for it. I think a lot of people don't like to, and before they'll tell you what happened, they'll come up with a list of five reasons, like kind of five excuses, like, I mean, that's kind of human nature, but it's just easier when it's like, all right, here's what happened and how we're going to fix it. I think that that's one thing that I had to, I mean, we all have to learn, but I had this really good manager whose whole thing was like, the whole

Anu Adegbola (27:30)
Yeah

Yeah.

I'm here.

Amy (27:46)
point of this is for us to be able to accomplish this thing, right? Like to work on this account. So if you know that you don't have the bandwidth, if something comes up, like let me know so that we can solve for it, right? Like everything is about like how we're going to solve for this together. And it's not like, did you meet this requirement? Yes or no. It's like, how are we going to make, bring this thing to pass? And that was, it was so interesting because I just hadn't had managers like that before in my career where they're focused on like the bigger goal, not just like.

Anu Adegbola (27:50)
Yeah.

Amy (28:16)
did you do your part, yes or no, and you get in trouble for it.

Anu Adegbola (28:19)
Yeah, absolutely. And that goes straight into like the question I do like to ask about what's the, what's your advice to managers to their team or to the people who report into them and to how they should approach mistakes. And why is it important to especially, make it clear that, you know, mistakes will happen and actually go them through the process. it for the person being managed?

to figure out and do it the right way or can managers do something to ensure that they instill a level of being accountable, the person being accountable and saying, okay, I'm gonna report it. I'm gonna say what happens, how can managers help in those processes?

Amy (28:59)
Yeah, I think it is just about emphasizing the importance of it being like a literal team effort and not just like an individual thing where you are passed or fail, but like we're all working together on this and how can we like redistribute the workload if needed or how can we all support each other and everyone kind of working for that common goal as opposed to just like, well, you messed up and I'm like keeping tabs on that, you know?

Anu Adegbola (29:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, no. And what's your advice to our LinkedIn community who never share their mistakes?

Amy (29:30)
I mean, it's scary to share mistakes. And so like, I think you have to figure out if there's a benefit for it. Like you'll see most people who share mistakes is like, happened a long time ago. And I mean, same with me. I didn't tell you something that I did last week. That was dumb. I'm telling you about something that happened 10 years ago. That was dumb. ⁓ because it's, it's just easier for like, for everything. That's not paid search specific, right? We have an easier time having a better perspective about it. The more time has passed.

Anu Adegbola (29:34)
Yeah

Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, absolutely. No, I totally agree with you. Um, and because I, want to do this for our, our guests of January, the beginning of the year, 2026, we're going to have another year of maybe, you know, two updates a week that we're going to try to wrap our heads around. Um, what's your prediction for this year as to how Google is going to, you know, what they're going to push towards, it's probably going to be AI, but like, what do you think that people should really be look out for and prepared for for 2026?

Amy (30:24)
Gosh, I don't know. I think at a macro level, if you watch what Google's doing, like they haven't really changed tactics since I want to say like 2017. It's just more of the same, right? Like they got on this trajectory and they're still on that trajectory. It's snowballing, but it didn't change course, right? So we're still going there. So like it's still just, how can they get more money from you? How can they take away controls that you might use to...

Anu Adegbola (30:35)
⁓ Yeah.

mmm yes no okay

Amy (30:53)
benefit your clients because we have two different objectives. We're trying to, you know, be more efficient and they're trying to drive more, more click volume, more costs. Right. And so just being aware, like we do not share a goal. So everything they do that is for their goal and not mine, I'm going to opt out of like that to me is like the most important thing. It's like, Hey, how can I try every beta? You know, how can I say reps all the time? Like just kind of going in there. What is your objective? Does this help your objective? No.

Anu Adegbola (30:56)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah!

Amy (31:23)
No thanks. You know, I don't care how many updates you do. I'm not going to just like opt in because there's more.

Anu Adegbola (31:28)
You do come across as very level-headed as someone who's not just flying with the wind with every new updates. And I definitely feel that we need more people like that. And that is, be our biggest advice for our audience. Try not to be getting too excited with every, every single post. For me, what annoys me is that I know it's the strategy of some experts to be like, look, I find out about this update first major update. they're getting all flashy with the pictures that they put it together. like, guys, not everybody, not every.

Amy (31:35)
you

Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (31:57)
30,000 of your followers needs this updates in their life. You know, so yeah, I feel, will feel like we've done, we sensationalize a lot of things, which yeah, if you're working for the target of your client and you're meeting those targets, you just need to stay the course on that. And not every beta is going to move you in the right direction. So we've all got to be careful.

Amy (32:19)
Right.

Right.

Anu Adegbola (32:21)
Thank you so much, Amy. This has been such a fantastic chat and such great learnings from someone so experienced as yourself. So thank you so much for that and taking the time to do this. One last question and nice, fun, no, not, not PPC kind of thing. If your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Amy (32:42)
So my

answer to this is a little bit cheeky, but it's practical magic because so, so my business has paid search magic, right? And that is just based on like when, when I was really like, when I started my business and this is like back in 2015, I want to say that like, came up with the name is another couple of years before I left and made it my own thing. But I still had this kind of thing where it was just like,

Anu Adegbola (32:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Amy (33:05)
I just felt like the results you can get from paid search was like magical. Like you control these settings and levers. You can do all stuff to optimize, to do more of what's working and less of what's not. And you could just get these like magical results. And it was like so amazing to be able to create that where everything else is like a much longer game and whatever. So like that magic component I've really held onto. But at the same time, there are definitely.

Anu Adegbola (33:11)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Amy (33:28)
times where I have to say, well, you know, it's not magic, you know, like people who just like expect instant results or whatever. It's like, it's so deeply based in strategy and the, there's tech and art and science and everything, but like there's, there's a real practical side of it. We're not just going to be able to like 10 X something overnight or, mean, sometimes you can, if it was a really, really bad, you can 10 X it, but like, but for the most part, like we do need, we need a real clear strategy and not, it's not just going to some sort of magic.

Anu Adegbola (33:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Amy (33:58)
So practical magic, think is probably a good combination of words that would describe my career.

Anu Adegbola (34:04)
Absolutely. I totally really enjoyed that explanation. I, cause genuinely when, cause when I first started my career in like 2008, like I started with a little bit of a stint in SEO and I found it, especially way back then it was very basic or not all these, you know, tech, you know, companies that I helped you really position. So it was all about, I'll, I'll speak to the web web admin for a different site and be like, can you know, can you put a link of my client on your

It was very salesy. hated it. And then maybe after three months, I went to another job, a job interview and they were like, yeah, you could, there's paid search. I, the more I learned about it, you will write an ad and you see your ad like two minutes. And I was like, that felt like magic. That felt like, whoa, that's ⁓ immediate. Obviously the performance is not immediate. We tell people like, like, you know, mix around, but yeah, I've been able to just see that whole.

Amy (34:33)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (34:56)
You know, you can see it straight away. And that's why I also feel like SEO PPC should really work well to each other because you can test things a lot quicker on paid site and then know whether you put the efforts into SEO. You have the breadth of the knowledge of the digital marketing channel. So that's, that's not something I need to tell you. I'm sure you fully aware of that. So yeah, that that's, think, yeah, practical magic for, for your career. That, sounds fantastic. So, ⁓ yeah, this has been such a great chat. Thank you so much, Amy, again.

for joining us. And before we leave our audience, where can people find you talking and giving some like, know, some of your amazing advice on the different platforms.

Amy (35:33)
So, paid search magic, you can go there, sign up for my newsletter. I usually will share things that way. I'm not the best at social media. Like every year, I feel like I'm like, this is the year I'm gonna do it. And I'm like, I still prefer not. No thanks. I'll lurk sometimes, but I'll post like never.

Anu Adegbola (35:42)
You're right.

I must not do it.

If you ever post, if, what's the one platform people should probably maybe expect to hear or some insights from?

Amy (35:54)
I mean, let's

say LinkedIn, because where else? know, LinkedIn.

Anu Adegbola (35:58)
Yeah, where are...

I know it used to be Twitter and then that just became a bit of like, ⁓ God, a hellscape. So yeah, no, I totally understand. Well, that has been a fantastic, great chat. We'll share all the links for, know, Paid Search Magic and yeah, Amy's LinkedIn and you can just lurk and see whether she comes out with any brilliant insights in 2026, who knows? Even if it's just one.

Amy (36:03)
Yeah, no. No.

Anu Adegbola (36:22)
Who knows, it will be a fantastic one to take away with. So thank you so much, Amy. And that's been a great chat. Thanks. Cheers. Bye.

Amy (36:27)
Thanks so much.

Anu Adegbola (36:30)
Thank you so much, Amy, for sharing that very honest and transparent retelling of that story of something that, all of us, would feel very heartbreaking to even relive or to think back again. that's really why I'm so grateful to all our speakers. It's not just that they're brave, but something that they're willing to go back and retelling, even though, yeah, they know that they've come through out of it. They know they're success now.

but still just thinking about that mistake and just make all your arms tingle, not the nice way at all. So yeah, remember that, you know, the longer it goes, the longer the time goes, the less you feel so bad about that mistake. And sometimes it might be the right thing to do. And it was similar to, know, Anthony Higman's lesson. It might be the right thing to do, but you might be done the wrong way. So you just need to watch out for that and make sure you.

get advice even from someone else to ensure that you're approaching things the right way. For the information and full transcript of that fantastic show, please go to podcast.ppc.live. So yeah, another PPC live event update as I do usually, tickets are live, tickets are still live. Please go to ppc.live. Please don't leave it to last minutes. I know a lot of folks kind of make their mind up the Monday of the week that they want to go to an event. And I do get that, you know.

post-Christmas can be a little bit bank balance draining. So yeah, I totally understand, but yeah, it's only 50 pounds for a ticket. Lots of other events are like in the 400, 500, 600, thousand pounds, 50 pounds to see an international speaker like Neil Rooijmans as well as Kat Sale and Dave Alexander both.

part of agencies who are at our award winning. So they're going to give advice that stuff that is working, that's winning them awards. So you need to be there. You want to be there. That's on the 5th of February, go to ppc.live to get tickets for that. Before I leave you, yes, again, I'm also delighted to share that I am taking on coaching clients, PPC mindset coaching clients. So yeah, just go to themarketinganu.com to book a time with me to discuss.

challenges you're facing, how, you want to get out of this year, you know, that promotion that you want to get, that pay rise you want to get, that new job you want to get, that manager you want to get off your back. So anything that might relate to you ensuring that you this year is your best year for your career. Yeah, let's talk about that. Get in touch with me, go to themarketinganu.com to book a free 15 minute discovery call so that we can discuss what is going to work for you. All right.

Thank you so much for listening to that. And yeah, I hope you join us next week for more talking about triumphs and F-ups from PPC experts. Thank you very much. Bye.