EP355 - Sneaky Google Ads Settings & Tanked Campaigns ft Chloe Varnfield

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 advice from PPC experts about how to ensure that we are keeping up with the ever-changing landscape, don't worry. You are still in the right place. Every week I speak to a different PPC expert, not just about what's going right in their career. In fact, we don't even touch on that. We talk about their biggest F-up, but also how they've turned things around. So yeah, we never leave things on a defeated note.

We share what has been disappointing, who has been supportive along the way, what were the biggest challenges and what's the biggest learnings so that you don't make the same mistake again. Today I have the absolute delight of speaking to Chloe Varnfield, who has been a great supporter of PPC Live since the beginning and comes all the way from outside of London, from all the way from the South to join some of our events. And she shares even like three different stories, stories about settings going wrong that Google kind of sneak.

⁓ by us and also, you know, things we're doing with like tracking and conversion tracking and those kinds of things going wrong and, sharing just like really great experiences with clients, even when things were going wrong. So yeah. And, know, there's always the important lesson that, know, as you, as you guys must know by now that honesty is the best policy. Honesty is the, is the best policy. And as long as you keep putting your, your best foot forward, even after the mistake, you still end up having a great relationship with your clients. So yeah.

Let's go speak to Chloe.

Anu Adegbola (01:41)
Hello Chloe, welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Chloe (01:45)
Hi Anu, thanks for having me.

Anu Adegbola (01:47)
Oh, it is such my delight. you know, I was like, I've not heard from Chloe in so long and I'd like to have a chat with her. And generally this is me just, I mean, this is my excuse for having a chat with Chloe because, one might go, Anu but you're recording a podcast. I'm like, yeah, I'm pretending no one is listening to us right now. I'm just like, I want to catch up with my friend Chloe, who has been a great supporter of PPC live in the past and, um, you know, joined.

Chloe (02:06)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (02:16)
Some came to some of the events, even though you live outside of London. And then I know more recently it'd be hard for you to get into London because is it okay that we share with the audience your, your, your lovely, lovely news that you're like about 36 weeks pregnant. Look at how glowing she is for anybody watching on YouTube. Like, and if you're not watching on YouTube, let me just tell you guys that she looks better than me. And I have no excuse.

hair done, know, makeup looking all on point. I love it. Absolutely love it. And yeah, I kind of was like, come on, Chloe, it will be such a fantastic power move to be like, I'm 36 weeks pregnant. I still did a podcast. So I love, I'm so delighted to have you here, especially on Women History Month. And probably people listening to this might be even listening to it on International Women's Day or maybe a few days after, whichever way.

Chloe (02:48)
You're close.

Anu Adegbola (03:11)
This is our month for women doing amazing things. we both are, I'll go as far as saying. And yeah, so who's Chloe? Chloe Varnfield is a passionate digital marketing professional, specializing in pay per click advertising and paid media across Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, Programmatic and TikTok for small to medium sized businesses and charities. does that with Atelier Studios. Did I say that right?

Chloe (03:39)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (03:40)
Yeah,

Atelier Studios and yeah, she's been doing it for, you know, quite a long while now. And how long have you been, you know, you've been generally in the, in the industry.

Chloe (03:50)
I have been working in PPC for nearly eight years, but in digital marketing probably about 16 years, like around that. Yeah, long time.

Anu Adegbola (03:58)
Wow, wow, wow, amazing, long wow.

And now going to one of my favourite bits, I'm gonna ask my guest to share, my lovely guest Chloe is just gonna share her fun fact, which I just, I'm just so jealous of this fun fact, I can't lie, but yeah, take it away Chloe.

Chloe (04:17)
So I actually did Arts and Events Management at uni, so I specialised in Arts Management. after I finished one of my first projects was managing a local band who my husband played drums for. So yeah, I managed his band for a couple of years, which was great fun because music's a huge passion of mine. And yeah.

I guess we fell in love, as cheesy as that sounds.

Anu Adegbola (04:41)
That's amazing.

No, that is

so rock and roll. Sorry. That is quite like a bit like, yeah, I'm going to do some music management. I got my husband by going to go some digital do some digital marketing now. That is so, that is so cool. But yeah, love that. Love that you found love and music and you know, and that's a fantastic, great memory for you. And you said he's the drummer, isn't he?

Chloe (05:11)
Yeah,

yeah.

Anu Adegbola (05:13)
That is so cool. feel like the drummers and the guitarists, are my, no shade to like people on the piano and the other instrument, but the drummers and a guitarist, I think they're the sexiest. So guys, I'm single. Whoever is listening to this, if you're a drummer or a guitarist, yeah, DM me. Sorry. That was such a random tangent. is so...

Chloe (05:36)
to hook

you up with some people from Alan's like bands.

Anu Adegbola (05:42)
Look, I

told Chloe I'm gonna come and visit her this summer because you live, where do live again?

Chloe (05:49)
I live in Dorset, so I live in Poole on the South Coast and it's beautiful down here. I'm 20 minutes away from Lullworth Cove and Durdledore.

Anu Adegbola (05:52)
Yeah. Yeah.

It's-

Okay, oh wow. So yeah, I need to visit Chloe this summer as well, cause that'll be so lovely. And who knows, maybe like, you know, some musician guy across the coast will catch my eye. We will see. I'll let you guys know on that. Anyway, enough of my random ramblings. People are like, I don't know are you on about? Well, what we're on about on this podcast is talking about mistakes, F-ups and how we've turned them.

Chloe (06:09)
hahahahah

Anu Adegbola (06:25)
around what I love that all my guests are very open to shares is The fact that everyone makes mistakes, you know, and it's all about, it's not about the mistakes that define you, it's how you deal with them, how you turn them around. And you know, we've had loads of folks that have been like heads of department founders, know, established digital marketers like Chloe has been doing this for like, yeah, about 10 years, 16 years, you know, so that didn't deter.

her career anyway, ⁓ like the rest of us, she, like the rest of our guests that have shared their stories. So yeah, Chloe is now gonna share her story about ⁓ an F-up that she made. So yeah, please take away, what's the F-up you'd like to share with us, Chloe?

Chloe (07:11)
We've got lots of little ones. So I would like to start with longer headlines. So do you know that really annoying account level automated assets setting that's really hidden? So when that was first launched or I wasn't aware that that existed there. So one of my

Anu Adegbola (07:17)
Okay

Yes. Yes.

wow.

Chloe (07:36)
clients contacted me saying, why does our headline look like this? With a screenshot. So I could see that that wasn't the headline that we had inputted into Google ads. So then there was the whole like panic troubleshoot. Why is this happening? Searching on Google. And then I found this setting.

Anu Adegbola (07:41)
Mmm.

Chloe (08:03)
And I just could not get over how sneaky Google were in hiding it away. Like it's the three dots where you have to click more, where you kind of get to that page and then they're all switched on if you haven't switched them off. So this was obviously quite a few years ago. But yeah, that massively tripped me up. Cause I didn't know it was there.

Anu Adegbola (08:07)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah

I'll go with...

Yeah. Yeah. So a mistake that I wouldn't even count necessarily as a mistake is one of those things that is just a warning that the updates that sometimes Google come out with, it can be very hidden. can be so it can be the default setting is something that has always been as long as I've been working in paid search again as well for like about 16, 17 years now. It's always been like those default settings are the things that can trip us up.

the most and that was always like part of, know, you'll get those kind of like, you know, SOPs or like just the tasks that you need to make sure you do when you're setting a new campaign live and every like publications and that kind of thing. They'd always be like, check your default settings, check those default settings that Google does, especially, I think one of my favorite ones was like check your like, there's a default setting that Google used to put that we'd always advise turn that off was, you know, a work have.

Chloe (09:14)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:26)
have your campaign be on both the search network and the display network where no literally like the same kind of keywords and you never want the same strategy for display and search so that was like an awful setting so yeah checking those settings very important but yeah please go on Chloe you have another one

Chloe (09:44)
There's so many settings to check, isn't there? Like those are just ever evolving documents of checklists of switch this off, switch this off, switch this off. Another one was I had a campaign and a client say to me, we actually now don't want to target the whole of the UK. We would just like to target these locations. So I did it quickly while I was on a call.

Anu Adegbola (10:08)
Mmm

Chloe (10:13)
with them and I think it was like a Friday so I hadn't like done my usual tracks and you know switching a location is fairly straightforward. What I'd done is I think I'd like left the UK there or I'd I don't know how I'd done this but I'd accidentally excluded the UK but targeted the locations that I needed to target.

Anu Adegbola (10:16)
Mmm.

Usually.

Chloe (10:42)
So, like, the campaigns stopped delivering.

Anu Adegbola (10:46)
Okay, so what was supposed to be the target location? The UK or a bunch of

Chloe (10:53)
It was,

the target location was supposed to be, I think it was like certain regions in the south maybe. ⁓ I can't remember off the top of my head, but yeah, what I did is I just basically excluded all of the locations that I could have. So the campaign stopped delivering and making changes on a Friday is such a big no. Let's just...

Anu Adegbola (11:01)
Okay.

Okay. gosh.

Yes.

Chloe (11:20)
I don't do that anymore.

Anu Adegbola (11:23)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

That's something that has been brought up before by other speakers. They've gone, yeah, don't, don't. Even if your client is like, this is an emergency, say that, look, it can be an emergency for Monday. It should not, don't start making changes on a Friday. So what happened with that one? Who kind of picked up on the fact that you'd done the exclusion? Wrong.

Chloe (11:44)
I picked up on the fact that I'd done the exclusion because the campaign just wasn't delivering. ⁓ But I couldn't work out what I'd done because I'd obviously trusted that I'd done the location right. So it was one of the last places I looked, but it was one of those where I was scratching my head about this one for a couple of days. And my last resort was, we need to audit.

Anu Adegbola (11:50)
Yeah.

Yeah... Yeah... ⁓

Chloe (12:11)
the whole of this campaign to get to the bottom of it immediately and then I found it straight away and you know when you just kick yourself you're just like you silly person why have you done that?

Anu Adegbola (12:12)
Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah.

and how many days did you give it till? Cause you know, we're experiencing this, you know, a campaign's volume doesn't, you know, kick off straight away. So maybe sometimes you're like, you know, you'll give it a couple of days before you're like, okay, it should have gotten volumes. Like how many days did you did? Did you leave it to before alarm bells started going off? Really?

Chloe (12:46)
Probably like three because you know sometimes when like the algorithm just does something funny or you know a campaign just randomly stops delivering and then it starts delivering again. You know, I was just kind of waiting for it to fix itself and it never happened. So yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:48)
Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Generally, I do think that is quite diligent because I might leave it a week. I'm the kind of marketer and you know guys, this is why I report on the news and I don't manage accounts anymore. If I had a client right now, they'd be like, what? Anu, you wait for our campaign to not run for a week before checking. That is such a diligent thing for you to do. I think three days for sure. Yeah, is enough for you to go, no, let's audit something. This is not just the algorithm.

Chloe (13:17)
Ha ha!

Anu Adegbola (13:33)
That has messed up. Yeah. No, I think that's really good.

Chloe (13:35)
you.

I have also left things for a week because I've been confident that it's not my mistake and it must be Google and then you find out it is actually your mistake.

Anu Adegbola (13:44)
What? You... What was that?

I'll be kinda doing the whole Google probably messed up. I think it's fair play a lot of the times and all the million and one updates they come out with every month. it's like things just, yeah, Google do kinda sneak things past us a lot of the time. yeah. Anyway, do you have another story to share?

Chloe (14:03)
Yeah.

I do. I had, sometimes I will have a call with a Google rep and sometimes I'll listen to them. And most of the time I don't because they're not really giving valuable advice. But on this particular day, I was getting greedy because my campaign was doing very well and it's

Anu Adegbola (14:14)
Any more?

Yes, yes.

Mm.

Nice.

Chloe (14:33)
it was doing the best that it's done in a long time. And when that happens, you obviously want to kind of keep pushing and get even more revenue for your client. So one of the reps recommended that I switch bid strategy from maximized conversions to maximize conversion value. And I did

Anu Adegbola (14:40)
Hmm

Absolutely.

Okay.

Okay.

Chloe (14:59)
and it tanked performance completely. And I think that the reason for that is because even though it was doing really well, because I worked for a lot of small to medium sized businesses, getting a campaign and an account to kind of get that optimal amount of conversions in 30 days can sometimes be a challenge. Obviously we use

Anu Adegbola (15:13)
Mm-hmm.

yeah. yeah. yes.

Chloe (15:27)
macro and micro conversions where possible to kind of try and meet that. But I think in this particular scenario, it just completely tanked performance. And it took me a couple of months to kind of get the performance back. And I think, again, that was in relation to the level of conversions. And

Anu Adegbola (15:32)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe (15:52)
You know, when you're kind of coming up to, when you're talking about a couple of months, I was like, when that couple of months was done, I was two months away from like the busy period for that client. So they were starting to worry, I was starting to worry. So it was just like, right, this is what we're gonna do. So I think that there were like multiple things that were

Anu Adegbola (16:07)
Yeah. ⁓ okay.

Mmm.

Chloe (16:21)
that kind of exacerbated that problem. So I had to backtrack and ⁓ switch to some different conversion tracking. There was this weird bug at the time and Maddie Lightning had posted about it and it was a bug where

Anu Adegbola (16:25)
Sure, yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe (16:45)
You know, in your settings you have account specific and campaign specific goals. There was this weird bug where it stopped listening, Google stopped listening to the account specific and she was advised by Google rep to switch it to campaign specific. So she was thinking, that's not gonna work and it did. So I've had that come up a couple of times since.

Anu Adegbola (16:51)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mmm.

Chloe (17:12)
had to implement that on some of my accounts which has fixed it so I don't know if it's an ongoing bug like I'm yeah I don't quite understand but that was like another thing that I had to do to fix it and luckily we got the account back to where it needed to be for this client's big Christmas New Year sale but it was it was a little stressful that one. ⁓

Anu Adegbola (17:16)
Yeah.

Wow.

Of course, of

course, you know what? Yeah. Thanks for our third story being like, that sounds like very, very significant. Like how did, how was the client with you? Cause that even just sounds like a client that would be, pissed off and just be like, what's going on for two months? Yeah. What happened?

Chloe (17:56)
She

was really great about it actually. So she's a marketer herself. I think transparency is always key, isn't it? When you're speaking to clients, like this is what's happened, this is what we're doing to fix it. If this doesn't work, then we'll do this or this. And you know, always having a plan B and the next step is great. But she understood.

Anu Adegbola (18:01)
Fantastic.

Yes.

Yes.

Mmm.

Chloe (18:20)
from being

a marketer that these things happen. And she also was like, your job is so stressful. this, like those changes have created this problem. And I don't know how you do it, but I don't know what it is. But in the moment when you're kind of panicking and you're troubleshooting and you're like, oh God, I don't know what to do. And then you

Anu Adegbola (18:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe (18:50)
find it and then you fix it and then you gradually see things kind of like go back to where you need them to be. That is so rewarding. Like I love that part of my job so much. ⁓

Anu Adegbola (19:01)
It really is.

Absolutely.

And you know, that's even another bit that, know, you know, I feel like we sometimes I think to myself, are we going to share anything new? Cause like, you know, a lot of the podcasters, I mean, a lot of my guests will come and be like, yeah, be honest, be transparent. And those are important messages, but you've, you've mentioned something there that no one really else has mentioned about actually as much as it can be stressful, you've found a mistake. You you've tanked someone's performance, a client's performance, the journey back, you've figuring out what went wrong.

It's just so like, it becomes like your proudest moments. Those are actually the kind of things, right? We never actually think that actually some of our proudest moments could be off the back of, you know, a big mistake that we made kind of thing. So maybe it's actually worth, you know, you know, you know, to the listeners, you know, listening to this to actually keep that in mind of like a mistake might happen, but think of the fact that that's

Chloe (19:50)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:05)
you actually then fixing that error could then be a big moment for you with you, your client, your manager, and you you fixed a problem. So don't always wallow in the whole, I've made a mistake. Try to turn it around and that could actually make, you know, become your proudest moment because yeah, proud moments don't come from really, ⁓ I've done everything well and everything's always well. That's more and more like, BAU that's, it just becomes every day. It's when something goes wrong and you fix it, you become the hero.

You know? That's okay.

Chloe (20:35)
Absolutely, and

you're building a toolkit of things that you will use again to troubleshoot accounts. And I think that that's the massive part of doing this job, is the more and more experience you get, the more and more mistakes that you make, the more and more well informed you are about these issues. And it's so nice.

Anu Adegbola (20:43)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Chloe (21:03)
⁓ Well, it's not nice when an account's not going great, but when you have a colleague come to you and say, I have no idea what to do with this, like this is the problem, and you think, ⁓ I've seen this before, let's have a little look, and you can fix things quicker.

Anu Adegbola (21:20)
Yes.

Yes, absolutely. And this is where I'll also mentioned that having a team or a community, know, mean, shameless plug. This is what PPC live WhatsApp and Slack is all about. Don't sit in your corner. I've made a mistake. Now I'm just going to sit down for six hours to 10 hours. Just trying to figure it out on my own message, your community message, a team member, tell someone be like, Hey,

this just happened. Could you just, you know, have another eyes be the second pair of eyes on this thing that I've done and maybe pick up on something that I have not picked up. And all of a sudden your, your, your, your, your research period of what's going on cuts down, cuts it down from six hours to maybe a few hours or maybe a few minutes or like 20 minutes because someone else looked at it for you because that's the thing when a mistake happens, it's, it's don't make it about a mistake about the mistake, make it about how quickly.

how quickly you can turn it around, know, that time period of quickly turning around is very important.

Chloe (22:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I feel like a lot earlier in my career and what I kind of see with colleagues that are kind of at that point as well is when things like this happen, they worry that it's gonna make them look incompetent. And like, I just disagree because we're all human beings and you know, we're working with systems that are not

Anu Adegbola (22:40)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Chloe (22:54)
foolproof and these things happen. Especially in marketing, what I always say to my colleagues is marketing, you're testing a theory, you're testing an idea, you're testing a concept and it might not work. And as long as you can...

Anu Adegbola (22:55)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe (23:18)
see that it's not worked and then you pivot and you do something else. That's the thing that makes you a good marketer. Not coming up with the best idea ever straight away and everything just works seamlessly because that's just, you know, rare. It's not real life.

Anu Adegbola (23:34)
Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely rare. You know, I, I, I feel like I want to do something that I don't usually do because, but I'm like, it's women history month. ⁓ you know, for you might be listening to this at any other time of the year, but we're recording this in March and, I know I picked up on the fact that your manager, I mean, the, client was a woman that was very understanding of you and was like, my God.

It must be really hard for you. Do you get that kind of compassion and understanding from both genders or have you found yourself, you know, getting more understanding from women? I mean, I don't, I'm not fishing for a particular answer here. I really just want to know your experience.

Chloe (24:19)
Yeah, it's difficult, isn't it? Because I think it's all about that client relationship and that rapport. And I think that I really pride myself on having those really great client relationships by just having really authentic communication, having a bit of a laugh, keeping things kind of nice and friendly and jokey.

Anu Adegbola (24:25)
Fair enough.

Yeah.

Chloe (24:45)
And

then when you need to have those real conversations and those difficult conversations, it just makes things a bit easier. And at the end of the day, this is work for mostly this is work for like both people, obviously, with some of the companies, I work for their small family businesses, and this is their livelihood. And that's like,

Anu Adegbola (24:52)
Yeah.

Yes. ⁓

Yeah.

Chloe (25:09)
sometimes really really difficult when you know you're dealing with an issue on an account and it's losing the money and you feel responsible for that ⁓ but yeah like I feel like client relationships need to be nurtured and as long as you're just updating them regularly and if there is an issue you're telling them what you're doing even if you haven't fixed it yet then

Anu Adegbola (25:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe (25:37)
you know, it's gonna be easier.

Anu Adegbola (25:41)
Absolutely, absolutely. Also, I'd like to ask, looking back to especially that third, because I feel like that third one is like was the biggest one we could have done because we had an hour just talking about that one story, but I'm really grateful that you came with three with me. I asked Chloe, like when I was asking her, I was like, oh, do you have like a story to tell? She's like, I have several. was like, okay, I'll take as many as you want to give me. So really grateful for all of that. But that third one really, really like, you know, stuck out to me.

⁓ what would this, what would you have done differently? Kind of thing. Is it, was it a case of you shouldn't have listened to Google or there was, there's more to it.

Chloe (26:20)
would have just like sat on it for a bit longer. Changing a bid strategy is a really large change to make and will have a big impact whether it's positive or negative and those should not be snap decisions and it's so difficult when speaking to Google reps because obviously you know

Anu Adegbola (26:24)
Bye.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm.

Nah.

Chloe (26:49)
some of them can be quite insistent that it's a very good idea and you know it sometimes you kind of get in your own head like what are they seeing that I'm not seeing and obviously I want this campaign to do even better than it is but yeah don't make snap decisions and listen listen to your gut

Anu Adegbola (27:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Mm.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Don't make snap decisions. Like, yeah, sit on the advice. Sit on advice for a while. So let's say someone is going through this. They have made that bit strategy and you know, it's one week, two weeks, three weeks in and they realize that the performance has tanked. What's your advice to them before they even

whilst they're sitting there, like maybe they're sat in the toilet right now and just like hands in there. You know how you have those moments where like, let me just get away from my desk and have a moment in the bathroom. What's your advice to them?

Chloe (27:47)
breathe, be kind to yourself because you're not a bad person and you will fix this. We don't know how long it's going to take but you will eventually fix it. And I think you've just got to stay calm haven't you because if you panic then you're not going to be in the right headspace to fix this properly or communicate to your client in a calm and confident way where they're going to feel reassured that you've

Anu Adegbola (27:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe (28:16)
you've got this. So stay calm. And one thing that one of my colleagues has said to me over the years when I've had a big panic when something's gone wrong is no one's died. No one has died. And it's so true, isn't it? Because no matter how big it feels to you in that moment, it really, it really isn't big.

Anu Adegbola (28:17)
Yeah.

Yes.

Nah, no, no one's died. We're not doing brain surgery here. We're not doing, you know, a heart transplant here. We're literally just well, not just because I did, you know, some of these businesses are very, you know, worthwhile businesses that doing well. But most of the time, yeah, we're just making more money for rich people. don't necessarily I mean, obviously you're taking care of someone else's budget. They've entrusted you with something. So, you know, take responsibility of that. But yeah.

Don't go into a shame spiral because you made a mistake. Just get back on horse and get back into fixing mode because that's the best way that you can be useful. Chloe, that's been fantastic story.

but like, yeah, let's move on to talking about something else and even like put shifting the spotlight to some maybe errors that you've seen your company, know, because it's an agency you work for. you get new clients coming in, new accounts coming in. What are some of the big mistakes that you see that, know, Blinda have been made on an account that come in that make you go, ⁓ really?

Chloe (29:31)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (29:42)
yeah, that really stunned you still like, and that things that you feel that shouldn't be happening still in 2026.

Chloe (29:50)
This segment needs to be so long.

Anu Adegbola (29:52)
I

Chloe (29:55)
So I'll summarize into my like top, top three. Firstly would be conversion tracking. When you start auditing an account and none of the, or like maybe one of the Google hosted conversion actions is working and nothing else is. They've still got universal analytics conversion actions in there. And it's just, dear.

Anu Adegbola (30:02)
Good?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Chloe (30:24)
this looks a bit of a pickle. So that

would be my first one. Then the next one would just be using broad match for brand campaigns.

Anu Adegbola (30:36)
Hmm.

Okay, don't do it. That's your advice. Yeah.

Chloe (30:42)
how I do things. I know people do things differently and I suppose it depends on your budget and you know your brand. But ⁓ I think what I've seen quite a lot is also just kind of other campaigns using broad match so you're showing for brand key terms like across all of your campaigns.

Anu Adegbola (30:48)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Chloe (31:06)
So

you just have no idea what keywords are working for you and like it's not like it might look on the surface that your campaigns are converting really well, but actually you're just converting on your brand. ⁓ That's one of my niggles. And accounts that have no negative keywords, just like zero or

Anu Adegbola (31:10)
I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm... Hmm...

Chloe (31:35)
or they're just not even applied in lists. That makes me feel really sad.

Anu Adegbola (31:39)
⁓ yeah, yeah,

yeah. is that, I mean, has there been any account that you've seen that was gone, well, I understand. Or legit, every account that's been running for a while should for sure have negatives.

Chloe (31:57)
Yeah, I feel that every account that's been running for... Yeah, I think as well. It's really difficult, isn't it? Because when you kind of inherit an account where it's been kind of like managed by like an in-house marketing team and they've done their best, but they don't really know what they're doing, then, you know, in that scenario, really glad that you can help them along the way and make this better. But when it's come from another agency or a freelancer, you're just like...

Anu Adegbola (32:12)
Mmm.

Yes.

Mmm.

Chloe (32:26)
Really?

Anu Adegbola (32:27)
You should know better. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. No, that makes sense. So yeah. So our three are no negatives, broad match, especially on brand and, sorry, what was the first one?

Chloe (32:31)
Thanks.

just like poor conversion tracking, like.

Anu Adegbola (32:46)
conversion

tracking, conversion tracking, broad match negatives. are very, and genuinely those three things are things that will definitely, it's not even just about a structure thing. Those aren't small things. Those are actually big things that will affect revenue. So yeah, guys, definitely look out for those things. Also our world of the AI revolution that is coming, whether it's hair, whether we like it or not. Any kind of like, or any like particular like, you know,

Chloe (32:48)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (33:12)
errors that people fall into about AI that you're like, yeah, people have got that wrong.

Chloe (33:19)
people using AI to kind of, I don't know, do ad copy or do a task or do a proposal, but not checking it. So like, and not editing it. So it looks really obvious that all of it's come from AI. ⁓ That's just really lazy. And that's not how we should be using AI.

Anu Adegbola (33:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, no, yeah, you look at it and edit it. It should always be like clear that you reviewed the work and change some bits in. Because yeah, I'm of the notion that it's, use it. It's a great tool for us to make us faster, but it make your brain faster. It should not replace your brain. And I think, so yeah, that's my view.

Chloe (34:05)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (34:09)
Chloe, this has been absolutely fantastic. You've given us so many things to think about, three great stories about mistakes we should look out for there and how you learn from it, the great relationship you had, the great working relationship you had with the client, three F-ups that you've seen other agency make that people should be absolutely wary of.

⁓ and yeah, our AI world and yeah, that's, that's all, you know, great knowledge for us to take away and, and, and make us better marketers, in this industry. but yeah, before we leave you, yeah, my, my last fun non PPC question at all, if your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Chloe (34:52)
Highly optimized.

Anu Adegbola (34:54)
Highly

I love it! Do you have a reasoning? What's the reasoning behind highly optimized?

Chloe (35:00)
You know when all of your campaigns are just looking really clean and highly optimised and you just feel really smug with yourself? That's the reason.

Anu Adegbola (35:13)
I love it. I feel

that you have a lot of smug moments of like, yeah, I did that good. I do get my campaign looking well. I'm sure you do. It is fantastic.

Chloe (35:20)
I

think I celebrate myself more now. I'm later on in my career, rather than beat myself up for all of these little mistakes. You've got to celebrate yourself and your successes.

Anu Adegbola (35:27)
What?

Yeah.

You know what? I did even ask, was like, we're at the end of it and you sneak in one last great piece of advice in there. Even like that's amazing. Honestly, everyone listening, no matter how early you're in your career, you know, we will beat ourselves up. It's what human beings do. Our brains honestly work against us and that way it's kind of sometimes, but celebrate yourselves. Remember to celebrate yourself as well. And yeah, me too. It's a very much like later.

Chloe (35:43)
Thank

Anu Adegbola (36:05)
in my life and my career thing, like even with friends, I'll be like, yeah, let's, let's do something for our birthday. Even if it's a spa, doesn't have to be like, you know, cause everybody thinks I was like, birthday party. don't want a birthday party, but celebrate yourself somehow. Do something you're actually really going to enjoy, you know, cause yeah, celebrating yourself is, is always worth it. Always worth it in my, my opinion. So Chloe, where can we find you to, you know, to share your, you know,

of things that you share and the great journey and great work you're doing at Atelier Studios.

Chloe (36:37)
I'm on LinkedIn so that would be the best channel to keep an eye on me. I like to ⁓ support other people's posts and comment but I'm a bit quiet and I'm obviously going to be a little quiet while I'm on maternity leave but one of my goals is to get more confident sharing on LinkedIn for sure.

Anu Adegbola (36:44)
Sure.

course.

We are absolutely

looking forward to that. I'm so looking forward to that. And, and I'll also shamelessly say that, you know, Chloe is part of our fantastic Slack group and you know, and she will be happy to answer questions that you've got on there as well, because that's what, we said earlier on like don't go through this mistakes on your own. Don't, don't spend a lot of time beating yourself up. Ask for help. Ask for someone to give you a second pair of eyes so that you can get to that, that, that, that journey of problem solution.

Chloe (37:15)
See you later.

Anu Adegbola (37:29)
quickly and pat yourself on the back and show yourself on. But yeah, so on that note, thank you so much for joining us today, Chloe. It's been so great chatting and catching up and yeah, speak to you soon.

Chloe (37:36)
Cheers.

Anu Adegbola (37:43)
Thank you so much, Chloe, for sharing that very honest and transparent experience with your client and those three different great examples as to how things can go wrong and it can just be something that you just honestly miss and might not even be your fault. But also things that you should have looked out for. And yeah, sometimes you need to check that account out just after three days. That is a key.

I think characteristic of someone who is trying to work hard for their client, so that you're the one that finds that mistake. As long as you're the one that finds that mistake, that always puts you on a good footing with your client. So yeah, for all the information, for the full transcript, not just the show notes, yeah, please go to podcast.ppc.live for all the details of that fantastic episode. So yeah, PPC Live events updates, always a favorite part for me.

Tickets are live, they're on sale. The early bird sale is gonna end on March the 22nd, so literally in a couple of weeks. So go to ppc.live. We've got Jack Wilmore from We Discover. We've got Emina Demiri from ⁓ Vixen Digital who are based in Brighton and it's so glad to have some know, amazing like heads of digital, senior digital marketers who are doing great work to share their experience with us.

I know we announced that Kirk Williams was going to be joining us, but unfortunately he's had to drop out due to family issues, which is very understandable. Family comes first. So yeah, look out for another update as to who our third speaker is going to be. I'm looking at someone from Microsoft, like some of a fantastic leader from Microsoft. yeah, cross all your fingers and toes for me, for that guys. Yeah, we're going to be reaching out to them. Well, I've already reached out to them, so hopefully it's a positive response. I see why not.

We see love is a fantastic event with our fantastic audience. They'll be stupid to say no. So yeah, let's they see things that way as well. Before I leave you, I'm also delighted that I am taking on coaching clients. So yeah, if you just have difficulty with confidence and just trying to ask for what you feel that you deserve and trying to figure out, you know, what the right timing is for having some of these difficult conversations. Yeah, reach out to me, go to themarketinganu.com.

For that, and you'll get to a page which is like the one-to-one coaching part of the site that will allow you to book a free 15-minute discovery call with me. The ongoing payment would be 500 pounds a month, but for that you get four hourly calls, weekly calls for four weeks in that month.

So yeah, in total, feel like ideally, you know how like therapy can just take a while, you need to give it some time. I think these kinds of discussions are the same. So I recommend a minimum three months period that we start off with. So on 500 pounds a month, so that comes to 1,500 for the whole period. So yeah, but you know, free conversation to start off with to figure out exactly what it is that you need. So yeah, I hope you have enjoyed the show and I look forward.

to bring in more PPC f-ups and triumphs next week. Thank you. Bye.