EP357 - Schedule It or Regret It ft Chloe Stockton

Anu Adegbola (00:09)
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 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 an F-up they've made. Yeah, you don't really get that from other podcasts, you? And yeah, we talk about how, the mistake they've made, how they turned it around, what the client reaction was, because yes, a lot of these are with

founders and heads of departments that are agencies and have clients. And yeah, we share also what's been disappointing, who was really in the way of the progress of just the learning and the people who are really supportive. Today, I have the delight of speaking to Chloe Stockton, who is from Journey Further. And you might have heard of Journey Further because they have supported PPC Live for a long time, especially from our ambassador, Scott Carruthers. Yeah, Chloe today talks about

the importance of actually scheduling, even when you feel that you have time to set that big sale campaign live, you know, on the day of they're to go live, it's still best to schedule. And we talk all about why that is important. So yeah, let's go speak to Chloe.

Anu Adegbola (01:20)
Hello, Chloe, welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Chloe Stockton (01:23)
Hi Anu, nice to meet you.

Anu Adegbola (01:25)
Nice to meet you too. Chloe is doing double brave work here. Not only like, just like every one of my guests who is brave enough to speak about their mistakes. That's one tick of being brave that she's doing. But also she told this very lovely story, which I totally understand that happened. I asked one of our ambassadors Scott Caruthers from Journey Further that was like, Scott, Women's History Month, we need some fantastic brave women.

to come and speak and apparently he asked and like nobody put their hands up as I'm not surprised what Chloe went, no, I am gonna, I'm gonna go with it. So thank you Chloe so much for joining us today. And honestly, our listeners are very lovely. No one's gonna DM you and barrage you with a bunch of questions afterwards. just.

Be comfortable and just, yeah, just share the story you wanna share. But before we get into that, yeah, Chloe and I were chatting earlier on and telling me about how she joined Journey Further Actually in the middle of COVID, like the whole COVID lockdown. But she has been doing paid search since 2017. Please, actually, sorry, this is one bit I didn't say earlier. What's your title? So what's your level at?

Chloe Stockton (02:40)
So I'm a paid search manager, so we have paid search specialist, paid search manager, senior manager, team leader, so yeah, I'm of just sat there in the middle.

Anu Adegbola (02:46)
Okay.

Yeah. So you lead a team as in like you manage the team or you're more like a account manager.

Chloe Stockton (02:53)
More

of an account manager, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (02:58)
All right, cool. And so yeah, I'd also loved like Chloe's story about it because she was saying that this might be generic, but I think everyone will understand the whole, you know, bit of like you're going to pay touch compare, especially compared to SEO, where SEO can take them. God bless all the hard work that SEO does. It can take three months for you to actually see the effect of your work. But with paid search, we write an ad and boom, two minutes later, you press that button and Google shows you, if you have enough.

even though the competition is not too bad. If you have enough bids, you've set your bid strategies properly, you can see your ad straight away. And that really, that's really what drew her into the industry. And she's been doing it with Journey Further for five years now. So yeah, definitely someone who is at that stage that can give us amazing lessons as to what not to do in terms of the industry, the story.

⁓ Fun fact, know, that's my also a lovely bit of this introduction. Tell us actually, Chloe, you go ahead. What's your fun fact?

Chloe Stockton (04:01)
So yeah, my fun fact is that I am a volunteer football coach. I've been doing that for I think like three and a half years now. So yeah, I do play but I'm getting on a little bit. So yeah, I get a few injuries. So yeah, it's quite nice just to kind of like see that next generation coming through.

And yeah, I said to Wanyu before, the kids that I coach are so much better than what I was when I was a kid. I I used to think when I was like 11, 12, that I was good. Like I could play with the boys and it'd be fine. But yeah, we've got girls in our team who would probably play against boys and beat them. So yeah, it's really nice to see that future generation coming through.

Anu Adegbola (04:30)
Yeah.

Yeah,

no, amazing. And we're actually seeing about how like, I've been really impressed with the national team, the female national team, like, you know, the lions and how honestly they're, they've been having a better run than the male team. So it's very, it's very funny to see how like there's all that chat of it's coming home and then you watch the match and it doesn't come home. But for the women's team, they brought several of those trophies home. So they really made, made the nation proud and

that will then help with the investment, as you were saying, with like kits and making sure that they have like, you know, everything, all the support that they need. So yeah, it's really great to see those kinds of things. But anyway, let's move on to what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about PPC mistakes. [Chloe] is gonna bravely share one of the stories about, you know, what happened, what she learned and how to make sure that we're not gonna make that mistake again, right? So, you know, we've done this for...

30, 40 episodes. I hope you're seeing all your mistakes been a lot less and that you're growing your confidence in how to approach these different strategies. And this is another story that will do that, just that for you. yeah, Chloe take it away. What's the F up you'd like to share with us today?

Chloe Stockton (05:49)
Cool, so yeah, I had to try and think of something that wasn't minor because I feel like everyone makes little mistakes and you can just brush them over, it's fine. But yeah, I had go back to Black Friday 2019, I think it was. Cyber Monday specifically, so obviously we'd had a fairly successful Black Friday itself.

Anu Adegbola (05:57)
Yeah!

Chloe Stockton (06:10)
the weekend was good from a performance point of view and then yeah, come Cyber Monday I realised I hadn't created specific ads and like scheduled them to go live so yeah, Cyber Monday morning I was frantically just trying to manually switch them over and I...

Anu Adegbola (06:13)
Mmm.

Chloe Stockton (06:27)
basically realised later on in the day that I'd actually forgot to press post on the ads. Obviously I was using Google Ads Editor, like I could kind of do with any of those kind of like ad building tasks. And then yeah, I think...

I realised in the afternoon because I was checking GA, obviously back in the day when you could check real-time revenue and life was good. And I think the client at some point emailed during the day to say, what's up with performance? Why are we not getting any revenue through brand?

And then, I was just like looking in the account and that's when I realised, ⁓ had my editor window still open. I opened it up and I was like, everything was still in bold and I was like, shit, I press pause. Post even. So yeah, that was fun. And yeah, I think like my reaction, like when I realised, it wasn't like a massive panic, but it was like kind of a feeling of dread that you get. And obviously that was like back in the day when we in the office every day, was like pre-COVID. ⁓

Anu Adegbola (07:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (07:21)
And yeah, I was just like sat there at my desk just trying to Just try and remain calm Because I said didn't want to bring like any attention to myself So yeah that that was fun ⁓ But yeah, it was like kind of like immediate as soon as I realized I was like, okay I'll post them now and then we can just deal with whatever we need to deal with after

Anu Adegbola (07:27)
Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, you have very brilliantly, I appreciate this also even answered, because there's always the question of how did you feel? You've already touched on that. There was that feeling of dread. You saw that being bold There's also the question of who saw it first. if I remember you said it was a client that spotted it before you did.

Chloe Stockton (08:06)
Yeah,

I think the client didn't necessarily spot the mistake itself, but obviously the flag that performed was looking a little bit slow, especially after the weekend, obviously with it being Saturday of Monday. I can't remember the exact details of the sale or anything because obviously it was a long time ago. Yeah, I think that's what made me kind of look into it. And then, that's when I realised.

Anu Adegbola (08:11)
Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

show.

Okay, okay.

So who did you come clean to? Did you like go, you know, they make your manager aware this is what has gone wrong? How did the conversation then go ahead with the client or someone internal?

Chloe Stockton (08:41)
Yeah, so from what I can remember, because at that agency we had account managers, so we didn't really have that much direct contact with the client themselves, which at times was a blessing. So yeah, I think I just mentioned it to him and then they obviously then kind of like helped. We just basically just wrote an email together, I think, from what I can remember. ⁓ That's how it went down. And then, yeah, we just obviously like emphasised with the client, like...

Anu Adegbola (08:49)
Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (09:08)
Firstly, this is never gonna happen again. The ads are now live. And I think, I can't remember like exact details in terms of like how it potentially impacted them, but I think it was one of those clients that didn't necessarily have like a lot of brand competition. So if anyone was coming through brand and didn't see an ad.

Anu Adegbola (09:10)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Chloe Stockton (09:28)
we'd

hope that they would have gone through organic anyway so from like a business point of view it shouldn't really have had too much of an impact but at the same time it's still one of those mistakes like you think especially on like a really important weekend you think that it could have been worse so yeah

Anu Adegbola (09:30)
Mm.

Okay.

Yes.

Yeah. So, and this, this was something that you started working on in terms of like timelines of when you did the action, how many days till they, till the client found out. where you're like trying to turn everything, put the new ads on, on the Monday or was it on a Friday? Sure.

Chloe Stockton (10:00)
So it was on the Monday, so

yeah, so obviously the ad switchover was happening on the Monday, because I think the offer changed, so obviously we had to change the offer and then change like any mentions of Black Friday to Cyber Monday. And then yeah, it all happened like on that day, so I think like...

Anu Adegbola (10:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (10:16)
I think because obviously we realised pretty quickly and it's not like it's something that dragged on for a few days, I think that also helped. Like obviously we responded pretty quickly. And I think the client did obviously appreciate that. And to be honest, like they weren't like angry or anything with us. ⁓ I think they just, in a nice way, just said, just make sure it doesn't happen again. And then it was fine. It's one of those things that just...

Anu Adegbola (10:22)
No. Yes. Yes.

No. Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Chloe Stockton (10:43)
Like I said I'll come onto this in a bit but it's like it just sticks with you and it just makes it just means that you just tripled if you're doing anything like this obviously you might change your process but it just means that you're going to triple check everything more than once just to make sure that you know you don't make that mistake again.

Anu Adegbola (10:48)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

absolutely. And like, even for a lesson, cause what I also like, you know, digging in with, with guests is sometimes you think to yourself, if I had done XYZ before that wouldn't have happened. What are some things that you think to yourself? Like, this is things that, you know, you should have, shouldn't have done in a certain way to ensure that that doesn't happen again.

Chloe Stockton (11:22)
should have just made sure that had everything scheduled and like obviously that ads labeled up correctly so that's kind of

Anu Adegbola (11:26)
Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (11:31)
what I've done ever since like pre that agency I didn't even use labels which is a bit wild when I think about it now like I would struggle if labels weren't a thing just because of it's just really easy to label up your ads and just pause them and enable them whenever you need to and see how that labels and scheduling like I've got a client now who have a promo every month so it's making sure like

Anu Adegbola (11:36)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mmm.

Chloe Stockton (11:58)
It starts on a Monday, it runs Monday to Sunday like one week every month. So then obviously on the Thursday or the Friday before that's starting, I'll make sure all of the ads are set up, they're all labelled correctly, all the BAU ads are labelled correctly. And then I sit there and make sure everything gets scheduled. So like BAU pause, promo live. And then like all those rules are set up well in advance so that it just means that this doesn't happen again. ⁓

Anu Adegbola (12:13)
Yeah.

the end.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (12:26)
But then yeah, I even think then, I think just label like ads being labeled correctly or just making sure you set your rules up correctly. Like there's been times where I've triple checked the rules just to make sure I've used label as the identifier. I think I did do it, I think I did once again a little while ago where I think to enable ads, I forgot to add label as the identifier. So for about an hour in the morning, every ad that was in the account, that was paused, just re-enabled.

Anu Adegbola (12:47)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (12:55)
Also

again I realised pretty quickly and just paused it again. Told the client they were fine about it. ⁓ So yeah again that's kind of another thing where it's just if you set up rules just triple check you've set everything up correctly. Because yeah it's one of those things if you don't notice it quickly you could have Christmas ads live and you're in July.

Anu Adegbola (12:58)
Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

Yep, yep,

you've got to be very careful with that. And in terms of like, of the things that I did catch about that story is actually needing, you needing to come in on the Monday because I'd imagined that they gave you this sales schedule. They're like, this is what needs to, this is the Black Friday discount amount. And then this is going to be the Monday one. So are you saying when in terms of scheduling, it's best to have scheduled that, you know,

the week before, that kind of thing, is that something kind of thing you would have done differently?

Chloe Stockton (13:48)
Yeah, I think I definitely would have spent, because obviously at the time I had like two or three e-commerce clients who were all doing Black Friday, but that was at a time where like we just did Black Friday on Black Friday, we didn't do it for like the whole of November. But yeah, I definitely could have spent more time in the early part of that week getting all of my schedules and all of my rules set up in advance just to try and make those, because those three days back then could be quite stressful.

Anu Adegbola (13:57)
Right.

Mm. Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (14:18)
and there could be like a lot going on and that's when you might miss things or forget to do things. So yeah, just definitely making sure that if you do have, whether it's Black Friday, whether it's any kind of promo period or just anything where you're switching ads over, ⁓ if they need to be done on like a certain day or certain messaging needs to be shown, then yeah, just actually take the time to make sure everything's set up because that avoids mistakes being made basically.

Anu Adegbola (14:18)
Yeah! Yeah...

Mmm. Yeah.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's, we're paid search managers, especially with AI coming on, and one, us wanting to be like in control. Some there's, there's the, probably like the bad habit for like, it's going to be a quick task. I'm just going to, I'm just going to do it as it's happening. And actually using those schedules can be very important and just allows you to not stress exactly on that day of doing the thing. Yes, it might not be a hard task, but like,

Chloe Stockton (15:09)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:13)
On the day of use it to double check, because if you're using the same day to do the task and double check again, that's you'll still miss something. At least if you schedule something and then the day of you double check, because especially with anything automated, don't just set it and forget it. You might set the schedule up and you might set it at the wrong time. There's so many times I've done a something is supposed to go at 9 a.m. But I've mistakenly put 9 p.m.

So then, but because I scheduled it, the morning of all my brain is doing, okay, nine Oh five, let me look for my ad. And at nine Oh five, I don't see my ad. I immediately go to what I scheduled. And then I set the right. And I'm like, Oh my God, I put the right time on. But if I was thinking of doing everything on that same day, you'll miss so much more. So yeah, use those automators, use those schedules to definitely happen.

In terms of like your internal team. you said the client was like, okay, the internal team, your manager, was he, was he okay as well? Was, was, was there a little bit of like annoyance? How did, how, because I also feel like with mistakes, some managers, it's also down to a manager to actually help you through it and not actually beat you, know, you know, beat you through it and do the whole guilt trip. So do you feel like you had that support in terms of when you open up about the mistake?

Chloe Stockton (16:33)
100 % and it's not necessarily ironic but I can kind of vaguely remember a conversation of being told about similar mistakes being made by them which obviously because I hadn't really said again I've made little ones because again I was still quite junior at the time and I think it was probably my first major one which I think is why it's stuck out in my brain and it's kind of like why I wanted to speak about it today

Anu Adegbola (16:46)
Star. Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (17:03)
And then that immediately just made it kind of clear to me, like well everyone makes mistakes, it's just how you deal with it. There's no point in dwelling on it. He just, kind of gave me some support and was just like well, if you need any advice on how to avoid doing this in the future then it's fine to comment chat, so.

Anu Adegbola (17:10)
Yeah. No.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, no, that's amazing. That's a good manager for sure. That's a good manager. That's how things should be dealt with. Also, now let's say someone is going through this kind of mistake and

the client has gone to them, what the heck? We're supposed to have, you know, this amount of revenue coming through and strong revenue on our best performing campaigns, but we're not seeing anything. And then they see that they've not set a campaign live. What's your advice to someone going through this issue right now?

Chloe Stockton (17:49)
I think it's okay to make mistakes. I know I've said that a few times. But yeah, think if anything they just help you become better at your job because they make you think a little bit more. You could think you're the best PPC analyst out there but if you make a mistake it kind of...

grounds you little bit, it you just remind you that you're not actually invincible. But yeah, think as long as you learn from it and endeavour to just make sure that you don't make the same mistake twice, because I think if you do make the same mistake like twice, maybe even three times, then that's where you probably think, okay, I'm doing something wrong, I need to change my process, but at the same time again, that can help you become better at your job because I feel like depending on what the process is, like...

Anu Adegbola (18:13)
There is.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (18:38)
I feel like you should always change things up a little bit because that's when, if you do the same thing over and over and over again, you get so used to it again you might miss a step. So yeah, I think it's one of them, just remember that mistakes don't really shape your career. It's just not how it happens. If that was the case then I probably would have stopped doing PPC when I made this mistake, because would have been like, oh can't face it. But yeah, think as long as you're being honest with the client.

Anu Adegbola (18:40)
Yeah.

Mm.

Me too.

Chloe Stockton (19:05)
Especially if it's a big mistake, don't hide behind it because clients obviously value that honesty and transparency. ⁓ Whether it's a mistake, whether it's you've overspent by X amount on a certain month through not pulling back when you needed to, for example. But yeah, think as long as you're honest, transparent and just learn from your mistakes, then you should be grand.

Anu Adegbola (19:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely. Look, you know, I'm not even, we're not going to delve into that because something that I also really appreciate with like my guests that come on, I'm almost making them drag out a story that they've comfortably put in the past and it might bring some PTSD of like, Oh my God, I can't believe I used to do that. But like, yeah, that's the thing. We, there's so many things we used to do and that's absolutely fine. As long as you learn from it and you've moved on from it, it's great. So yeah.

We're going to leave that story there. You've given us some really great takeaways, know, things to remember, to be like, yeah, be honest, don't, and these kinds of mistakes do not make your career. It doesn't mean your career is coming to an end. Um, just be honest about things and learn. And yeah, if you have good support and good managers around you, yeah, this, it just becomes a little blip in your career and it makes for the best learnings really. So don't be afraid of them.

All right, let's now move to change gears now and look at, you know, clients that your journey further have won and the, you know, new accounts that you've been put on and maybe you need to do an audit or someone else has done an audit and now you need to change things. What are some of like the big mistakes or like even just surprising mistakes for you that you've seen that's still happening that you've needed to change quickly in terms of like strategies for clients?

Chloe Stockton (20:49)
I've got loads. I think there's a few obvious ones. I will land on one specific one in a minute, but yeah, think sometimes we might get account and brand and non-brand are in the same campaign. And it could be a fairly well-known brand, so non-brand's not getting any volume whatsoever. ⁓ That's surprising that we do still see that quite often. But I think one of the...

Anu Adegbola (21:00)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (21:13)
One of the issues I had when I took on a new client almost three years ago now was to my knowledge, the previous agency didn't have full Google Merchant Center access. So, and they're a retail client. ⁓ So when I...

Anu Adegbola (21:18)
Mm.

Okay.

wow. Okay.

Chloe Stockton (21:32)
Basically when we got them, we were trying to get the access so we could audit the feed. And that took a few weeks because on the client side they didn't know who actually had the access. And then when we eventually did get it, it was like I just reviewed the feed and I was like that's a quick win, that's a quick win, that's a quick win. There was no like, Gtins in there. The titles were very unoptimised. There was just a lot in there.

Anu Adegbola (21:57)
Yeah...

Yeah...

Chloe Stockton (22:01)
So yeah, just think that's a little bit wild how you can get an ecommerce client and the feed have not really been touched for as long as... well obviously you can't really see when changes are made but it just looks like the feed's been untouched basically. So yeah, that's pretty much the main one.

Anu Adegbola (22:12)
Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Feeds not being optimized. mean, I've never really needed to optimize like feed and even managing accounts has been a long time, but I, I'm always like, that's a, that's a, that's very quick win. That's something that's just makes sense. So if you've had an agency who has not touched your feed in terms of optimizing, yeah, you need to fire them. Literally. I'm like, like that is a basic one for sure. how about in terms of like,

AI, you know, our world of AI, it's, it's whether we like it or not, we have to use AI even, even even like bit strategy. AI is being used, even if you know it or not. but like, what are the ways that you feel like people are using it wrong? Or maybe even like people are not taking as much advantage of what it could do either.

Chloe Stockton (23:06)
I

think in terms of... I'll probably take that as the second angle in terms of not using it as much as what they maybe could. I think there's maybe a couple of groups out there who don't just want to rely on it to do the job but then at the same time it's there, utilise it. So I've used it to help me write ad copy when I'm...

Anu Adegbola (23:12)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm. Mm.

Okay.

Chloe Stockton (23:34)
struggling for inspiration. don't necessarily use exactly what it spits out because there might be reasons why I can't use exactly what it spat out. But yeah, if I'm struggling for inspiration, I use it. I've used it to help devise an urgent strategy for Demand Gen ⁓ For like, I work on a pet food brand and in terms of like puppy and kitten and just thinking even though like I've got

Anu Adegbola (23:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (24:02)
I've got dog, both of which I've had when they were puppies and kittens. It's easy to think about the things that I was probably searching for at the time to create custom audiences for example. But it's just again thinking outside the box ⁓ and that's obviously where AI can help with that. It basically helped me put together an audience strategy or again it gave me inspiration to think a little bit more and I like okay I can take that idea, I can add to it.

Anu Adegbola (24:06)
yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (24:31)
And then yeah, I think in terms of mistakes.

I feel like I can maybe flip what I said around the ad copy for example where people might just get lazy putting their landing page for example and say give me 5 headlines, a couple of descriptions and then just take that for what it is without really thinking about it or thinking why they might want to use that as a headline. ⁓ I think don't always trust it as well.

Anu Adegbola (24:41)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Chloe Stockton (25:03)
It's

easy to ask it a question or ask it for something but then kind of try and verify that information as well because I think there's probably, again I haven't done it but I think you could ask it something and then you could just copy and paste it, send that to a client without really reading it and verifying it yourself. So I think that might be some mistakes that people make in terms of just making sure that it is something that you can trust.

Anu Adegbola (25:11)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely, absolutely. Also something new I started asking and I apologize that this might be a brand new question I didn't give you preparation for but this is like very much in terms of like things that a manager might be testing or because I write for search engine land and I'm always spitting out this latest update. I'm one of the latest one in terms of features is AI max. Have you guys been testing it yet?

Chloe Stockton (25:41)
Okay.

Yeah, I've been testing it across all of my accounts. I'm very much like on the fence about it in terms of like, so for one of my accounts, we can't use the find a URL expansion element of it. then I'm like, well, what's actually, and then one of the experiments, like it seems to be performing well, but it's not necessarily certain terms coming through AI max specifically. I'm like, what's actually driving the performance.

Anu Adegbola (26:00)
Nice!

Right.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (26:25)
And

then yeah, definitely been testing it and I think it's something that obviously a lot of us at Journey Further have been testing as well. think it is quite split. Some people have seen some good results off the back of it, some are still not so sure. But I think again, it's the importance just continue testing it and just see like is it not working because your campaign structure or your ad group structure needs to be different. And then yeah, again, that's where we can like leverage the help of Google as well just to...

Anu Adegbola (26:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (26:54)
see if there's anything else that we can do a little bit better just to see if we can get it to work.

Anu Adegbola (26:58)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it's very brave those who are deciding that they're going to be one of the first to do it. I mean, it's been year now, just over a year. So one of the guy, Mike Ryan, who's worked for Smartie E-commerce and he's one of those guys that really like writes about it and writes about e-commerce and all the stuff that that's e-commerce can do. Or like Google, you can do through like retail, you know, clients. And that's why I decided to ask about it, because I was like, yeah, you know about retail campaigns.

edited a shopping feed. yeah, in my marks, maybe something that you're testing and yeah, they're saying it's very mix, very mixed signals at the moment. So yeah, I think you're pretty much the same, same fruit with it. And it's really all the most of Google ads and all the different features, P max demand gen, some of some brands that will work for some brands, it will not work. Right. So

Chloe Stockton (27:50)
Yeah, we were

talking about this internally last, I think it was last Thursday, just about how when smart bidding first became a thing and everyone was just like didn't want to touch it with a barge poll and then smart shopping and then fast forward a few years, PMAX, everyone's a bit like what's this and then broad match, obviously like broad match back in the day again if that was in an account that I was auditing like without broad match modifiers I'd just be like

Anu Adegbola (28:00)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mmm... Ugh.

Yeah.

Chloe Stockton (28:19)
I'll take

a little look at the search terms just because I'd just be interested to see what rubbish it was matching through. But again, it's just one of those things like AI has been increasingly becoming part of what we do as Google Ads specialists over the last five, six, maybe even seven years. ⁓ And I think over time, we've just learned how to adapt, also learn how to test it as well. Obviously, yeah, think it doesn't always work.

Anu Adegbola (28:24)
Yeah!

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Chloe Stockton (28:48)
like

it doesn't always work for every client but I think again that's why we test these things just to see what does work and what doesn't.

Anu Adegbola (28:56)
Absolutely, absolutely. It's about testing. And we're not, was speaking to another, this guy, Brad Geddes, he's like, you know, and I was like, what's one thing PPC will not admit? it's the fact that we're admitting that we don't know the answer because it's like our saying is that we always need to be testing, we're always testing. And I'm like, yeah, we don't necessarily admit, we don't want to admit that we can make a mistake or we're not gonna know the right thing to do for a client.

because I'd rather say that, we're testing.

saying that we don't know. not going to admit that we say we don't know. Well, we're always testing and we're always advising that we should be testing and I think that's still always going to be a great advice to give.

Chloe, thank you so much. You've given us so much advice, shared your great story, you know, and talked about, yeah, mistakes that are avoidable, I'd actually even say, you know, and you talk about mistakes that other people are making, guys, that's avoidable stuff. Optimize your feed. That's an easy one. Use AI, but don't give it all the controls. And even things like, what was it? Double check any scheduling automation. Yeah, use automation, use AI, but double check it.

the human that always puts it in place and gives it the right guardrails to use. so yeah, last question before we leave you to hear today, Chloe, if your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Chloe Stockton (30:23)
Okay, so it would be called manual labour and like the description again, this isn't me, this is like a Gemini job where it's kind of like the description it gave me like I'll

Anu Adegbola (30:26)
Okay?

I it.

Chloe Stockton (30:35)
say it word for word because I think it's quite funny. It says the plot is a nostalgic look, a nostalgic look back at the good old days of PPC So like I obviously first started doing PPC in like 2017. The film features long sweeping shots of massive Excel spreadsheets in the heartbreaking moment and manual bid chains accidentally tanked the client's weekend performance. So it's kind of like back in the day where everything was like quite manual and then...

Anu Adegbola (30:36)
Sure.

Mmm.

Chloe Stockton (30:58)
Yeah, it kind of like goes to fast forward through like all the automation and stuff like that. So yeah. Manual labor.

Anu Adegbola (31:03)
Say the title again, sorry.

manual

labor yeah manual labor i feel they should be like if we get you on the show again it would be like there needs to be the part two of like that you know the machine rises kind of thing manual labor but the machine has risen and taken control of other kinds ⁓ bless that is so cool thank you so much Chloe for sharing that if i know you're not necessarily a social media person but if people if you're ever going to share something about what you you know you're testing

Chloe Stockton (31:18)
Yeah, make a sequel.

Anu Adegbola (31:34)
Where can people hear from you?

Chloe Stockton (31:36)
So it will be Chloe Stockton on LinkedIn. Yeah, that's pretty much the only place I would post about work. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (31:40)
Yeah, question. Also, also,

now that makes sense. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Chloe. And yeah, we look forward to hearing about any learnings that you have to share with us.

Chloe Stockton (31:51)
Cool, yeah thanks, I know it's been a pleasure,

Anu Adegbola (31:53)
Thank you, Chloe, for that very useful insight and that transparent honesty about that mistake that happened and, you know, the lesson that you learned from it and how you are very much like on top of the whole, yeah, using AI, using it for inspiration, using it for ad campaigns, but also the warning about not overusing it and making sure that we are looking at those outputs before we implement it. Very, very important, I definitely think. So yeah, for all the information, the full transcript.

of that fantastic chat, just go to podcast.ppc.live for the full show notes, the links that she shared and any resources that you might need. Yeah, so for terms of our PPC live events updates, unfortunately, by the time you're listening to this, you've probably missed out on the early bird sale, but still go to ppc.live. There might be some treats there for you. We definitely have speakers like Jack Wilmore and Emina Demiri, who's based in Brighton as well.

And by now we've probably announced our third speaker surprise speaker, but as I'm recording this, I'm not too sure who that is yet. Yeah, we definitely have a third speaker for you by now for that makes up a fantastic lineup of speakers at Brighton. So yeah, go to ppc.live. It's the cheapest that you're going to get for such a great value. You know, that price doesn't reflect the value that it's going to give seriously. It doesn't reflect, you know,

how much we actually provided these events, three fantastic talks, food, drinks, and this time at pretty much at the seaside, we are gonna have fantastic views. Of course, we want you to focus on our speakers, but who doesn't want the backdrop of the beach as you're listening to fantastic talks about paid search. So yeah, hope you're gonna join us on April 29th. Yeah, go to ppc.live for your tickets. And before I leave you, I'm also delighted to share that I'm taking on coaching clients.

⁓ If anyone just has issues in terms of asking for that promotion being confident about you know Going for that job that you're like, you're not sure you're perfectly suited for You know, yeah, let's have a chat about it Even if it's just about getting ahead in the industry if you feel like you've just stagnated at a certain point Really would love to help you build that skill that skills of your confidence to ensure that you're continuing to going after the thing that you deserve and that you've earned

So yeah, if you go to themarketinganu.com, you can book a 15 minute free discovery call so that we know exactly what to do, what to chat to you about and what to discuss and what kind of confidence we need to build in you. So yeah, I hope you've enjoyed the show and I look forward to bringing you more PPC F UPS and Triumphs next week. Thank you.