EP358 - Quick Wins, Quick Mess ft Hannah Zora Strong

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 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 about their biggest F-ups, something that still makes them, their skin crawl a little bit.

thinking of the fact that at some point in their career, they'd made this mistake. But these are people who are heads of agencies, founders, directors, successful consultants. So this is something that did nothing to harm their career. They learned from it. And now they're coming on the show to tell you about what they learned from it so that you don't make the same mistake again. So yeah, today we speak to Hannah Zora Strong.

⁓ a very, very strong name, She shares like an F of that she made several years ago. That was more on the, in other lines of like winning a new client, trying to make that quick win happen because of course the previous agencies, you know, did a big mess up and that's why they left the previous agencies. And, know, they found like the, the quick one to make, but unfortunately that quick win ended up being a bit of a.

quick mess, also it was really great to hear her story about all the people that supported her even when she was away on holiday during the, you know, crawling back from that mistake. So yeah, let's go speak to Hannah.

Anu Adegbola (01:36)
Hello Hannah. Welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Hannah Zora Strong (01:40)
Hello, thank you for having me.

Anu Adegbola (01:41)
It's such a delight. Like, yeah, it's so great. You're going to be rounding up our, I believe it's going to be like the fourth one for like, know, women history month. Or maybe it's the week after, maybe it's just going to be early April that we're going to be doing that. Cause you know, we said just before this, there's so many fantastic women in our fields. They're doing amazing work, but we're all fallible to mistakes. We're you know, susceptible to doing things that make us go, okay, I will never do that again.

And Hannah is going to be joining us to share one of those lovely stories to do that. So who's Hannah? Hannah is a PPC specialist with over 14 years of experience. She's helped brands with local customers to get from their Google ads and LinkedIn advertising. So when you have a client objective or there's a mix of lead gen commerce or footfall.

She works with monthly budgets of about two to 20K to help those kinds of clients to ensure they're meeting their right targets. As a freelancer who is helping several clients, couple of agencies, the services she provides include Google Ads Management as well as LinkedIn Ads and consultancy audits, training and power hours. So you just need like that second pair of eyes to ensure that you're on the right path of your account management.

She's the one to call. And now one of my favorite bits, fun fact. So yeah, Hannah, share your fun fact with our fantastic audience.

Hannah Zora Strong (03:09)
Hello. So I'm based in Newcastle, about 10 minutes from the coast, and when I'm not managing PPC accounts or mothering my two children, I will often be found in the North Sea, just having a sea dip. And if the cold isn't for you, then there's also a beach sauna option afterwards. So...

Anu Adegbola (03:28)
Yes. Yes. I was

telling Hannah before she had, she had me a beach sauna, lost me at cold plunge. And I'm like, even I love the way that even in the, in the warm areas, our gym, they, they announced to us like, we're going to offer a cloth, you know, cold plunge soon. And I'm like, okay. Good. Yeah. Good for you. Good for you. Your people. So look, yeah. People who love, I love.

Hannah Zora Strong (03:46)
Cool. Not for me.

Anu Adegbola (03:53)
warm swims. love the Mediterranean Sea to swim in. is my lovely love to love to do. and Newcastle is quite up north because you've been part of the PPC live as well community for a long while now. Really grateful for that, but like you're quite up north, aren't you? That's, that's, that's north. What are the events that are around that area?

Hannah Zora Strong (03:59)
Peace,

so there's SEM Stories. SEM Stories was launched back in about two years ago now. I think there's a third one coming up in May of this year. There's Atomic Con quite big for the general marketing and mostly like self-employed consultant community. But PPC, I PPC Lives coming tonight leads into Manchester.

Anu Adegbola (04:17)
Yes!

Yeah, yeah, see you. Yes.

Nice.

Hannah Zora Strong (04:35)
there's obviously Performance Manchester which Charlie's done a great job of like putting the north on the map, yeah there's you know the odd search marketing event up here but yes it's usually down south as well.

Anu Adegbola (04:37)
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you ever come south to South Africa?

Hannah Zora Strong (04:51)
Occasionally,

occasionally I'm saying before I go into the Digital Marketing Union, be up next week. I've obviously been to Brighton SEO and I spoke at HeroConf last year.

Anu Adegbola (04:55)
Nice.

Nice.

Hannah Zora Strong (05:00)
So I try and get around but as I say just working from my garden office very far north and two kids are four and six so it's like they don't quite understand why I'm going away sometimes. Even when it was just to like dip in the sea to have some silence the sea is great or whether it's to listen to like you know the best in the biz share their latest tips you know both both are great.

Anu Adegbola (05:06)
there. God bless.

Yeah.

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, amazing. You work hard in terms of like, yeah, doing that networking and sharing with, you know, others. So that's fantastic. And we'll get into, you know, working. We can hear, hear your, you know, your amazing insights later on, but yeah, let's get into the crux of the story. We know what we're here for. We're here to hear,

you know, an F up that happened that, you know, makes some of my guests still go like, my God, I can't believe that happened. So I'm really, really grateful that Hannah is like, yeah, the latest on the long list of people who have been very gracious to share their stories. So yeah, let's take it away. Hannah, what's the F up you'd like to share with us today?

Hannah Zora Strong (06:00)
So I classed myself as quite an old lady of PPC. I've been in the business for 14 years now, so I'm employed for four. So the effort I'm going to share will cast you back to, OG's of PPC will remember this very big strategy of like more manual bidding days. Do we all remember those? And so I was actually at my first marketing agency and I'd recently been promoted to head of department.

Anu Adegbola (06:20)
How does?

Hannah Zora Strong (06:30)
So we're still working on some accounts, managed a team, happy days, was looking after the big books, the big clients. And we signed a new client that was a car dealership on the Tuesday. And I was heading on holiday with my parents on the Friday. And you know what clients are like. They want immediate results. And as a young gun in the industry, I wanted to make a good impression super early days and, you know,

Anu Adegbola (06:30)
Thank

Yeah.

Mm, mm.

Hannah Zora Strong (06:58)
implement

the quickest of quick wins. But my f-up was that I was a bit too hasty with my mass edit that I did on the bid strategy. And it ultimately caused the client to have a bit of a panic and for the agency director to call me at the airport to be like, what have you done? So yeah, that was not, not ideal. Like in front of my parents, think I was about 25 at the time. So I was still getting told off in front of my parents.

Anu Adegbola (07:13)
now.

my god, ⁓ my god

Hannah Zora Strong (07:24)
about work was like no this isn't great but basically so I worked with this car dealership and their conversion was viewing a vehicle page a vehicle display page view so a VDP view and they had managed this internally for the last million years and I was the first time they'd like kind of gone out to an agency so it was like I couldn't be too critical of the account because I didn't want to like poo poo what they've done already but anyway went into the account and noticed that

Anu Adegbola (07:47)
Mm-mm. Mm.

Hannah Zora Strong (07:52)
90 % of the keywords were set to below first page bid. So like any good advertiser, like, that just won't do. We need to be, you know, further up the ad position, RIP, where we can still see that. And I selected all.

and said yeah we'll back them up, we'll back all those bids up as you would because you want to maximise your impressions and your clicks and your clicks rate for the client naturally so did that and it was like I'd dropped a bomb and left to be honest because I did that and then went on holiday and then this is when the angry phone call from the ops director arrived and was like oh my god the client's kicking off because their cost per conversion's gone from like 20p to about

£2 all because I'd just blanket up the bids so...

Anu Adegbola (08:44)
Yeah, yeah. Lord, and it wasn't,

yeah, it was one of those things that where you like selected maybe like a hundred keywords and then just did change from that to that. So it's not even something that even took you too long to do. It was, was, it's a change that happened in minutes. ⁓ Lord, absolutely.

Hannah Zora Strong (08:57)
Yeah, do it.

But like it came from the best place because I was like, well, obviously

you do that. Just like, you know, I did that from all the other accounts. It had totally worked. Why would this be the wrong thing to do? But it turns out that the client had manually chosen to keep those cost per clicks at like six, seven pence.

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

Mmm.

Hannah Zora Strong (09:21)
in the expectation that the conversion rate would be 20 to 25 percent so a VDP would be kind of 20 to 30 pence not one to two pounds. ⁓ So yeah so the that wasn't great and then so my second-in-command had to go back and manually make those changes because even in change history there wasn't like an undo button I know there is for some changes but not for this one apparently so yeah that was their job while I was

Anu Adegbola (09:27)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, now there is. Yeah.

to

manually do that. Now I actually do like sitting, listening to me editing past episodes. I tend to do the whole, well, the client should have X, Y, Z. And I'm like, why didn't the client let you know that they were like, by the way, we want these bids low.

Hannah Zora Strong (10:09)
Mmm.

Anu Adegbola (10:10)
What, like, what do you feel like was the, cause how, how involved were you in the onboarding of this client? And was there, was there coms that just didn't happen that, you know, prevented you from knowing the point of that, that bit strategy.

Hannah Zora Strong (10:24)
So

we didn't, we had like the objective, I guess, was just to increase views.

Anu Adegbola (10:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (10:32)
And

there wasn't like a set cost per Click target, there wasn't a CPA target. So in my head, I was like, the bids aren't being aggressive enough, which is impacting click through rate, which will be impacting, you know, quality score, which will be impacting the account health. Let's fix this first and then work on, you know, pausing the keywords or doing all the bits later to improve the CPA. So in my head, I was just trying to get the ads in front of as many people as possible as

Anu Adegbola (10:36)
Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (10:59)
up the search results as possible naturally but yeah there wasn't like if there was a CPA target of 30 pence and Google was saying yeah this need this bid needs to be 50p you know to be on the first page bid then I would have been like ⁓ okay there's maths to do here let's not do that but yeah because it was just to get more I didn't necessarily put two and two together at that point and think about the risk of making that change

Anu Adegbola (11:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I, again, I can't help but do the whole, if clients are listening, any clients that are listening, be as open and transparent with the targets and what you've done and why you did certain things, because it's, you know, it's a bit rude for you to ask your client, Hey, why did you do this? You know, that's, you, you want to be like, you want to be like, they probably know what they're doing. These are people, you know, they, so.

Hannah Zora Strong (11:45)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:49)
I don't know, like yeah, there's, there's, there's a, think we get a, you get a lot of clients are like, yeah, paid set experts. They'll know, they'll, they'll know. We can't read people's minds. We can't read our client's minds. And if it's not in black and white, and it's not in the comms that we've had with the client, there's some things that we can't assume. And, ⁓ so yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (12:10)
So

we'll just blame the sales team. We'll just blame the onboarding process. It wasn't the client, like, just micromanaging their CPCs at all. wasn't me, it was them.

Anu Adegbola (12:15)
day.

Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah, maybe.

Yeah. But like, you know, so, but like in your, in your, in your mind, I mean, I was like, have a few thoughts. Some might seem to be obvious. They're probably not obvious, but this is the point to find this, these conversations. What's what, what was missed that, you know, that you feel like you didn't do if you look back retrospectively, oh, if I had done this, I could have really avoided this.

this mistake from my end.

Hannah Zora Strong (12:51)
think it would have been a target, having a target CPA to be like we can scale up but this is the cap because I think that at that moment I would have realised that if we increase all the bids actually traffic's gonna drop by three quarters because if we 3x the bids then naturally we're not getting as much traffic and we can't scale as quickly but I think in my early days as a keen PPCer I was just

Anu Adegbola (12:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (13:20)
Like even running blind to just make a big impact really quickly To show yeah, but I click through rate and before I'd even like check the ad copy and everything else it was just like it seemed like the quickest win get more eyes on the brand and Ultimately, yes, everybody wants conversions and leads, but there is that You know impressions and

Anu Adegbola (13:33)
Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (13:45)
brand awareness that people want as well. And I think this is harming. So it came from a good place. It was just, yeah, the action was not in line with the end goal.

Anu Adegbola (13:55)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I also like, you know, bringing like the human perspective of these stories of, you know, you have someone shouting at you while you're at the airport on your way to go on a holiday. my thing, my thought is, that really the best way to approach it? You know, you've had different experiences, you've managed people, I imagine. Yeah. you are managing the team. So even then you were managing the team at this point and you've managed others.

Hannah Zora Strong (14:17)
Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to show you team at this point,

Anu Adegbola (14:24)
where was your manager a bit too harsh with you? Like who was it that was calling you? Was it the client themselves or it was your agency? Okay.

Hannah Zora Strong (14:32)
It was the agency ops director.

yeah, he would have been like the interceptor between me and the client. So I had direct client comms as well, obviously, but he would have had the anchor client on the phone to be like, why have my cost per conversion shot up? And then he ran me to find out why. And then obviously how I fix it, because he's not a PPCer. So he was like, how do we fix it ultimately?

Anu Adegbola (14:52)
Yeah. What did, yeah. Yeah.

And cause I feel like just shouting at someone who's about to go on holiday, even when they've made a mistake, that's not a nice thing to do. I mean, I mean, like at the end of the day, as we've said, the whole point, so you want to reiterate to people about all the people I've interviewed on this show is the fact that

we're not saving lives here, it's not the things that are not the end of the world, know, you did something that could be reverted. Had you blown up their like month, their month's budget kind of thing in a way, what's in terms of, yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (15:31)
No, the budgets

were still set. had like caps, I think, back in the day. Google could only spend over like 20 % as opposed to over 100 % of the daily budget. So it was like, it was not mission critical. could still, although manually, the changes could still be undone and then we could crack on. I think it did take a couple of weeks for the CPCs to kind of settle back down because it had that huge blip. And then obviously the data was trying to get involved and do its own thing. But yeah, I think because it was

Anu Adegbola (15:43)
Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (16:01)
biggest client the agency had had, it was a multi-service client as well, so they had like, I think they were getting a bit of CRO and bit of SEO from the agency as well and it was like...

Anu Adegbola (16:08)
Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (16:11)
this early error could have sullied the relationship and the trust in the agency, which I get, which is obviously their frustration. And because they didn't know PPC themselves, they didn't realize if this was like one change that was gonna f things up for months, like just thinking about an SEO change, for example, you know, could it be done as quickly as it could? And I don't think he knew that the benefit and curse of PPC is that it can move very quickly. So once the fix was

Anu Adegbola (16:15)
Mmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (16:40)
implemented and things did settle. Things were okay and the client trust was regained and we went on to have a long successful relationship and I left the agency before the client left like a couple years later. So I didn't do anything long term to damage that AD agency's reputation on my own. It was just like a really hairy week of on boarding crisis.

Anu Adegbola (16:45)
Okay, let me calm down. Fantastic.

right.

Fantastic. Fantastic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah. mean, and because I do tend to like also in these stories that we speak to the managers of someone who has made a mistake and do the whole, how do you deal with that? So, you know, someone now who's managed people then and since then, what could that the person who called you to have a go at you, what could he have done differently?

Hannah Zora Strong (17:28)
think possibly talking to my senior, my second in command first, to be like, let's have a look at the changes that were made. Why do you think Hannah made that change? And how quickly will it take to fix it?

Anu Adegbola (17:42)
Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (17:43)
and then that should direct the level of emotion or the, yeah, the output to me because like you say, it's PPC not A &E and we're selling cars, not saving the world. So actually, can we just, I know it's different because the client is like, it's their baby, it's their business. So you have to treat it like it's the only client we work with.

Anu Adegbola (17:59)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (18:04)
But they were swift, you know, to refer to the agency, they swiftly got my second-in-command in front of the client to explain what had happened and why I'd done it. Because I trained them so we had the same thought process. If you could see why I made this change and how it could be fixed and it was sort of contained. I just think my initial ops director was mimicking or echoing the client emotion to me because obviously he was the gatekeeper he got.

Anu Adegbola (18:14)
Nice.

Nice.

Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (18:33)
it in the neck from the client, not me, so he would have been passing on that, the urgency and yeah, the upsetness really. I was like 20, well I was like 24, 23, 24 at the time. I was like super fresh in the game really and had the client's best interests at heart but just had an F up.

Anu Adegbola (18:40)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

⁓ wow.

Yeah, and how did you feel? How did it make you feel like even when you'd heard it's?

Hannah Zora Strong (19:02)
that I didn't want to come home. I could

have just lived in Jersey. That's I was going with Mum and Dad. I could have just stayed there because I knew I would have had to clean it up when I got back and I knew I would have to face my manager and obviously the client and feel sorry for them. But also when you make a mistake as a manager in front of your team, it's like, are they going to trust me to train them? And I was then worried that my, like my...

Anu Adegbola (19:12)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (19:28)
credentials with them had been lost as well because so obviously there's like the vulnerability is like even mind just make mistakes and like as someone who's older than the two is I can have that for you now but at the time I was like really embarrassed that the head of department had made this such easy mistake.

Anu Adegbola (19:30)
suffer.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah now gosh. and also Because I feel that there have been several folks and I really I think I probably even know the answer to this like there were several folks that You know someone that person was angry. I wasn't sure who impressed you Who kind of in that situation made you go? ⁓ my god. I'm glad I have this person on my team

Hannah Zora Strong (20:05)
It was David, it was my second in command, David Martin, because he saved by bacon. He saved the day, he revived the account. I was away for the week, so he, yeah, undid the change and ⁓ managed the client relationship. So yeah, did the management, did the kind of trust rebuilding and yeah, he had...

a lot of experience on that account. Obviously when I got back he had more than me because it was so new. So it was really nice to have someone to bounce ideas off because in that agency structure you had your group of clients and that was it. And even as the head of department I'm obviously looking after all the accounts but I'd like my core few and it was nice not to feel lonely at the top.

Anu Adegbola (20:30)
Yeah!

Yes.

Hannah Zora Strong (20:49)
because

before I might have been a bit scared to ask my team for advice or bounce ideas because it's like, I'm the head of department. I should know when actually sometimes you just need some PPC pals to bounce ideas off and validate what you want to do.

Anu Adegbola (20:56)
you

Yeah,

absolutely. that's, that's fantastic. Was, was that like a personal hire that you hired him on? Like, is it just someone that was on the team and you just build a great relationship with like that.

Hannah Zora Strong (21:15)
Yeah, just someone

that I think I wasn't in a, wasn't hiring at that time. I was sort of internally promoted. So we were all on the team together. So I feel like we'd risen through the ranks and kind of like being in the, in the trenches together, which is sort of, and we still, we're still friends today. Like we're still, like when I went on.

Anu Adegbola (21:22)
Yeah. Nice. Yes. nice.

Hannah Zora Strong (21:31)
maternity leave, I had a couple of clients and I gave my clients to him because he's since gone freelance as well. So even that was like six years ago. So that trust from that initial mishap on my part has then forged the friendship for the last decade.

Anu Adegbola (21:42)
Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes, we

need that. think, cause sometimes it can be hard to be like, you don't know who to trust. You know, it can be a competitive space or it's a competitive space. It's very like, I'm the one that wants to be the account manager and an account director and only one person in a team of people can do it. Even is finding one or two people who you know will have your back. kind of, of you kind of think the same way. I'm not even necessarily even think the same way, but like both of you are willing to listen to each other's.

so that you, you know, you're, you're, you're making each other better and that they can step in, you know, it's really important because what can be, you know, and it's not like if he stepped in and then became head of the team, was it? Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (22:18)
So important, yeah.

No, no, I still

kept the title but it just, it just, we kind of respected each other and I think it actually brought the team a lot closer because we could be like, let's share a challenge and then let's fix it all together and I would bring a challenge then instead of just having to be like the fixer because we all have challenges and that's okay.

Anu Adegbola (22:34)
Nice.

Yeah, yeah, we all have challenges.

No, that's good. Cause you know, you hear about the stories of like, you know, one person went on holiday, they, they, you know, they make the mistake and then the person who fixes it now becomes the head of the team because they're like, yeah, you're the one that we can trust now. You know? And so, yeah, it's really great to know that you have that trust and people have your back to, know, to stepping for you, but also see how, how, you know, your, your role is still secure when you, when you get back.

That's fantastic. so also just now going into, if you have an advice, someone has gone through that mistake there, you know, they, they, they, the best of intention, they've made a bulk change and all of a sudden they, their phone is ringing with somebody that never calls them. I didn't know they're about to be yelled out.

Hannah Zora Strong (23:28)
Block, block!

Anu Adegbola (23:33)
my whatty advice, apart from blah!

Hannah Zora Strong (23:35)
Don't block your managers guys, don't block your managers. You didn't hear that from me, that wasn't from me.

Anu Adegbola (23:40)
We'll edit that out.

No, no, you know, we're like, what's yeah. What's your advice to someone? Okay. Not, not like the phone call, but kind of like in the inkling of their mind, you know, something has gone off. Maybe one of their teammates DMs them on a Slack on WhatsApp going, my God, it's kicking off. What's your advice to, that person who's made that mistake?

Hannah Zora Strong (23:44)
said it was okay. Hannah said it was okay. Just know that.

So most things in PPC are fixable. I would remember that. And just as the system is...

quick to adapt to new changes. It's also quick to adapt back if need be. Not every optimization is going to be for the best. And in my case, just because I thought implementing this kind of mass change was best practice, it didn't mean it was best practice for this client. And I think especially people who have been doing this for years and years, you kind of have a formula of what works for the majority of clients.

it would be easy to go into a brand new account and be like that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong, I'll change that, change that, change that because it's always like your way of doing things when actually just taking a step back and looking at the account but also the wider business just to understand does this change actually work for this client because that's what I bouldered in with I just went in with like I'll make this quick change because it's worked for all my other accounts there's no can't see a reason why it wouldn't work for this one and then it all blew up in my face so I think it was a combination

of client targets and me making that kind of best practice optimization blindly when I could have thought about is this the best fit for this client.

Anu Adegbola (25:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, absolutely. It's yeah, just, just about, yeah. Taking, taking the thing. Have a thought through the process, you know, and before you start making any changes and like, we're going to now talk about, well, we're not going to talk about like AI stuff and, or mistakes that you've seen other, other accounts make. But before we go into that bit, what's one final takeaway you want people listeners to take from the story you've just shared?

Hannah Zora Strong (25:56)
Probably.

Don't make mass changes, no not that one.

Yeah, just taking the time to think, does this best practice work for every single account is probably the one.

Anu Adegbola (26:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah best practices are not best practices for every account, right? It's not you know, you really need to need to consider that Okay, so Since that that your your lovely young self or have been in your you know, your 20s i'm sure you've seen others also, you know taking on accounts And being like what the heck? Why are people still making these kind of changes and let's let's even get more recent into maybe in the past six months

in the most like, you know, eight months, what are some F-ups though, like just mistakes or just things that people are still doing that you're shocked that it's like, it's a clear, okay, no, that's the wrong way of doing it. That needs to change. And when you've changed it, things have gone better. What are, what are mistakes that you're seeing?

Hannah Zora Strong (26:59)
I have one example where I didn't know if the client was going to laugh or cry or run or what or run. When he said that, I was like, this is a perfect example. So when I was still employed, I took on a client, like freelance. And so I worked with these guys like six, seven years ago and they were a mortgage broker client and they just specialized in like local

Anu Adegbola (27:11)
Okay

Hannah Zora Strong (27:30)
supporting local people so we had a like Northumberland down to North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Tyne and Wear so like very northeast, very north based and we worked together for a couple of years

performance was okay, the cost per lead was my KPI, it was okay. And then after a couple of years, they moved to a different agency. So obviously moved from me to an agency because they must have thought, we're growing spend now, perhaps we need to work with a bigger team. And this agency specialized in financial services. Again, it's fine. I kind of said, right, that's absolutely fine guys, handed the account over, no bother. And first of all, red flag is they paused the campaigns

enough but then they started a new account, flag, for yeah I know right and a new J4 actually for don't yeah yeah same website yeah yeah so yeah ⁓ so that was a bit wild I think they did a bit of like

CRO as well so they might have designed some splash pages and stuff also fine you know on the client's domain crack on yeah and so that that all happened and then I had a call what do we get back in touch with me in September and they were like ⁓ things aren't going too well with with this agency they were at first so now they're not can you take a look at the account so we like jumped on

that said all the lead quality's been really rubbish, anyone who's like inquired, we've tried to call back and haven't been able to get in touch and they haven't been a good fit. was like, right, okay. So I'd got in the account, it'd been recording conversions, about 600 nod over the year, I the client had spent like 12 grand or something across the year. So it had like a way to spend. And it turns out they hadn't had a single qualified lead. I was like, but you spent like...

12 grand and you've had 600 or more conversions like are you recording page views? Are you recording like contact page views and not actual submissions? And they were like no no we're getting the leads through it's just when we try and contact them through like phone or email or whatever we can't get back in touch and I was like what is going on here?

We were live on this screen share with the client. It wasn't even a formal kickoff at this point. It was just another intro chat. And I was like, show your screen. Oh, look at this. Click here, click here. And what they'd done was instead of targeting just Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Cumbria, and Tyne and Wayne County Durham, they were targeting the whole of the UK with those counties excluded.

which is what my brain did as well.

Anu Adegbola (30:00)
So literally where all the places where they should be getting customers, they were not, those guys were not seeing their ads at all.

Hannah Zora Strong (30:07)
Yeah, it was the opposite.

It was literally they were excluding them. And so I, because it was their screen share, I was like, click here, click here, click here. And then when it dropped down to that, was like, maybe they've got like presence and interest turned on or something, but no, the whole thing was excluded. And we both, we all kind of sat there and I was like, how are they going to react to know that that money is now being wasted? And all of the efforts and all of the times they've said, this is our audience, this is our market, this is our ICP have been completely ignored.

Anu Adegbola (30:39)
⁓ lord. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (30:41)
So we're all a bit stunned. I was like, didn't know whether to laugh

or cry on their behalf. They did take it gracefully, but I was like, sweet Jesus, are they gonna now have a chat with the agency to be like, this is mismanagement, this is neglect.

Anu Adegbola (30:52)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, guys. Yeah. And how long ago was this?

Hannah Zora Strong (31:01)
So they were running that account for the year, but I think they had run other campaigns. I just looked at the data for that, for one of the campaigns over the years. ⁓ I had the call with them in September and I started working with them again in January just to like, yeah. So they've now boarded with me again and we're sorting it out and making sure the location settings are correct.

Anu Adegbola (31:06)
Yeah.

But like, how recent was this?

Yeah, again, again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

so, yeah. So like looking back, going back to that, that question I asked, mistakes that, you know, like, how can this happen? Location targeting. We've been doing this since 2000s. Like, long as we've been doing Google ads and, is it Google ads? Ad words. Ad words are what we used to call it.

Hannah Zora Strong (31:36)
You

Google AdWords,

Throwback!

Anu Adegbola (31:47)
Location

talk is it is always been a thing and guys look at that location talk is it I mean, you know, I look shocked but actually one of our previous ⁓ Previous guests has said that I think that was actually one of her stories of like yeah instead of of actually Selecting the location. had she just selected uk and actually excluded the areas that she actually wanted to so she excluded ⁓ she excluded uk

Hannah Zora Strong (32:10)
see how it's done.

Anu Adegbola (32:13)
But even though she selected the things, because she excluded UK thinking that she was like, okay, not all of UK, just her thing. But the system was like, it excluded UK including the targets and areas she wanted to. So it wasn't no volume. So yeah, be wary about those kinds of things. What's your advice in terms of avoiding that kind of mistake?

Hannah Zora Strong (32:32)
I

For my client, even though this agency obviously specialised in financial services, they didn't specialise in local. And for me, that's my big thing of check this first, because again, I see so many clients wasting budget and misclicks to presence of interest targeting when it isn't a good fit, or wild exclusions not excluded by city or by county as part of optimisations and stuff. There's so many quick wins to save that money.

Anu Adegbola (32:39)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (33:02)
and tell Google where to refund all it. I just feel like it's such a underutilized setting.

Anu Adegbola (33:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Always look at those like, even like default settings, what they are, you know, what location targeting, make sure you're targeting the right area with those companies like small budgets. It's, it's what really make and make or break a campaign. How about in the terms of like our wonderful world of AI where we cannot avoid, what are things that get people that you feel like getting wrong in terms of like using AI?

Hannah Zora Strong (33:35)
I've seen like, well, even ad copy that's not checked. I know Google's getting better at scraping or understanding what's on the landing page in terms of like USPs, call to action, messages and whatnot to then present it. But I've seen...

Anu Adegbola (33:39)
Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (33:52)
having too much honest and too much trust in the Google platform to pull everything correctly. So like I've seen incorrect business names or not like the customer facing business names obviously being uploaded because it was the parent company name and not theirs and that kind of distinction in that ad copy looked a bit weird. And I still feel settings like AI max.

Anu Adegbola (33:56)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hannah Zora Strong (34:21)
and search expansion do bring in very, very fringe terms when, give it a few years, it's like PMAX, when that first came out, it got absolutely slated because it was like...

Anu Adegbola (34:29)
Mm.

Hannah Zora Strong (34:35)
broad times broad, like there was sometimes no method to the madness and I feel like these tools are only going to get better with time, I do trust that they will, but the first, like the initial launch of them is often met with great expectations but low actual results.

Anu Adegbola (34:37)
yeah! ugh. nah.

show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And talk about AI Max, have you tested it?

Hannah Zora Strong (34:58)
I've had one client that's had the perfect storm of decent lead volume and not limited by budget and using Brawlmatch already and for all the search campaigns that have felt like it's a good...

Anu Adegbola (35:06)
Yeah, okay.

Hannah Zora Strong (35:12)
want to test with but then we started to test it and then budgets got re-backed. I was like, oh right, okay, so we've ran this for a month and then we had to, it was a bit of a false start. What about you? Have you heard much from it?

Anu Adegbola (35:17)
Okay.

Yeah. No, well, yeah, no, I don't

manage accounts. So like, it's just that I'm doing the asking about, like just see, seeing what the, you know, test results are. And people are finding success with it. Some people are finding that in the, Heidi Sturrock ⁓ episode, which is the one just before this one, or a couple of ones before this one. ⁓ yeah, she said that she's tested about 50 accounts on it. And, know, it's like two thirds are working well. So yeah, if people, if you have the budget, if you have the

Hannah Zora Strong (35:46)
Mmm.

Anu Adegbola (35:49)
You know, like, yeah, perfect storm of like, yeah, all the different levers, Broad match has been used. You have like, you know, good structure. Plus probably more like if you're a retail client is probably what I, I hear that's working. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I'd love to hear from, from folks, you know, please comment in the, there's, it's like, I'm going to put up a poll.

Hannah Zora Strong (36:01)
Yes, for EECO for sure.

Anu Adegbola (36:11)
in this for this episode. please check out that poll of me. You know, ask whether people are using it. If you're using it, is it working? Let us know. And maybe you're the one that I speak to next on our podcast episode, which would be really great. but yeah, that has been fantastic. Like, you know, we've, yeah, we've gone through this stuff. Fantastic story of sharing experience about location setting errors that we should be aware of, you know, AI.

our world. So yeah, Hannah, thank you so much. You've given so much, just so much insight and so much food for thought for our listeners. But before we leave you, our last question, I'm not sure if you saw this on the list, it's nice as a guest favorite of like a fun one to just ask. If your career were a movie, what would the title be?

Hannah Zora Strong (36:57)
my god. I don't watch a lot of films. Can you tell? I don't know.

Anu Adegbola (36:58)
Oh, or it could

be one of your kids' TV shows, right?

Hannah Zora Strong (37:06)
Yeah I was like it's gonna have to be, it's gonna be like Moana because I'm just trying to like get back to the sea and not actually be in front of my computer.

Anu Adegbola (37:13)
Dude, I'll take that. I take that. I love Moana. I know there's a part two. I've not watched it yet. I keep thinking, do I want a part two of it? I love it. I watched it on a plane and all of a sudden, because I wasn't like, it's nice.

Hannah Zora Strong (37:24)
It's good, the songs are not

as banging as the first one. But like, here we go. Watch this.

Anu Adegbola (37:28)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, Moana. That's a lovely one. Yeah. Moana is a good one. Good movie. Um, and yeah, I know if people want to hear about the next maybe event or conference you're going to speak at, or you just want to share some, you know, amazing insights that you've got for us, where can people find you?

Hannah Zora Strong (37:48)
So I'm mostly on LinkedIn, Hannah Zora Strong, will find me, I'm the only Zora floating about the internet. I am also speaking at...

Adworld conference in October of this year in Bologna, yes, alongside Jyll So I'm like really excited for that to meet her finally and to share my love of local with everybody. Really bad management on my part. I'm also speaking in Turkey the same month. Speaking at... Yeah, I'm going to search and stuff.

Anu Adegbola (38:02)
Italy, nice. Yeah.

Yeah!

That's in October, isn't it? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah

Hannah Zora Strong (38:27)
to, they're running a June conference in London and then this is their kind of wider European version so it can catch me there as well but yeah the conferences are about a week apart so no pressure, no pressure to me in October, find me in November to be honest, it's recovering.

Anu Adegbola (38:41)
Wow. Wow.

Are you gonna just, are you just gonna

go from Turkey to Bologna or you're gonna stop over?

Hannah Zora Strong (38:50)
wish I

did that. I think I've got about four days at home and then I'm bouncing to the next one. So my kids will be like, where's she going now? Yeah, sorry, sorry. Worth it though.

Anu Adegbola (38:56)
It's to Oh,

let's, but yeah, it's absolutely going to work. It'd worth it. I've done Bologna, done Italy. It's fantastic. You love it. It's they've got, you know, the conference was definitely great, but the food, sorry, the food, Bologna food would be better. I've got to say, I've got to say, that'd be amazing. Well, if you guys are in anyone listening, you're either going to be in Turkey, you're either going to be in Bologna or, know, you just want to hear from.

Hannah Zora Strong (39:12)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (39:22)
Hannah on LinkedIn, well, we've given you all those resources, the links, I'll give you the direct links in our show notes. So go to show notes to get the direct links to get your tickets to those events so that you can check her out. But till then, thank you Hannah so much for joining us on the episode and yeah, we'll catch up later.

Hannah Zora Strong (39:39)
Thank

Anu Adegbola (39:43)
Thank you so much, Hannah, for that fantastic and transparent retelling of the story of discovering that mistake as you're going off on holiday and having the feeling that you don't even want to come back to your desk. But yeah, remember, guys, having a good team, having a great team in this world of working in digital marketing, working in agency, even as a consultant, even as a freelance, having someone who's reliable.

to work with, it's something that previous of our guests have said about how the good relationship with someone, whether it was the clients or their teammate really was the key in ensuring that that mistake did not blow up their career and they were able to come back to their team, having really had their back, even though the mistake happened while they were away at Inderpaul

⁓ Also, in the poll ride, the previous ⁓ guest also mentioned that about a mistake happening and his team really sorted it out and he came back and his job was still safe. So yeah, have a good team. Surround yourself with good people. So yeah, for all the information and the full transcript as well as show notes and everything, please go to podcast.ppc.live and you'll get the full details of this episode.

Regarding our PPC live updates, yeah, tickets are live. There's no more ⁓ early bird sale, but yeah, we've got our full list of speakers now announced. We've got Jack Willmore from We Discover We've got Emina Demiri from Vixen Digital who are based in Brighton. And we've got the fantastic Julia Riml who's coming all the way from Germany. So I stuck to the international speaker because we had Kirk Williams, but he had to pull out because

Unfortunately, yeah, he had like, you know, family commitments. So glad will replace that with another fantastic speaker. Julia has spoken at SMX advance in Berlin and Munich and to like fantastic, you know, feedback. And yeah, she's the growth director of ⁓ Percis. And yes, really helps with their growth. And she's really going to help to talk about ensuring that you're not just doing, you know, finger in the air to decide how you're going to put budgets.

across your different ⁓ channels. So yeah, you definitely don't want to miss that. So sorry, you know, we gave you as much as we could in terms of discounted tickets. And yeah, that was that was several people took advantage of that. They took advantage of us. But now it's full price tickets for these three amazing speakers where we're going to meet and brighten across having fantastic views. It's going to be a third floor, I believe.

venue, so you're going to have fantastic views of the Brighton Sea. It's a location that is on that road that's just on the other side of the river. So you're going to have fantastic views. But yeah, we're going to make sure you need to be paying attention to our speakers. The views are for the networking time, which we'll have plenty of, as well as a panel discussion where it's going to be the PPC Live team meeting and getting everyone involved in what we're.

⁓ you know what we're doing and you know helping each other out and uplifting each other. So yeah, go to ppc.live for your tickets and make sure that you join us on April the 29th for that. And before I leave you, I am delighted to share that I am taking on coaching clients. So yeah, if you're just having a bit of confidence issues, you want to ask for that promotion, ask for that pay rise, I'm someone who has successfully done that and paved the way for my career.

confidently knowing what direction it's going in. And so if you want that level of confidence, yeah, get in touch with me. Just go to themarketinganu.com. You would be able to book a free 15 minute discovery call so that we ensure that we go on a journey that works for you, that is particular to what your needs are. So yeah, I hope you have enjoyed the show and I look forward to bringing you more PPC F ups and triumphs next week. Thank you, bye.