EP363 - The Campaign Looked Perfect — Until It Didn’t ft Veronika Holler

Anu Adegbola (00:01.25)
Hello, Veronica. Welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Veronika (00:04.789)
Hello, Arnold. Thank you for your invitation

Anu Adegbola (00:07.374)
I'm so glad. Again, you know, people now know this, like maybe in the last few days, I literally did the whole frantic, hey, who's available to share a mistake? And Veronica, you know, was the brave one to answer my call. So yeah, this is not something that has been prepped for months. We've not decided to, you know, do any PR. Let's say this, let's not say this. She's gonna give you the full.

Veronika (00:17.718)
No.

Anu Adegbola (00:34.496)
story of a mistake that real mistake that happened in her career. But before we get into that, let me introduce you to this fantastic guest that we have with us today. Veronica Holler is the head of demand generation at Tresorit and a digital marketing strategist with over 17 years of experience in PPC, SEO and growth across highly regulated industries. So all those kind of

places where the ads, you have to say the right thing. You cannot just believe it to the automation to put your ads in however way you want. She's worked with those industries. She writes for PPC live and you know, yeah, so you would have seen her name. She's been an author of several of our blogs and the articles. So go check her out. She's given some really great, great advice in there. And other, of course, other platforms as well. And she focuses on how AI privacy and changing search.

behavior is reshaping the performance marketing industry. As an international conference speaker as well, she actually is just coming off speaking at Brighton SEO that happened last week. But yeah, she also helps marketers rethink their metrics, their text stack and mindset in a world where both users and algorithms keep evolving. So many things evolving, so many people that we need like Veronica to ensure that we're keeping up and doing things in the right way.

and yeah, Veronica, I'll, I'll pass it on to you now. Tell us your fun fact. this is, this is such a funny one. And for someone with her personality, fact that she's this as well, it just, it just battles me. yeah, what's, what's your fun fact?

Veronika (02:18.57)
My fun fact is I'm married, I have two kids and I'm a crazy cat mom from nine cats.

Anu Adegbola (02:25.422)
Nine cats guys, nine cats. Like yes, I'm the single crazy cat lady at the age of 41 and I only have one. Mine is just one. One is all I can handle. And how do you manage with all the smells? That's just for me the biggest question. And I'm like...

Veronika (02:43.324)
this goes. So yes, they have to clean up a little bit more and yeah, but it works. So.

Anu Adegbola (02:51.082)
it were that they all like indoor cats as well they are some of them they're outdoors and they just come in at night

Veronika (02:58.614)
No, they are in-house because I have this um, un-perfect cats, you know, the one has a heart problem, the other one has something on the leg, so I take all this um, nobody wants to have. Yes.

Anu Adegbola (03:06.094)
Mmmmm

Anu Adegbola (03:10.542)
Oh, the damaged, damaged, unloved cats. You go and love them. Oh, you're doing a good deed. You're a very good person. Oh, bless you. So they need attention and they cannot just be hanging out outside all the time.

Veronika (03:25.01)
Yeah, it's yeah so a few of them are healthy but yes if I can't take the other one out then I can't take the others out so they are all here in the house and they are happy.

Anu Adegbola (03:28.014)
Ugh.

Anu Adegbola (03:34.999)
Yeah.

They're happy. Good. Well, they sound very well loved, so they better be happy. They, know, like why, why not? Anyway. So yeah. So for you cat lovers out there, yeah, she's Veronica is your person and we have, you want any tips on how to take care of cats that have issues, the special need cats. bless them. Those ones.

Veronika (03:48.223)
you

Veronika (03:52.135)
Yeah!

Veronika (03:56.544)
Special needs, yes.

Anu Adegbola (04:01.262)
But yeah, y'all are going to say, yeah, I knew enough with your cat stories. We want to hear about the mistakes and the real stories that's happening behind all the wins. People are always sharing wins on LinkedIn. Yay, I just got this new job. Yay, we just won this new client. Yay, we just hit the revenue target. We want to hear the stories about when things go wrong, when revenue is not being hit. And that's something Veronica is going to specifically share about.

today about how everything seemed to go right until it didn't. So yeah, Veronica, what is the F up you want to share with us today?

Veronika (04:36.992)
Yes, I want to share a problem I faced one time and it was everything seems to be perfect. So I've taken a look in the accounts and the structure was perfect. The creators was good. The ads was from my opinion. I thought it was good ads. We have to create budgets. Everything seemed to look right. We have impressions, we have clicks, we had conversions. So it looks from the outside. You thought, it's a great good.

Anu Adegbola (04:53.422)
Mmm.

Veronika (05:05.576)
account and the tracking was also there. So not unusual there, but we don't generate revenue. So it was less revenue for this good working campaigns. So this was a really strange thing. So I didn't know why.

Anu Adegbola (05:18.414)
Mmm.

Anu Adegbola (05:23.316)
Okay, all right. So you didn't know why the campaigns were all setting up, set up, revenue was not being hit. How long did you give it for you to start realizing something is wrong here?

Veronika (05:37.462)
two months. As I started it was two months so I was thinking about okay you are new

Anu Adegbola (05:39.028)
wow, okay?

Anu Adegbola (05:45.558)
Okay? Okay? Okay?

Veronika (05:46.752)
You start in this position. So let's take a look and then, okay, find out what's wrong.

Anu Adegbola (05:54.986)
Okay. So were you part of the team that set the campaigns up? No. Okay. So you, you, you joined the company and these campaigns have been set up and then they, they, they, they, they show it to you and you were like, and you did all the checks and you were like, everything is correct. And okay. And so, okay. So two months in, at what point did you were like, okay.

Veronika (05:59.51)
No.

Veronika (06:11.646)
All the checks.

Anu Adegbola (06:22.082)
What, okay, what was the problem? What's the thing that was not, what was the problem that even though everything was set up, what was it that was not working?

Veronika (06:29.878)
You know how it is if you start in a new company, you have to wait. So you have this starting point and you have a lot of workshops and I'm a really impatient person. So I start to analyze. So it was something I hate to wait for a login. So in this time I start to read, make a research and I have to make a competition research. And what I found, and it was really interesting was we sound like them. It was like in this relative competitive landscape.

Anu Adegbola (06:42.53)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (06:59.096)
Yeah.

Veronika (07:00.182)
We were, there was nothing we stood out. So our ad was, was there. It was in good position, but to be honest, if I'm a user, I didn't know why I should choose Trezorit. Why not Proton or why not Trapbox? You know, it was something like, okay, then you click, you know how users are. They click everything or nothing.

Anu Adegbola (07:02.912)
Okay.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (07:15.487)
Right, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (07:21.942)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And so it's literally was like, you didn't see anything in terms of the campaign ad copy or just the USP. That was different. Okay. And how did, how did your, your, manager say when, you figured out what that the problem was, who did you tell first? How did you go about and like, okay, let's, let's solve this problem. Who did you go to?

Veronika (07:32.341)
Yeah.

Veronika (07:48.513)
So I go to my leader and this was at this last year, he was the CMO. And I said, yeah, there's a problem. We have to make it a little bit different. And I've worked with him before. So it's not the first time we worked together. So it's the second time we worked together. And he said, do whatever you want to do. I trust you.

Anu Adegbola (07:57.302)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (08:14.446)
Okay, that's good, that's good

Veronika (08:17.13)
Do what you, and then I've talked to my PPC manager that we have to change some things and I'm a really nightmare for this person. Because if I change something, I starting completely from scratch. So there's no optimization on the existing campaigns. have started from scratch. Really from scratch, completely new. then.

Anu Adegbola (08:28.172)
God, why were you a nightmare?

Anu Adegbola (08:35.054)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (08:38.668)
Okay, alright.

Veronika (08:43.552)
to see what happens and you know PPC mentor love is something work, it works and then they don't want to change it because it works. It works mostly the answer. It's okay, it works.

Anu Adegbola (08:50.967)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (08:54.572)
Yeah, yeah, okay. So it works. And so you're literally like, we need to start this from scratch and go to the beginning. And what was the difference with this campaign now?

Veronika (09:07.466)
What we have done, we have done a completely new messaging. We have find our anti-ICPs. This is really important. Most people search only about ICPs and personas. And we also use the anti-personas and anti-ICPs. This person we really don't want to have on our product. So this was really important for the messaging and creatives. Then we have test different creatives. We have done a lot more localization.

Anu Adegbola (09:11.704)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (09:25.624)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:29.176)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:36.738)
Yeah.

Veronika (09:37.439)
So for the country specific, because this was something that was a little bit missing in the account that you do more for special countries, a special LP, for example, special graphics, creatives, and another net. And this is what we have changed. And of course, we have tests from the beginning direct. If you make a campaign from scratch, it's much easier to test things. Then you can make different ad versions, different landing pages for America.

Anu Adegbola (10:01.644)
Yeah.

Veronika (10:06.674)
A and the B version from the beginning to see what works better. And it's much easier if you start the campaign as you go and optimize it from an existing one. So the algorithm has to go with this new things you have changed. And yes, we have make it completely in an other direction and completely new. It was hard. We also have make it with Microsoft ads, not only on Google ads.

Anu Adegbola (10:09.142)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:15.831)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:20.046)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:25.272)
Yeah.

Okay.

Anu Adegbola (10:31.36)
Okay. Yeah.

Veronika (10:33.822)
And by Microsoft ads, you have this new campaign types like audience, campaign ads, and you can use the LinkedIn integration and some things. It's such a platform. And the most people make this upload from Google ads to Microsoft ads. We don't do it anymore. We have done it from scratch again.

Anu Adegbola (10:44.396)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:48.173)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:53.597)
Mm-hmm

Anu Adegbola (10:58.666)
Right.

Veronika (10:59.27)
And we only optimize for this platform too. And it has made such an impact. It's,

Anu Adegbola (11:04.192)
Yeah, amazing. Veronica, I want to do something different and I'm actually have to edit this episode a little bit weird because as I'm hearing your story, what I'm actually hearing is that this wasn't technically your mistake. No. Is it okay for us to actually hear something that it was your mistake from like maybe

Veronika (11:10.847)
Mm-hmm.

Veronika (11:20.884)
No, not tech, not an oil.

Veronika (11:29.589)
Yes!

Anu Adegbola (11:30.454)
early in your career, you maybe a bidding that went wrong, a copy that you put up that was the wrong, the wrong timing. Maybe you set up the wrong ad scheduling and that messed things up, but you saw the mistake or someone pointed out the mistake and you were able to fix it. And even, you know, the good and the bad of it, or what maybe happened that you didn't, you're not happy with, but you'd learn from it in your next role, that kind of thing. Do you have like an example like that?

Veronika (11:58.337)
Yes, I have an example like that that was very at the beginning of my career. And you know, have this recommendation from your CPA could be better if you use this budget, for example, please use this CPA. And what I have done is to use the CPA but didn't make an higher budget.

Anu Adegbola (12:02.807)
Yeah?

Anu Adegbola (12:10.23)
Yes.

Veronika (12:18.75)
And what happens, the campaign doesn't run anymore. There was nothing coming in and it breaks. And it was of course at a Thursday and Friday, nobody had seen it, me either. And then it runs over the weekend. And then on Monday I got the call, something went wrong with the campaign. And I said, what? Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:19.05)
Okay. Rats.

Anu Adegbola (12:37.134)
Oh no, you know what? That's now that is a spicy one. That is 100%. That is a spicy one. I'd love us to take you take us through. I apologize. I feel it's one of those stories where people are like it happened and I want to forget about it. I just leave it in the past, but I just beg us to like bring it, bring it to the forefront of the, of this story. And then we'll forget about it again. After, after you talking about it here, that's it. We'll put it in barrier. We'll go to the pot.

Veronika (12:40.96)
HA!

Veronika (12:55.292)
Yes.

Veronika (13:06.346)
was the craziest, yes, so...

Anu Adegbola (13:06.562)
But yeah. So yes, tell us, us about that. So you have put the CPA up, but you hadn't matched it with the budget. So this was like putting a bit strategy of like a target CPA bit strategy. Yeah. And like, so like how long ago was this? Would you like, was this where, was it, was it at a time where bit strategy was very common or it was still at the early stage of bid strategy Cause I know there was a time where I have like,

Veronika (13:19.606)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (13:36.366)
manual CPA, you've been in the industry for a long time. So you must have been in the way at the time where I we've been at the same. I can't even call you old. If I'm calling you old, I'll call myself old. So we are young and sprite like, you know, we just know these stuff very well, right?

Veronika (13:36.458)
Yeah.

Veronika (13:48.298)
We-

Veronika (13:52.791)
Yes, but it's true. It was in the times where the switch was coming. So where you have this from manual PPC and then it goes more to the automatic PPC strategies. So it wasn't this changing time, I would say, but it was, I didn't thought about it. It was so clear. at the moment, you know, it's totally clear. You get this recommendation. They say you have to uplift your budget.

Anu Adegbola (13:59.47)
Yeah!

Anu Adegbola (14:10.742)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:16.097)
Yeah.

Veronika (14:21.202)
if you want to reach this one. It was like I didn't think about it. said, yes, this sounds great. Click on it. But it was so first. and we had this call. Yeah, it was. And I said, my fault. Sorry. I said, I've done this, this, this. And I said, I'm really sorry about it. And then it was OK. So.

Anu Adegbola (14:24.535)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:34.023)
No, yes, so... Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:42.092)
So who, yeah, so, so Monday came in, who found the issue? The clients. Okay, who's the CPU? What's, what's a CPU?

Veronika (14:49.012)
Of course, the CPO is the chief product officer of the company.

Anu Adegbola (14:57.198)
Okay. Of the company. where you, where you agency side or client side, you were in house. Oh, you are a freelancer. Wow. Yes. Oh my God. Yeah. You're a freelancer. And so you were like, you really needed this job, really needed this client to be happy. No, bless you. And so like when they told you that the revenue had gone down, did you know?

Veronika (15:03.092)
I was freelance at this time and I have taken care of this account at this time so it was the freakings time in my life.

Veronika (15:15.701)
I needed the money, yes.

Anu Adegbola (15:24.76)
Did they, when they told you that, we have the, the, the volume has gone down. Did it make sense to you? Did you connect straight away? it's because of the CPA that I did that. Or did you have to do some digging first?

Veronika (15:34.696)
Yeah. No, it was something it was like if he told me it's going down it was like shit and I got it on my mind I said my god okay.

Anu Adegbola (15:42.742)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so you knew exactly where to go to fix that problem. Okay, that's good. All right, so that's easy. and so did they, how annoyed were they? Did that annoyance last or they were like, okay, you fixed it moving on or how did that process go?

Veronika (15:50.014)
Yes, this was the good thing. Here was it easy.

Veronika (16:05.46)
At the beginning, he was really angry, to be honest. And of course it was a discussion, but then he said, my reaction was really honest. So it was this, okay, it was my fault. Sorry, I've done something wrong. I will fix it. And yes, I apologize. So, and then from his side, it was okay. So he said this reaction, if I had said, I don't know what to do. it's...

Anu Adegbola (16:13.891)
Yeah.

Veronika (16:32.234)
these things can happen then, but it was straight away like, my God.

Anu Adegbola (16:36.674)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, it's the way we've said this so many, so many times. I'm not even going to belabour it. I'm just going to quickly pass by it about the fact that honesty coming out with honestly, like you did the thing, admitting your fault is not going to be end of the world. You're actually going to impress with that. but like based on that story, so based on that, like CPA, what do you do differently? What, what did you look at and be like, okay, wow, this is something that I won't ever do again.

What's that thing that you're not going to do again?

Veronika (17:08.858)
I go over the whole recommendation and read the whole story behind it. To be honest, if there's a recommendation and yes, I will not change direct things. I tested before. So, if I change things, this was a learning effect. as I started to test things before I changed the whole campaign, be honest. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:23.459)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:32.558)
Yeah, implement, yeah, implemented the whole thing. That was a recommendation. Also, you know, look at those recommendations very well. mean, and this was one of those like early days Google recommendations, right? So it was something that Google, yeah. I think, you know what, we can a hundred percent forgive you. This was the early days where you thought that Google was on your side. I think the more we've been in the industry, we've all, you know, it's rampant. Everybody goes that auto apply recommendations. Be careful.

Veronika (17:44.616)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (18:00.558)
don't also apply recommendations you don't know. The main thing Google is trying to go for is stuff that will actually make them revenue and not actually what's going to be good for you. So always be careful in that respect. Yeah, look at those recommendations and really, really think whether it's a recommendation that's going to work for your client. We're not saying totally ignore it, but look at it carefully before you implement. Yes. Read the whole story.

Veronika (18:19.187)
No.

Veronika (18:22.826)
Read the whole story, yes. Read the whole story. And there are a few helpful things that can help you. But yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:31.916)
Read the whole story. and so now like, cause you know, we started off you talking about, know, you came in with Tresorit and you saw this account that was not working at all. You had to change everything. Now going to that one specific mistake and that kind of stuff. And you know, you've, you've come a long way from being the person who make the mistake, person who spots a mistake, you know, straight away. And like, what would you say, what is a process or a mindset that helps you like,

you know, not be too scared, not be too, you know, apprehensive when, you see a mistake has happened at all. Because I imagine the fact that you knew you had made a mistake helped you with that all account to be able to see that not to be too, cause you were the senior person there. There was a PPC manager and you know, you must have taken it a lot easier on them because of you. So

What is your advice to people like managers, heads of departments, when their team makes a mistake, how to approach it?

Veronika (19:36.032)
To be honest, we are all humans and we all make mistakes. It's a sign that they work on it. I see it as a positive thing. Mistakes can only happen if people work on something. Do you want people in your team that don't work?

Anu Adegbola (19:45.42)
Yeah. Okay. Yes.

Anu Adegbola (19:54.06)
Yeah. Yeah. And why is it? Yeah. And why is it? Cause you know, there's, there's a whole, okay, we know mistakes happen, but then there are people who never talk about it. Why is it even important that we hear the stories about mistakes happening?

Veronika (20:01.91)
Mm.

Veronika (20:09.622)
It is important because for other persons too, that they don't run in the same problems. If you talk about your failures or your mistakes or why you do things, then you help other people. You can uplift other people and you can be the one who is this person to start with these conversations. So, you know, I do a lot of mentoring and I have this conversation so many times that people are scared. And if I start, okay, this happened to me too, then it's like...

Anu Adegbola (20:29.558)
Yes.

Veronika (20:37.278)
What just happened to you too? And I said, yes, it happens. And it happened this way and then explain what happened. And then it's easier for the person to understand, okay, this is not a failure. So the most people think if they do a mistake, it's a personal thing. It's like, my God, it's me. And if other people know this, then they don't like me or they think I'm not good enough in my job or something like this. But no.

Anu Adegbola (20:47.02)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:03.105)
Yeah. Yeah.

Veronika (21:04.064)
can only be good if you fail because then you have to stand up and work again. And where I am right now is because I failed a lot in the past, so many times. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:13.314)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that statement. That might be the heading of our title. Let me, if, I don't know, Claude gives me a better option. You can only be good when you fail. That is just really, people need to hear more of that. You can only be good. Honestly. I actually think only, I think people are like, no, no, no. I can get away. I'm, if I'm very careful and I'll, you know, I'll never get anything wrong.

Veronika (21:31.349)
Yes.

Veronika (21:40.225)
Yeah, and I don't believe this person's to be honest because if I hear words such things never happen to me it's like, wow, really? And then I don't trust this person. So this is something so and be honest and it happens. It's not, on, it happens.

Anu Adegbola (21:47.778)
Really? Then you've not tested enough. Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:57.878)
Yeah, yeah, we like that. And I think it's even with our world of AI, somebody actually pointed out about how, we, we, we are, you're, you're going to capture your audience's attention with minor imperfections, spelling mistakes. You know, it gets people to be like, that's a human being. That's a human being who made an honest mistake because we know that's what human beings do. You get AI to make everything perfect and everything on point.

Veronika (22:14.55)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (22:27.892)
Yeah, it's going to look perfect, but people are going to be bored of that. It's going to be boring. Everything just, everything just always just perfectly looking all the time. It's going to, that's not going to be eye catching. It's the random thing that you know, you don't see that you don't know that. Yeah.

Veronika (22:34.26)
And this is true.

Veronika (22:46.58)
And we have run an A-B test with this point. It's really important. have make an landing page with no spellings, no grammar issues. Everything was work really well. And then we have done another LP with little small things that happened if you write a missing character or something like this, and you will laugh. This one has performed better than the other one. This is a really interesting thing. And it's the same with social media posts.

Anu Adegbola (22:57.762)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:01.709)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:08.864)
Wow. Wow.

Anu Adegbola (23:13.644)
Yes.

Veronika (23:13.726)
All the companies think we have to make brandings there. They have to be the logo and we have to make graphics really, really high performing, good, fancy things. What performs? The short smartphone videos, the short screenshots, these true things you can show. And yes, and this this is missed in an AI world. and yeah, and I'm sure it will come back that.

Anu Adegbola (23:32.76)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:36.63)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it will. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Now look, we've answered several of those questions you've given us, you know, that really lovely story, giving us a deep dive into like, yeah, why I've, I usually even ask if someone is currently going in the middle to get, you know, currently have made that same mistake, what will your advice be to them? But I think you've pretty much said it with the whole, you know, know that everybody makes mistakes. You mentor people and you tell them that, you know, like, you know,

Veronika (23:41.514)
We love more human content and yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:10.53)
You're only good by from the failures that you've made. like, if we just wanted to leave, because we're going to go on to now talking about, you know, mistakes that you've seen other people make. But before we go into that, if you want to, if you were going to leave people with one last, how people should face mistakes, one last thing about the story about mistakes, what's one last thing you want to leave people with?

Veronika (24:21.141)
Mm.

Veronika (24:32.384)
Don't try to be perfect and don't listen to too many voices. So sometimes your gut feeling is the right feeling. Test it out and if it doesn't work, then you make it on your list. It hasn't worked and try another one thing. But I think you should, the most people should more think about they have the right direction mostly in it, but they are scared to do it because other person said, no, this is not the right way, but you can't.

Anu Adegbola (24:41.134)
Yeah.

Veronika (25:01.234)
know it. It could be the right way if nobody tested it. You will never know.

Anu Adegbola (25:01.482)
No. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, you never know. Absolutely. Don't try to be perfect. Perfection is not a thing. Okay. Fantastic. Now going to now, now we can put that story to bed. can get over the PTSD, put these things back in a part of the box. Let's go on to seeing, know, sharing your, your expertise with us and the mistakes that you've seen other maybe advertisers or even from audits of accounts that you've

Veronika (25:09.638)
No.

Anu Adegbola (25:31.384)
you've seen or like just just random mistakes that you've noticed that people are making that you're like wow how are people still making those mistakes what anything

Veronika (25:32.694)
Mm.

Veronika (25:43.146)
This is mostly just tracking, be honest. It's mostly if I take a look on the tracking side, it's so crazy. So I can't believe why.

Anu Adegbola (25:45.153)
Okay, all right.

Anu Adegbola (25:52.184)
How it's still wrong.

How, but what are the tracking issues usually? Is it just like what they're making the goals to be or yeah, yeah.

Veronika (26:03.146)
the goals, then they do a lot of micro conversions sometimes because they think they have to. So sometimes it makes sense and that's not, you know how it is. Then the implementation is wrong. This is often, and you know how important this, if the people use smart bidding that you have to write implementation. so, before, as I started in this times, it was not really important. Yes.

Anu Adegbola (26:07.276)
Okay?

Anu Adegbola (26:11.99)
Yeah.

Veronika (26:27.306)
with the manual CPC. But now it's really important to have the right setup. And the most, I see it's in the Google tag manager, you know, I come in from SEO. So I also make my tracking by my own. And, so, if you take a look implementation on the ad side and then on the tech manager side, it's like, it's the crew version. And if you have a website migration, people forget sometimes that they have to adapt the conversion tracking too.

Anu Adegbola (26:27.374)
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:39.693)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (26:57.038)
Mmm.

Veronika (26:57.046)
If you recreate the sites and then you have a completely dismiss. So it's crazy. this is what I often see. And what I don't like to be honest, is this crazy. if an account is not structured, if you go in the account and there's no structure in it, it doesn't make sense. Or if you, if you analyze an account and there's only brand campaigns, it's something I closed directly, this account, and I need to pre.

Anu Adegbola (27:01.529)
god.

Anu Adegbola (27:11.084)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:16.129)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:21.09)
Yeah.

Veronika (27:25.3)
sometime a little bit longer and then I go back to the client what are you doing?

Anu Adegbola (27:26.147)
Yeah. Yeah. my gosh. we're going to have to put an explicit sign on the, this podcast episode. Cause that really first Veronica off. Okay. Okay. We do not like brand only, you know, accounts. No. Yeah.

Yeah, you're not getting any incremental revenue. I don't think people do that. Like understand that. Yeah, we understand that brand is going to come for you at a very low CPC, low, you know, you know, cost per acquisition or kind of thing, high return on investment, but you're not getting anything incremental. And even like when you do brand, I don't necessarily even think that brand works so well on PPC as it would like on display, paid social, that kind of thing. Cause you can

Veronika (28:18.59)
Yes!

Anu Adegbola (28:19.718)
show more of your brand. Cause when it comes to brand, it's not, you know, when people search for your brand, they want an experience. They're not just wanting text message that, know, and unless you're an amazing writer, copywriter, think they're not enough good copywriters that are going to paid search. You're going to page search because you're like, you know how to do Google ads well, and you know the technicalities of bit strategy, and you know, you need to put an ad copy and you know, need to about testing.

They are not necessarily, and this is coming from someone who is a paid search practitioner. used to be a paid search practitioner. I'm not the best writer. So, you know, trying to do branding when you can't bring the brand alive in PPC, I think it's such a waste, such a waste to do it just there, or even to do it and to be like, that's the only thing running on paid search brand.

do it in the whole, like you need to do with the generic and other stuff. yeah, sorry, I didn't even realize how I felt so passionately about that. I think that's a point I've never made before that we really need to think about.

Veronika (29:17.846)
you

Veronika (29:25.108)
Yes, and it does a lot of people.

Anu Adegbola (29:28.076)
Yeah. How about mistakes when it comes to AI? We can't miss out the whole AI mess that everyone thinks that knows how to do the job very well.

Veronika (29:39.223)
What the people are doing is they analyze their accounts in PPC. So they put in the data and then they make an analysis. What they forget is if you put in average data, then you get an average answer. So what happens if you don't have an stand out account? You have only analysis or ideas from an average position. So AI can't fix this problem. So you have to find out what can you optimize to do it better.

Anu Adegbola (29:58.604)
Yeah, yeah. No.

Anu Adegbola (30:06.819)
Yeah.

Veronika (30:07.284)
And this is something you have to find out. Then maybe you can ask AI how to do it. So maybe it can help to support there, but a lot of people say they don't need them PPC manager anymore. put all the data in AI and then they analyze the account and everything is fine. But this is something you will never stand out. And then you have the problem I've mentioned before. You have a good campaign, maybe with new revenue.

Anu Adegbola (30:11.533)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (30:29.88)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. No, like, yeah. And that's the, that whole average thing that is, you know, hit the nail on the head and a friend of ours, a shout out to Yoann Ferrand who, great support of PPC life comes to all the events and, you know, and he was like, look, yeah, AI has made the bad marketer to be average. I'm like, yeah, but is that really what we're selling? Is that what we're selling to clients when you pitch, when we go into that?

Veronika (30:52.629)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (30:59.534)
and you've got the brand saying that, different agency is the agency who wins the one that goes, hey, we're all average. We're all average and that's what you want. Is that really the people that win the accounts? And that's the annoying thing. You get a lot of people who are literally like, oh yeah, I've got a whole AI set up and AI, spend millions of dollars a day because they're all on an AI set up.

Veronika (31:07.518)
Nope.

Anu Adegbola (31:28.002)
because you've got thousands of accounts that are average, that are average and are doing average stuff. And if the client knew that, they'd be pissed, in my opinion is what I think. They'd be pissed. Yes!

Veronika (31:39.767)
I would be pissed. I would be pissed, yes. So, yes, stand out. That's the most important thing is stand out. And you can only stand out if you use your human mind. And this is something that people forget in their AI age. And they think they are a good PPC manager if they put the data into an AI. They aren't.

Anu Adegbola (31:46.648)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (31:50.359)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (31:53.741)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (31:58.316)
Yeah, yeah. No, no. I mean, there's so much that the AI is doing well, making us faster, you know, but and something that, yeah, but something that is coming a lot more and more out, which I don't know, we're just saying it in so many different ways. It's a tool. It's a tool the same way that Google Ads has been a tool. It's the same way like

Veronika (32:08.426)
Yes, I use it too.

Anu Adegbola (32:24.236)
You see all these like, you know, like my rain software, the, the, the like, DSA studio, all these kinds of stuff, like, like, you know, Athena, the competitive tool, distinct tool, AI is just another one of those. There's so many tools. And when you just leave the tool to do whatever it's rubbish, but when you make the tool to make you faster, that's when the best work comes out. And I just think it's.

Veronika (32:40.682)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (32:52.672)
It's very important that we pay attention to the fact that these are tools that we need to direct. Yes.

Veronika (32:57.342)
It should help you, support you, but you have to give the right insights to this tool. This is also a messy. If you think one sentence is enough, then shit in, shit out.

Anu Adegbola (33:03.02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (33:09.684)
right yes absolutely we the the oldest thing is garbage in garbage lgigo i know but i love i love your xmo expressive version yours yours gets the point across clearly i love it direct i love it this has been so great this is so great

Veronika (33:15.862)
Yes, I'm a German. I'm a German.

Veronika (33:29.718)
We are the direct persons, so at this point.

Anu Adegbola (33:37.422)
So like, how do you also, do you have any advice for people on spotting their mistakes? Cause these kinds of mistakes, I feel that sometimes, you know, when we were like, when this new era of like, yeah, we wanted the AI tool, we want to use it, but we don't want you to take over everything, but we need to be able to spot them well.

and but actually still use them and not be all like, cause you're not, you're not banning. You're not, you're not saying that, no, AI is all shit. We shouldn't use AI, but how do you, how do you, how do you notice what, what do we need to be doing to make sure that we notice those mistakes quick?

Veronika (34:08.04)
No, no, no, no, no.

Veronika (34:18.582)
I think we should get the try to understand how these tools work. So, and this is the most mistake that people does. They use things, education to understand how the system works, what the system needs to works for you perfect. And what have you to do on your side to make them work better. They are great tools to find mistakes on your account. If you teach them the right way.

Anu Adegbola (34:27.733)
education.

Anu Adegbola (34:38.382)
Hmm.

Anu Adegbola (34:45.858)
Yeah.

Veronika (34:46.464)
But they have to know what you want. we are humans are humans, know, if you talk to other people, always think the people has to read between our, between our lines or read our head. And we just the same with AI. So we think they, they should know what we want. No, they don't know it. So make it clear, make it accurate, say what you want and think about if you use this tools, it's like you sent a briefing to a designer.

Anu Adegbola (34:50.487)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (34:57.89)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:04.653)
Yeah.

Veronika (35:13.96)
or to a content team, to other human and make it specific. And yes, and check it, of course. Ask for resources. And always put in your prompts, please don't hallucinate, please don't fill the gaps, please don't interpret data, please only use real resources you found and please show these resources. So yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:14.092)
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.

double check. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:30.56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:36.886)
Yes. Yeah. I, know what, on this note, I was going to bring this near the end, but I actually feel this is a good time. was going to do things in the introduction. I apologize. I missed it, but you've got a great book that teaches us how to do this, right? Please show us your book and literally look, you know, yeah, it's called the search singularity winning in the new game of search and give us a little bit about what this book is about.

Veronika (36:02.44)
It's about a digital marketing messy middle, and it's about PPC SEO, social and content and analytics works together. It's a little bit sarcastic like I am. So it's a direct book. You will read it, but it gives frameworks and practical advices to go with this new area and find the calmness in this really, really, really chaos. Yes. So it's a little bit.

Anu Adegbola (36:24.44)
Yes, chaos.

Yes!

Veronika (36:31.4)
A few laughter are in there.

Anu Adegbola (36:33.87)
I'm glad we need, I think a lot of marketing books is very like, okay, do this. you're not, you're not doing this well and this is how you need to do blah, blah, blah. Okay. Go. And you're like, okay. Yeah. I did. did someone that's got something that's going to make me smile. So yeah. Can people find it on Amazon? Yes. The Amazon is called the search singularity. Yeah. Okay. And we even wrote a blog about it so that people, you know, get the link. we're to put all the show notes, put all those links in the show notes for.

Veronika (36:51.562)
Yes, on Amazon.

Yes.

Anu Adegbola (37:03.288)
people to read that. Look, yeah, Veronica, that has been such a great chat, just so interesting as you describe in your book, you're sarcastic, you like making people laugh, and you've made me laugh. So thank you. Thank you for that, for sharing your experience and, know, about how we really need to be on top of all these AI tools, how we need to be on top of mistakes, how we shouldn't be scared about the mistakes that we might make, and it's not about being perfect.

Veronika (37:16.374)
you

Thank you.

Anu Adegbola (37:31.534)
all the things that we really need to be hearing right now. So yeah, but finally, before we let you go, if your PPC career were a movie, what would your title be? What would the title be? Faster!

Veronika (37:41.943)
Fast and furious, yes, fast and furious!

Anu Adegbola (37:46.626)
Tell us a bit more. Why do you feel like your career has been faster furious?

Veronika (37:53.047)
Because of all these crazy stages I had. agency side, in-house freelance. Teacher, yes, I'm becoming a teacher and it's crazy. And from nobody knows my name to you go to a conference and so many people comes to you. I follow you, I like you, can I have a screen? Can I have a selfie or something like that? It's so crazy. It's like, okay, okay. And then, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (37:55.395)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (38:02.871)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (38:06.541)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (38:16.066)
Selfie! bless. that is so nice. So yeah, Fast and Furious, doing so many things with the career that it reminds me like when I was in the previous episode and I asked one of the guests and the guest turned around and I like, And mine was like Moulin Rouge. Moulin Rouge is just amazing. Because, but it's almost like the same thing. When you watch Moulin Rouge, it's amazing.

Veronika (38:22.678)
you

Anu Adegbola (38:45.678)
I love the red and the rouge obviously of it all, but it's also chaotic. It's such a chaotic movie where some of the scenes, a lot of things are happening at the same time. And I'm like, and I feel that's how with me because yeah, I've done working with agencies and brands and tech tools and doing freelance contracting, working for an American company, working with a publisher now, doing a podcast, running events. And my brain is like, why? Why? Like what is going happening there?

Veronika (38:46.005)
Mm.

Veronika (38:51.273)
It's it.

Veronika (38:56.074)
you

Veronika (39:12.034)
you

Anu Adegbola (39:15.0)
But anyway, we kind of, you make it work and yeah, it's a lovely industry to be in because there's so many kind people, so many people who are like, who want to learn, who want to grow. And I'm hoping that is the people we have listening to our podcast, because that's what we want, people to grow, people to learn and people to do things better with integrity in our industry. So if people want to be your fans and so that, you know, they can follow you online, where can they find you? Yeah. Okay.

Veronika (39:22.165)
Yes.

Veronika (39:42.324)
on LinkedIn.

Anu Adegbola (39:44.79)
Yeah, LinkedIn is our trusted source, which is why most of the time 99 % of my promo is on LinkedIn. last event, I didn't even do any promo on Instagram because I was like, my God, are PPC people on Instagram?. I did everything on LinkedIn So yeah, we're going to share Veronica's LinkedIn profile as well so that you could, yeah, hear about any, any next of the events that she's going to be. I mean, and we're on events, events, you know, based on the events. So what's the next event that you're going to Veronica?

Veronika (39:53.673)
No.

Veronika (40:14.892)
it's a German event. It's Kampix. There are also some international speakers there. There's also an English speech stage, but I will speak in my mother language. So.

Anu Adegbola (40:21.633)
Okay.

Okay. nice. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, that is good to hear. I'm hoping any of your, your fans who are your Germans fan listening to this, they, they, they check that event out. We'll put the link to, to that event. So anyone who's in Germany that wants to hear Veronica talk. yeah, definitely go check her out. but for now, thank you so much for being on this, this, this podcast on this episode. and yeah, we'll catch up again soon. I'm sure.

Veronika (40:52.311)
Yes, bye. Thank you for the innovation.

Anu Adegbola (40:53.774)
Hey, my pleasure.