The Client That Made Me Quit Google Ads (For Years) ft Laura I. Abreu

Anu Adegbola (00:03.008)
Hello, Laura, welcome to P P C Live the podcast.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (00:06.816)
Hi Anu, how are you?

Anu Adegbola (00:08.758)
I am very well, thank you. I'm very well. Thank you, Laura, for joining me today. It's like, yeah, another one of those people who, because of what this podcast is about, it's about sharing mistakes, sharing the wins. And Laura and I we just had a very nice conversation earlier to to this. And you know, as non-surprising, she launched into some of the great stuff that she's been doing and that'll even come up in like a fun fact.

You know, but yeah, we're gonna talk about the things that led us there, the road that that came up to her. So who's Laura? Laura has twelve years of ex of experience across Europe, Asia, Pacifics, the likes of Hong Kong and Australia. And she's even lived there for a while. And she brings a global person global perspective to performance driven, led, driven lead generation and traffic campaigns while building and scaling also SEO strategies.

Tailored to diverse international markets. So she's very much like an, you know, in integrated strategist kind of person who works across paid search, has worked across PaidSearch and an SEO as well, which I always love when I hear that. There's too many silos of like SEO is on this side, PPC on that side, and the PPC don't know what the SEOs is doing. And it's not great. another bit of the show I'd like to show is sharing a fun fact. So, Laura, do you have a fun fact to share us? Anything interesting of like,

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (01:08.991)
Yes.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (01:18.314)
What?

Anu Adegbola (01:29.218)
Where you've lived before, any interesting hobbies that you have?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (01:32.982)
yeah, I've lived in India for almost six months and I was on the road once and there was a guy riding an elephant next to me on the biggest highway on Saturday nights. That was pretty impressive.

Anu Adegbola (01:36.822)
One.

Anu Adegbola (01:45.655)
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've never seen that before. But like you do hear that the elephants are sacred animals in India. I have heard that before. So I'm not surprised you see that. How did that how did that make you feel? Are you like a bit like, sorry, what's what's going on? Like did everybody else have to get out of the way when the elephant when he was riding on an elephant?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (01:53.983)
Yes.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (02:03.122)
Yeah!

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (02:08.181)
was wearing this fancy dress, I was going to a party this Saturday night because there are so many Bollywood actresses and Bollywood things in Mumbai and all of a sudden, yeah, I saw a dark, a huge dark shade next to me. Yeah, was, then I saw his eye right next to my window. So we just keep on going with the car, but you it was a magical place. one should be visit at least once, I think.

Anu Adegbola (02:14.754)
Right. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (02:29.106)
Wow. yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah. I'm hoping to have India on my list of of travels soon. I've never I've never been before. So yeah, that'll be one one exciting place to go to. anyway, we don't have too much time. We don't we wanna wanna waste anybody's time in terms of what we're gonna be talking about.

today. So let's dive into it. We've got another great story for you about how, you know, yeah, Laura kind of did just didn't kind of make the decision early on in her career. And that really helped her make better decisions and continue to be the expert as she is in in her career today. So yeah, Laura, please go ahead. What's the F up you'd like to share with us today?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (03:16.597)
The biggest mistake I've done probably is not, I don't want to sound spiritual, but not following your gut and just saying yes to the wrong client. If you see that business model is not going to work, if they haven't tested the market before, don't go for it. I've been there and it's been emotionally draining and definitely not worth the money.

Anu Adegbola (03:42.626)
Yeah. Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (03:43.765)
That was an e-commerce.

Anu Adegbola (03:46.766)
So yeah, go on. Tell us, tell us, tell us what happened. Why what what led to you taking this client? How did you s when did you start realizing that it was the wrong client?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (03:50.878)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (03:57.919)
Yes, so I was working for a business in Hong Kong and then a friend of mine reached out to me. I'm running this female entrepreneur association and it's one of the members.

She wants to launch this new business. Why don't we run, you run ads for her and I do the PR part. And then I was, it was my very first client. So I said, yes, why not? But there was something inside me that I just could see that business model wasn't right. Basically it was an e-commerce and she was selling.

Anu Adegbola (04:26.702)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (04:31.306)
beauty products but from well-known brands such as Clinique, said all these big brands you can find on any drugstore but she was selling those brands at the same price that you can find them on Boots or on any other drugstore so there was not really a difference on why would they choose you if they don't know you in e-commerce versus just going to Boots or to any drugstore and get them from that site so for me that was the biggest

Anu Adegbola (04:32.929)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (05:01.3)
flag but you know she had all her hopes on us she really wants us to do the job and I accepted and it didn't succeed we didn't got any sale not a single one and it was

Anu Adegbola (05:14.23)
Okay. What what ti what what type of campaigns did you set up? Like was it just like normal search campaigns? Cause you said this is quite early. Like how many years ago was this?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (05:26.944)
So this was almost 9 years ago, so was quite a long, long time. Yes!

Anu Adegbola (05:31.552)
Okay. So this is before P Max, before really AI kicked off. We're doing just like let's put some keywords together, write the ad copy, let's see the best we can do. Yeah, bit strategies. What kind of bid strategies were you testing?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (05:41.494)
Exactly.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (05:48.993)
To be honest, I can't really remember the details, but we were running a search campaign. remember this and I remember the whole layout was completely different from now. So it was a search campaign, but I can't really...

I can't really remember what else. I remember we create buyer personas and we create specific campaigns for Christmas. I remember we ran some offers as well on Meta not just Google and...

Anu Adegbola (06:10.754)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (06:14.605)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (06:19.958)
I think I learned from that that if they haven't tested the market before they hired you, I wouldn't work with them. You want them to test the market because the reality we found is that there was not enough market for them because the market was already trusting this huge drugstore. And in Hong Kong, you have these large chains that same as you have in the UK. So we try different creatives. We try different angles. We try. I remember we play around a

Anu Adegbola (06:26.583)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (06:43.308)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (06:49.912)
with different last minute offer. We prepared these packages because for men they also have beauty products, so we prepared specific packages for them. We did a media sort of dinner and then we used these testimonials.

Anu Adegbola (06:53.112)
Sure.

Anu Adegbola (06:59.939)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (07:06.72)
for the creatives, you know, we use these testimonials, but nothing, nothing worked. And she was obviously really upset with us. And it was a huge lesson very early on, but.

Anu Adegbola (07:17.153)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (07:22.102)
Yeah, and how many months, like so how long did it take before you just accepted, look, this is not working out?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (07:28.638)
It was more than one month. I would say it was around three months. And yeah. And because we were testing different answers, because we, we couldn't find, we couldn't guess what was the, we couldn't guess what was the reason that it wasn't working. And we were really, really young. mean, it was almost nine years ago. So it was, you know, we were new doing that and it was a new market and we sort of.

Anu Adegbola (07:32.023)
Wow.

Anu Adegbola (07:44.652)
Yeah. Hmm.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (07:56.139)
try to tell her it wasn't working, but she wanted to try, so I would say just don't follow what the client is telling you. At some point she was leading.

or the strategy instead of us. You know, so if you follow what the client wants, it doesn't usually take you to the right place because otherwise they would do it themselves. So just because they think there was a lot of, think this looks nice. And another thing I learned from this looks pretty to me on Meta is that whatever looks pretty on you, if there is no data backing up that creativity, it doesn't make sense because it has to be

Anu Adegbola (08:06.378)
Yeah.

Le in

Anu Adegbola (08:32.269)
No.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (08:33.99)
a performance-driven image that, or flyer or promotion that works not just because it looks pretty. I remember we used to spend money on a whole shooting and all this because we tried really hard to make it work. It was not that we weren't doing our job. was we were working long hours just to make

Anu Adegbola (08:42.542)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (08:48.63)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (08:53.67)
make it work before realizing that it was not they didn't do the whole the proper business research to see if there was a gap in the market it was she wants she liked beauty products so she wanted to have an e-commerce and that's it that was all and she had the money she had the money because she was working in banking right so i have money i'm bored of my job i just want to have this e-commerce i have not

Anu Adegbola (09:00.31)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:07.05)
How beauty covered my knee, yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Okay. Okay. god.

Anu Adegbola (09:21.372)
gosh.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (09:23.046)
And that's what I learned that they have to do their own homework because you need to do a whole business plan on how, on if the countries you are targeting have enough demand for what you're offering. And what you're offering is different from the other competitors because if they've been there for a longer period of time, they're going to obviously get the clients before you. So.

Anu Adegbola (09:45.858)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (09:47.191)
I also learned that from future clients. I'm like, okay, have you done your homework? Like, have you done your part? Because they think because they hire you, you're going to all of a sudden make that business a successful business when there is no, the fundamentals have no rights. So there is no basement. The basement is not stable.

Anu Adegbola (09:56.215)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:02.709)
No.

Yeah. Yeah. The fundamentals ab yeah, if the foundations is not stable, if you've not done yeah, if you've not done your research, is it's so important. Like and I even love the bit of like where you said about, you know, the customer, like if you don't know you know, knowing what the customer needs, or even the bit about the creatives, saying that, this looks nice. That's even something that I learned at like an a mini MBA course that I that I

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (10:11.21)
foundations.

Anu Adegbola (10:32.248)
That I took that even at MBA level, they'll still teach the students, you are not the customer. You as the marketer trying to do, do not go on your guard. Do not be like, I like how this looks. As soon as the person trying to promote something, you are the worst person to judge what good creative is. It's the person who is purely the customer, who has no interest in actually making money, that needs to look at it and like it.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (10:39.572)
Yes!

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (10:45.61)
High like

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (10:52.914)
Yes!

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (10:59.955)
Exactly.

Anu Adegbola (11:02.038)
And so yeah, some of I it's it's just so surprising some people don't don't really get that. You know, you you see a marketer going, that looks nice. So yeah, I'm gonna use it and then they're like, it didn't work and you have no idea why. And it's like, Well, you should have asked the customer. Before you go out, you need to have asked the customer.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (11:08.478)
I couldn't.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (11:17.386)
Yeah, yeah, because she was a brilliant woman because we believe on her products as well. We believe on her business as well. We like the commerce because she was a successful banker woman, know, in Hong Kong making this huge salary per month. And she was quite successful. thought like, she's a smart, intelligent woman. She knows what she's doing. Let's just run ads for her. And then we were like, wait.

Anu Adegbola (11:22.188)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:38.882)
Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. god. House is on fire. Yes.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (11:43.881)
The house is on fire. She's really upset with us. We cannot be responsible for the market not responding to your product because you didn't do your part. So, wow, it was a really, really hard time. can you imagine with my very first client, I was so scared and sad. It was really sad.

Anu Adegbola (11:55.424)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:58.851)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:03.928)
So yeah, exactly. I there's another point I like put pointing, you know, bringing up in these chats is how that experience, what did it make you feel, how did it affect your confidence? Did you did you kinda think of quitting when this happened? gosh.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (12:13.628)
teddy ball.

Ugh.

Yes, yeah, actually, I didn't really take on more clients. It was terrible emotionally because I think media buyers, we have all this ego, right? We sort of relate our worth with the results we get to the clients. There is some, we have to separate that, but I think it's sort of linked to us, Because when we get this achievement, sort of, I did that. I know it's terrible, but you know.

Anu Adegbola (12:33.154)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (12:43.168)
Yes, exactly. A very kind of pride. A pride. Like, my God. Yeah. I I I raised that performance. I made the client a lot of money. There's a lot of pride and our self worth that we tie to that. Yes.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (12:48.79)
Yeah!

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (12:55.092)
You know, or on your team, obviously it's not a me thing, right? It's a team thing, but it's like our team will get that, right? Cause you see the analytics and it's so, it feels amazing. So it felt terrible back then. mean, we sort of ended our friendship with my friend that was with the PR team because I was like, how come?

Anu Adegbola (13:11.265)
Wow.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (13:12.916)
you accepted this client I was so mad at her because she was sort of whatever it is it's not our fault and I'm like of course it is we are responsible of this non-resource we are delivering and she was sort of she was from Paris you know people I'm sorry I don't want to anyone make feel bad but honestly I'm not saying

Anu Adegbola (13:27.95)
We're not all we're not saying all people from Paris are horrible people. No.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (13:36.873)
but look i'm spanish and i take the bride yeah we like to party yeah we like siestas every now and then so yeah i take the you know whatever you about spain i can sort of relate to that so you know anyway she was like but it's not my problem but my problem whatever and i was like listen this woman

Anu Adegbola (13:40.13)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (13:53.935)
no gosh. It is it is.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (13:57.845)
She's been invest, she's been in us and you are sort of not responding anymore. We have to say something to her. And then she was like, I want my money back. It was terrible. think I stopped running ads for a while after that. Yeah. I was just doing social media content. I was traumatized for years, for years, of course, because I thought I'm not worth it. Of course you take, because the client makes you feel as well. Right. I felt I was not worth it. felt.

Anu Adegbola (14:09.965)
Wow.

Okay. my god.

Anu Adegbola (14:20.427)
Yeah. Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (14:25.394)
Yeah, I I wasn't good enough. All the terrible things she made me feel for months or for years after that experience, of course. So it's not just...

Anu Adegbola (14:27.958)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:33.176)
So since sorghone. Yeah? Go on.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (14:36.682)
So it's not just taking the wrong client that's obviously gonna make them lose money, it's how that's gonna make you feel in the long term, because you relate that experience with your self-worth or with your professional worth. So think about that, even if you need the money or need the experience, think about how is that gonna make you feel if you don't get the results because the client didn't do her part.

Anu Adegbola (14:58.54)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:02.059)
Yeah. Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (15:03.206)
something to consider. That's why I don't just take clients for the fee. I think about, okay, I try to visualize what I can really do for them, what they've been doing and what's her character or her personality like, because if she's going to be telling me what to do, then I'm not, you know, you have to consider all these factors. It's not just publishing a campaign or launching a campaign.

Anu Adegbola (15:12.032)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:17.004)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:25.122)
Yes.

Yeah. Absolutely. And so like you took a break from Google Ads. What made you come back into w what was the next campaign, the Google Ads campaign you you then managed after that? And how did that gonna go?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (15:36.694)
Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (15:42.839)
good question, I was in Hong Kong and I went to Australia, probably, let me think, I have to think probably, because was years after that experience, it took me some time.

Anu Adegbola (15:58.323)
Yeah, it was years after years, yeah, about nine years ago. But you came back. You you you decided to you you ran another, you know, a paid media campaign after that from your experience. Actually, yeah, don't worry. That's we we don't need to go into that. But like so if you now look back, what would you have done differently? What can you say that this is what I would not have done, especially?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (16:06.784)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (16:17.814)
yeah.

So when I first met the client and I knew about her business model, when she told us about her business, there was something within me that made me consider that it was a risky client because she didn't test the market first. So from that very first moment, I made sure the expectations were set. I try not to take any client who hasn't tested the market first, but I've done that in the past, but I was almost making sure the

Anu Adegbola (16:45.601)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (16:50.472)
that okay what we're running out but we are gonna run now it's not just a plain campaign we're gonna test the market we're gonna see if there's actually demand for your market are you okay with that because we may not get any client but it's gonna help you to test on a quicker way so and also

doing the masters. So I took a masters on SEO and SEM that gave me more confidence. probably after the masters, which was a few years after my very first client, I felt way more confident because we had teachers that were running campaigns. I don't think just watching YouTube is enough. I always try to encourage people to educate themselves, not just...

Anu Adegbola (17:13.089)
Okay.

Yes, yes.

Anu Adegbola (17:21.568)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:31.05)
No, no.

Anu Adegbola (17:35.16)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (17:36.631)
Because back then, I didn't have any course on Google Ads. I was just self-learning. I think having teachers and doing a whole year on these masters, SEO and same gave me the confidence back. I would say that was the moment where I'm like, I'm ready to go back to run ads again. I know what I'm doing now. And I know when to say no. It's very important to say no, to know when to say no, I think, when you're a freelancer.

Anu Adegbola (17:41.644)
No. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:56.142)
Sure.

Anu Adegbola (18:02.21)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely very important. So if someone has just gone through this, someone has taken on a client that they thought was not a good client. They thought the business model was not is not great. It's not gonna work on Google Ads. But they did it anyway. They took the client on and now they're seeing bad performance. What's your advice to them?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (18:29.558)
Reputation is everything so I would personally give them their fees back. I would pay them back. You have to make sure that...

everyone that has worked with you or has had any sort of interaction with you is going to have nice words about your work and your personality. think it's very important. The PPC and the ACO world is so small. you know, we are, you and I, saw it together. We saw important and then we are on this podcast. So you always want to make sure everyone, you know, you have to fake it, but just try to be honest. So I would say, look, I, I, I mess it up and

Anu Adegbola (18:52.984)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (19:03.692)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (19:14.52)
here is your money back. If you can afford that, if you cannot afford giving the money back, I would offer a few months without getting paid. You have to sort of understand that they're running a business and they also struggling with their bills.

Anu Adegbola (19:24.354)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (19:30.861)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's really important that we make it clear that we value that someone has given us their money. Yes, we know that sometimes at at a at a time in my career, I always used to be like, well, it's just money. You know, it is these people, they're just they're just we're spending their money and you know, they're we're making money for people who already are rich. Because on one hand, someone could argue that, this lady's in banking, so she's got money, so she's well off.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (19:40.756)
Yeah

Anu Adegbola (19:59.917)
Maybe she even has like, you know, good inheritance from, you know, grandparents or something like that. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If this person has you don't get to decide how that person's money goes. And if you made promises of how good Google Ads is gonna go and it doesn't, yeah, it's definitely very important to try to try to make make it up to that person as much as possible. And yeah, yeah. Yeah it

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (20:03.414)
Yes, she had.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (20:17.206)
Mm.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (20:26.566)
Yes. And be honest. Be honest about what happens.

Anu Adegbola (20:31.906)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (20:32.278)
say, you know, I don't know what else to do. I've done that to a client. said, I don't know what else to do. I've done my best. And because she me being honest, she wanted me to keep working for him. Not just running ads. That was another thing long time ago, just be honest about it. Because then when you get good results, which after my masters, I got only good results, you get referrals. So that's the best way to grow is someone calling you,

Anu Adegbola (20:58.902)
Yeah. Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (21:02.352)
someone recommended your services and that's how I've been growing for the last five years. through referrals I never advertise my services so that's what you have to aim for being recommended.

Anu Adegbola (21:07.102)
Nice.

Anu Adegbola (21:12.274)
Nice. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, that's amazing. That's amazing. So, like, what would you say that from that story, that particular example, what do you now do differently now? Especially now in the past five years, you get, you know, because that one was a recommendation from a friend and you saw this client and you know, so

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (21:34.324)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (21:36.798)
One might go like you might be a bit nervous about taking recommendations now, but you do now and you've been successful at it. So what from that story did you learn that has made you do different do different do things differently now?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (21:50.007)
Yeah, I am gonna sound a bit harsh now, but I don't work for friends or family. That's what I learned. Yeah, I don't do favors. I don't do favors.

Anu Adegbola (21:54.829)
Yeah. You know what? That's not harsh. I don't think that's harsh. I think we underestimate and we minimalize how important that rule is. Some people are like, it's our friends, our family, our relationship will hold strong. Be careful. Sorry, go on. But I totally agree with you. That's a very good

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (22:08.702)
Yeah, yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (22:14.634)
Yeah, because she was a really good friend of mine, not the client. Also, she was a lovely woman, but the girl that recommended me, she was a lovely friend and we still have our friendship and I miss her to this day, you know. So I don't work for friends. So because then if you don't work for friends or family, you have a more objective point of view on what can you do for them. And then you don't have this, just because she's my sister or whatever, I'm just going to do this. No, no, no, no, no. I try to separate because I think when we do media by

Anu Adegbola (22:17.335)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (22:22.626)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (22:35.084)
Yes.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (22:44.638)
we have to be really analytical and non-emotional. We have to have any sort of attachment because these numbers and we have to make numbers and we don't do any sort of favors. just have to numbers make numbers. So we have to be really cold-hearted with the account, ideally known.

Anu Adegbola (23:02.263)
Yes.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (23:03.984)
non-emotions between you and the account. So yeah, I don't do friends or family and you know my brother has a business but I'm like I don't offer my services. I don't want that extra money because it's gonna cost me five times more and we're gonna end up arguing and it's not worth my energy and my peace of mind. So yeah, I don't do friends, I don't do family, I don't do neighbors, I don't do anyone like I know anyone. No, I don't do these things. I just like...

Anu Adegbola (23:10.21)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:17.068)
Yeah. More than that. Yep.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (23:29.952)
call either someone calling to me through a client and then I analyze their business. I'm like, okay, my first question is, have you sold before? Are you selling? What's your... Are you getting any...

Anu Adegbola (23:41.154)
Yeah. Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (23:45.591)
And then I asked them, what do your clients say about your service, your product? Do they like it? Because they don't like it. All I say is that I don't do magic. I just magnify what you're already doing. If you have a big S, you're going to get a bigger S.

Anu Adegbola (23:57.933)
Desks.

Anu Adegbola (24:03.936)
Yes.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (24:06.294)
So and I set up expectations really low. I was really traumatized by that experience. So I I I No, no, I never talk about it. So it's sort of a therapy thing for me now

Anu Adegbola (24:12.243)
Yeah, wow. I'm sorry.

Yeah, that's that's the point. That's why I'm bringing people on this show. Talk about it, have your therapy about this situation that happens so that you can fully move on and be confident in who you are today. Yeah, honestly. Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (24:29.354)
Yes, I feel now I'm ready to move on. Yes, so I, I forgot what I was going to say. I, I, yeah, I under promise and over deliver

Anu Adegbola (24:42.2)
Deliver fantastic.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (24:42.838)
So I, you know, I can see, can get them, you know, 10 times, whatever. I'm like, well, maybe, you know, we can double, triple, let's see, let's see, you know, with numbers and then I over deliver. So I always get this wow effect by this and just being very data driven. So I follow that. I follow numbers and I'm much more cautious on, you know, the video strategy, the whole set up. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:56.28)
No

Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:07.384)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Now that's amazing. That's really, really cool point. You know what? You've given us so many tips on that one. And yeah, there's a lot. We've already talked through quite a bit of time, taking a bit of time on that that mistake. And what I really like to do is also now, you know, let's look, let's just take things from the point of your expertise of mistakes. So, you know, you've you've said that you've got gotten clients before, you know, you've been winning clients and people have been referring you.

Getting new clients, and I imagine that some of those accounts used to be another agency used to work with them, and then you took them over. And maybe you did some audits and to figure out what needed to be improved and changed. Now, in those times that you've done those kind of audits, what are some of the mistakes that you've seen that really surprise you, that shocks you, that you s maybe that you sho you're shocked that you see it at all, or you're shocked that how often you're seeing it in with from across.

several different accounts. do you have any ex examples of that?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (26:10.216)
Yeah, many examples and also my own mistakes. make mistakes every day. It's called iteration or whatever, but we all make so. Probably I think in Australia, when I started out in this account, saw a lot of that was a meta ads audit. I saw a lot of dynamic ads that weren't performing. They had like nine or 10 dynamic creatives. It was only one creative getting all the leads and they didn't, they didn't pause the other ones or test the.

Anu Adegbola (26:32.686)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:36.492)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (26:40.19)
creative so they were running for months and I'm like can you not see what's not performing because if you post that or just delete them you're gonna get the winning creative more seen for your public audience so I think I see a lot of and I've done that myself as well set and forget

Anu Adegbola (26:41.185)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:54.295)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (27:01.549)
Yes.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (27:03.038)
Yeah, I think people underestimate how much you have to be on the campaigns, not only pausing the keywords that are not giving you any clicks, but also...

readjusting the copy on Google, maybe trying to find the right call to action. I see really long text on meta ads, the description copies, really long. So if I make them shorter within three lines that you don't have the three dots, you get a higher click through rate. So I've seen a lot of meta

sorry, lead generation campaigns that they send you to the website when and they are not testing meta forms. So within the platform, you usually get way more forms if they don't have to leave the platform. So I see a lot of that. I see a lot of forms where you ask for too many questions. I'm like, don't ask them too many questions. If you don't need their phone number, don't ask because...

Anu Adegbola (27:46.755)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:58.702)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:05.014)
Yeah, yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (28:09.814)
These days with all these data privacy things we don't want to give or we don't want anyone to call us. Just ask for the email. Don't even ask the surname. If you don't really need the surname, just the name or even just the email. So making it too complicated, I like to make things simple when I'm auditing. Mistakes myself probably is running a LinkedIn ads campaign for lead generation. They never really work as much as I wanted.

Anu Adegbola (28:15.277)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:34.68)
Yeah.

Mm. So lead generation campaign for LinkedIn, you feel like not a great strategy. Is it just been do you feel like it's maybe like depending on the industry or something?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (28:39.317)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (28:47.926)
Depending on the industry, but it's a hard one. I, it's a hard one. mean, I had some real estate clients. What I like about LinkedIn is that you can run the carousel and then have different, five different call to actions. So they work well for downloading for sort of the warm up, the warm up part of the funnel, but for regeneration, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:51.584)
It's a hard one.

Anu Adegbola (29:02.99)
Sure.

Anu Adegbola (29:09.308)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

It's not. It can be hard. It can be hard. How about in terms of like the AI, AI times, it AI like AI Max, DSA going away into in you know, in in preference for AI Max, and just in terms of just how we're using AI for work and our workflow, are there ways that the people are using it that you think is wrong that we should really we should we should try to stop?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (29:17.686)
think I'm gonna really high.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (29:41.655)
Yes, many ways. The thing with AI is that with placements you cannot really see where they're going to show you at.

Anu Adegbola (29:55.02)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (29:55.089)
So I have some specific campaigns that I just want to show on stories, Instagram stories or Facebook stories because of the format, you know, they have the whole screen. So I like to use manuals sometimes. I have really bad results sometimes if I use this AI sort of setup, but then the advantage plans works well. I'm just trying to think, what I've seen also in Australia, some of my colleagues were using the AI generated descriptions. They were terrible.

Anu Adegbola (30:24.544)
Yeah. yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (30:24.972)
They look terrible to me. Yeah. And, and yeah, that's terrible. And also using the dash, stop using the dash in your copies. We know it's just GPT doing that.

Anu Adegbola (30:35.766)
The long da yeah, the log that although some people they have their like we they've been using the dash way before AI was using it, and that's part of their language. I don't know. I think the dash one, it's it's a split one. Some people will be like, Yes, I definitely shouldn't use it. Some people are like, Well, I've been using dashes there, people who are writers, people who've written books and written, you know, award-winning like blogs kind of thing, they'll be like, I use M-dash, and that does not mean

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (30:41.748)
Yeah

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (30:47.651)
yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (31:01.237)
Yeah

Anu Adegbola (31:05.282)
My content is is AI. So I don't know. I think that one might be a mixed one. But in terms of just like this this whole people I feel like AI is gonna take over a lot of things in terms of like Claude being used, you know, alongside, what would you think? What should people really try to focus on with your advice in the next few years in terms of how they'll use you how they should use AI?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (31:33.291)
I think I was on a panel talking about this two months ago. think.

I don't know what do you think, Anu, but I think it's going to be about how good you are using AI. So we're going to have this, okay, how comfortable are you? Do you feel with cloud? Can you do automations? Automation? See. So we have to be proficient at cloud. And right now I think it's cloud the one, but probably when I have more tools, so we have to just keep on being proficient and try to automate tasks.

Anu Adegbola (31:59.469)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:05.955)
Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (32:10.396)
So setting up the alerts on when the cost per click goes higher than cost per lead goes higher than X number. So setting up these alerts, we have to automate so we can afford to take on more clients.

Anu Adegbola (32:22.444)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:28.62)
Yeah, and being more strategic with with our clients too. There's some things that we shouldn't be doing manually anymore, anyway. So yeah, yeah, that's what AI is is there for. Laura, that's been a fantastic conversation. You've given us so much great advice there. Thank you for sharing that mistake that you had. And I'm really glad that even though that it, you know, it it it it got you scared about working in Google Ads.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (32:35.924)
Anymore, yep.

Anu Adegbola (32:54.208)
Account you came back to it, so because yeah, we need more experts like you. So well done. And but yeah, so then congratulations for like stay staying in the industry, you know, being a judge, and so clearly you're doing something very well because you know you're even judging accounts now, so you know that is absolutely fantastic. but yeah, before we go, my very last question that is like the now chill, not really not peep not a really PPC question, but like if your career.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (32:57.59)
Thank you.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (33:13.92)
Thank you.

Anu Adegbola (33:22.668)
were a movie, if your PPC career was a movie, what would the movie title be?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (33:29.814)
probably catch me if you can because I've moved around so many times

Anu Adegbola (33:36.012)
Love that I love that generally I do because I love that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks Everyone should go watch it. In fact, I'm gonna put a section on the website as to all the movies that people have suggested. Because I just think it's just so cool so that people can be like that movie. I maybe I'll try check out that movie. Yeah, so catch me if you can, because you've moved around. And where are you living right now?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (33:40.254)
Yeah, it's a great movie, right?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (33:48.918)
I

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (34:00.65)
I mean Barcelona, yeah, enjoying the...

Anu Adegbola (34:01.934)
Yeah, in Barcelona, yeah. Yeah, and people should come go to Barcelona. Barcelona is beautiful. Yeah.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (34:07.24)
Yeah, let me know next time you're here and I don't have any plans yet but you never know, know, just catch me if you can.

Anu Adegbola (34:14.158)
Yeah, we'll try and catch you if you can, because who knows, you might have gone somewhere else by the time we come to Barcelona. Who knows? bless. but yeah, if people want to hear about where where you're gonna be moving to next or any of the advice that you like to give, where can people find you?

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (34:19.572)
Yeah, maybe.

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (34:34.034)
I would say LinkedIn because I keep changing sometimes my phone and everything. promise you I'm not running away from anyone, but sometimes I get my SIM cards, they get expired or I still have the Australian one. I would say LinkedIn. My name, they just can send me a request. I want to do like the YouTubers, they do like here. And yeah.

Anu Adegbola (34:46.51)
Big time.

Anu Adegbola (34:53.015)
Yeah, go I will I will sh we'll share it all in the show notes and in the transcript and everything. So people just go and look out for that. And yeah, that'll be great. Yeah, fantastic. Well, my pleasure. Thank you so much, Laura, for joining us today. And yeah, I'm sure we'll catch up soon. Cheers, Lara. Bye. So if

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (34:56.502)
you

Laura I. Abreu - laurastrategy (35:02.656)
Thank you so much.

Thank you.

See you, bye bye.