The €30K Underspend That Broke Client Trust ft. Simran Harichand

Anu Adegbola (00:00.533)
Hello Simran, welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Simran (00:05.474)
Hi Anil, thank you for having me.

Anu Adegbola (00:07.751)
it's such an absolute pleasure. Like, yeah. I I you know, I I love that, you know, we I have what my guests have started doing, which I love, is that they've come on the podcast, they've enjoyed it so much, and they've, you know, spoken to their colleagues going, my god, I was on this podcast. You should you should apply to be on the podcast because, you know, our mutual friend is a fun fantastic Maddie Lightning who yeah, also works at Hallam with you.

Simran (00:18.83)
with

Simran (00:22.743)
Yeah.

Simran (00:27.146)
Yeah. Yes.

Anu Adegbola (00:32.859)
And yeah, told you about her experience. So I'm glad that she enjoyed the experience so much that you know she thought you needed to be on it. And so yeah, let let me introduce our audience to you, Simran. So Simran has moved continents, you know, and that was in the pandemic time, especially. So yeah, that is some absolute, you know, rigor and the test of test of patience and and pursuing what you want that she did too. And she's gone

She did that to pursue an MSc in marketing from the University of Nottingham. And after graduating in 2022, she joined Hallam in their paid media team. And she currently works as a paid media lead with the aim to make the advertising industry as ethical as possible. Now, Simra might not have had too many podcasting experiences, but she has several speaking experiences. So I am absolutely not nervous about at all about her being on the show today. She has spoken

At HeroConf twice, even she has spoken at several like Nottingham, you know, DM meetups and you know events that they've had, and also within like Hallam as well, and also Figaro Digital that do like, you know, like yeah, as well, event an event in London, you know, ever so often, a few, you know, like several times a year kind of thing. so yeah, great experience, has great experience, has studied this whole crazy marketing world that we find ourselves in.

but yeah, on to the fun fact, which I am really excited to have for her to share because this is something that is also close to my heart. Take it away somewhere with your fun fact.

Simran (02:07.106)
Amazing. Thanks. That was a really lovely introduction. My fun fact, I love sharing it because it always gets me this reaction like I did with you as well. People can't believe you've actually done it. But I adopted my cat, Hazel, when he was three months old, back when I was in Pakistan. And obviously when I moved here, there was always like this part of me where he was my cat. So two years into moving in the UK, I shipped him from Pakistan all the way to the UK. And he came alone in the airline hold and I

picked him up from Manchester and brought him home. And it's really funny because he was really close to my dad. But when he came in the carrier for an hour, he didn't even meow in the car because I think he didn't recognize where he was. He just kind of like accepted his fate. And then after an hour, he was smelling my hand. And you know, you could see on his face that it dawned on him that it's me. And you could see his face just go like, fuck, not her. Because like he loved my dad so much that he was.

Anu Adegbola (02:40.148)
Hmm.

Anu Adegbola (02:48.06)
Hmm.

Anu Adegbola (03:01.446)
She's like, where am I? Where am I? I'm back with her. She's back.

Simran (03:04.62)
Basically that, literally. now he's really, he's 11 this year, so he's quite old. So he moved when he was seven. So I've had him for a while, but he settled in quite well. But I like to give this fun fact because like, it's not often people do ship animals.

Anu Adegbola (03:19.844)
It is no, you know, I have seen few several like on social media people. it's mostly in the US end that I've seen, you know, people traveling, allowed to travel with their cat. And I'm like, wow, that's interesting. And you know, I've not necessarily looked into it yet because sometimes, you I'll travel for work and I'm like, well, I'm only waiting for like a few days or a few weeks. I'm not gonna break like disturb my cats and you know, for that. But I have thought of moving countries because I work for an American company, I literally can work anywhere.

Simran (03:27.99)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (03:36.876)
Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Simran (03:46.732)
Yeah, anywhere.

Anu Adegbola (03:49.311)
that I wanted to. So I'm like, but I always think, but how where what happens to my cat? So it's good to know if that if that actually happens, I can have I can ship my cat. I can ship my cat I'm so excited to hear that. It's just opened up a world of possibilities of like it can happen. So if you guys are all of a sudden here Anu has moved to Italy, don't worry. Lexi has come with me. Like

Simran (03:57.486)
Possible.

Simran (04:01.644)
Yeah, you can.

You can move.

Yeah. Yes.

Anu Adegbola (04:17.344)
Let's see. Let's go with Jesus. Okay. That's fun. Okay. No worries. No worries. Okay. So, yeah, Simran is on our latest on a very fantastic line of, you know, fantastic folks who have decided that they're going to be brave enough to talk about their mistakes because that's where the best learnings come from. It's not about the wins. It's not about, I know that AI max works or P Max works, or I know that smart bidding works. We want to hear.

Simran (04:18.446)
It'll so amazing.

Anu Adegbola (04:46.696)
the mess ups that happen till you figure it out something actually works. And because those are where some of the fun stories are. So really grateful already, Simran, that you're bold enough to come on this show for us to share about this. But yeah, without further ado, take it away. What is the F up you'd like to share with us today?

Simran (04:54.158)
Yeah.

Simran (05:05.326)
Well, my FUP is actually quite simple. So obviously, we pace budgets day in, day out. That's like we live and we breathe budgets. We get a budget. You have to make sure you finish. And the expense is not good. Oh, the expense is not good. This is actually from 2024. But essentially, we had this B2B SaaS client. And they were quite a big deal, quite a big client. So internally, very important. And I was leading their paid media.

and the organic was still building up. There was a lot of content work to be done there and there was a lot of pieces of work that my colleague was doing a fantastic job, but the lead generation was happening through paid, primarily Google. So obviously there was a lot of pressure, a lot of limelight on us and I would live and breathe their HubSpot dashboard. Even on weekends I was checking the HubSpot dashboard. That's the kind of pressure I felt.

Anu Adegbola (05:48.001)
wow.

Simran (05:52.591)
to deliver on what was expected of me. And you know when you know you can do it, you've done it 100 times. You're like, of course I do it. Anyway, it was actually the month of May. I was thinking about it when I agreed to come on the podcast, but they'd given me about a budget of 80,000 euros to spend on Google in the month of May. There was associated targets with it, blah, blah. I'm checking their lead. They'd been talking about the CPA being really high. So in the middle of May, I...

Anu Adegbola (05:52.594)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (06:17.582)
tightened their target CPA on one of their main campaigns because I was like, great, let's just test it and see if I can bring the CPA down, keep the spend where it is. And then it got really busy with reporting in QBR. So I obviously forgot about the fact that I had made this massive change in the account. And three days before the month was supposed to end, which was a Friday, I looked at it and my spend had dropped so much that I would have finished the month on only 50,000 euros.

That was a 30,000 underspend for a client who was messaging every single day talking about why the leads have slowed down. And you know, when you just like want to die because you're like, I do this every day. should not like, it's not, it's not like I'm like the wrong button or I did something wrong. I made an active choice and I forget to look at it. And my F up really was just not looking at it. And I can't tell you my.

Anu Adegbola (07:00.872)
Yes Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (07:07.828)
Yeah.

Right.

Yes. Lord.

Simran (07:17.208)
heart was in my throat because it's a client important to the agency. Of course, I like the client. I feel personal about my performance as well. And I just stood there looking at it, you know, and I just basically instantly loosened the target CPA on a Friday morning. It's B2B SaaS as well. Nobody's looking on a weekend. So my ship has sailed. I can't push the spend any harder than I can. So loosened the target CPA. I obviously pushed the budget, but let's be honest.

Anu Adegbola (07:25.32)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (07:34.888)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (07:45.475)
Maybe a grand more I spent over the weekend, not much more. And obviously come Monday, the month is ending. And as always, I sent my update. we finished the month on this with this blah, blah. And obviously I had to the message saying we finished the month on 50 grand and not 80 grand. And you can best believe the client was not happy about that. And she's lovely, by the way. Can I just add my client, she was the marketing director at that place, a quite higher. She is lovely, like really nice, not unrealistic, not a bad client.

Anu Adegbola (07:45.533)
It didn't.

Anu Adegbola (08:05.05)
No, no.

Anu Adegbola (08:09.908)
Okay. Right.

Simran (08:15.094)
when she's upset, it's rational and you know that's when you know you are the problem. She's upset. It's not. Yeah. Yeah, it was. have to say I was just like, my God, you know, when you're like, this is so stupid. This is so stupid. This is something that I could have easily avoided. But I didn't because I didn't look at the account for 12 days.

Anu Adegbola (08:18.206)
Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. It's not easy that she you she gets annoyed. But yeah, Lord, okay. Okay.

Anu Adegbola (08:34.601)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Simran (08:42.158)
And yeah, well, let's just say I sent that message. She was upset about it, but we had the monthly call and I got into that monthly call and, you know, everyone was like waiting for that moment for that call to happen, for her to like just rip me a new one, quite frankly. So when you're like, you'd go to the call and you're like, I'm going to come out of here with a second asshole because there's no way, there is no way, there is no way that I'm going to get out of here.

Anu Adegbola (08:59.004)
Yeah, nestly, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:04.435)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:11.694)
my god.

Simran (09:11.758)
I'm scared because you know they have targets and then they'll hit that target and it's all my fault, me, small me. But anyway, to be fair, we locked it and obviously the first thing I did, my account director was sat next to me in the same room we were in the office and I just locked it and I just owned it. I was like, do know what? We all know I fucked up here. I'm sorry, this is my error. This is very much my error and I fully appreciate that this has resulted in you not meeting your target, you having an underspan and you having to return this money to finance.

Anu Adegbola (09:40.83)
Yeah.

Simran (09:41.999)
I'm sorry. There's absolutely nothing I can do. And you know what? She was so reasonable about it. She was just like, yeah, that's fine. Because I think she just, because she saw that I was not trying to hide it. I was not trying to lie about it. I wasn't trying to say, oh, no, it's Google's fault. Whatever that means. Do you know what I mean? It's not. It was my fault. And she was very reasonable about it. And yeah, it was really, eye opening. Let's just say.

Anu Adegbola (09:43.314)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:50.698)
wow.

Anu Adegbola (09:54.494)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Wow.

Anu Adegbola (10:10.153)
Yeah.

Simran (10:11.246)
But you know, when you come out of something like this and you kind of know that what you've done is you've sort of broken that little bit of trust that the client had with you because you kind of didn't take their account personally. So basically after that, I just started sending them a budget update every Friday. Every Friday, hi, we're 5 % through the month, you're 5 % through your budget. We're 10 % through the month, you're 12 % through your budget. And so after doing that for like two or three months, they just stopped asking and the trust was like back.

Anu Adegbola (10:17.14)
Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (10:33.876)
Nice.

Anu Adegbola (10:39.45)
Nice nice Yes

Simran (10:40.75)
you know what I mean? Because then they knew that I knew that I fucked up. I learned from my mistake and I was gonna just look at it more closely now because I knew that a boss fuck up like that is possible. So quite frankly, I didn't come out of it scathed, but even though everyone learns that lesson quite early in their career, it's like I relearned how important it is to monitor a change that you make in the account and then look at it for at least a week.

Anu Adegbola (10:46.056)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:05.256)
Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. I think like thank you. I you know, and you did exactly what I asked. Cause I feel like you answered like maybe four or five questions in there. You we we went through the what the fuck up is, we went through the how did you feel about it. You went through the whole of what the client was like. You've given me your learnings, you've given me what you do differently, you know. And I think it's really important for people to really hear that whole because one can be like, you know.

Simran (11:17.838)
Yeah, Yeah, hard to fix it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (11:35.779)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:37.321)
Don't don't sit in the whole moment, because we've said that in past episodes. Don't sit in the whole moment of your mistake and wallow, you know, like how you actually, you know, turn things around is actually going to be noticed. And you've just given a very fantastic example of what that actually means. Cause as much as the client was nice about it, didn't didn't really quite rip you a new one, you know.

Simran (11:42.338)
No. No.

Simran (11:47.266)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (11:59.385)
Sure, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:00.764)
You know the trust level had kind of dwindled, whether you like it or not, whether they're like, you know, yeah, we're not gonna fire you, but still we're like, all right, we need to keep an eye on you closely now, because people don't like to be micromanaged. People be like, I don't want to be micromanaged, but it's when you do things like this that cause micromanaging, you know, and because they're like the trust is gone. And the way to actually gain it back, you just think ahead, like if if if someone doesn't trust me, what's what do I need to do to regain that?

Simran (12:03.97)
Yeah. Yeah. No.

Simran (12:10.539)
Yes, yes.

No.

Simran (12:18.168)
people to micromanage you. Absolutely.

Simran (12:28.888)
What do I do? Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:30.416)
You did that. You know, and I think what some even some people don't even realize as well, when I used to work at agencies, that whole underspend has a multiple of reasons, has a have a multiple of you know effects for the client themselves. It's not just about the underspend and less leads. All of these marketing directors, they're going to the CFO, kind of trying to pitch for this is how much we need.

Simran (12:40.302)
Yeah.

Simran (12:43.587)
Yes.

Simran (12:48.077)
Yeah.

Simran (12:53.687)
Yeah.

Yes.

Anu Adegbola (12:56.968)
This is how much we can do. So if even if you like, let's say, you know what? I you know, a funny thing that even reminds me of from my agency time, where even if we'd hit our target and we are, let's say, 60% of the wave of the budget or seven, and we hit our target, the client would be like, keep going, keep going. And they'll be like, and we go, but we can't. We, you know, and we've like, we they're like, okay, spend on something else. Because the argument is they didn't want the next year.

Simran (13:10.861)
Yeah.

Simran (13:20.139)
as.

Anu Adegbola (13:24.318)
the the CFO to be like, you need less. You only you didn't spend your whole budget. So clearly you don't need as much. So that's what some agencies people don't don't really pay attention to. So the I, you know, I really want our listeners to pick up on the fact of like that underspend. Because one might think, well, it's an underspend. It's not like if there's an overspend and I needed to, you know, refund money. It's an underspend how big a deal is an underspend. An underspend can be a big deal.

Simran (13:24.78)
have less budget.

Simran (13:33.571)
Yeah.

Simran (13:46.378)
Yeah, but

Simran (13:51.247)
apps, you took the words out of it. And you know, that's actually what it's saying for the client had said in that moment as well, that if you don't spend it, we lose it. You take it or you don't get it. You can't make, you can't use it next month. You can't use it in the gone month. It's now, if you don't want to spend it, you don't get it. And then don't come to me saying you need my budget because when I gave it to you, you didn't send it. And it's true, isn't it? And sometimes maybe, and obviously we're talking in Google, but like sometimes the account has maxed out.

Anu Adegbola (13:58.708)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:11.092)
You didn't use it.

Simran (14:20.162)
You have to make a significant change. Maybe you need to add a new campaign, be not in the campaign type. But it's all about communicating to the client and telling them when they're hitting their diminishing returns. If you let them know we've hit 50k, you can push harder. It's going to give you nothing. I propose we put it here and just give them an alternate of where that budget can go to be spent instead of feeling like you're blocked. feel like clients are quite receptive to solutions if you go with one. If you just go with the problem, then.

Anu Adegbola (14:41.502)
Yeah. Yes.

Simran (14:49.708)
course you're going to get blocked. But if you go with a solution, it just takes the thinking away from them. They don't have to think about, my God, what do I do? You've given them the projection. You've given them the solution. All they have to say is yes or no. Go. Especially if they're that senior, like a marketing director. If they had a marketing team where they had another paid person, they needed granularity, maybe they would need more thinking time. But a marketing director has bigger fish to fry. They just want you to just tell them and just go away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:12.52)
Yeah.

Yeah, just tell them like where the money should go, where they'll get, you know, they'll make up for the leads. Yeah. And it's important, yeah, that you you you and we said in the previous episode, it's really important that you get to speak to the decision makers. Make sure know who your contact is is and make sure that this you know, make sure you know the information that you need they need from you. Cause sometimes you're speaking granular work to a CMO who doesn't care.

Simran (15:18.816)
But to get out of it, Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (15:28.629)
Absolutely.

Simran (15:36.45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (15:41.718)
and then, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:42.918)
Or you you you get very like, you know, you get very high level to somebody who actually wants to understand the mechanics of what you're doing, know who your contact is.

Simran (15:48.694)
Yeah, yes.

Absolutely, especially like obviously we're diverting a little bit, but it's also very true for pitching. When you're pitching for new workers in agency, you need to know who's going to be in the room to be able to touch those points because that just remains true no matter. Even if you work in house, you'd have so many different stakeholders that you need to present that same information to. You need to know who your audience is. Otherwise you just.

Anu Adegbola (15:59.359)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:12.638)
Yeah. Yeah. It's always it's always important that, you know, like because yeah, that pitching thing is a very important thing. I'd always I'd always advise people if you're about to pitch and you're not sure of who's gonna be in the room, you know, ask them for the names and then and then maybe go on LinkedIn to figure out what the titles are, what their titles are, what do you so that you're like, okay, it's gonna be the CMO and maybe the CFO and you know, like you know, a head of digital person there.

Simran (16:25.358)
yeah, yeah absolutely.

Simran (16:35.81)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:38.684)
So you know, you know, you don't work out, you know, what whether you're gonna be very much more on the numbers or whether you're much be more on the creative and that kind of stuff with your page because you want you want to make sure the audience is gonna get.

Simran (16:48.418)
Yeah, 100%. It's so easy to snoop now because you've got LinkedIn. I mean, I remember back when I finished my undergrad and I had to do interviews, I would always have to email the HR person and be like, I please know who will be on my panel? Just so that you can prepare for the interview as to who's it gonna be, know, who are you gonna talk to? And back then, all you got was a name and a title. You couldn't find anything. And now LinkedIn, everyone has LinkedIn. Everyone has LinkedIn. It's so easy to snoop. So take advantage of it.

Anu Adegbola (16:54.644)
my god, yes.

Anu Adegbola (17:02.438)
Okay Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:10.886)
No. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. That's such a you know what, Simon? That's actually such a a very clever thing to have done that because I don't think even I did that. I would I didn't do the whole or even ask the HR person what's the name of the person that's going to be in the room. I never even used to do that. I'd just be like, let me hope I do all my prep. And I I know myself and my brain, like, I know my stuff. Like of course I'm gonna nail this interview. And then you know, you go in and you're like, okay, this is not who I was expecting. I, you know.

Simran (17:29.974)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (17:37.656)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (17:45.558)
That's the thing, because everyone has a different formula of who meant who what that it what the recruitment stage looks like. Because obviously, some companies would like have to do interviews, one with your line manager, one with a CEO done, the one that I ended up working with back in Pakistan, they had like four rounds. And every round, it's a different person. You're like, I'm obviously not going to say the same thing four times. There are four different people who want to hear four different things about me. So I need to know who

Anu Adegbola (17:52.723)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:08.488)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (18:12.994)
who they are to be able to tell them what they're looking to know. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:14.162)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But we can we can do a whole episode and series on how bad the interview processes can be and how the like paid search job. Some of the rules, especially the junior roles, doesn't need to go through four stages. It really doesn't. The way you know, and they'll be like, do do this task, do this, write this essay, put this strategy together, do a presentation.

Simran (18:30.24)
No! No!

Simran (18:37.76)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:39.026)
Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? For anything that's a salary of 40k or below, you shouldn't need to do that.

Simran (18:43.15)
Yeah, should not be. Yeah. And truthfully told, not to again, I appreciate this podcast is far away from bragging, but I actually joined Hallam as an intern. I joined as an intern in the strategy department in November, 2021. And I had, I didn't know a word of paid. I was doing a master's in marketing, but let's be real. Education systems don't tell you anything about the advertising industry, not on ground reality. You don't know anything.

Anu Adegbola (18:51.742)
Sure.

Anu Adegbola (19:06.747)
No

Simran (19:09.42)
I think the word SEO and SEM is torn around twice on a page and that's it. That's the best you get out of it. And so when I joined Hallam and I was finishing my thesis and ready to be hired and basically enter the employment force, they had an opening in their paid department and they basically hired me, completely junior, complete specialist level hire just because I liked numbers. They were like, you like numbers, you seem like the kind of person who'll learn on the job, let's go.

Now I'm a lead four and a half years later. And it's just that if you take the time to train people who come in without making them jump through 50,000 rings of this task, this task, this task, this task, you're kind of losing out on people who have the soft skills to talk to clients and soft skills, you know, the ambition to learn on the job, because it's just those are soft skills you can't teach or gauge. You can't do it.

Anu Adegbola (19:55.294)
Yeah. Yeah.

No. No. No. Absolutely. No. Absolutely. so I'm gonna kinda bring us back into our conversation. And no, I totally I totally understand. I loved I I'm the one that pushed it even there a little bit. So it's my fault as well. But I do wanted to, yeah, let's bring us back to like, you know, you know, this underspend that you did and your clients, yeah, being, you know, being okay with it, but also you knowing that you had to build your trust from it.

Simran (20:05.91)
Yes, we've gone so far away.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Simran (20:26.348)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:27.954)
So like even like going back to the mistake itself, like what do you think that you missed? You feel like you missed, you know, that caused the error, that if you looked back, if you had done that differently, that error wouldn't have happened.

Simran (20:40.198)
Yeah, yeah, I think there are certain things you do in accounts that you know are big changes and certain things that you know are small changes. Like if I change the budget from 15 to 10, I know it's a really small change. Nothing major is going to happen on the back of it. And I think the quite big mistake was my perception that the CPA that I had typed in was not a big change. If I knew that it was something that was going to have a massive impact on the account.

I would have monitored it like a campaign launch. I monitor it every day for a week because it's new, you know, or if I'm suddenly upping the budget by double overnight, then I'm going to look at that account like a hawk. But with the target CPA, I think in my brain, I was just like, I've just made a small change. What can happen? And then I forgot about it. And I think that's if I had just if I just like, stop to think that I'm making a really it might be a button click, but it's actually a massive change on the account. I would have probably gone and looked at it a lot more.

Anu Adegbola (21:05.609)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:09.426)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:14.278)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:19.922)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:30.226)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah. It's like it's and it's not just about how easy the thing it is to do, it's about what it will affect. You know, you're changing changing CPA target, that is gonna affect spend. So yeah, it's a spend lever. So anything that's a spend lever, yeah, keep a keep an eye, a closer eye on it and yeah, make sure that doesn't work. so like how how in in terms of a process of mindset, what did that what did that experience?

Simran (21:42.99)
And basically, it's study, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (22:03.048)
teach you about, you know, how you deal with targets, how you deal with account budgets now.

Simran (22:09.61)
Yeah, yeah, to be honest with you, one of the main things that it did for me was this idea of how important it is to do the brilliant basics. We get clients, oh, you need to launch a campaign in three days, you get to do this. And that's what happened, right? When I made the change, normally I would have looked at it, but I had 50 clients screaming 50 different things. I was like, all right, this change is not big enough. I'm just gonna do the campaign, build in the campaign, launch in the creative brief and so on and so forth.

Anu Adegbola (22:21.8)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (22:31.804)
Yeah.

Simran (22:36.94)
And when you do all of that stuff, and if your foundation is not strong, you will crumble. And it's back to the brilliant basings. How important it is to look at your budget pacing, how important it is to open the account every day to make sure your tracking is working, how important. And that's obviously a part of budgets and target CPAs that are part of it, of like monitoring your account. And I think we sometimes forget that the job is more than just launching and the big shiny things. The job is to make sure that your account is running.

Anu Adegbola (22:55.881)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:02.003)
Yeah.

Simran (23:05.462)
where your budget is spacing as you want, your targets are where you want, your conversions are coming, your tracking is working, your landing pages are fine, nothing is disapproved, know, the absolute basic. And it was just such a big reminder that no matter how farther in your career you go with paid, your success will completely be imminent on how brilliant you are at your basics. And that was sort of the mindset shift that happened because obviously when you're growing, because I was a consultant then.

Anu Adegbola (23:11.369)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:26.418)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (23:35.658)
you're just in that you're in that mid level of, I'm not a junior anymore, but I'm not fully senior. So you're like, trying everything you can to do all the big things and the media planning and this and that, so that you have a progression, but then you have to remember not to forget the absolute basics of the job.

Anu Adegbola (23:53.045)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So the from then on it was literally like reminding yourself about the basics are as important as the big shiny. Absolutely.

Simran (23:54.178)
which was quite frankly the main thing.

Simran (24:02.914)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I'm still the same right now. You know, it's really hasn't left me because I feel okay telling a client, I'm so sorry, I can't meet this deadline, because I know that I'd rather block out my Friday to check all my clients' budgets and make sure that performance is working and make sure they're on target, then build another campaign because it won't benefit. If you add shit to shit, it's just going to be shit. Basically, you can launch 50 campaigns, but if your account's not working, your campaign's not going to work.

Anu Adegbola (24:13.213)
Nice.

Anu Adegbola (24:25.446)
Right. Yep.

Simran (24:31.276)
But if I just spend the time to clean out your shit, make it fresh, and then build for your Monday, nobody's going to die. And yeah, you just have to have that mindset. I think we're really afraid to say no to clients, which is also like another sort of area, which is why you almost try to hide your fuck up, won't you? Because you're so afraid of disappointing a client, but you almost won't be honest about where you fucked up. So it was just some of those few.

Anu Adegbola (24:37.436)
Nah. Yeah, absolutely.

Anu Adegbola (24:44.284)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (24:49.757)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm. Yeah.

Simran (24:59.982)
job life lessons that came on the back of that very big F up.

Anu Adegbola (25:03.196)
Nice. Nice. Amazing. And if someone literally has just seen that, yeah, they've they've they've they've just they they changed, made a CPA chart target change. It's a Friday, it's two days before the month is over. They are going to come in like maybe 60% shorts of the budget target. What's your advice to them?

Simran (25:28.398)
My advice to them is to take a moment and reflect that this is an error you have made and there's no shame about it. Everyone makes it from your CEO to your exec. Everyone will have fucked up in their job. So you're not alone in it. So it's okay to feel guilty and it's good to take accountability. Don't push it on other people, but just know that it's not the end of the world. I would say, see what you can do in the account. Is there any campaign that has the capacity to spend and you can push it a bit further?

do it, but more than anything else, don't lie. Come clean. The truth will come out. Always does. If not now, in two months people will realize it was a change you made. Somebody else will come in, they will do an account audit, they'll know exactly what caused it. Come clean, your internal resource, tell your manager, they'll have your back. I'm sure if you work in a good culture, your manager will have your back. I know it's not true for every company, but if you're in a good company.

Anu Adegbola (26:02.876)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (26:08.425)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:23.89)
Yes, yes, yeah.

Simran (26:27.746)
Hopefully your manager will have your back. Tell the client and then do the work of rebuilding that trust. Don't hide away from it and you have to face your consequences. And I always say to people, 50 % of your job is performance, but the other 50 % is your relationship with your client. This fuck up won't feel as bad if you have a good relationship with a client. If the client knows that you work hard on their account, you always have their best interest, you're always recommending good things for their account, there will be space.

Anu Adegbola (26:29.555)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:33.5)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:44.455)
Mm.

Simran (26:57.208)
for your fuck up. And so if you never put in the work to have a good relationship with your client, it's only so far you can go with good performance because it ebbs and flows. This is one fuck up, you can make another fuck up. Sometimes you don't fuck up and the performance is bad because that's what industries are. You can't change that. They do. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:58.268)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:07.826)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:13.998)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they blame you for that. And they blame for you for things that are not your fault. And you're like, why? But if you build a good relationship, they'll understand.

Simran (27:23.63)
Relationship, you can fail. Yeah, so I know it's, if you fucked up now, I suppose one of the big lessons is that every other client you have build a relationship. Ask them about how they are, ask them what the business goes, how's their lives going? I mean, I have a client I used to get on a call with and we used to spend 15 % talking about how we both thought Scottish men are hot. Is this relevant to the job? No. But you know what I mean? It humanizes both of us. It humanizes that she's the head of sales and marketing and I am a media.

Anu Adegbola (27:33.299)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:37.172)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:48.158)
Yes, yes.

Simran (27:53.653)
lead and we live in very different parts of the UK but we still like and enjoy Scottish men in this context but do you know what I mean?

Anu Adegbola (27:59.964)
Good.

any any Scottish man listening to this is going I stop going I like this lady. I like this episode very much.

Simran (28:08.91)
But you know, just put the effort to get to know your client and it will give you such a big buffer when you ultimately fuck up. Everyone fucks up.

Anu Adegbola (28:17.576)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, Simran, that has been a really fantastic, you know, summation of like that story. You've given us so much great like feedback and lessons to leave people with. And you know what? Now, you know, I said that was gonna be half an hour, but we need we have time for let's talk about other people and other things that you've you've you know experienced, maybe accounts that you've won that you know you guys have inherited.

Simran (28:35.512)
Yes, absolutely. Sure.

Simran (28:45.347)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:46.036)
And you've looked at some of your auditing, like what should you change? And you're like, wow, this is they did that previous agency did bad for these guys. We don't need to call any names, but just in terms of like what you've seen happen and f ups that are happening, mistakes that are happening that you're surprised with. And it doesn't have to be a big one, but like your favorite one to see that really just goes, God, why are people doing this?

Simran (28:56.291)
gotcha, yeah. Yeah.

Simran (29:09.812)
I will always die on the hill, but if you're tracking a shit, you can't get anything done. That is, this is an account I was looking at. We won their paid pitch a year ago. And when I looked into their GA4, they were tracking the same form with four different key events. All events set to key. And so basically for all their time, they were like quadruple reporting the number of forms.

Anu Adegbola (29:14.877)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (29:39.098)
Lord, okay.

Simran (29:40.527)
And I looked at it and I was like, you know, when you're looking at it and it's like contact from version one, version two, version three. So initially I thought maybe there four different forms that they're tracking separately. Yeah. And then I went and looked at their setup and I was like, that is the same form. And this, this is also like, it gives me the absolute ick in the marketing world of why do you in today's day and age, why do you rely on just GA4?

Anu Adegbola (29:49.918)
Well Yeah.

No, it's the same form.

Anu Adegbola (30:02.27)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (30:09.102)
to tell you success. Where is your CRM? Where is the data that's coming in? How can you not know your own leads and numbers and what's coming from where? Come on. We're in 2026. Attribution doesn't work. People are talking to ChatGPT before they're doing a Google search. We're all over the place. And if your single source of truth is just GA4 without any integration with your CRM,

Anu Adegbola (30:19.272)
The accounts. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (30:31.06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (30:38.178)
then you're only looking at half the picture.

Anu Adegbola (30:40.232)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Can I say for a second, you gave mom vibes? You gave like mom scolding the child like, what are you doing? How can you not be do? And I just absolutely chef's kissed. Yes.

Simran (30:42.157)
I just hate it.

Simran (30:49.198)
Can you tell I have cats and I think that they're my children? Like both my cats are my children and that's how I talk to them.

Anu Adegbola (30:59.316)
Like, what are you doing? Are you kidding me? I love that. I hope for those who are only listening to this, you guys need to go and check out this video on YouTube. Because Simran gave like the physical reaction. Even if you think your conversion is tracking is working well, you are going to be inspired to go and double check. You'll be inspired to double check unless Simran is gonna come with her whip, going, what do you think you're doing?

Simran (31:05.998)
You

love it.

Simran (31:27.585)
I know. Why? Why? You know, people come to audit.

Anu Adegbola (31:28.708)
Why, why? Yeah. Cause I think 'cause you're you're right. People do the whole GA4 is so hard, and you know, and so that's why they give themselves the excuse of it not working. But you know, you they it's GA4 is not the holy grail. GA4 is not the only source of truth that you can have. So yeah.

Simran (31:37.868)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (31:44.129)
It's not.

No, it's not. No, absolutely. Just use your like, you have to think more holistically now, because even if cookies were not an issue, even if attribution was not an issue from a consent point of view, people don't search in a linear way. Like they don't. We talk to GPT, then we look at AI mode, then we go and talk to a friend. And then somebody tells us something by word of mouth, and then we find something else altogether.

Anu Adegbola (31:55.593)
More than ever.

Simran (32:15.278)
Even though originally this was started from ChatGPT, but no one's going to tell you that it came from ChatGPT. Holistic mindsets. We need to stop working in these silos of you are paid, you are SEO, you are content, you are PR. We are all one now. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:30.812)
Yeah, it should have the T-shaped markets are like, Yeah, no be specialized in what you're doing, but make sure that you're aware of all the things that can affect you. I in fact, when you were even starting your story, when you were saying something like, yeah, the all the leads generation was being down to PPC, I was a bit nervous about that. And I was like, But how about everyone else? Is everyone else doing what everyone else needs to be doing so that you can really trust that you know you're driving, you're doing the

Simran (32:36.098)
Yeah. Yes, of everything else.

Simran (32:45.559)
Yeah, pump paid.

Simran (32:53.848)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:57.63)
demand generation and that means that it's yeah, the people would know to do a search and purchase through you. So yeah.

Simran (32:58.872)
Yes.

Simran (33:04.594)
me about it. Exactly. It's just like, won't magically generate demand. I will only harvest it through Google. But if you're not doing your PR and you're not doing your content and you're not doing your organic blogs and resource hubs, there's only so much I can do for you from that front. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (33:20.296)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Also, let's let's divert into like you've been talking about AI. I'm I'm very impressed. It's taken us thirty-three minutes. We've not even mentioned the the AI word. but yeah, what's what's your thoughts on like how it's been used? Are are there ways that it's been used that you don't think is the great? 'Cause actually I would argue that right now, you know, it's not necessarily about knowing whether you're using it right or wrong. It's

Simran (33:28.256)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (33:49.747)
Because we none of us know, right? It's still very early stages. You know, campaigns like AI Max, it's not quite fully developed. So someone might have bad performance today and it's just because of how bad AI Max is working, and maybe a year later, two years later, it'll work better. But like, what are your thoughts on how AI Max is being used? And are there ways that you're not liking it, that you're seeing it's being used?

Simran (34:03.148)
It's right now, Yeah.

Simran (34:13.88)
To be honest with you, I feel like it's such a blast from the past, because that's what happened, the same thing that happened with Performance Max. It came in, I pushed a lot of clients on it, half my portfolio made me pause it and they were like, no, spam, spam, spam, spam. And I'm like, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Pause. And now it is very mandatory a part of my portfolio because it now works well. I can exclude things, I can exclude brands, I can do a lot more with it. It works better. And I think it's the same with AI Max.

Anu Adegbola (34:22.654)
Well the next

Anu Adegbola (34:34.302)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (34:40.654)
If I'm being really honest, I tested on one of my clients in the US because they rolled out ads in AI mode in the US first, they? And so I tested on it. Obviously there are no metrics to report, but it wasn't nice. It wasn't fun. mean, this is actually hard to say because this client doesn't have the kind of internal data infrastructure to report back on quality very fast. So even though we were seeing a lot of leads come in, we eventually ended up pausing it because...

Anu Adegbola (35:05.436)
Right.

Simran (35:09.442)
They claimed anecdotally that it was spam. But to be honest with you, I'm actually quite keen to test it out. I'm a good believer in test and learn. If you have a test and learn mindset, just ring fence a testing budget. You don't have to take it out of your core campaigns. Just ring fence a testing budget, test it, keep an eye on what your lead quality is looking like, and then take it from there. But I feel like it's part of the curse of the marketing industry that we run to everything that's shiny.

Anu Adegbola (35:16.818)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:26.094)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (35:38.444)
Mm. Mm, yes. Yes. Yeah. And Google doesn't help and you get all these LinkedIn bros on it. They're going, major news, major thing. You shouldn't you need to be doing this for that. And you're like, no, you don't. I don't.

Simran (35:38.574)
We're like magpies. We just take the shiny bits.

Simran (35:48.815)
major. Yeah, yeah, no, we don't. Yeah. And you almost feel like a minority when you say that, even when you're not, because a lot of people are quiet. But you look at your LinkedIn and I'm like, I refuse to believe that you manage to triple your conversions by running AI max. Do you know, like, it's too early. They need to we need we all need to collectively as the industry have guinea pig clients with big enough budgets, so that Google can then learn from our feedback.

Anu Adegbola (35:56.009)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (36:06.578)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (36:14.546)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Simran (36:18.508)
And then the same way that it would be max. And then we'd be the same boat with air max. But AI in general, I feel like it's really important for people to remember that as, this is true even beyond marketing that you will never ever surpass quality checks from a human. Like a human quality check will never ever ever be not needed. You have to have to have to.

Anu Adegbola (36:37.818)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (36:42.302)
Yeah.

Simran (36:45.582)
think the strategy, where does AI max it? What is the incremental things? Where does it sit within your entire marketing portfolio? What other parts of AI sort of work in? If you can't do the strategy as a human, then there's only so much that you're going to get a push from. Because, I mean, again, without throwing any shade, the amount of Google rep calls I go on where they're just like, yeah, just turn it on, just turn it on, just turn it on, just turn it on. I'm like, why? Turn what on?

Anu Adegbola (37:01.714)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (37:08.457)
Yeah.

Turn wood on, yeah. Yeah.

Simran (37:13.526)
And, just turn it on, but just turn off your final URL expansion and your text customization. And I'm like, okay, then what am I getting out of it? What is it? But you know, they're making all the DSAs, your AI max in September anyway, so we don't have a choice, do we?

Anu Adegbola (37:20.786)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. We've got to be really careful careful about that. So testing it. What would you also say what would you like people to stop doing when it comes to like, you know, just AI, how people look at AI and how they implement it for their campaigns, not even just AI Max, because PM Max technically is an AI tool, I think. How are people using these AI capabilities wrong?

Simran (37:32.598)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Simran (37:46.156)
Yeah, yeah, just to be on. Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (37:54.675)
You feel?

Simran (37:55.735)
I think that people are using it wrong. But there two aspects. I think when you're on either extreme, you're in the wrong. If you're in the extreme of, I'm never going to test it because it's going to be bad, then you're going to be behind the curve. And if you're going to test everything at the same time, you will have no idea what you're doing because you will have had no control. And now you've just got the whole account on test. I think that's, if you open your LinkedIn, at least, I feel like that's what happens. You either have people being like, look at this shit campaign tie, they're never going to touch.

Anu Adegbola (38:20.008)
Yes.

Simran (38:23.938)
And people mean like, turned every campaign to AI max and I supercharged my account. in the middle. I feel like be in the middle. And that's one of the issues I think there is a lot of like pressure. And I mean, even if you look beyond paid, you had like this intense like sort of a surge on AI agents fire your entire employee base and you have AI agents and you develop them through whatever, you know, software you use now and then they can just do all your work for you. you're like,

Anu Adegbola (38:26.834)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (38:40.521)
Mm.

Simran (38:49.07)
The amount of time it's going to take me to quality check the work produced by these AI agents is going to be triple fold. So I feel like people need to sort of like take a step back and use AI or AI capabilities where they're needed. Like for example, you know how you have Nana Banana Pro in Google now. If you're a small company that struggles to have quality imagery, you don't have a photographer. I have some clients that budgets are so small.

Anu Adegbola (38:52.57)
Yeah, yeah. Yes, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (38:59.752)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (39:17.566)
Mm.

Simran (39:18.348)
I don't have the space to go to them and be like, give me good creative, because from where? Let's be real, not everyone has that kind of budget. Use it, build it, if you won't somebody else will. Use it, test it, see where it goes, because obviously it will always have the banner of this is AI generated. Of course, is an argument that it is not representative of your actual offering because it's a prompt. All true.

Anu Adegbola (39:22.77)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (39:37.245)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (39:42.29)
Yeah, yeah.

Simran (39:44.431)
But then you have your website, people would come to your website and then they will use that as your shopfront. You know, so I'm not opposed to small businesses using those capabilities because if you don't have the budget, we can't just make money fall off trees for you. like use it where it's going to add value. Don't just use it for AI sake, just to make a LinkedIn post that, oh my God, look at me. I am AI fluent. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (39:49.353)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (40:04.35)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. First. Yes. AI. Yeah. I think I've started seeing people roll them like written on as their title as I'm like an you know an AI PPC manager or like PPC AI fur and you're like, Jesus is Lord. Do you know marketing? Do you know about your customers? Is your conversion tracking working? That's all I care about. If you don't have that, I don't care whether you're AI or not. Yeah.

Simran (40:22.351)
I know.

Simran (40:28.329)
Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Yeah, it's just a hard ask. To be honest with you, it's a hard ask, but I have seen this sort of move towards with inclined faces where they almost expect you to speed up your output because you have access to AI. And I'm like, that's not how this works. If you want good quality work, that's QA, then you don't have to feed back on a lot. I have to do it.

Anu Adegbola (40:34.002)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (40:46.183)
Yeah.

No, no.

Anu Adegbola (40:55.42)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the best biggest way to just lose work. Just being like, yeah, you're just gonna throw anything everything in AI. So yeah, we've all got to be careful. So don't be a person of extremes. Test it. Test it, especially with people with small budgets.

Simran (40:57.858)
without using every bit of my bone and prompt and chachi piti.

Simran (41:08.878)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (41:20.264)
But also don't be Mr. AI. Nobody you know nobody needs to be Mr. AI or Miss AI on the internet, you know. No, no, no. And it's learning. Even the AI is still in very much learning phase. So you don't wanna do that. And of course things will mess up. So you gotta be careful about that.

Simran (41:22.56)
Yeah. Yeah. No, there's no rush. There's no race. We are not in a race.

Simran (41:33.762)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

Anu Adegbola (41:41.084)
Simran, that has been such a fantastic chat. I could talk keep talking to you for another like 40 minutes, hour, and do it first. But yeah, we've got we've got things to do. Who knows? There might be a budget spend going on that needs your eye. So let's not let's not keep you from that. But thank you so much for being on the show. But before we leave, our last question, very fun, non-PPC question. If your career, PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Simran (41:45.518)
you

Yes.

Simran (41:52.654)
I'm gonna have a look.

Of course.

Mmm.

Simran (42:08.994)
That's a good question. That's a good question. And I have to say, I think, OK, I'm going to bring it back to the fact that I had no idea that this was even an industry. So if I did have a PPC career that was a movie, I think the title would be Nobody Told Me This Was a Career.

Anu Adegbola (42:24.306)
Nobody told me this was a career. I like that. I like that. And you I love the way the explanation of it. And you know, yeah, it can be you you know, you go to university, you study marketing, and you're like, I'll be a marketing manager, and you know, and it's marketing. There's nothing like a paid search, paid media course at uni. And I want I hope they've changed that because I think it'll be very important for that that to be in there. But yeah, no, I never knew this was a career. That's amazing. That's amazing.

Simran (42:26.19)
Thank

Simran (42:35.852)
Marketing. Yeah.

Simran (42:47.394)
Yeah.

Simran (42:53.102)
Thank you.

Anu Adegbola (42:53.192)
Thank you so much, Simran. You've been such a delight to chat with. With people want to find more about you and and you know, any of your musings, you're you're on LinkedIn, I'd assume. Yeah. Any other platforms that you like like musing on? No, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the focus. Yeah. And check out Hallam. Hallam clearly has so many fantastic folks like Simran and Maddie, who we spoke to a few months ago. yeah, there's some good there's some great people doing some great work in Nottingham, mainly.

Simran (43:02.06)
Yes, absolutely, yes.

Simran (43:07.232)
No, just LinkedIn. Yes. Yes. Thank you.

Anu Adegbola (43:22.59)
But with international clients from the sounds of it, which is fantastic. Really good to know. yeah, on that note, thank you so much, Simon, for being on the show today. And I'm sure yeah, we'll catch up soon. My pleasure, my absolute pleasure. All right.

Simran (43:25.495)
Yes.

Simran (43:31.094)
Amazing. Thank you for having me. Absolutely.