The Learning Phase: A $50K PPC Mistake and What It Taught Me ft. Arin Gharapetian

Anu Adegbola (00:01.071)
Hello, Arin. Welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Arin Gharapetian (00:04.961)
I knew, thank you for having me.

Anu Adegbola (00:07.019)
I am so delighted to have you on. Thank you again for, you know, quickly, there's so many people. I mean, we talked about this in left, so many people and so many different platforms I'm trying to get people on. And I'm I feel so privileged to be in that position, whether it's I'm trying to get someone to come on the podcast or write for the blog or get on one of the the different SMX, you know, events that we do.

And I I really feel like I want to have a new target for myself of like the newer people that I am meeting. I've know so many great people that in our industry, people that I meet at events that come to the same event, but I want to get hear new voices. And Arin is definitely one of those. I'm really grateful that how you did it, your LinkedIn DM that I didn't mind, Arin. Can I say that? You know? And because most of them I do. Most of the LinkedIn DMs I see, I'm like, block, leave me alone.

Arin Gharapetian (00:53.144)
Yes, yes.

Arin Gharapetian (00:59.043)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (01:00.293)
But yours was very welcome. because yeah, you you're you're interested in like commenting on something I'm gonna write for Search Engine Land that I'd recently posted this about Chat GPT. So that's going on. Okay, people are going to be like, Anu, we're we are not part of the conversation yet at the moment. Can we get involved? So let me Right, exactly. There's so many things, so many things that we can talk about. But let me introduce you to Arin.

Arin Gharapetian (01:17.176)
I know, I know. We're gonna do multiple podcasts afterwards to tell them what we're referring to. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (01:27.151)
Helps addiction treatment, behavioral health, and service-based businesses improve how they generate track and convert qualified leads. Like I'm I'm glad you guys stuck with me on that one. When I was even first reading his intro, I was like, addiction treatment? Are we sure we're on the right, right forecast? But he is. He definitely, it's all about trying to get them to generate track and convert their qualified leads.

and through his his recent new brand, brand house, he combines marketing, website strategy, analytics, CRM systems, and lead follow-up to identify what's working, uncover where opportunities are being lost and build stronger growth systems from first search to real lead. So

Yeah, I'm sure Arin is gonna have some really great insights for and a very like unique perspective, is that even in terms of how you know digital market is working, the the his experience, the mistakes he's made. So yeah, welcome, Arin. Really, really grateful to have you on here. My pleasure. And before we get into our QA, I'd like to get to my our guests to share a fun fact about them. So, Arin, what's your fun fact?

Arin Gharapetian (02:22.35)
Thank you. Thank you again for having me. Yeah, definitely. I'm excited.

Arin Gharapetian (02:34.104)
Fun fact. gosh, I don't know. I don't know. That's a that's a good one. That's a good question. I think for me,

Arin Gharapetian (02:44.236)
I I you know, I f okay, so I'll say this is the fun fact one for me. So I think I think I've I'm really like into sports. I'm very active. And I think my career has kind of been where I've focused so much on my work where I haven't really had an opportunity to do that. Starting with the agency, fun fact for me is I've kind of gotten back into golfing again. So I don't know if you could also tell from my from my shirt that I'm wearing a very colorful polo. I actually

Anu Adegbola (02:52.292)
Nice.

Anu Adegbola (03:03.384)
John Heist.

Arin Gharapetian (03:09.13)
yeah, I had a golf appointment earlier in the morning as well. So that's definitely something I enjoy. haven't done it for years, but I've had the opportunity now to start doing it, meet people again. So that's a fun fact for me.

Anu Adegbola (03:21.11)
No, fantastic. Like those kind of you know, just interesting interests that has nothing to do with work is so important. At some point, I picked up guitar and I bought a guitar and it's literally staring me right at the corner of my eye right now. It's gathering dust. And I really just am like, it's I feel so guilty that and I keep on thinking this year I'll get back to me. This year I'll I'll pick it up again. But then I just get drowned, drowned in a lot of work that I enjoy, and because I enjoy the work, I don't feel like I should do anything differently. And I'm like,

But I'm really

Arin Gharapetian (03:50.991)
That's the thing. I was gonna say fun fact is I love my my work, but you know, people are gonna say that's that's a lie. But yeah, you and I are the same. I think maybe afterwards maybe we get you to play like guitar as well, just

Anu Adegbola (04:01.656)
I should. I really should. I love music. I love singing. I love I I love everything about it. But yeah, it's yeah, my passion has really been become my my work. The team that I work with, it's like I I I I know where to get help for anything that I need. Anything that that is concerns me. I know and they yeah, the work is great. But anyway, anyway, people probably know that dude. I I I love the work because they see me everywhere all the time. But no, let's this is not about me, this is not about my experience. This is

Arin Gharapetian (04:02.797)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (04:11.715)
Mm-hmm.

Arin Gharapetian (04:20.59)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (04:29.754)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (04:30.68)
This is about Arin and, you know, him being a latest on another line, a line of our fantastic guests who's gonna share a very, very real and true mistake that could easily happen to any paid search expert, regardless of how long they've been in the industry. And, you know, and it's just the the continued reminder that the path to success is not devoid of mistakes. It's not the person who's done everything right, it's the person who's

Arin Gharapetian (04:43.587)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (04:55.052)
Learn from yeah, losing client money, budget for you know, and and and learning from it and knowing how to rebuild that trust, rebuild that, you know, respect from a client. so Arin is gonna share one of those. So I'm gonna pass it over to you now, Arin. What is the F Up you'd like to share with us today?

Arin Gharapetian (05:08.867)
Yeah.

Yeah, the F up was. so we were running Google ads for we have multiple campaigns going on. There was one particular campaign, we're spending about forty to fifty thousand dollars a month on it. we were utilizing an agency as well because this was at the time when I was leading marketing efforts for one of the companies or organizations I was at. And you know, we came to an agreement that I think we've gotten to a point where maximized conversions is done as much as it could. So let's try to kind of switch over to target row as.

Anu Adegbola (05:35.706)
Okay.

Right?

Arin Gharapetian (05:39.143)
And what happened was when we made the switch, we we saw a quick drop in the amount of conversions we were actually receiving. So that was probably maybe a week into it. you know, that's when the CEO and I both kind of noticed it. CEO approached it as like, hey, let's flip it back. But then, you my Google Ads mind's kind of like, no, it's like we're in a learning phase, let's continue, let's continue. Yeah. So we kind of continued with it a little bit longer and sure enough, it kept dropping.

Anu Adegbola (05:58.979)
No day.

Arin Gharapetian (06:06.584)
That's when we kind of made that readjustment again back to, you know, maximizing for conversions. and just that F up kind of took us maybe about a month or so to just recoup and kind of get Google Ads back to, you know, the regular status of driving the same amount of conversions. So yeah, that was a big, big pluck up for us.

Anu Adegbola (06:25.044)
no, so and like what what was like the loss in budget in space?

Arin Gharapetian (06:29.902)
I mean, we spent the full forty, fifty thousand, right? which was for that one month. It's just it's I I guess it ties back to it was kind of hard to also articulate the revenue loss in it to a sense, because the problem is in the healthcare industry, right, with regulations, there's only a certain amount of things you could actually send back. So you want to avoid anything that leads all the way down to PHI, you know, admissions.

Anu Adegbola (06:34.21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (06:55.766)
Yeah, yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (06:55.832)
So we're tracking different things that could potentially lead to a conversion. We don't know. And I think the biggest disconnect for us was we we we jumped we jumped the gun. We went too quick. We should have tied a better value to our ROAS, understood the entire middle process a lot better. and then maybe it would have been a better idea to kind of switch it over.

Anu Adegbola (07:00.245)
Mm. Mm.

Anu Adegbola (07:14.766)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (07:19.111)
another thing too is like we're we're we were essentially guessing the percentage right that we had to put for the row S. That's another problem because we didn't really know how many of those leads were actually turning into into patients.

Anu Adegbola (07:23.917)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (07:29.398)
Okay. All right. And so now what was then the fix? What was the pro what is it that you then did to ensure that you did know that that number and you you you're putting that a target based on like a scientifically, you know, reachable number that you as you could?

Arin Gharapetian (07:42.031)
Of course. I I I think it's it's kind of led into like the agency, those wall apart brand house, and that's like what's something that's a bit different. I mean some agencies already do this as well, but we we we can't kind of stop just at the lead phase, right? And just be like, okay, the job is done. It it was a lot of analysis into other departments. So essentially was getting the admissions team involved, which is primarily your sales team that's answering calls or responding to leads.

Anu Adegbola (07:57.208)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (08:10.626)
your insurance verification team. So there was a lot of teams within this healthcare, you know, organization that you had to s kind of talk to. and the reason behind that too is you know, to identify what was working and what wasn't. but moving forward, any small change that we felt was a small change to us in marketing, was still communicated with them because we ultimately needed their response as to like, hey, we've noticed call volumes changed or the tone of individuals or the

Anu Adegbola (08:17.231)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (08:39.754)
intent has changed. And I think that was the biggest change for us was really trying to hone in on that journey of that user, identifying everything in advance. Any small tweak we were making, even to like small row ads or anything that, we would you know, keep in contact with them, make sure that, you know, we're not really breaking anything.

Anu Adegbola (08:58.234)
Sure, sure. And was this like the beginning, like how how mature was this account? Was it like kind of the beginning where because you said that, you know, you thought, look, it might be a learning, learning phase then. So let's let's keep this, you know, you know, the you know, bit strategy as it is. So and and did that affect it? The fact that whether it was at the beginning or not, the beginning of like running this account, was that something that would have been?

Arin Gharapetian (09:22.634)
No, mean the count the account was active for for some time. So it wasn't that the count was old. you know, so for us it was just anytime you made a bid adjustment or bid strategy change, yeah, you're kind of like, okay, it's gonna go into some form of a learning phase. you know, like like I mean, you ultimately know that the row as is already being calculated, right? But the problem was we didn't have an actual dollar value. That was just, you know, a regular dollar amount.

Anu Adegbola (09:28.056)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (09:32.826)
So yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:38.347)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:44.515)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:49.226)
Mm. Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (09:52.021)
we we didn't know. So I think that was the biggest thing that affected us is because we we couldn't really tie it back to revenue. especially in the healthcare industry too, is revenue could be very different per person. It could be different insurance policies, different payoffs, different locations, states. Some people might not even use insurance. They might want to do self pay. So so it's it's just so many moving parts.

Anu Adegbola (10:02.978)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:09.582)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:13.934)
To be fair, though, what I'm also hearing is the fact that this was very much more a learning phase for you guys in terms of because you were trying to start doing things in a different way, using this new new form of like the bid strategy. so like I guess a c a question even like based on that is that what what bit of this would you say that you could have done better? What could you have done a lot earlier?

even if it was even though it was something that was brand new for for you guys at on even everybody in the industry, what could you have done done better to preempt to for for this issue to not happen?

Arin Gharapetian (10:51.726)
Yeah, I I think it's just having full on connection with every other team member within the organization. It's not it doesn't end at marketing division. That was the biggest thing for us. I mean, I could tie this back even to like e-commerce, right? E-commerce, a lot of people will start off of you know, conversions is just a purchase. But is is a true purchase actually important to that owner of that e-commerce? It might be LTV, it might be, you know, subscription-based purchases, not regular purchase.

Anu Adegbola (10:55.97)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (10:59.61)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:04.975)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:09.987)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:13.72)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (11:19.374)
So I think not having that full on discussion with other team members i is is probably what caused an issue. We couldn't just as marketing just figure it out what that role as was. we really had to come into an agreement with everyone else. I mean, if we kept it in maximized conversions, it might still have been fine 'cause it was just sending whatever it felt was a good lead because it was turning into one. yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:38.634)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But then it was clearly not it wasn't turning into the rights kind of leads. Yeah. I yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (11:44.949)
No, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think just having a lot of things into place reporting wise. So like if you do uncover maybe something is broken, be also quick to adjust. you know, we we tried to be as quick as possible, but it still took a little while for it to kind of go back.

Anu Adegbola (11:54.85)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:03.126)
Okay. So when you were like, let's wait. We're going through a learning, it's it i we you know, it could be going through a learning period. Was that a mistake?

Arin Gharapetian (12:15.34)
I don't know if it really was. I've I've I've I remember like a lot of the stuff that we do, I mean it you know, Google's tries to optimize to say not to really run ads this way, but in the industry a lot of us tend to kind of start off with let's say maximize for c you know for clicks, right? Or just manual CPC. so we know that if we start that way, we're having Google kind of understand conversions, right? And then obviously we're tracking it.

And then we switch over to maximize for conversions. And we do feel like it might still have a little bit of time to adjust. Sometimes it might be due to budget, playing around with that afterwards. So we we we like I kind of feel like as much optimized as Google Ads is, it's great at what it does, but it still doesn't understand each person's business completely. Yeah. So you know, there could be certain bidding strategies that work great for one industry and doesn't for another or for a business.

Anu Adegbola (12:45.602)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (13:02.135)
No. No.

Anu Adegbola (13:10.018)
Why don't you

Arin Gharapetian (13:11.27)
so yeah, I always feel like there is a learning phase, even if it's not Google, it's me, right? It could be our team. so yeah, so we're kinda going into some form of a learning phase.

Anu Adegbola (13:16.888)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (13:22.05)
Okay. Okay. Fantastic. And like I also like, you know, talking even about the the the human aspect of when this mistake was happening, who was helpful, who was, you know, what was in the way. What was challenging even in being able to fix that issue. Cause when you t start wanting to switch from a way of like you know, marketing, you know, who's supposed to be in charge of the paid search details, and you start telling

telling like, you know, the CEO that actually we're going to need sales figures and other departments. There could be some challenges to it. What was the biggest challenge of in the for your for you specifically in in terms trend in terms of kind of doing things differently now?

Arin Gharapetian (14:03.182)
Sure. Sure. I I

Arin Gharapetian (14:08.162)
Yeah, I I I think one big one is y y when the CEO is telling you like no, flip it back, you're kind of like in that middle ground of like, okay, do I do it? But I feel like this is my gut feeling, let it continue. I I I think explaining what a test is, right? That's the biggest thing. even with A B tests, certain things are gonna fail. I think you need to kind of have an idea or mindset of like, okay, if I'm gonna make a change, how long am I sticking with that change?

Anu Adegbola (14:18.489)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:36.782)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (14:36.93)
And you have to speak that with all the stakeholders that are involved as well and kind of tell them, hey, look, even if you feel something in your gut is wrong, unfortunately to truly test this out, we gotta let it go for this long period of a time or whatever it might be. so that was the biggest biggest thing for me was it just the the possible lack of communication with the team. so

Anu Adegbola (14:50.072)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (14:57.677)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (14:59.51)
You know, working that out I think is gonna be a lot easier moving forward. So we we now anything we do, we're gonna go ahead and explain exactly what it's gonna look like. and then we need to because the last thing I want to do is let's say it wasn't a ROAS issue and it was something that seasonality or something else we don't identify yet. if we close it, we're gonna go back to always think, could it actually have worked if we stuck it out longer?

Anu Adegbola (15:07.277)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:16.91)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:25.686)
Yeah. Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (15:28.494)
So there's also always that. I think I think, you know, s you know, talk with the stakeholders, have an idea of what you're gonna be testing, how long that test could probably run for and what issues you might come across.

Anu Adegbola (15:35.802)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:40.067)
Absolutely. That sounds great. And like, okay, so like and and let's say someone is going through that similar similar issue. They've seen that there's been it's been an issue with with with the the bit strategy they've put in place and you know, yeah, the the this the their manager, CEO is saying that, yeah, turn that off, but they feel that it needs to be done and then they realise that there was a mistake. What's what's your advice to them?

Arin Gharapetian (16:02.605)
Yeah.

I mean, we're gonna make mistakes, right? I think I think you've been hired on for a reason and you know the CEO, the company has some trust in you. if you could validate why the mistake was made and what had happened, you know, hopefully it's not a bad mistake as well that's gonna affect them too much. you know, thank God like ours wasn't really drastic. It was one particular campaign, there was other campaigns that were still driving conversions, but you you're gonna make a mistake.

Anu Adegbola (16:06.703)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:21.465)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:33.625)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (16:34.498)
The way I I I think about everything is, and I told this to a lot of people, is I I always want to test. I'm not always right. but I love to I love to show that I am. And I think to test it, again, it goes back to where you're not going to keep assuming would it have worked, would it have not worked. A lot of the time success is by accident. So if we try something, we might fail one piece, but accidentally identify something else that might be successful.

Anu Adegbola (16:51.727)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:00.536)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (17:02.744)
So that's what I would tell people. and and maybe just, you know, the biggest thing is just if you're worried about how CEO is gonna react or or or client, just give them the heads up in advance, you know, given the rundown of what might happen and what you've seen happen with past clients.

Anu Adegbola (17:10.584)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I I love that point of like success is usually can be accidental. A lot of the time is accidental. It's very much when you you go down the route of doing something wrong and you actually go, actually, you're going in the opposite direction. That's what actually it should be working. And it's it's not necessarily always planned. A lot of the, you know, the big success is you think that they

Arin Gharapetian (17:23.736)
Yeah. Yep.

Arin Gharapetian (17:32.13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:39.204)
Planned it out and it all went their way. A lot of it was very accidental. Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (17:42.006)
No, yeah, that's what it is. They'll have they'll have great stories, but yeah, it it probably wasn't really a perfectly thought out plan, it just happened. So yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:50.617)
Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. So like we're gonna that that's that's just been like a great reteller's that story. And we're gonna go to talking about mistakes from other people. But before we do, like what's now like one thing like, you know, you do differently based on that story? What that what what's cause you know, like checklists as you you you go into the industry as and as you grow deep into the industry, change with new different updates, the different things that you need to do in terms of when you wanna

try a new bit strategy or a new update comes out. So like what's your what's a process that you now do differently? Like an actual process that you do with each client, with each thing that you now do based off that story, based off what happened in that story.

Arin Gharapetian (18:32.706)
Yeah, I mean, right now, especially with like brand house, a lot of times you we get a client and the client's gonna be maybe a high level, right? Individual within the organization. They might not really be the one that's operational. we make sure that that client's essentially gonna get us in contact with other people that are operational. So we we try to understand the whole flow of their funnel, like what does that look like to you? And if you and who answers the calls, who actually reaches out and what's that department? So we try to kind of get involved with those department heads.

Anu Adegbola (18:42.745)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:47.854)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (19:01.93)
Right. I could I could always contact the stakeholder, but you know, they're ultimately not the one that's making some of the changes. They're the middleman. They could tell a person, do this and do that. but I want to hear it from that individual. I really want to be involved. And I think that's the biggest thing is you know, we we kind of make it where we're not just your marketing agency that's external. We want to make it feel like we're internal to your team. so I would say that's gonna be very helpful, especially nowadays. Like you said, like there's so many changes that are coming out.

Anu Adegbola (19:05.988)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (19:14.308)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (19:31.064)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (19:31.124)
in like as a marketer you want to test every one of And the last thing you want to do is test it with an organization that is gonna, you know, not be prepared for the test and you just launch it and you break something, I mean that's also risking you losing the client. So yeah.

Anu Adegbola (19:34.019)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (19:41.217)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. No, absolutely. And like even like that story, like I was like, I I hope I've not missed out any any key questions. How did the client at the end of the story like take is that was that client y did you lose that client possibly or did the client continue working with you after you read you you communicated with them what the issue was? Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (20:05.258)
No. So this this this one I was head of marketing, I was working with them. So they didn't they didn't fire me. You know, they still they still kept me on board. Yeah. I I I think it's also like if you made a mistake on something, you own up to that mistake, right? And you if you could also explain what that mistake was, I think that's another big thing, the big thing that a lot of like advertisers, right, they they make adjustments and then they see something goes wrong and they flip it back, right? But they don't know what actually went wrong.

Anu Adegbola (20:08.91)
Yeah. No, good. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:19.257)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:23.235)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:28.323)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:31.798)
Yeah. No

Arin Gharapetian (20:34.52)
they don't really do the full on analysis and and that's probably what hurts them even more. I think I think an owner of a company is gonna be a lot more like, okay, i i if he understood it or she understood what was wrong, then they know it was just part of the game, right? Whereas then if I can't explain to them exactly what caused the issue, that's where they lose faith in you. And I think that's what's gonna cause you to either lose the job or lose a client.

Anu Adegbola (20:36.792)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:44.696)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:53.017)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (20:59.578)
Okay. Yeah. Okay. So last question about this story. Like if there's one thing where you want people to leave to leave people with, let's say people have been distracted all up until this point of the of the episode. And I'll I'm telling you guys all for that. You know, pay attention. But like if there's just one takeaway, the biggest key takeaway of this story that you want to live leave listeners with, what is it?

Arin Gharapetian (21:02.808)
Yes.

Arin Gharapetian (21:09.294)
Mm. Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (21:21.334)
I mean there's a lot, but I would say I would say feel comfortable making mistakes. That's the biggest takeaway. I've learned from that mistake, right? So I'm not really gonna try to repeat it in any way. I mean, there's still possibility you're gonna make a mistake, but l you know, make the mistake, learn from it, be quick to adjust. I think that's the biggest key takeaway of this one. you know, Target Row as we ended up changing to it down the line later on, it worked perfectly fine.

Anu Adegbola (21:28.74)
Sure.

Anu Adegbola (21:36.185)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:43.79)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:53.049)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (21:53.161)
i i it was just the execution wasn't done properly. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Anu Adegbola (21:57.371)
Properly, but yeah, you learned from that. Fantastic. All right. So let's put that, neatly put that back into its box of regrets of the past and moving on down to no, no. You you've done very, very great job of of of giving getting the learnings from that. So thank you for that, Arin. but yeah, now let's let's let's let's let's share your strengths and see when you've picked up on things that our industry is doing that you've gone, uh-uh, guys, no, no, no, no.

Arin Gharapetian (22:05.718)
Yes. Yes. I don't want to hear it anymore. I don't want to talk about it. Yes.

Yeah, thank you.

Anu Adegbola (22:27.342)
No, no, no, you're not doing that right. Or you've or you've worn a new client and you know, you you've you know, you're like, okay, what's the quick win or what's the thing that really needs to turn around and you know, you've changed something that the previous agency that these clients were working on change. What are some of those mistakes that you're like just shocked that is still happening or just is surprisingly reoccurring? You know, they're just some things they're like, wait, I've seen that in four or five different accounts. How come? What's going on? Are there any of those that stick out for you?

Arin Gharapetian (22:27.778)
Yeah, yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (22:56.152)
Yes, yes, biggest one, biggest one. Conversion traffic.

Anu Adegbola (23:00.289)
god, everyone, I can't I literally I think I need to do a caveat with guests. Like guys, we know convention tracking is gonna be tough on link. Yeah, but what's specifically, what's specifically about convergent tracking?

Arin Gharapetian (23:02.7)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (23:06.599)
Yeah. Don't say it. Don't mention it.

Arin Gharapetian (23:12.17)
It's I it look, I I think the biggest one, especially now with AI. So we're right, we're losing a lot of CTR. That's the biggest thing a lot of people are saying is the click-through is losing, right? Yeah. So AI is answering a lot of questions, might be informational, might not be affecting businesses as much because business is still gonna be transactional, they're probably still gonna look for that business. but ideally it's really identifying what do you need to be tracking.

Anu Adegbola (23:22.68)
Victory rates is bad, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:27.714)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:38.915)
Mm.

Arin Gharapetian (23:38.991)
People, I think, to this day are still tracking maybe clicks, page views, like giving that as a conversion. or even if like let's say like e-commerce is different where you could be tracking multiple purchases for a person, but like let's say for a lead, you only want to have make sure the conversion fires once, not more than once. that's another simple mistake a lot of them are making. So either it's too many things that are being tracked and it's confusing the systems.

Anu Adegbola (23:56.408)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:00.602)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:04.25)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (24:06.31)
in PPC as well, almost everything's set as primary and that doesn't make sense. Like it it's okay to track something but have it set as secondary, right? Don't let Google optimize for something that's really not a good lead. I think I think that's the biggest thing for me is it's always been tracking and conversions. A lot of the time I keep seeing that they're broken. They are just broken.

Anu Adegbola (24:10.008)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:14.276)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:18.436)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:24.358)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone says that. Every yeah, and I think it's it's it's not our listeners shouldn't be like, okay, yeah, hear it again. It's we're every guest near says it because it's important. Because it's absolutely important. So I like the fact that, you know, 'cause not everyone's not gonna listen to every single episode you know, this podcast, but at least if you listen to two or three, you're going to hear someone mentioning conversion tracking is an issue.

Arin Gharapetian (24:41.229)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (24:53.858)
And that is really good and I'm hoping people are like, Okay, it must be important. If we regardless of which episode I listen to, if they're still talking about common resident tracking being an issue, let's pay attention to it. Anything else? Yeah. Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (24:54.06)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (24:59.224)
Very very

Arin Gharapetian (25:04.302)
Especially now, right? Yeah. I mean AI because if all these systems are gonna focus with AI, AI is just it's just another human being that just takes feedback without not knowing what's in the back end. So if you're sending them a ton of conversions or broken data, it's just gonna take it and assume that this is what you want and it's gonna go looking for it. so you're just optimizing your campaigns for the wrong things.

Anu Adegbola (25:15.054)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:22.147)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:25.752)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But is there anything else? What's so that's number one on the list? What's like a number two, three on the list of of peppies of mistakes that people make?

Arin Gharapetian (25:33.961)
pet peeves, I think right now that people are relying too much on AI. right? possibly a lot of agencies might be doing that. There's a lot of software tools coming out that are saying, we're AI driven, we'll do this, we'll do that. And people are like buying that tool, but that tool isn't really it's not useful. It's great. AI, don't get me wrong, I use AI a lot, but I know where to kind of use it and where not to. And I think a lot of people.

Anu Adegbola (25:51.833)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:58.137)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (25:58.699)
AI right now is causing some issues within the industry well as well, because everyone's grabbing whatever AI is out there thinking it's gonna be very helpful.

Anu Adegbola (26:04.418)
Yeah. And there's just the yeah. There are all these tools that are like, yeah, look at this AI tool. Can you do you realise Claude can, you know, do this for you? Do you realize Claude can you how it I'm like, guys, we realize, but it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Or God, wait, there's all a new connection everything.

Arin Gharapetian (26:19.264)
Yeah, yeah. It's like here's the magical command, just give this command to Claude, it'll do everything for you. And it's like, no, it's not really the way it works.

Anu Adegbola (26:26.564)
Yeah. Yeah. What what's an area that generally is a big n cause I'm not I you know, I'm not hearing hair you saying don't use AI ever. I'm I'm sure there's some use cases that you'll be like, yeah, that that'll make sense. But what are some areas that you're literally like, guys, AI that that is definitely what not what AI is for? What what users have you said that is definitely wrong?

Arin Gharapetian (26:38.018)
Yeah, yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (26:47.939)
Yeah.

I think people feeling comfortable let AI like Google has right now, right? It has the ability to create headlines, descriptions, and things like that for you. Right. That's that's for me kind of the biggest one. Again, it goes back to like Google just understands what you're feeding it, doesn't really know that the entire business. So if you give it a subset of keywords, it automatically can assume you. I mean, addiction space is a perfect example, right?

Anu Adegbola (26:56.706)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:01.561)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:07.885)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (27:15.178)
In addiction, there's multiple types of treatment centers, right? There's, you know, your detox, your residential inpatient, your outpatient. So if you're a facility, let's say that does detox only and you don't do anything else, and that's all you want to focus on. But if you tell it or you feed it some keywords, based on those keywords, it might actually talk about different programs that you don't even offer. So if you just rely on AI to build the content, you know, build the headlines, the descriptions, it might be inaccurate.

Anu Adegbola (27:19.055)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:26.248)
Mm. Mm.

Anu Adegbola (27:36.559)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (27:43.085)
All of a sudden your team's getting all these calls or forms for something you don't even offer. some do it on purpose because they're hoping they could maybe get the person to still go into their detox program and then maybe go somewhere else. you know, afterwards. Maybe they do need the detox, they just don't realize it. But those are areas that I would be kind of careful with AI. Don't have it help you analyze things. Even analysis could get it wrong, numbers, but don't let it actually make the campaigns. Don't let it do everything 100% and publish it.

Anu Adegbola (27:47.13)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (27:55.791)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:59.696)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:05.646)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:13.498)
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. yeah. Something I've I've also said that yeah, again, it's one of the things if you listen to even just two or three episodes of the podcast, you will hear me at some point going, make sure you are looking at what AI has given you before you press post. Before you press, let me publish it. Let me send it to my client. Because if the client doesn't like what they're seeing, they're not gonna take the excuse of, well, I used AI, you know, so it's AI that said I should do that.

Arin Gharapetian (28:13.943)
That can become very tricky.

Arin Gharapetian (28:30.349)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (28:41.966)
They will fire you based on that and they'll have every right to. So AI is not accountable. AI is not accountable. I'll say that, I'll say it again. So yeah. So another kind of mistake that, you know, I I do think it's worth talking about because especially of recent, of like the August, August 17th, you know, big update. I feel very big for for a lot of people. I spoke to about you it earlier with you. You didn't seem

Arin Gharapetian (28:45.998)
That's no.

Yeah, I agree.

Anu Adegbola (29:07.406)
too faced by it. You you you know, you did what you needed to do for your clients. It didn't really affect you much. What w in what ways did the what did the industry you feel react that you feel was a mistake? That you're like, guys, that's not how you approach what Google are trying to do here.

Arin Gharapetian (29:20.994)
Mm-hmm. I I think there's always gonna be people that are that'll pick up like let's say some change or some form of change and make may maybe a bigger deal out of it than it really is. some of them are just maybe trying to sell some sort of a tool or product or something else that pertains to it. Yeah. I, you know, we didn't we didn't see much of a of a problem for us. I think I think for us it was

Anu Adegbola (29:32.889)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (29:38.551)
Hey.

Arin Gharapetian (29:47.055)
as long as a lot of agencies were on top of their clients and they knew what the budgets were that they were being spent, how you know the bit strategies working off of them, wasn't really something that we were worried about making adjustments. So I mean I mean we we looked at every client that I was w you know that I have that you know could potentially affect it. but we just did a pretty quick c look look at We analyzed everything and we ensure that, you know, nothing was gonna go wrong.

I think the biggest thing too was like if you if your budgets were laid out properly and you're kind of focused on changing them as you go, you know, every month or so as well, you shouldn't have really seen any sort of hiccup. And, you know, yeah, I think I think there's always gonna be, you know, there's good press, bad press, people will probably take it, overreact to an extent. it could just be that you're just doing it to talk or, you know, maybe you weren't really planning out in advance for it.

Anu Adegbola (30:23.172)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (30:33.87)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (30:41.314)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (30:42.606)
But yeah, I mean we've I've I've been doing Google Ads for some time. They they make a lot of changes and you just gotta adjust. Some of might affect you, some of them might not, but yeah, just be prepared.

Anu Adegbola (30:48.002)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (30:54.42)
In t for twenty twenty six, what has been your favorite update that has come out?

Arin Gharapetian (31:01.646)
I mean, I think the AI enhancements that I'm noticing are a lot better. right. So I think those are those are kind of the things. you know, there isn't really much else that Google's released that's really been exciting for me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not I mean, it's not really it could be exciting for some, but it hasn't really adjusted anything too much for for what we're doing. but I think the AI's getting a lot better.

Anu Adegbola (31:08.684)
Okay. Okay.

Anu Adegbola (31:19.726)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Anu Adegbola (31:29.912)
Yeah. Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (31:32.941)
Right. If I'm gonna use some of it for headlines or descriptions, it is giving me better options. I I remember I remember earlier on it would actually break. So you would when you would ask it and you had the ad open and you would ask something, it would say, Sorry, I can't see it right now or I can't do it. so I think it's it's getting better and better. they're really I anticipate like maybe next year.

Anu Adegbola (31:53.635)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (31:58.5)
midway. I mean, people are gonna see like some pretty cool things with it. They're really I I mean, putting it deep inside. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:03.672)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How you finding AI Max? Have you tested are you guys testing it?

Arin Gharapetian (32:10.038)
we did. I turned it off. I am not I'm not really used yeah, I'm not using it yet. the biggest thing that I I still kind of use and I've used it more for like the e-commerce piece is so I'm I'm blanking out on the name right now, but it's not even something that came out this year. But like for the automated campaigns where we'll kind of push into search, display, YouTube.

Anu Adegbola (32:15.385)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:34.34)
P Max or D Manjan? Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (32:35.734)
Yeah, PMATs. So so performance mats is a lot better. yeah, yeah, e-commerce if you feed it a lot of content. So obviously with PMAX, because it's gonna go to different channels, so like if you feed it imagery, videos, it's doing really well, I think. I think it's it's finding a lot of leads or purchases that would have come from other channels at a very smaller cost than what you would have gotten directly from shopping campaigns or search.

Anu Adegbola (32:40.61)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Anu Adegbola (32:50.926)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:57.914)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (33:04.772)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (33:05.186)
We are testing that within the addiction space as well right now. I know it's been something that a lot of people still use, but sometimes it gets too broad in keyword matching. And that's why it's a bit still, you know, but it's it's gotten a lot better. And that's the one that we use right now. I'm not I'm still not using AI a hundred percent with with a lot of the tools yet.

Anu Adegbola (33:11.928)
Hmm. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (33:24.322)
Yeah. Are you are you a bit of a skeptic with the whole AI AI world?

Arin Gharapetian (33:31.635)
Kind of. It's not like I mean people say artificial intelligence and they make it seem like it's a the full on robot sitting back there and doing like all this magic, but you know, it's still very, very much in its infancy. There's I mean, people will get surprised what this thing could probably do two years, five years from now. right now it's still learning how to adjust. I mean it's getting things still wrong, right? So I wouldn't say that's it's not AI yen. It'll get there.

Anu Adegbola (33:32.783)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (33:38.692)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (33:45.007)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (33:49.693)
Mm, mm.

Anu Adegbola (33:56.313)
Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. Although I'm very nervous about like when it does get there to be a lot more advanced. The decisions that it'll be able to make, the things that we can able to do, how how much it can take over and what what access that government might even give it to. But that's another that's another podcast. That's another one.

Arin Gharapetian (34:06.349)
Yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (34:17.154)
Yes, that's a different topic. That's another one. If you get a podcast started for that one too, give me on there. That's something else I'd love to I'd love to talk about as well.

Anu Adegbola (34:23.706)
Lord, god, I don't I don't know. I think I'll I'll also attract a lot of tinfold hat people for that kind of podcast. Who knows? Who knows? Lord, yeah, yeah. Arin, this has been such a great chat. I'm really, really grateful for you just sharing your experiences, what's working for you, what's not, what people should look out for, especially conversion tracking. Conversion tracking, yes guys, is a big issue. All our guests, pretty much all our guests talk about that. So yeah, make sure you've got that.

Arin Gharapetian (34:30.732)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Arin Gharapetian (34:39.394)
Likewise.

Anu Adegbola (34:53.156)
Correct and working for you. yeah, so but last question, just nice nice fun, not not PVC heavy one. If your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Arin Gharapetian (34:55.746)
Yes.

Arin Gharapetian (35:01.048)
Yes.

Arin Gharapetian (35:06.094)
I I think just because of like probably, you know, what we just discussed too probably the learning phase. I I I I I feel like we're always a Google Ads is always, you know, this in its own learning phase to an extent, but we're also kind of learning. the world's changing pretty quickly. A lot of these tools are adjusting and changing quickly. So it's not just the tools themselves learning, it's us. but yeah, I I I I probably call it the learning phase. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:20.89)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:28.184)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The learning face. Fantastic. No, that sounds absolutely perfect. So I know you're on LinkedIn, but is there anywhere else that people may be able to be able to find you if they want to pick your brain about about your work and what you do?

Arin Gharapetian (35:46.456)
Yeah, no, I think LinkedIn's probably the best place. obviously if they want to kind of reach out through the website too that's Brand House LA. I do have my own personal website too, which is rngarpiteon.com, mouthful. But hopefully there's also a text version where they could actually see how to spell my name and last name. But yeah, there we go. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, but I think I think LinkedIn's gonna be the best one. And you know,

Anu Adegbola (36:02.936)
Hundred percent. We'll put that all up in the show notes and transcript, no worry. that's amazing. Shark.

Arin Gharapetian (36:11.222)
I think I'm gonna get a lot more heavier into intend next year into like a lot of shows and events as well for marketing. So probably, you know, that's gonna be another good one. I'm definitely gonna stop by wherever you're at. So at some of these shows, but yeah.

Anu Adegbola (36:19.586)
Yes. SMX, come to SMX next next year in March. March will be in in San Diego. So yeah, really hope people can come for that also.

Arin Gharapetian (36:31.222)
Of course, of course. But yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Anu Adegbola (36:34.742)
No worries, Arin. Thank you so much for that fantastic conversation. And yeah, we'll we'll share all the links and all the resources that we talked about online. And yeah, if you want to get in touch with either of us, yeah, find us on LinkedIn. but for now, that's it. And I hope you join us for the next episode. but yeah, for now. Thanks, Arin, and speak to you soon.

Arin Gharapetian (36:53.134)
Thank you. Bye.