We Wasted 4 Months Optimizing for the Wrong Leads ft. Saif Al-Jabbar Khan

Anu A (00:00.185)
started. Hello Saif. Welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (00:06.444)
Hey Anu, good to be here.

Anu A (00:09.143)
I'm so I'm so grateful, Ashaev, that you you came on. When I asked, you know, in the lovely WhatsApp group that, god, Andrew. I always forget I know loads of Andrews. What's his last name? Remind me, our friend, our mutual friend.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (00:22.07)
Honestly, I forgot as well. That's so bad. That's so bad. I forgot as well. But we've got the group chief of paid.

Anu A (00:28.395)
Alright. so yeah, we'll try to Yes, yes, chaf of page, you know. god, I feel like I need to now find it. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, because I'm sure I'd have put it in there. I just have him now as Andrew Click Train. Yeah, his name's last name is not Click Click Train, but that's his company. To be fair, that's what he'd like me to mention. Go to Click Train. Andrew Click Train.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (00:48.438)
Andrew Clicktrain, that's it. Andrew Clicktrain.

Anu A (00:53.123)
He knew his last name. But yes, our mutual friend Andrew from Click Train, you know, he has this fantastic WhatsApp group of fantastic paid search, you know, marketers who are really in the weeds of the work. And like, yeah, like last week I I put a message because Andrew is very like selective of the people that are in this group. And I know there would be people who are, you know, in the weeds of the work, do paid search, are trying to share their knowledge as well. So I was like, who wants to be on the podcast? And Saif was one of the fantastic guests, people that yeah.

put up his hand, he shared a YouTube video of another podcast that he's been on. So I was like confident this is going to be it's going to be a great addition to our our roster of greats of great paid search marketers. And what do I mean by you know great addition to of of of you know great addition to our roster of paid search marketers? Saif is actually a founder. He's a founder of Lead Ember and he's a co founder of WA Conversion Tracking. And I think Lead Ember especially he helps

B2B and service-based businesses in the UAE turn existing demand into predictable revenue using Google Ads. So yeah, and it's all about revenue, no vanity metrics. He they specialize in high value B2B industries like construction, manufacturing, industrial sectors. And the focus is simple, qualified inquiries. And he's actually gonna talk his story, is gonna be be about the mistake of not figuring out what that qualified, you know, inquiry was, which is just very, very important.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (01:59.192)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Anu A (02:18.065)
so yeah, he's also works you know, what with about around biggest blind spots and paid ads and WhatsApp attribution. and yeah, and the with WACT. So that's the WA conversion tracking. They track real WhatsApp leads as conversions, not button clicks, allowing campaigns to optimize on accurate dates and all you to understand where your WhatsApp leads are coming from. So, yeah, if you're into WhatsApp advertising and want to do that better, get in touch with Saif.

you'll have Hibehi's LinkedIn profile in our in the transcript. So yeah, welcome Saif. And like next, please tell us some fun fact about you. What's what's something interesting fun that that people might not know about you?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (02:58.797)
Cool. So unlike probably most people here, I've not been in the industry for too long. My background's actually in computer science. I was working as a DevOps engineer in Rotterdam for three to four years. And then I hated it, to be honest. I didn't like it at all, but I had no knowledge about marketing, business or anything. And I had a good, really good friend of mine who was moving back to Dubai.

Anu A (03:09.547)
okay.

Wow.

Anu A (03:27.429)
Mm.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (03:29.045)
And he said, safe, look, I'm opening up a video production company. Do you want to, do you want to join me? And honestly, I didn't like what I was doing. I had no idea what I wanted to do. had my family back in Dubai. So I just said, you know, screw it. Let's quit. Let's go do something new. And that's how I got my first foot into the marketing space, into business. And here I am today.

Anu A (03:36.281)
Mm, mm.

Anu A (03:48.933)
Wow.

Anu A (03:58.202)
Fantastic. Well done. Yeah, it's really I mean, obviously you're you're you're you're you're definitely brave. People know that you're brave already for coming to this podcast to share a mistake. But it's definitely brave to like just pick up your life and move somewhere different. 'Cause I you know, many a times I've thought to myself like much later I'm now more cemented in industry. But we early in the in the in my digital marketing journey I've been like,

This is all I'm gonna be doing, just marketing and going home, paying my bills, marketing. I'm like, maybe I should start again. And but I was always like, I'm gonna go back to zero and you know, my my paying my bills. So I just stuck through. For me, it was a good idea to stick through because things are going really well right now. But yeah, it's it takes a lot of guts to just go, you know what? This is not working for me. And when a great opportunity, like, yeah, let's do something else. And clearly it's worked out for you. How long have you been in Dubai now?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (04:26.679)
Yeah. Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (04:53.965)
So actually moved to Dubai with my family when I was about 10, about 2007. Yeah, then I moved for university to UK and then I went to Rotterdam and then now I'm back in Dubai and I've been here. Yeah, yeah, since man, like 13, 14 years in total.

Anu A (04:58.445)
Okay, okay.

Anu A (05:04.548)
Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

Anu A (05:15.053)
Okay, but like the latest stint. So after Rot when did you move from Rotterdam back to

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (05:19.877)
like end of 2021, start of 2022.

Anu A (05:25.623)
Okay, so when when when COVID lockdown showed you a bit of back right, you came back out, you're like

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (05:30.605)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. luckily, had it handled quite well. So while Rotterdam was on lockdown, I just came back here and we were just enjoying life. So.

Anu A (05:40.846)
Yeah. Nice. Nice. Well, yeah, well, that's that's always a good reason to move to a different country when yeah, when the COVID laws are are are are better. So yeah, well, that's great. Well, okay, so let's not let's not waste any more time. People are like, Yeah, I know we love Dubai, Dubai is a great place to visit, but how about the mistakes? Let's get to the juicy story. So we're gonna give people what they want.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (06:04.471)
They want the juicy stuff.

Anu A (06:06.785)
Yeah, let's get to the juicy stuff. Thank you again, Saif for being like another person that is like, yeah, let's share the mistakes because that's where the biggest learnings are. We've had some great stories so far. And you know, I've been like even I think to myself, what am I doing for the podcast? Will anyone want to listen about mistakes? And I feel like I'm enjoying it. I don't even care if just one person listens. I really enjoy, you know, hearing from experts because I don't work

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (06:13.515)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Anu A (06:30.909)
on in accounts anymore. I work, I'm I write for search engine land mostly. So I'm I'm not kind of like, you know, looking in accounts. So when people are sharing to me things are going on in their accounts, it kind of takes me back to earlier in my career and I'm like, wow, how things have changed and sometimes how things have not changed. So anyway, I will stop talking now and p pass it over to you. Saif, what's the F up you'd like to share with us today?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (06:54.381)
Cool. So it's a mix between a technical issue and also a business related issue because basically we work in mainly with B2B clients and then the traditional side. We're not looking to drive like high volume of inquiries through the door. It's about getting the one, two, three really high qualified leads. And then they turn into big ticket contracts. So that's the kind of goal here. So setting up a good

Anu A (07:05.048)
Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (07:23.861)
offline conversion tracking system that's feeding the right data back to, our accounts is really important. Right. And, and to do that, we need to define with a client what's qualified. So that's going to kind of be the, the, the crux of the story and where the mistake happens. But yeah, we had a client in Saudi Arabia. They were a legal firm and they were looking to start a new service. They were experimenting with a new service.

for providing company formation services in Saudi. And this was quite new, new thing before, only locals or natives of Saudi Arabia were able to open up a company. Now they opened it up to foreigners as well. So yeah, we started, we started working with them. And when we work with a client, the first thing we want to do is note down what, what criteria a lead needs to fall in for it to be considered qualified, right?

So this is crystal clear for me. So I know what to go after, but it's also crystal clear for the client so that they can update their CRM accordingly. So the data gets fed back, right? So we defined that we agreed with them and create the campaign. We connected the CRM, all that kind of stuff. was all good. Fast forward about four months, data was feeding in quite slowly though, the client, as much as you tell them, Hey, look, it's important that you got to update it constantly.

You've to do this, you've got to do that. They take it for granted and they get slow, et cetera. So you've got these like patchy moments in your tracking, right? But the campaign on paper looked like it was going well based on the criteria that we defined, et cetera. The calls of the clients were going well, but then four months in, they had their end of year review and they came back to me and said, look, Saif, I don't think this is working well. We're not really getting

Anu A (08:54.179)
Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (09:19.935)
Any business through the door. And, you know, I kind of brought the metrics to the table and said, look, we're getting this many qualified leads through the door, et cetera. And they said, but these aren't actual good leads. then the whole Pandora's box opened on, okay, maybe our definition. Wasn't the best. We need to go back to the drawing board here to see what was wrong and why don't these actually align. then a very big requirement that never existed before.

Anu A (09:22.862)
Mm.

Anu A (09:29.924)
Hm.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (09:48.984)
came on the table and that was a company to open a, a foreigner to open a business in Saudi Arabia has to have an existing business in another country operating for more than one year. Right? When you have a requirement like this, it's not like someone's going on Google. I have business open for more than one year. Now I want to open businesses. No, they'll just search like company formation service or open a company in Saudi Arabia, et cetera.

Anu A (10:04.613)
Right.

Anu A (10:12.293)
Cool.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (10:18.391)
So the question then becomes, how do you filter out everybody else who doesn't have a business, right, for more than one year and who does? And how do we drive them to the campaign? So when we put, when we updated the CRM properly on the, on the old data for the last four months, we realized only 22 % of the leads coming through actually fit the client's criteria, right? There's obviously an issue there. So they said, look, we've got

Anu A (10:42.191)
Right.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (10:47.825)
one, maybe two months to turn this around. And if we don't, then we're going to have to cut the campaign. Right. So I kind of laid it out and I said, look, if we've got a sharp deadline like this, I'm going to do what I need from my side, but there's going to be a part that you need to do as well. So we've decided, defined what's a qualified lead, but there's another issue where they're not updating the CRM correctly. Right. And obviously imagine your Google.

Anu A (10:54.017)
Mm-hmm.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (11:17.109)
And you're using these signals from the CRM as your direction to go forward. But then you've got five days of nothing. It's just five days of darkness and you have no idea what direction to go in. Right. So I told them, look, every day consistently, you have to update all the leads that came in that day on the dot. Right. And you, need to do this for a month. And by the end of the month, we should see good movement forward.

Anu A (11:40.335)
Mm-hmm.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (11:47.222)
Right. by the end of the first month, we got good traction and then they were willing to continue for another month. And then by the end of month two, with all this new system that we've built and just basically redefine what's considered a qualified lead, we were able to go from 22 % qualified to 42 % qualified leads. That's double the amount for the same budget. And from there, client was happy. And then we just smooth sailing up and we got it to about

Anu A (11:47.309)
Right.

Anu A (11:52.559)
Okay.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (12:17.079)
55 % by the end of like that was like four or five months down the line. It couldn't get past that, but that's like an amazing jump for us.

Anu A (12:19.661)
Right. Nice.

Anu A (12:27.255)
Yeah, that's a absolutely brilliant. And that's it. Fall from grace, you know, you start realizing that something went wrong and you fixed it. Like now, you know, and and I feel like you've answered like four or five questions there, which is absolutely fine. But you know, as I t as I told you at the beginning, I like picking out a like like what's what what was the journey to that sp stage? So you said that you know, you got this new client and they didn't give you what what went wrong? Why

What was the reason that you didn't get that information of a qualified lead is XYZ? Could there have been more education on your end? Or did you feel like you had a bit of a difficult client? It could be either. Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (13:09.417)
So I don't think it's the client's fault. I'll put it there. I think that's more of a fault on our business. So obviously when an inquiry comes through the door, especially when it's a referral, which was the case here, you tend to want to take obviously the opportunity. The reality is that this was a new service for them that they've not explored. Right? So even though they understood, they knew that there was this requirement.

Anu A (13:27.226)
Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (13:37.72)
their sales system wasn't so defined in place for them to just chalk it off. Like these are the tick boxes we need to meet for us to, actually fulfill and, and, and sell a client. Right. So because I was willing to work with them for something new, maybe I didn't probe them enough, but they also didn't really understand what they needed on their side as well. Right. And I think that was the, the, the crux of it. And then when you got four months down the line and they're looking at like,

we've spent all this money and we're not closing. They would have probably just sat down and said, why are these leads bad? And what, what criteria they're not fulfilling. And that's when they realized that, okay, this is the main reason we're not converting clients.

Anu A (14:21.219)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. So if people are listening, so you know, if they say that, but what's the question I should have asked that would have gotten me that? What's the question that should people should ask to make sure that they get that qualified lead? Like what a qualified lead is. Because that information is important from the get go, isn't it?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (14:35.575)
Oof.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (14:42.765)
It's a hard one, you know, because to be honest...

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (14:50.101)
No, for sure. Because look, the reason why I say it's hard one is when you ask someone who's operating a business, what criteria does someone need to meet for you to take them on as a client? Usually they try and brush it off and just be like, like, look, as long as someone's looking, we're willing to take them on, et cetera. Because obviously they don't want to turn away business. The reality is that

Anu A (15:15.919)
Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (15:20.621)
you need to kind of, sometimes some people work in a negative aspects, be like, okay, cool. If I had, if I was XYZ inquiry, would you be willing to take it on? And sometimes I push a client to an extreme. So I'll try and use like an easy one, right? Budget, right? For example, we've got a catering client, right? And I asked them, look, what's the lowest like price per head?

that you'd be willing to take. they said, safe is so dependent. Is this like a corporate event? Is it a private event or et cetera, et And I kind of just put it to them and I won't use UAE local currency. I'll use dollars to make it easier. I said, look, if I came to you and I said, I've got $1 per head and I want a hundred people, can you do it? So I took it to the extreme and they said, of course no. Right. And I just kept edging. I just kept edging the budget up.

Anu A (16:14.051)
Yeah. That's no idea?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (16:19.273)
until it got to a point where they're like, okay, cool. Yeah, we're willing to take that. Right. And then that's where we kind of defined like a floor. And it helped us set criteria. Right. So I think sometimes you, got to use some analogies or create some real world scenarios to really help a client understand what you're trying to get out of them.

Anu A (16:19.62)
Yeah.

Anu A (16:27.661)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu A (16:39.93)
Yeah.

Anu A (16:43.373)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Giving that person that whole because I think everybody does look at some of these, you know, Google ads as traffic, just give me traffic. I want the people and they don't think about actually you're talking about real people who give you real money and there's a there's certain amount you need for them for it to be a worthwhile sale. And you know, we really and I think we used to have that at the beginning and it actually surprises me that some industries still work that way about pick touch, I

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (17:03.521)
Yeah, exactly.

Anu A (17:11.951)
Traffic, get me the traffic. I'm like guys, you don't actually need more traffic. You need more people who will buy. You need to know who is gonna there's some people you don't want breaking on your ad, you know?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (17:18.103)
Yeah, yeah, well, look, to be honest, if get too many leads through the door, to be honest, let's even talk about leads, right? If you get too many leads through the door and your sales team can't handle it, you cause issues like, so again, I'll bring up that catering client. We were getting a lot of leads through the door and he called me up and he said, say if I'm having trouble with my sales team.

Anu A (17:39.322)
Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (17:46.082)
And I'll give you an example, right? They, they had like 10 or 11 leads come in, come in during that day. There was one lead for about $2,000 and 20, 30, 40 minutes later, a big lead came in for about $50,000. Right. And their sales team was still working on the $2,000 lead while the $50,000 lead was just sitting there. Yeah. And because, because there's just too much volume coming through the door, obviously this is

Anu A (18:01.131)
okay.

Anu A (18:06.558)
Ooh. Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (18:15.597)
partly a sales issue, because if you see that come in, you need a system that tells you, hey, stop looking at this and look at this one instead, right? Because you've got to weight your options. But I think the issue was that they had two, like more leads than they could actually handle.

Anu A (18:22.489)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anu A (18:29.603)
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And and more leads and it's and it's not categorized leads because they should be different departments for different price points. The person who has the skill sets for dealing with two K leads is not the same person that can deal with a fifty K lead. So you know, and I so then yeah, there needs to be a better system, better better communication as to like, you know, this is the way and even better form. So

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (18:41.217)
Yes, yes.

Anu A (18:57.163)
I'd imagine going back to even like the first story that you shared, I'd even imagine that there is a tick that you need to put in the form sharing like, you know, how long do you have any other businesses? How long have they been run for? If that is a specifically important, you know, area. Was that was that available on the form that people had to fill in to to qualify as a lead?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (19:21.015)
So look, at the current point in time when we did the initial four month run, that wasn't there. Why? Because one, I wasn't aware that this would need to be a criteria. But two, I've got a slightly different approach. I like to cast a wide net, so leave the doors quite open. And then when I see, OK, cool, the qualified leads are coming from here, here, and here, I can start narrowing down. Right?

Anu A (19:28.758)
Anu A (19:33.721)
Right.

Anu A (19:40.877)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu A (19:49.988)
Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (19:50.36)
But if you, if you add too many friction points from the beginning, you might be pushing away people that actually would have converted. Right. So I like to leave it open and then, and then, and then hone it down.

Anu A (20:04.995)
Yeah, but I I I get it. I think from your point of view, you're saying it takes you convince sometimes you just need to convince people. There will be there might be three or four things in place and you just need to convince people and you know and and maybe one different people are are you know harder to convince or easier to convince. But if you're saying that actually what the the business needed is like they if you're saying it's a hard and fast rule of like you need to have been having a business.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (20:32.39)
yeah, so that came after that checkbox came the checkbox came after yes yes yes

Anu A (20:36.163)
Right, exactly. Yeah. so so that checkboard then put got put in place after they realized after the four month period of y realizing that they weren't getting qualified leads, is that correct?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (20:47.917)
Yes. So, so it wasn't a checkbox. It was more, we had a system where it said, like, are you current? Like how long have you been operating a business less than a year, one year, two years? Like, so it was, was a more of a drop down. the reason I like, yeah. Yeah. I like drop downs more than.

Anu A (21:02.159)
Sure.

'Cause yeah, but I'm what I'm asking was that was that was that option always available or did that only happen after your client went

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (21:14.124)
After.

Anu A (21:17.061)
Well so that's that really is very much on the client. Why is the client not putting on their side that by the way, this is our criteria? I think there was a mistake both for you and the client as well.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (21:26.273)
Yeah, so I think that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I mentioned, right? It's a mix of us and them. To be honest, I'd like to, I'd never like to put it on the client. I'll say the mistakes always on us. If the client doesn't tell me, I should be there to ask. Right?

Anu A (21:36.078)
Yeah.

Anu A (21:40.878)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think like also, you know, we we like still whoever's listening, whether you're on the client side or the agency side, both sides have something to take away from this as to what they need to share. Because this is not even necessarily a paid search issue anymore. This is what I call a conversion rate optimization issue. So we're talking because you know, I mean, I don't know the different channels that these guys are doing.

Like email marketing will have the same issue. Like SCA will probably have had the same issue, you know, because they're it's just basically, yeah, we're just driving traffic to a landing page that is not asking the visitor how long have you had a business in another country. It's not it's not asking you, and so SEO will probably have had bad conversion rates as well, as well as email marketing as well as outdoor, because on the landing page, you get to a place where that doesn't qualify that customer to say, by the way.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (22:12.779)
Yeah. Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (22:36.713)
And the landing page makes such a big difference.

Anu A (22:39.417)
The landing page makes such a difference. And in fact, and another thing that we really say across everybody is silos are really bad, you know, like PPC and SEO and all the different channels working well together. If all of you were talking, all you know, you could have like, Yeah, but SEO conversion rate is also bad. SEO lead quality is also bad. What you know, can we actually look at what's going on all together? There's obviously something else going on than it just being paid search has gone wrong.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (23:05.111)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Anu A (23:07.299)
You know, and then they would have seen. And look, I know you're not seeing that you're trying to blame the client. Yes, you could have done ask better questions, but everyone involved, pay attention to your landing pages. That's what I'm trying to make sure that our listeners also get away. Pay at know what the look at what the landing pages are doing. And I do think paid search folks can be lazy on that one. We look at the landing page and we're like, whatever a client gives me as a landing page, hey, okay, I'll use it and just try to do the best as I can for that landing page. Sometimes look at that landing page and be like,

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (23:32.361)
maybe like so, so, so.

Anu A (23:36.227)
Guys, you want us do you want me to send people and my and the and my target is that people need to buy an item, but there's no buy button on the landing page. Sorry, can we do something about that? Those kind of conversations need to be happening more and more because AI is not gonna be happy.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (23:50.53)
Here's where I'll probably take a bit more stuff on the wrist. We are the ones who made the landing pages for the client. So that was all on us. Yeah. Yeah.

Anu A (24:00.88)
Way safe. Now we're getting to the real mistake. Can we get into the real Okay? Okay. All right. Okay. Like I'm I'm glad for your honesty. You know what? I get it. And these kind of things, a lot of what we said so far, that doesn't negate any of that. The landing page is important. Clients should know what the landing page should look. Clients should also be good at informing what a qualified lead is for them. But we should also ask better questions.

But let's move on to like how I like this conversation. So like big lessons for our listeners today. If I like someone who's listening is a paid search marketer like you and they feel like, okay, that they they've been doing a great job for four months. The client has come to them saying that, yeah, your leads, leads are not great, and they're panicked. That person as a paid search person is panicked. What's your advice to them?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (24:52.619)
My advice is maybe try and not get to that situation before it actually happens. Right. So you want to get ahead of the horse.

Anu A (24:58.511)
So we're saying we're saying we're saying it has happened. It has happened. What's the advice? It has what's the advice for someone where it has happened?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (25:02.133)
Okay, so it has happened.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (25:08.427)
Okay. So the first thing is do not get defensive, right? Yeah. Yeah. The clients on edge, right? Your, your contract or whatever is, is, is, is on the line. Gain defensive here is probably the worst thing. What we want to do is accept that what has happened is a loss, whether it's your fault or the client's fault, but just accept that it's, it's, it's it's a fault and quickly trying to figure out how do we move forward from here? Cause that's the important thing. Not trying to figure out.

Anu A (25:12.591)
Good.

Anu A (25:36.205)
Mm.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (25:37.932)
Why did this happen and how did we get there? We first want to fix it. If you guys want to discuss three, four weeks down the line of like, Hey, look, it's all working now. How can we avoid this again in the future? That's a cool conversation to have, but at the current moment, the, the, the, we need to be solving is how do we get out of this situation and, and move towards better performance. Right. So once we've, got onto that frame with the client, then it would just be.

Anu A (26:00.1)
Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (26:06.157)
going back, because usually what you'll get from a client is like, the leads are bad or I'm not happy with the lead. like quite, quite vague stuff. So you want to get into numbers. I think this is a very important thing, right? Which leads were bad, then start looking into where did those leads come from? And then asking them, why do you think these leads are bad? Right? Were these leads bad in a specific timeframe? Was it trickled out throughout the period? Because sometimes what happens is

Anu A (26:16.165)
Mm.

Anu A (26:20.452)
Hm

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (26:34.189)
You might get in a situation where the client comes back to you and they're like, the leads were horrible. Right. But if you really get into it, it's that maybe the last two, three days, they were bad, but overall over the month, it actually was performing better than the previous month. Right. And they're just looking at the small timeframe. So you want to figure out, is it a lens issue? So are you looking at it from the wrong angle or is there actually a problem here? And then you can, you can start to move forward.

Anu A (26:51.3)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu A (26:57.24)
Yeah.

Mm. Yeah.

Absolutely, absolutely. Great. And then so what what based on that story, based on that experience, what do you do different now? What did that for you personally have what was now a new cause you know everybody has like, you know, checklist of stuff that you do with clients kind of thing? What what became a new addition to that checklist based on that that experience that happened?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (27:29.229)
Okay. So we're trying to be more rigorous with how we ask the, like how we define qualified clients and what are the criteria and all that kind of stuff in our discovery calls. But in the end, we still get similar level of answers. So it's not something that's so easy to define. What we'll do is when we're two weeks in, we jump ahead. And this is what I was trying to say before, right? We try to get ahead of the horse and we sit down and we go, okay, cool. Here are the leads that we had.

Anu A (27:48.42)
Yeah.

Anu A (27:55.673)
Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (27:59.438)
Can we walk through each one and in detail, how did it go? Is this something that you want to have going forward? If you don't, what were the reasons? And by actually having leads to look at, you can then really start to define, because the client will just tell you like, I didn't like this lead because of XYZ or I like this lead because of XYZ. Right. And you can then fill out that criteria a bit more. then just by the end of the call, you go, Hey, look, here's our old criteria for what we consider qualified.

Anu A (28:07.503)
Yeah.

Anu A (28:20.953)
Yeah, yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (28:29.623)
from this call, we've realized these new things. Are you cool to add this into the new criteria? They'll go, yeah. And then I guess maybe every month or every quarter, you can then review that again to make sure you're aligned, right? And it stops, it stops. Yeah, yeah, please.

Anu A (28:42.511)
Yeah.

Anu A (28:45.891)
Yeah. Yeah. So

No, no, no, go on, go on, finish. Finish, please.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (28:54.241)
The other reason I like to do it is sometimes clients might move the goalpost on what is considered qualified. And this causes a problem with, cause imagine like Google's got left and right, and you've been telling Google go right, go right, go right. And then randomly you just, the signal turns go left, right? All that data that you've had in the past three, four months, Google's going to start questioning.

Anu A (29:00.894)
Mm. Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (29:23.351)
Do I continue to listen to this data or do I start going off this new signal? Right? And that can really screw up a really good system that you have quickly.

Anu A (29:28.026)
Yeah.

Anu A (29:34.112)
Mm. Mm. Mm. Absolutely. Absolutely. No. And like I think what I was actually gonna say is that, you know, I I think it was very important for you to say that I love that specific, like, after maybe like a couple of weeks, a month, review those leads. Don't wait four months for them to be like for the client to be the one that tells you, by the way, all my leads are, you know, the leads are rubbish. We need the qualified leads are not what they should be. Get ahead of that. Get ahead of that. So I really, I really appreciate that.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (29:51.243)
Yeah.

Anu A (30:03.651)
that that that new p point that people should pay attention to. Get ahead of the timeline you take or to that it takes to to question your clients about what the leads are like. So yeah, we've we we've talked a lot about that story. In fact, I need to edit some of the that that bit I don't know. I don't know how I'm going to. But like yeah, if before we get into talking about other mistakes, popular mistakes you have see other maybe none is no not picking at a agencies or other people specifically, but like

When you've audited accounts, like you know, I want to get into your your your your what you've seen in terms of taking on new clients, in terms of how they're doing how others have done their paid search strategy. But before we do that, before we get there, what's one last takeaway from that story that you've just given in terms of, you know, the mistake of not knowing what your qualified league early enough? What's a big takeaway that you want people to take from that story?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (30:58.693)
The one takeaway is that

Going like more and more targeting is being removed from us. And especially if you're in the B2B space, your clients are going to have very specific requirements of who they want to work with. This mistake goes to show you how important this offline conversion tracking is. Because not all inquiries are equal.

Anu A (31:09.061)
Mm.

Anu A (31:14.789)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu A (31:28.913)
Mm, mm.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (31:29.323)
We need to be able to provide that additional context to Google so it knows who to spend our money on.

Anu A (31:37.242)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now more than ever, we need to be feeding the data, feeding the system with up to date data, information and for it to work off of. So yeah, fantastic. Great. Thank you very much so much for that Saeful. Now put that story back into its box. We'll get over get over the PTSD of like what what that thing that happened. Now moving on to when you've maybe won accounts and what you know, one new business and

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (31:56.621)
you

Anu A (32:04.985)
You're not the first person that's worked on that account and you're looking for, you know, quick wins and quick changes to make to the account. What are some of like the most frequent mistakes that you see happening that really shocks you are still happening today? I almost feel I need to say apart from conversion tracking, because everyone says conversion tracking. And I'm sure that's probably on your list as well.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (32:19.67)
Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (32:24.974)
Yeah, I'm not going to lean on conversion tracking by it because look, I do think that our cases where you can get away with no conversion tracking, right? If you want to pay. Yeah, I think if you want to pay the high cost CPCs and go fully exact match and try to control it, it will cost you a lot more, but you can force the traffic in the direction you want to get the inquiries you want.

Anu A (32:36.651)
okay.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (32:52.556)
I still think it's possible. I just think it's a lot more expensive. It's just a lot more expensive, right? Where I see the mistake is Google's pushing broad, broad AI max, P max, et cetera, right? And basically it's like, you don't worry about the targeting. We're going to do it all for you. Just tell us what type of customers you want, right? Unfortunately,

Anu A (32:52.813)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu A (32:56.995)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu A (33:16.249)
Yeah. Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (33:18.028)
The keyword itself or whatever search term or audience you make, it's not enough for Google to know who you need and who you want to go after. Right. So I go into accounts and I see broad match everywhere, which two years ago I would have said, this is absolutely crazy. I actually quite like broad full broad campaigns now. Right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And in certain cases, I like it a lot. Right.

Anu A (33:26.842)
Yeah.

Anu A (33:42.393)
Really?

Anu A (33:47.994)
Okay.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (33:48.857)
but you need to have really good conversion tracking in place, very clean conversion tracking, right? And then I've seen cost per leads a third of the cost of running an exact match or phrase match campaign, right? The issue is that you see people with broad and the conversion track is a mess.

Anu A (33:53.496)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu A (34:05.349)
Mm-hmm.

Anu A (34:14.703)
Yeah. Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (34:14.732)
Right. They're, they're, they're, loading on some random page load or they're doing phone call, conversion tracking, but on the phone call click, not on the actual recording. So many mistakes. And it's just like, you're just feeding junk. And then Google's thinking that junk is, is, is good. It's like a dopamine hit for Google, right? The conversion event. And it's going to go after it, after, after it.

Anu A (34:28.077)
Anu A (34:31.737)
Yeah.

Anu A (34:37.667)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. I'm glad I'm I'm yeah. Yeah, I think it's really great to do that that deep dive into like what you mean by bad convergent tracking and it's very interesting that you say that you can get away with actually no convergent tracking and it'll be a bit expensive, but you know, yeah. But but if you need have broad and you think broad is good, you need to have very good convergent tracking. that's an if interesting type. How about any others? Any apart convergent tracking, what are other like kinda big

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (34:43.96)
So is that an?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (35:04.374)
You have to, you have to.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (35:09.88)
So this is a more, so not in the West, but in the Middle East, in East Asia, in South Asia, Latin America, WhatsApp's a very big thing, right? WhatsApp conversion tracking is actually quite complicated. So let's say you've got WhatsApp on your website. If you click that WhatsApp button, you get redirected to WhatsApp and then someone sends you a message.

Anu A (35:21.614)
Yeah, yeah, okay.

Anu A (35:28.333)
Mm.

Anu A (35:35.491)
Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (35:37.283)
The question is when that person sends you the message, how do you know what's the click ID? So that would be Facebook click ID, GCL ID, et cetera. How do you know which click ID is associated with that message? Right. Without knowing that you can't do any conversion tracking. So what people end up doing is they optimize on that button click, which is the same mistake as optimizing on a phone click without actually doing that yet. And you just feed a bunch of junk.

Anu A (35:49.773)
Mm, mm.

Anu A (36:02.083)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (36:06.794)
And especially on P max because P max is littered with bots or bots do they go on your landing page. They click every single thing possible and all those. Bots are clicking your WhatsApp button and they're not messaging you. And then in the end, you're just feeding that to feeding it to Google. And it's just going to send you more bots.

Anu A (36:22.903)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, oi, oi.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (36:29.678)
So we actually built a solution for this. We've been working on it for the past year. But we built a solution that allows you to know when someone messages you on WhatsApp what's the click ID associated with it. And we can directly upload that back to Google Ads and other ad platforms.

Anu A (36:33.508)
Yeah.

Anu A (36:44.506)
Mm.

Anu A (36:48.058)
Yeah, okay.

Anu A (36:51.927)
Yeah. Sure, sure. Absolutely. Fantastic. Yeah, I think you actually, yeah, it's not necessarily popular in the in in the West, in the UK, but I know we've written about it. Well, it was like ages ago, like on Search Engineer, my brain is like, we've done something about WhatsApp messaging and WhatsApp conversion tracking. So it's you know, in terms of like working with Google Ads, that is a possibility. But how much of it is used, yeah, it's not really quite popular in in the UK.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (37:18.952)
here it's like, so if you go in, like, for example, in Dubai, you go into any business website, they've nearly stripped away their phone number. So people don't call anymore. Everything is done through WhatsApp. Like, for example, if I wanted to get my, my, my tenancy contract here, I do it through WhatsApp. Right. Yeah.

Anu A (37:26.957)
Hmm. Yeah.

Anu A (37:33.187)
No.

The WhatsApp Greg.

Anu A (37:42.545)
wow.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (37:44.567)
So like a lot of, a lot of things, a lot of things go like here happened through WhatsApp and the automated systems they have, are insane. So a lot of businesses go towards WhatsApp because the consumer is looking for WhatsApp when they go to a landing page. So when they go, they're scrolling and they're looking for that WhatsApp widget or button to go message someone directly on WhatsApp. So here it's, it's, it's huge.

Anu A (37:50.475)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu A (38:08.087)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. I guess it's also good for privacy. Like who wants to put their phone numbers, their actual phone numbers, you know, on on any website. So yeah, what's up is allowing you to get that security. Although, yeah, Meta and and Zuckerberg is not usually said synonymous with being good with security. But I think WhatsApp guys are actually doing a great well. Seemingly a good job from what I can tell in terms of, you know, encryption and all that kind of stuff. But

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (38:22.477)
Yeah.

Anu A (38:41.123)
Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Also, before we leave, you definitely have to also touch about the AI, the AI revolution. What do you think are some big mistakes that in terms of how people are approaching AI and how they're using it?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (38:43.596)
Mm-hmm.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (38:57.122)
When you say AI, are you talking about the AI features inside Google Ads or more like people using it to audit accounts and the external tools?

Anu A (39:05.413)
Which which one do you like talking about more? Which which one interests you more?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (39:12.49)
I think it's the...

Honestly, it's the like, so I see a lot of stuff online about people saying I've done the craziest thing to system. can audit like 20 accounts in one minute, et cetera. And then you've got the other side that says that it's virtually impossible because AI doesn't have context, et cetera, et cetera. I think you, there's a middle ground here. This generic system.

Anu A (39:28.633)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu A (39:36.9)
Yeah.

Anu A (39:41.389)
Mm.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (39:43.801)
that you build, like if you just go to cloud code and you give it access to your Google ads and you just say, Hey, order my account. It's going to use all the, because it's trained on all the online generic information, which might be even outdated. Right. And it's not going to give you the best results. You need to, I honestly think you can do it, but you need to build your own internal system where you're able to feed it context. your, your calls with your clients, right.

Anu A (39:55.481)
Yeah. Yeah.

No.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (40:13.75)
What are the changes that you've done on your accounts and why you've done those changes? And with that context coupled with, you know, it's AI power and all that kind of stuff. It can actually uncover some really more nuanced issues. So something like, like, for example, going through, let's say I wanted to review one year's worth of search time reports, right? There might be keywords on paper that I look at them. like, this, this search.

Anu A (40:18.285)
Mm.

Anu A (40:29.753)
Okay.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (40:42.562)
This search term actually looks good. looks valid, but when AI compares it across the whole platform, it might go, look, yes, it's bringing us conversions, but the cost per lead is not worth the amount that we could be paying for other search terms, et cetera. Right. And it can make some more nuance, adjust, assessments, et cetera. That could probably save you a lot of time. The one thing I suggest to not do is don't let AI make the change for you.

Anu A (41:00.91)
Right.

Anu A (41:04.633)
Yeah. Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (41:12.79)
Review the change and do it yourself.

Anu A (41:12.973)
Mm.

Of course. Of course. Yeah. And that's the biggest thing. I think that's the most popular advice for everybody. When people say get that human intervention, it's like they're like, it's not that you shouldn't use AI, but review what AI suggested. Review all of AI's suggestions before you hit that post hit. That's still a human being that should hit the post. That should hit the okay, I'm happy with this, should have seen it. Because AI is not accountable. And saying that so many on so many episodes have said.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (41:31.053)
Yep.

Anu A (41:44.504)
AI is not accountable, so be aware of that. But yeah, but use it. But use it. And I think also, especially with when people are like, I've you know, use Cloud to audit my account or use this thing to audit my accounts. You've got we've got to be really careful about Google using that to be like, well, if you have bad data, it's not our it's not as if you have bad performance, you you you brought AI in, and it could actually have been Google. But because you've brought a third party involved, they're not gonna take they're not gonna take the clack.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (42:09.134)
Yeah. They don't take the country. Yeah. They're just going to throw it on you.

Anu A (42:14.551)
Yeah. So we've got to be really careful then being able to differentiate and know that, okay, the implem things have been implemented, can I dis clearly distinct what was Google and what was there the AI thing that I brought in? And if the AI thing I brought in, whether it it affected anything and if the performance went down, was it the AI thing that I brought in? Was it Google? Like can I definitely say it was Google, if it was Google or not? So we've got to be really careful with how we're really implementing this into our accounts.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (42:43.79)
for sure.

Anu A (42:44.707)
Yeah. Yeah. what do you think? What has been the latest update that has really intrigued you? 'Cause down here because it's there've been just loads, you know, AI Max, there's you know, DSC going away. Well, gone, share.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (42:54.782)
I have one that I love.

I have not heard many people speak about it. Have you heard of... I keep forgetting the name. Journey Aware Bidding, I think that's what they've called it.

Anu A (43:11.461)
Yes, January we're bidding. Yes, that shit came out even like in Google GML, Google Marketing Live earlier earlier this year in May. So you like that one? Tell us more about it. Why do you like it?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (43:18.284)
Yes. Yes. So, so I like it. I like it because, so for example, in, in, in B2B, right. I'll have clients where maybe they'll close a deal once every three months, right. As much as I want to optimize towards converted deals, it's not possible. Like I can't feed one data point every three months. Right. but I want to use that signal because that signal is very important. So with journey aware bidding,

As long. So if you go into the conversions panel now, you can build like a funnel. And if you fill in all four funnels, right. Then in TCPA, Google will allow you to enable journey aware bidding. And what that would allow you to do is I can now optimize towards like, like form fill conversions, but it will still use the qualified lead data and converted lead data as supplementary data points to try and find leads.

that are more likely to convert.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (44:28.002)
I don't think your mic's on mute.

Anu A (44:34.073)
Yes, my mic was on mute. Sorry. So I went because I don't actually know how to use journey away bidding. I'm going to leave it for you to guys to take on what like yeah, so I've said there. So yeah, if you guys, if people are using journey aware bidding, do you agree with Saife there? Please let us know in comments or you know, DM me just to be like, Yeah, yeah, I agree. And if you want to hear more about Journey Aware, you know, Journey Aware bidding, yeah, maybe we can get Saif to tell him more about it. So reach out to him.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (44:37.43)
Hahaha!

Anu A (45:02.199)
On that note, it has been such a great conversation. Thank you, Saif I don't know if I said that I was gonna ask this question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Our last question, a very just fun, kind of PPC, not really PPC, but non non-technical at all question. If your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (45:22.562)
Wow, that's you put me on the spot. What would it be?

Anu A (45:27.139)
Sorry, and you said you read my questions. You said no anything was in there. I should put it in both for people to really see it.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (45:31.284)
No, I'm sure that question wasn't there. I'm sure that... What would it be?

Anu A (45:43.365)
Don't worry, you can think about it. I'll edit any silent moments.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (45:44.93)
We can call it, we can call it once upon a qualified lead.

Anu A (45:51.142)
Once upon a qualified lead. Yeah, okay. And let's let we can tie it to the story that you shared today about, you know, guys, qualified lead. Just digging into what your qualified lead is so important. So, yeah, once upon a qualified lead. I like that. I like that. That has been such such a great conversation. So thank you for joining us today. Something also that I'd like to just ask because you know, PPC Live is about events. Do you go to any events? Are there any PP?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (45:57.206)
Hahaha

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (46:12.514)
Likewise.

Anu A (46:19.897)
Digital marketing events we should be aware of that, you know, they that you'd advise people to attend.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (46:27.5)
Ooh, in Dubai, unfortunately, we don't have too many. We have a lot of marketing events, but not PPC. I'm waiting for one though. We've just entered the MENA Search Awards and they give the announcement on, yeah, on the 17th September, they give the announcement. So if that goes well, then we'll be at the Search Awards for an award, hopefully. Yeah. Thank you.

Anu A (46:33.613)
Mm.

Anu A (46:37.401)
Right?

Anu A (46:42.435)
Okay, amazing.

Anu A (46:52.708)
amazing. Amazing. Well good luck. Yeah, good luck. Good luck for that. I hope you you win that. Do you ever like maybe come around to the UK or do or to the US for any events that go on?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (47:06.422)
No, but I will be in the UK for a month from September to October. So if there are any events during that time, I might show my face.

Anu A (47:12.121)
Okay.

Anu A (47:17.239)
that'll be great. That would be great. Well, yeah, we should definitely hang out when you're there. Andrew Click Train. you and I can go. Andrew is gonna kill me now calling me Andrew Click Train. But yeah, we can all hang out and you know, make an event out of it, which would be fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Saif. Really appreciate you joining the the podcast today, joining on this episode. It's been giving us so many interesting information.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (47:27.831)
Hahaha

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (47:32.738)
Mm-hmm.

Anu A (47:43.299)
I know you're on LinkedIn, but are there any other platforms that, you know, people can find you on?

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (47:48.812)
LinkedIn, personal LinkedIn or Instagram. That's about it.

Anu A (47:53.463)
Okay. Personal LinkedIn or an Instagram. All right. Check that out. I will share the links that of all of both of those in the transcripts. And for now, thank you so much, Saif, for joining us. And yeah, maybe we'll catch up in September. All right. Thanks. Bye.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (47:56.556)
Yeah.

Saif Al-Jabbar Khan (48:06.582)
Awesome. Thank you Anu. Appreciate it. Bye bye.