June 11, 2025 • 38 mins
In this candid episode of PPC Live The Podcast, host Anu sits down with Peter Guba, a Google Ads expert and founder of Profit Mill, to explore the raw reality of PPC failures and how they can become powerful learning experiences.
Peter shares two memorable mistakes from his career - one hilarious, one costly - that shaped him into the marketer he is today.
The main story centres on a perfect storm of PPC disasters: while managing a multi-million dollar enterprise event management client, Peter's Dynamic Search Ads began targeting Christmas trivia content from the client's blog during the holiday season. This led to massive irrelevant traffic, zero qualified leads for over a month, and ultimately the loss of the client - despite Peter successfully fixing the issue using Google's data exclusion functionality.
Key takeaways:
1. Own Your Mistakes Immediately
- Transparency and accountability are crucial when things go wrong
- Clients respect honesty more than excuses or blame-shifting
- The person who made the mistake is often best positioned to prevent it from happening again
2. Smart Bidding Requires Smart Monitoring
- Automation isn't "set it and forget it" - it needs consistent oversight
- Google's algorithm needs substantial data to learn, which can be expensive with broad, irrelevant keywords
- Third-party monitoring tools can help catch issues before clients do
3. The Perfect Storm Elements to Watch For
- Dynamic Search Ads + Smart Bidding + Broad SEO content = potential disaster
- Seasonality can amplify existing targeting issues
- Enterprise clients with razor-thin margins have zero tolerance for extended poor performance
4. Industry Reality Checks
- PPC isn't a magic bullet for fundamental business problems
- Understand your client's organic conversion rates before diving into paid search
- Some industries are simply too competitive for paid search to be profitable
5. Authenticity in Professional Communication
- Real failure stories are more valuable than polished success narratives
- In an AI-driven world, genuine vulnerability becomes increasingly rare and valuable
- "Showing up" consistently matters more than being perfect
Bonus Lesson: Always double-check your presentation slides for competitor logos before sending - it might accidentally help your pitch!
0:00 Introduction to PPC Live The Podcast
00:53 Meet Peter Guba: Google Ads Expert
05:09 Funny F-Up Story: The Logo Mix-Up
08:48 Serious F-Up Story: The Christmas Trivia Disaster
18:39 The Importance of Smart Bidding
19:18 Learning from Mistakes
20:21 Client Communication and Accountability
22:02 Challenges with PPC and Demand Generation
26:50 The Role of Automation in PPC
28:59 The Value of Discussing Failures
32:59 Final Thoughts and Resources
Find Peter on LinkedIn and Profit Mill
Book a coaching call with Anu
PPC Live The Podcast (formerly PPCChat Roundup) features weekly conversations with paid search experts sharing their experiences, challenges, and triumphs in the ever-changing digital marketing landscape.
The next PPC Live event is on June 26th in Leeds, UK
The next PPC Live London event is on July 31st
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Hello and welcome to PPC Live, the podcast formerly known as
PPC Chat Roundup. My name is Anu and I'm the
founder of PPC Live. And if you're used to hearing
from PPC experts about how to ensure that we are keeping up
with the ever changing landscape, don't worry, you are
still in the right place. But instead of relaying what the
PPC experts are saying, I'm going to be be bringing the PPC
(00:28):
experts to you. Every week.
I'm going to be speaking to a different PPC expert about their
biggest F up, but also how they've turned things around,
what their disappointments were,what their surprises were, and
how you know the story of how that F up turned into a big
learning and how it made them the successful marketer that
(00:51):
they are today. Today I have the very delight of
bringing you Peter Guber, who isa great supporter of PPC Live
and he has sponsored previous events.
It's written on our blog, so go check it out.
He's the founder of Profit Mill and he's yeah, Google as
freelancer and all around great freelancer working with clients
of different sizes and ex Googleas well.
(01:14):
So he's got some very interesting stories that he's
dealt with when he's dealing with like multi million
campaigns and even how to ensurethat you don't do an F up while
you're pitching for a client. So some really interesting
there. So I hope you enjoy.
So yeah, let's go speak to Peter.
Hello everyone, and welcome Peter to PPC Live, the podcast.
(01:36):
Thank you for having me. Hi.
Amazing. Hi.
So Peter Guber is such a fantastic support of BBC Live,
he's written on the blog, he's sponsored of our events.
So it's such a delight to speak to him today.
He is a Google ads expert with over a decades of experience and
(01:56):
of marketing experience and digital marketing experience in
general. And during his eight-year tenure
at Google, he managed over 1000 advertising accounts across
nearly every industry vertical from early stage startups to
enterprise clients with multi $1,000,000 budgets.
And yeah, he's going to talk about some of those multi
million, multi $1,000,000 budgetclients very soon.
(02:20):
Currently, Peter runs a profit mill where he helps lead
generating advertisers achieve profitable growth through paid
ads. Interesting facts about Peter,
which we almost talked a bit toomuch about this just before
Rick. Now, the previous life, he
wanted to be a dentist. And right now with all my
dentist issues, like literally, I feel that very strongly.
(02:41):
And he has a strong passion for politics, which I'm like.
I'll give you a moment to sit with that one because anyone
having a passion for politics right now, I hope you're all OK.
I hope you guys are seeing your therapist on a regular basis.
And yeah, so thank you, Peter, for joining the show today.
Thank you. Now it's such a pleasure to
(03:02):
finally catch up with you and have a good excuse to have a
conversation. So you're, I think, famous on
the Internet for me, just acrossthe pond.
I'll chat to people, I'll meet people.
Finally in person. Nobody.
I see all the body and I'm like,I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Yes, I'm on the Internet. I want LinkedIn too much and I'm
(03:24):
always just typing away everything that comes into my
brain. Yeah.
And thankfully a lot of the times a lot of people agree with
me. So it's nice to find my people
online who are like, yeah, that's annoying.
Google is annoying in that way as well.
Or this is definitely how we should be doing this, especially
with recruitment and how people even get jobs as well.
(03:46):
That's the one that that really a post of mine last week really
kicked off on giving people tasks on their first stage
interviews. And I'm like, why?
Why do you do that? What do you have an opinion on
that? Do you ever think it's a good
idea to give someone a task at the first stage of an interview?
Yeah. PPC interviews, I mean, I don't
know what you would, what you would ask as a task in the first
(04:09):
PPC interview like then it'll create this campaign for me.
See how you do it I guess. That has happened for me.
I'm literally like, I feel you're trying to get free work,
especially if you then if that candidate doesn't get through
and you know how like they take their ideas and I'm like stuff
out there. It's a little bit.
That's a little bit. Yeah.
People should be wary about themanyway.
(04:31):
We're not here to talk about theF UPS of the whole of our whole
industry of recruiters or agency.
We're here to talk about our personal experiences, about
Peter's personal experience, about things that have gone
wrong in the past, how we've turned it around because to
forget the title of this podcastis the F UPS that led to
triumphs. We're going to talk about an F
(04:52):
up. We're going to talk about how
Peter turned it round. We're going to talk about the
people who are supportive and what we should all remember in
terms of like making mistakes. There is always a way out as
long as you communicate. Well, without further ado,
Peter, what is the F up that youwant to share with us today?
I heard that you have a funny one and a serious one for us.
So yeah, go ahead, start with each other.
(05:14):
One you want to start with. I think the funny one's really
funny because it has a good ending at the end of the day.
Otherwise it would not have beenthat funny.
But the funny one that I don't think warrants an entire podcast
is that when I was at Google, used to work with the startup
incubator. And I see like, you know, I was
working with advertisers who were like trying to Google ads
for the very first time. And there was a lot of like
(05:35):
leeway with, I think the stakes were not as high, like kind of
working with that type of advertiser for the first time.
You know, they certainly weren'tlike holding you to like really
high expectations. But then I went and I went from
working with the with the startups to working with our
largest travel advertisers, likeour largest airlines, hotel
groups, online travel agencies. I had three accounts the entire
(05:58):
year that I was responsible for.So I was kind of like an
extension of their team. And you know, their budgets were
anywhere from 10 to $20 million a year roughly.
You know, happened to be put on 2 accounts that were actually
competitors of each other. They both had physical locations
and the product called the localcampaigns just kind of came out.
This was I think it probably in around like 2018-2019 and I need
(06:21):
to pitch both of them to try it out and they were aware that we
we had their competitors within our overall book, but I don't
think that they were aware that I was working with both of them.
Yeah. Yeah, and the deck together of
the local campaigns and explaining why they should do
it. And I put the client logo in the
bottom right corner on like every single slide.
I presented it to one of the competitors and they were kind
(06:43):
of like, I think they had a bit of a like a lukewarm response.
And they're like, OK, cool. It's like a Google beta product,
like what it tested out. Yeah, exactly.
We don't know what it's gonna doyet.
Exactly, Yeah. And then the other company that
I worked with, the other competitor like, but the same
deck together, I think I hardly changed anything and I most
probably did not change the one thing that was really important
(07:04):
to change, which was the client logo.
It's like why was that even necessary on the deck, right.
Like well, how much personaliseddid that ad?
And I sent it off and the agencythat worked for the client
responded first and was like, hey, Peter, do you want to check
like the bottom right corner of the slides Winky face.
And even when they sent that e-mail, I still didn't know what
(07:25):
they were talking about. It wasn't until I right that I
saw the competitors logo And this was like early into the
job. So I basically like the stakes
were just so much higher. Like I was just like, no, this
is really important time for us.And I've just sent a competitors
information to them, you know, and I told my boss about it.
(07:45):
I told my account executive, my counterpart.
And they were kind of like, I mean, like they're not going to
fire us over this. Like don't do it again.
But, you know, it'll be fine. And that's kind of funny at the
end of the day is the other client who got the smaller one,
I think of the two got back and was like, yeah, we'll try this
out. We'll try this out.
Like maybe just to our larger competitor, we're going to try
(08:08):
this out. Yeah, yeah.
It's a classic place of like competitors.
They're like, Oh yeah, our competitors doing that.
I want to do it as well for sure, Which I'm not always sure
is the best strategy because you're like, oh, you're not
really going to set yourself apart if you're just doing the
same thing that your competitorsare doing.
But I guess in this stage, like it's about trying a new Google
(08:28):
Ads product anyway, so. Like performance review?
Unlock the campaigns? Check.
So yeah, guys, those who are doing pitches, you're doing
pitching documents, you're pitching clients and pitching
products, watch out for the logos.
Like, no, that's not the big lesson that you want to share
with us. Get on to our second story,
then. People OK, so I was managing
(08:49):
this advertiser that was in the enterprise event management
space and the platform they sold, which is kind of important
in this context here is a platform that allows you to do
quizzes, surveys, attendee management, like everything all
together. So even if you were hosting a
big tech conference or even sortof like a, it could be a like a
(09:12):
quarterly or annual, you know, review for a larger organisation
you might want to platform like this.
And honestly, it was really hardto advertising for them because
the space that they're in is so massive.
Quizzes, surveys, like employee engagement, God, there's so
many, both B to B solutions, butalso like a lot of B to C
(09:35):
solutions. Like think of like SurveyMonkey
type form. These are not their competitors
whatsoever, but they're gonna show up for a lot of that.
Yeah. And then there's a lot of people
who just, I don't know, they're like, I wanna fund quiz trivia
for my first grade class. They're gonna make that type of
search. And of course, exact match or
Google's batch types are not actually what they say they are.
(09:57):
So, yeah, yeah. Let's not let's not talk about
Max time. Right.
So, so it was, it was literally impossible to only show up on
the right keywords. I mean, like, yeah, there there
was not enough time to do the whack a mole of negating every
single keyword that would come up.
But we had a really difficult goal that we've set for the
(10:19):
algorithm that said somebody hadto book a demonstration.
The website itself was very clearly enterprise.
So once you got there, you kind of understood like what the what
was going on. And we use the ad copy to really
they kind of philtre out the type of people we wanted to go
after. And I did have dynamic search
ads turned on as well. That should be another one that
I should add. And they had a, they had like a
(10:39):
big SEO strategy and a huge blog, all sorts of content, some
of which was related to what could have been seen as like AB
to C ish piece of content, like Christmas trivia and things of
that nature. Like, you know, there's also
another important topic, but this is more like consumer
related, but like Juneteenth in America, you know, is an
(11:01):
important holiday, right? So they would kind of write
about that. And what happened was we had
dynamic ads turned on and it wasworking.
We were getting a lot of really interesting keywords.
People would book demos. The client was super happy.
American Thanksgiving hits and we are now on to Christmas and
we start to get some for like Christmas trivia and things of
(11:22):
that nature. And I remember when we initially
reviewed it with the client, it was like, huh, maybe this could
be like some like enterprise search, like, wait, let's keep
it on. You know, we have such as
running and things are just kindof humming it along.
The lead volume started to like kind of slow down.
But whenever I meet with the client, we actually met on a
weekly basis. We'd say could be the
(11:44):
seasonality. You know, that's why things are
slowing down. And then after like a couple of
weeks, the client's like, no, this is way too slow.
Like something's happening. We should really be getting some
leads. Yeah.
And I and I kind of dig into it.I dug into it a little bit, but
not enough. And I was like, I don't know, it
must just be like competition. It could be seasonality.
(12:07):
It wasn't until the client reached out to me and was like,
our hosting provider has just reached out and wants to
increase our prices significantly due to the volume
of traffic that we're getting and all the traffic coming from
Google ads. What is going on?
And that's when I knew somethinghappened and I looked into it
(12:28):
and we started to really rank for all sorts of Christmas
trivia. Yes.
Cheers from DSA from the blog content that they have.
And I don't even know if it was necessarily like spending the
most of the budget on that. And I think that's kind of what
threw me off. But the algorithm was driving so
(12:50):
much traffic from this poor quality or, or some or something
that was not going to convert that it didn't even know what to
do with the right keywords and how to find the right people.
And basically, we just didn't get any leads through all of
December. And I had to use, you know, some
tools to really kind of have thealgorithm forget all of this so
(13:10):
we could talk about that. But in essence, I mean, a total
miss that not going to happen. No lead.
No lead. Yeah.
So would you say the issue was what was the issue that what was
like the mess up really that caused that it was it just not
an efficient use of actually adding negative keywords?
(13:32):
What was the thing that like because that output was you guys
were showing for a lot of keywords that are irrelevant.
That was traffic going through. There are no leads going
through. What's the thing that you did or
didn't do that led to that? I think there's, there's two
parts, right? Like there's, I have to say that
(13:52):
this was at the end of the day, a human error on my part.
Like I, I could have really beenthe monitoring what was going on
and we could, we could talk about also the, what are the
settings that kind of causes. But from the human error
standpoint, I think the part that was really challenging is
this client would get like, I don't know, it felt like 100,000
(14:13):
impressions in a, in a week. Like there's just so many of
these keywords that they would show up for just to get the
right ones and it, and it kind of worked that I like, I just
did not have the bandwidth to goand comb through everything that
was going on. And if I was using one of these,
like all nine tools, they probably would just be shooting
red flags constantly being like it's not getting commercial.
(14:36):
Getting. Yes.
So, yeah, I mean that added a high level that you know, I wish
I'd probably use some sort of like a third party tool just to
kind of monitor that or maybe just make some smart like large
scale decisions. But at a very high level is a
perfect storm, Smart bidding, dynamic search, ads, the clients
(14:57):
creating SEO content that is notnecessarily related to what it
is that they're selling as much seasonality.
Yeah, yeah, it was the wrong time for that kind of me say
like it had happened, let's say during springtime, we wouldn't
have had so many of these Christmas service because during
(15:17):
springtime, what service are people really serving is very
popular. Yep, Yep, I get it.
So yeah, perfect for all those kind of things.
And so was it the client got spotted it or you spotted it
first like a mixture? So I mean, the worst thing is
that the client spotted it, right?
Like you never want to be in that position because at least
(15:38):
if you spot it, you can proactively bring it to the
client and say, Hey, I'm, I'm watching this.
Like, you know, obviously there's things that happen with
a Google ads that are a little outside of our control and we're
there to catch them as. Quickly.
As possible and make those adjustments.
That's why they pay you. But the clock and I really kind
of spotted like, no, this is really not that great.
And we had weekly calls so it's not like we didn't get sort of
(16:00):
check in, but things were going almost so well for a long enough
period at the time that there was no like doubt that something
could be doing going wrong. And it was our first holiday
season together, like our first Christmas season, you know, so,
so it wasn't like, and every time you take on a new client,
there's also you're learning about their industry.
(16:22):
You don't realise? Yeah, this is a potential issue
with the types of keywords that were that show up for them.
Yeah. No, definitely something that I
imagine then becomes part of a process in the future.
Try to really understand what the seasonality is like.
Was there, you said that this was your first season?
Instinctive question I had in myhead, Was there a second season
(16:45):
that you had with them? No, so there wasn't a second
season and they probably, they probably didn't say directly to
me, but I imagine that that's what that's actually what caused
it. That's before I stopped working
with them. I did fix the issue.
So I felt terrible that that this this occurred and, and to
be quite honest, like I do thinkthat I still probably would have
been the best candidate to keep working with them because it's
(17:06):
probably good to work with the person who knows where the
mistakes could occur. I'll make that argument,
absolutely. I agree.
I agree, yeah. Yeah.
So I will say that I basically excluded that entire period.
So I just went absolutely crazy on the data exclusion
functionality within Google Ads and just excluded like the two
(17:28):
months that this was running that it just didn't make any
sense. And the day that I did, it is
literally the day that both the CEO and the head of marketing
got back to me and said, yeah, leads are back.
Like they literally the leaf waslooking like it was before or
whatever. You did that, right?
Yeah. And then that point like they
(17:50):
did not want to work together anymore.
And as as it happens, they they were like had me on account
access for a while and I thoughtI would kind of monitor it for a
little bit too, just to make sure that they were good and on
their way. I think overall the account
itself, like doing OK, you know,it's the larger, larger
challenges with the industry of like it's extremely competitive.
(18:12):
They were probably kind of breaking even with Google Ads.
I don't think it was ever like the best, you know, performing
option for them, but I think that so the client was working
with this person on SEO. I knew this person on SEO was an
extremely big fan of manual bidding.
And I knew the normal they wouldstop working with me, they would
(18:33):
just work with that person to doOK.
And they kind of had it running the way I had it set up, which I
think with their industry, you cannot use manual bidding.
It has to be smart bidding. Like you need a system to sort
through a haystack. Yeah, You know, that's one or
two enterprise leads that are gonna make sense for them
(18:54):
because it was not a big industry.
And I saw that they were gettingleads for like another three
months after I set it up. But I was kind of happy that
things go back to normal. And then I saw eventually that
they switched everything to manual bidding and started
getting 0 leads. Yeah, yeah.
Surprise. Like, yeah, no, I feel you.
(19:17):
I feel you. And This is why I love this is
such a great story. This is such a great story for
people to hear about as to how because you make a mistake
doesn't doesn't mean that you'rethe bad choice for that client.
I love that even like point you made earlier on, it's actually
better, usually better for the client to work with someone who
(19:38):
has the made the mistake and whoknows how to fix it and who
knows that that mistake will probably never happen again.
And depending on how that conversation goes, because look,
we all know the phrase better the devil you know better.
The person who have made the mistake.
I'm trying to grovel and get back the grass is not always
greener on the other side. Absolutely.
(19:58):
It's not about gaining your leads and.
Yeah, and then on the crime side, let's say play a bit of
the advocate for a second because you think to yourself,
OK, yes, you're you're annoyed you've lost a lot of budget
internally wanted to make it seem like if we fix the problem,
the problem was this advertiser who spent too much of our
budget. So what's the solution?
(20:19):
We fire the person who made the mistake.
That's not always the solution. And I think everyone should
learn this, whether it's the TVCadvertisers that are listening
to this now or clients, clients who are listening to this now.
If you're an in house person, the solution is not, it hardly
ever fired the person who made that mistake.
It's hardly ever the solution, especially if the person owns
(20:42):
the mistake and goes, Oh my, you're right.
I've know how to fix it. I will go and fix it.
I'll sort it out for you. It's a person that all of a
sudden becomes very hard to get a hold of.
And it's all oh, it wasn't me. Oh starts to make a whole bunch
of excuses as to what the error was.
That's the kind of person you want to fire.
(21:03):
It's not necessarily about the mistake.
It's about how the person responds to the what the mistake
was. And if the person is taking
accountability and earning it and knowing how to turn it
around, that's that should be a good partnership for the future,
I feel. Well, there was there was some
other funny stuff that I think was hilarious as part of the
story is the CEO was the one whohad a conversation with me and
(21:25):
he goes, OK, yeah, we found somebody keeper and I was like,
OK, cool, sounds good. You know, and I, I.
Yeah, it wasn't one of the mistake.
I don't think I stayed. It's just like out the car costs
now and I'm like what in the carleads as well.
They're good. Yeah, no, I know.
Like I, I, I would say that thisis not a, this is not a story
(21:46):
about a, about a bad climb. I'm very thankful for working
with them. And, and it was lovely to, to
work with both of them. I think it's also, you know,
here's another part of this sortof story.
And I think feel like all these stories have multiple layers.
Let's uncover all the layers of this, of this onion.
How many times the advertisers hire PPC specialists to like fix
(22:08):
the problem of demand for the entire company?
Like, like, oh, we are not growing.
We are training customers and weneed to like fix this hole in
our finances. And I feel like we could do it
with paid ads. And it's almost like I don't
(22:28):
know what the right solution is.I don't know if that is, I mean,
paid ads is really powerful. It's also really costly.
It's it's a high stakes game, You know, is it going to solve
bigger problems? No, absolutely not.
I mean, demand is creating, generating demand is so
integrated with all other aspects of marketing like your
website, this, everything else that you're doing.
(22:50):
So it definitely was helping them out.
You know, I think that they weremaking their money back with in
revenue and real revenue after they would close the deals.
But like the the margin for error was so razor thin.
It was like this needs to work. If it doesn't, I mean we are,
you know this, we're not in a great spot and that's also
(23:12):
really bad. You know that as a PPCI think
specialists to be helped to thattype of situation is like you
are the saviour here. Yeah.
No, I'd rather not. No, not from this.
Not yeah. Again, I will also repeat what
you said like this is not a dig at this client particularly, but
(23:34):
yeah, it's I think advertisers should be wary of clients who
think paid search is the answer when they have not really gone
through a robust marketing overall strategy and looking at
the product looking like if they've actually created a good
interest, a healthy interest. Because one thing that our
(23:55):
friend Jill's asking girls, I always say that is a lesson I've
got from her. I was like, actually you need to
understand your landing page, your websites, conversion rates
before you even start doing paidsearch.
You need to have been able to you need to have known what the
healthy organic traffic is and how that converts and then say,
OK, let's bring let's pay you dopaid such ads to it.
(24:16):
And then you can actually go, OK, maybe paid such ads is
actually good or not good. But you cannot know that really
well until you know the landing page is pure or daily traffic
high conversion rate for it. So, yeah, when clients have not
really done that after the analysis is to overall what's
creating the healthy demand for the brand itself, the product
(24:39):
itself. Yeah, you put a lot of a lot on
paid search shoulders and it yeah, it's not worth it.
This is not supposed to be a lot.
We could talk so much about thisand thanks, Peter.
This has been that has been sucha great topic to talk about.
Our questions are still on the topic itself.
What if someone is going throughthis same kind of issue right
(25:00):
now? What is your advice for them?
They've just, a client has just phoned up and said, Oh my God,
we've had so much traffic. Leads are not great.
And and you know, I'm not even sure what the problem is until
you kind of said it. What?
What's your advice to someone like that?
My policy is always honesty, so just own your mistakes.
(25:22):
Obviously you need to dig into what happened, but but when you
do find out what it is that caused this, you need to own
your mistake. If you do not, and if you're not
transparent about what it is that occurred.
And I think there can be a gut reaction to be like, Oh no, it
wasn't, it wasn't me, it was this, it was that blah, blah,
(25:42):
blah. Then I think that sews a tonne
of doubt into, yeah, you know, the client as to are you going
to catch this mistake in the future?
Yeah. Was it really that right?
Like, so I think that with the right client and with the right
partner, they'll say, OK, great,this was a good learning
experience. You'll learn a lot, right?
(26:03):
And I now feel more confident that you're not gonna stake in
the future. And that is just important
knowing that they are gonna do abetter job in the future.
Absolutely. And did this change anything for
you in terms of your process on working with?
Because unfortunately that client decided no, this is the
(26:24):
last time you're going to be allowed to make the mistake.
But did it inform how you do other things and how you work
with other clients or similar tothe data?
Yeah. So I actually I don't in terms
of client work like I keep in consistent communication with my
clients at all times. So all my clients we meet on a
weekly basis, I'm available by Slack.
(26:46):
So it wasn't a lack of communication, a lack of set of
eyes on the account. So there wasn't that much that I
felt like I learned from that perspective.
But I feel like I really got a hard lesson about how Google's
algorithm works. So Google's automated bidding is
at the at the end of the day needs to get like a good sample
(27:07):
size of traffic for any sort of search or category of it before
it says, yeah, search to go after or this is bad search to
go after. Yeah, but did it convert into
the leads or not that we wanted?And if that search category is
massive, it is going to need a lot of time, a lot of budget to
(27:30):
hit that minimum viable or that minimal sample size that it's
looking for. I don't know what that is.
Is that a percent of the search?Is that 10% of the search
traffic? Whatever it is to to feel, to
create that confidence that it knows what it's supposed to do.
And when you get a massive category, it's going to spend
indefinitely. And especially if you have like
a smaller budget like our, I think our budget was like 5-6
(27:53):
grand a month and it just kept spending on it and just never
figured out should it not keep spinning on it?
Should it keep spinning on it? And that won't have you got to
smart bidding where I said no, this is where smart bidding does
not work perfectly. Yeah.
And you need to make a mention cuz it's not just gonna figure
it out on its own. Absolutely, yeah.
(28:14):
So, yeah, Smart Bidding, have your eyes on it.
And it's what I do like to tell people about automation.
Don't just set it and forget it.Make sure you're putting those
daily cheques. Are there any tools that you
feel like you would have helped with this as well?
You know what, I have not explored this enough, but
obviously there's awesome tools like Optio and many of the other
(28:36):
ones out there. They get a little pricey
frankly. So you need to get a really good
value out of that. And I think they can can go up
pretty quickly when you have a lot of accounts saved.
Yeah, Yeah, one of those would have been, would have been I
think great for this particular account.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I also speak to our guests about
(29:01):
this is such AI think a brave thing that my guests are doing
and I'm really grateful already to every single person who's
like, how's the mess up? I did and this is how it I
turned around. This is why I learned and this
is how it made me a better marketer.
Do we talk enough, you feel about failures and should we
talk more about it? Based on what I read on
(29:23):
LinkedIn, we don't talk about failures at all.
I don't see any. Here, No, it's like I can't.
I can't. There's too much of this.
Like here's how I changed the world.
Let me tell you how in the sevenstep process and I'm like, I
can't read this anymore. I want to, you know, feel
depressed, I guess about am I doing enough?
(29:44):
I should just go on LinkedIn andread about people's great
successes online. But no, I actually think about
this a lot because obviously in the world of AI, anybody can
write our call. And and there's so many of these
people who I think are like LinkedIn influencers that have
now come up with their own like SAS product.
That's like, here's my platform for creating viral LinkedIn
(30:08):
posts, right? And it's got like a certain
script in there. It's probably like a ChatGPT
rapper and starting to sound thesame.
And I think about the fact that if you can talk about your fuck
ups and your failures and the face UPS are actually really
hard to say to people. Yeah.
And that's gonna be one of the last things that are gonna be
(30:29):
authentic and real in the world of AI because people don't
actually want to do these things.
Even this conversation, right? Like it's not totally
comfortable for me to share thisstory, but it is way more
interesting than like I am the best and I did all this.
So I think, yeah, I think that we don't we don't say this
enough. And I think that that this will
be the the Super powerful peoplewho can be vulnerable and which
(30:54):
is like built building in public, right.
That's what we that's what we call it now.
But some people are waiting moreextreme about that.
Adam Robinson talks about his like financials and firing
people and all that stuff. And we're just like all like
tuned in like it's a reality TV show because it's like really
unauthentic. So I think that yeah, it's.
We're hoping that this is going to be the PPC version of this
(31:16):
like PC reality show. We want to hear that each
other's human. And I love that you put that
aspect of life. Yeah.
AI is helping people to be that whole like have such a polished
purse kind of thing. And actually it's removing
authenticity from it. I just say that's one of like
our big issues with AI. And are there any others that
come to mind? I.
(31:39):
Think so the thing that I think about that, but I don't know how
this is going to change. But so when when these like we
see all these posts on LinkedIn and on social media and there's
all these like universal truths about how people like to consume
their information, right? Like we love narratives.
(32:00):
I guess it's different like archetypes or story archetypes
that have existed for like centuries.
And that's how we like Disney stories, right?
Like there's always like the follow up the hero and the hero
rises up, right? Like, but if we all start using
those archetypes in the content because like we don't need to be
(32:22):
good writers anymore, we could just add ChatGPT and be like,
use one of the common archetypesthat people like to use to
consume information. Is that going to create a new
archetype? Is there going to be a different
type of format for information that we're going to crave?
I think that's going to be so different from what everybody
else knows that we're going to throw, you know, the playbook
out of, like, how we've written narrative forever.
(32:45):
Yeah, I think about that. Like, what?
I don't know, like, and, you know, maybe people will be super
creative. That's original.
But I think that that's becoming, you know, really,
really tough. Interesting, Peter, this has
been such a great like over 1/2 an hour.
I tell people it's going to be less than half an hour.
But when you when I've got a good guest on this show, I'm not
(33:08):
going to hold them back. I'm going to let them say all
that we need to say. We didn't even ask all the
questions. Maybe pizza is going to have to
come back for a Part 2 of this so you might see him again and
we'll ask him more questions about, you know, the F up and
ways that we can learn from it. But before you go, I'm going to
ask you what I ask all my guests.
A nice, fun and non AI, non marketing, non PPC question.
(33:31):
If your career were a movie, what would be the title?
My career was a movie was eithertitle.
I feel like you're gonna have tohelp me find the right title for
it. But I really do love this quote.
And I forget who said this again, but that half of the work
is just about showing up. So the title can be showing up.
(33:54):
Showing up, this doesn't have tobe a real movie.
Why did I think that that was the case?
I was like, that's a really hardquestion.
Amazing. And Peter, you definitely embody
that. Like every time that I've done
like a last minute, oh God, Peter, I need you to show up for
this or help me with this. You 100% show up.
So that one I feel is very fitting.
(34:14):
Awesome of you. So honestly, thank you so much
for that fantastic chat and yeah, hope, hope to see you
again on the on the podcast sometime.
Soon likewise likewise. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Peter, for sharing that very honest and
transparent experience from those two stories.
The one that was a hilarious mistake of let's call it a
(34:36):
hilarious stake of putting like a competitors logo.
I was presenting a solution to another client to competitors
client. So yeah, look out for those kind
of things when you're writing all those putting all those
presentations. I know it's a lot of hard work
where attention to detail will win or lose a client.
So yeah. And it was just so great to hear
those stories that Peter gave him, that experience that he
(34:58):
gave with that second client. And even though how he lost, he
might have lost the client, although the agency might have
lost that client, but there was still a big learning and look at
that. Even though he lost the client
and the client decided they weregoing to go in a different
direction with a different paid tech expert.
Yeah, performance did not do as well.
Don't ever to advertisers, don'tbe too disheartened when you
(35:19):
feel like you've made a mistake.And then a few weeks later the
client goes, oh, yeah, we no longer want to work with you.
That's not necessarily the end of the world.
That's not necessarily a big failure.
It's as long as as Peter did, you were able to really turn
things around and fix things andbring leads in because honestly,
the person who has actually madethe a mistake on an account,
(35:40):
they're going to be the one thatworks twice as hard.
So that's not just a message foradvertisers, but also for
clients and brands who are out there being annoyed that their
pay search expert has made a mistake.
They are the ones now they are going to do everything they can
to continue to win your trust and to do going hard and ensure
that they're not another mistakes make mistake happen.
(36:02):
So yeah, I think those are the ones that you should really keep
keeping your back pocket becausethey're the ones that really
will try to win as hard for you as you would for yourself.
One question I forgot to ask Peter when we were chatting was
asking him where we could find him.
Yeah, you can find him on LinkedIn.
That's Peter Guber, last name Guba.
We'll also find him on his fantastic website.
(36:23):
That's Prophet Mill dot IO. So that's PROFITMILL dot IO.
So yeah, go check him out and check out the fantastic
feedback. He's got it from past clients
and the model that he uses and just he's able to bring so many
years of experience. Whether you're a small brand or
a big brand, he can definitely help you out.
(36:46):
And for all the information on the full transcript of this
fantastic chat, please go to podcast dot PBC dot live.
You'll get all the full details of the fantastic story that
Peter just shared. Of course, we can't leave you
without giving you some update about PPC Live and what's going
on. We've got 2 events coming up for
you in both June and July. We're going to be in Leeds in
(37:07):
June. We're going to be back in London
celebrating 3 years of PPC Live in July.
So make sure you go get your tickets for that.
If you go to ppclive.eventbrite.com, you'll
be able to get tickets to eitherof those events.
We hope to see you one of them Before I leave you.
I'd love to share that. I've also got coaching services
that I've started paid search coaching and you can book on an
(37:30):
hourly basis if you go to the marketing anode.com just to help
you guys reignite that passion for paid search to give you that
confidence that you are on the right path, especially with all
the changes that we're seeing, all the objects that we're
seeing. I get to see them first hand,
whether I like it or not. It's my job.
So I can help you give you that insight to ensure that you are
on the right path of what you'retrying to test for your client,
(37:52):
for your brand, or even how to question the agencies on what
they're doing. I'd love to support with that as
well. So you have to go to the
marketingannual.com. You'll be able to find more
details about that. And yeah, look forward to
bringing you more stories from PP for experts and more efforts
and triumphs next week. Thank you.
Bye.
Hello and welcome to PPC Live, the podcast formerly known as
PPC Chat Roundup. My name is Anu and I'm the
founder of PPC Live. And if you're used to hearing
from PPC experts about how to ensure that we are keeping up
with the ever changing landscape, don't worry, you are
still in the right place. But instead of relaying what the
PPC experts are saying, I'm going to be be bringing the PPC
(00:28):
experts to you. Every week.
I'm going to be speaking to a different PPC expert about their
biggest F up, but also how they've turned things around,
what their disappointments were,what their surprises were, and
how you know the story of how that F up turned into a big
learning and how it made them the successful marketer that
(00:51):
they are today. Today I have the very delight of
bringing you Peter Guber, who isa great supporter of PPC Live
and he has sponsored previous events.
It's written on our blog, so go check it out.
He's the founder of Profit Mill and he's yeah, Google as
freelancer and all around great freelancer working with clients
of different sizes and ex Googleas well.
(01:14):
So he's got some very interesting stories that he's
dealt with when he's dealing with like multi million
campaigns and even how to ensurethat you don't do an F up while
you're pitching for a client. So some really interesting
there. So I hope you enjoy.
So yeah, let's go speak to Peter.
Hello everyone, and welcome Peter to PPC Live, the podcast.
(01:36):
Thank you for having me. Hi.
Amazing. Hi.
So Peter Guber is such a fantastic support of BBC Live,
he's written on the blog, he's sponsored of our events.
So it's such a delight to speak to him today.
He is a Google ads expert with over a decades of experience and
(01:56):
of marketing experience and digital marketing experience in
general. And during his eight-year tenure
at Google, he managed over 1000 advertising accounts across
nearly every industry vertical from early stage startups to
enterprise clients with multi $1,000,000 budgets.
And yeah, he's going to talk about some of those multi
million, multi $1,000,000 budgetclients very soon.
(02:20):
Currently, Peter runs a profit mill where he helps lead
generating advertisers achieve profitable growth through paid
ads. Interesting facts about Peter,
which we almost talked a bit toomuch about this just before
Rick. Now, the previous life, he
wanted to be a dentist. And right now with all my
dentist issues, like literally, I feel that very strongly.
(02:41):
And he has a strong passion for politics, which I'm like.
I'll give you a moment to sit with that one because anyone
having a passion for politics right now, I hope you're all OK.
I hope you guys are seeing your therapist on a regular basis.
And yeah, so thank you, Peter, for joining the show today.
Thank you. Now it's such a pleasure to
(03:02):
finally catch up with you and have a good excuse to have a
conversation. So you're, I think, famous on
the Internet for me, just acrossthe pond.
I'll chat to people, I'll meet people.
Finally in person. Nobody.
I see all the body and I'm like,I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Yes, I'm on the Internet. I want LinkedIn too much and I'm
(03:24):
always just typing away everything that comes into my
brain. Yeah.
And thankfully a lot of the times a lot of people agree with
me. So it's nice to find my people
online who are like, yeah, that's annoying.
Google is annoying in that way as well.
Or this is definitely how we should be doing this, especially
with recruitment and how people even get jobs as well.
(03:46):
That's the one that that really a post of mine last week really
kicked off on giving people tasks on their first stage
interviews. And I'm like, why?
Why do you do that? What do you have an opinion on
that? Do you ever think it's a good
idea to give someone a task at the first stage of an interview?
Yeah. PPC interviews, I mean, I don't
know what you would, what you would ask as a task in the first
(04:09):
PPC interview like then it'll create this campaign for me.
See how you do it I guess. That has happened for me.
I'm literally like, I feel you're trying to get free work,
especially if you then if that candidate doesn't get through
and you know how like they take their ideas and I'm like stuff
out there. It's a little bit.
That's a little bit. Yeah.
People should be wary about themanyway.
(04:31):
We're not here to talk about theF UPS of the whole of our whole
industry of recruiters or agency.
We're here to talk about our personal experiences, about
Peter's personal experience, about things that have gone
wrong in the past, how we've turned it around because to
forget the title of this podcastis the F UPS that led to
triumphs. We're going to talk about an F
(04:52):
up. We're going to talk about how
Peter turned it round. We're going to talk about the
people who are supportive and what we should all remember in
terms of like making mistakes. There is always a way out as
long as you communicate. Well, without further ado,
Peter, what is the F up that youwant to share with us today?
I heard that you have a funny one and a serious one for us.
So yeah, go ahead, start with each other.
(05:14):
One you want to start with. I think the funny one's really
funny because it has a good ending at the end of the day.
Otherwise it would not have beenthat funny.
But the funny one that I don't think warrants an entire podcast
is that when I was at Google, used to work with the startup
incubator. And I see like, you know, I was
working with advertisers who were like trying to Google ads
for the very first time. And there was a lot of like
(05:35):
leeway with, I think the stakes were not as high, like kind of
working with that type of advertiser for the first time.
You know, they certainly weren'tlike holding you to like really
high expectations. But then I went and I went from
working with the with the startups to working with our
largest travel advertisers, likeour largest airlines, hotel
groups, online travel agencies. I had three accounts the entire
(05:58):
year that I was responsible for.So I was kind of like an
extension of their team. And you know, their budgets were
anywhere from 10 to $20 million a year roughly.
You know, happened to be put on 2 accounts that were actually
competitors of each other. They both had physical locations
and the product called the localcampaigns just kind of came out.
This was I think it probably in around like 2018-2019 and I need
(06:21):
to pitch both of them to try it out and they were aware that we
we had their competitors within our overall book, but I don't
think that they were aware that I was working with both of them.
Yeah. Yeah, and the deck together of
the local campaigns and explaining why they should do
it. And I put the client logo in the
bottom right corner on like every single slide.
I presented it to one of the competitors and they were kind
(06:43):
of like, I think they had a bit of a like a lukewarm response.
And they're like, OK, cool. It's like a Google beta product,
like what it tested out. Yeah, exactly.
We don't know what it's gonna doyet.
Exactly, Yeah. And then the other company that
I worked with, the other competitor like, but the same
deck together, I think I hardly changed anything and I most
probably did not change the one thing that was really important
(07:04):
to change, which was the client logo.
It's like why was that even necessary on the deck, right.
Like well, how much personaliseddid that ad?
And I sent it off and the agencythat worked for the client
responded first and was like, hey, Peter, do you want to check
like the bottom right corner of the slides Winky face.
And even when they sent that e-mail, I still didn't know what
(07:25):
they were talking about. It wasn't until I right that I
saw the competitors logo And this was like early into the
job. So I basically like the stakes
were just so much higher. Like I was just like, no, this
is really important time for us.And I've just sent a competitors
information to them, you know, and I told my boss about it.
(07:45):
I told my account executive, my counterpart.
And they were kind of like, I mean, like they're not going to
fire us over this. Like don't do it again.
But, you know, it'll be fine. And that's kind of funny at the
end of the day is the other client who got the smaller one,
I think of the two got back and was like, yeah, we'll try this
out. We'll try this out.
Like maybe just to our larger competitor, we're going to try
(08:08):
this out. Yeah, yeah.
It's a classic place of like competitors.
They're like, Oh yeah, our competitors doing that.
I want to do it as well for sure, Which I'm not always sure
is the best strategy because you're like, oh, you're not
really going to set yourself apart if you're just doing the
same thing that your competitorsare doing.
But I guess in this stage, like it's about trying a new Google
(08:28):
Ads product anyway, so. Like performance review?
Unlock the campaigns? Check.
So yeah, guys, those who are doing pitches, you're doing
pitching documents, you're pitching clients and pitching
products, watch out for the logos.
Like, no, that's not the big lesson that you want to share
with us. Get on to our second story,
then. People OK, so I was managing
(08:49):
this advertiser that was in the enterprise event management
space and the platform they sold, which is kind of important
in this context here is a platform that allows you to do
quizzes, surveys, attendee management, like everything all
together. So even if you were hosting a
big tech conference or even sortof like a, it could be a like a
(09:12):
quarterly or annual, you know, review for a larger organisation
you might want to platform like this.
And honestly, it was really hardto advertising for them because
the space that they're in is so massive.
Quizzes, surveys, like employee engagement, God, there's so
many, both B to B solutions, butalso like a lot of B to C
(09:35):
solutions. Like think of like SurveyMonkey
type form. These are not their competitors
whatsoever, but they're gonna show up for a lot of that.
Yeah. And then there's a lot of people
who just, I don't know, they're like, I wanna fund quiz trivia
for my first grade class. They're gonna make that type of
search. And of course, exact match or
Google's batch types are not actually what they say they are.
(09:57):
So, yeah, yeah. Let's not let's not talk about
Max time. Right.
So, so it was, it was literally impossible to only show up on
the right keywords. I mean, like, yeah, there there
was not enough time to do the whack a mole of negating every
single keyword that would come up.
But we had a really difficult goal that we've set for the
(10:19):
algorithm that said somebody hadto book a demonstration.
The website itself was very clearly enterprise.
So once you got there, you kind of understood like what the what
was going on. And we use the ad copy to really
they kind of philtre out the type of people we wanted to go
after. And I did have dynamic search
ads turned on as well. That should be another one that
I should add. And they had a, they had like a
(10:39):
big SEO strategy and a huge blog, all sorts of content, some
of which was related to what could have been seen as like AB
to C ish piece of content, like Christmas trivia and things of
that nature. Like, you know, there's also
another important topic, but this is more like consumer
related, but like Juneteenth in America, you know, is an
(11:01):
important holiday, right? So they would kind of write
about that. And what happened was we had
dynamic ads turned on and it wasworking.
We were getting a lot of really interesting keywords.
People would book demos. The client was super happy.
American Thanksgiving hits and we are now on to Christmas and
we start to get some for like Christmas trivia and things of
(11:22):
that nature. And I remember when we initially
reviewed it with the client, it was like, huh, maybe this could
be like some like enterprise search, like, wait, let's keep
it on. You know, we have such as
running and things are just kindof humming it along.
The lead volume started to like kind of slow down.
But whenever I meet with the client, we actually met on a
weekly basis. We'd say could be the
(11:44):
seasonality. You know, that's why things are
slowing down. And then after like a couple of
weeks, the client's like, no, this is way too slow.
Like something's happening. We should really be getting some
leads. Yeah.
And I and I kind of dig into it.I dug into it a little bit, but
not enough. And I was like, I don't know, it
must just be like competition. It could be seasonality.
(12:07):
It wasn't until the client reached out to me and was like,
our hosting provider has just reached out and wants to
increase our prices significantly due to the volume
of traffic that we're getting and all the traffic coming from
Google ads. What is going on?
And that's when I knew somethinghappened and I looked into it
(12:28):
and we started to really rank for all sorts of Christmas
trivia. Yes.
Cheers from DSA from the blog content that they have.
And I don't even know if it was necessarily like spending the
most of the budget on that. And I think that's kind of what
threw me off. But the algorithm was driving so
(12:50):
much traffic from this poor quality or, or some or something
that was not going to convert that it didn't even know what to
do with the right keywords and how to find the right people.
And basically, we just didn't get any leads through all of
December. And I had to use, you know, some
tools to really kind of have thealgorithm forget all of this so
(13:10):
we could talk about that. But in essence, I mean, a total
miss that not going to happen. No lead.
No lead. Yeah.
So would you say the issue was what was the issue that what was
like the mess up really that caused that it was it just not
an efficient use of actually adding negative keywords?
(13:32):
What was the thing that like because that output was you guys
were showing for a lot of keywords that are irrelevant.
That was traffic going through. There are no leads going
through. What's the thing that you did or
didn't do that led to that? I think there's, there's two
parts, right? Like there's, I have to say that
(13:52):
this was at the end of the day, a human error on my part.
Like I, I could have really beenthe monitoring what was going on
and we could, we could talk about also the, what are the
settings that kind of causes. But from the human error
standpoint, I think the part that was really challenging is
this client would get like, I don't know, it felt like 100,000
(14:13):
impressions in a, in a week. Like there's just so many of
these keywords that they would show up for just to get the
right ones and it, and it kind of worked that I like, I just
did not have the bandwidth to goand comb through everything that
was going on. And if I was using one of these,
like all nine tools, they probably would just be shooting
red flags constantly being like it's not getting commercial.
(14:36):
Getting. Yes.
So, yeah, I mean that added a high level that you know, I wish
I'd probably use some sort of like a third party tool just to
kind of monitor that or maybe just make some smart like large
scale decisions. But at a very high level is a
perfect storm, Smart bidding, dynamic search, ads, the clients
(14:57):
creating SEO content that is notnecessarily related to what it
is that they're selling as much seasonality.
Yeah, yeah, it was the wrong time for that kind of me say
like it had happened, let's say during springtime, we wouldn't
have had so many of these Christmas service because during
(15:17):
springtime, what service are people really serving is very
popular. Yep, Yep, I get it.
So yeah, perfect for all those kind of things.
And so was it the client got spotted it or you spotted it
first like a mixture? So I mean, the worst thing is
that the client spotted it, right?
Like you never want to be in that position because at least
(15:38):
if you spot it, you can proactively bring it to the
client and say, Hey, I'm, I'm watching this.
Like, you know, obviously there's things that happen with
a Google ads that are a little outside of our control and we're
there to catch them as. Quickly.
As possible and make those adjustments.
That's why they pay you. But the clock and I really kind
of spotted like, no, this is really not that great.
And we had weekly calls so it's not like we didn't get sort of
(16:00):
check in, but things were going almost so well for a long enough
period at the time that there was no like doubt that something
could be doing going wrong. And it was our first holiday
season together, like our first Christmas season, you know, so,
so it wasn't like, and every time you take on a new client,
there's also you're learning about their industry.
(16:22):
You don't realise? Yeah, this is a potential issue
with the types of keywords that were that show up for them.
Yeah. No, definitely something that I
imagine then becomes part of a process in the future.
Try to really understand what the seasonality is like.
Was there, you said that this was your first season?
Instinctive question I had in myhead, Was there a second season
(16:45):
that you had with them? No, so there wasn't a second
season and they probably, they probably didn't say directly to
me, but I imagine that that's what that's actually what caused
it. That's before I stopped working
with them. I did fix the issue.
So I felt terrible that that this this occurred and, and to
be quite honest, like I do thinkthat I still probably would have
been the best candidate to keep working with them because it's
(17:06):
probably good to work with the person who knows where the
mistakes could occur. I'll make that argument,
absolutely. I agree.
I agree, yeah. Yeah.
So I will say that I basically excluded that entire period.
So I just went absolutely crazy on the data exclusion
functionality within Google Ads and just excluded like the two
(17:28):
months that this was running that it just didn't make any
sense. And the day that I did, it is
literally the day that both the CEO and the head of marketing
got back to me and said, yeah, leads are back.
Like they literally the leaf waslooking like it was before or
whatever. You did that, right?
Yeah. And then that point like they
(17:50):
did not want to work together anymore.
And as as it happens, they they were like had me on account
access for a while and I thoughtI would kind of monitor it for a
little bit too, just to make sure that they were good and on
their way. I think overall the account
itself, like doing OK, you know,it's the larger, larger
challenges with the industry of like it's extremely competitive.
(18:12):
They were probably kind of breaking even with Google Ads.
I don't think it was ever like the best, you know, performing
option for them, but I think that so the client was working
with this person on SEO. I knew this person on SEO was an
extremely big fan of manual bidding.
And I knew the normal they wouldstop working with me, they would
(18:33):
just work with that person to doOK.
And they kind of had it running the way I had it set up, which I
think with their industry, you cannot use manual bidding.
It has to be smart bidding. Like you need a system to sort
through a haystack. Yeah, You know, that's one or
two enterprise leads that are gonna make sense for them
(18:54):
because it was not a big industry.
And I saw that they were gettingleads for like another three
months after I set it up. But I was kind of happy that
things go back to normal. And then I saw eventually that
they switched everything to manual bidding and started
getting 0 leads. Yeah, yeah.
Surprise. Like, yeah, no, I feel you.
(19:17):
I feel you. And This is why I love this is
such a great story. This is such a great story for
people to hear about as to how because you make a mistake
doesn't doesn't mean that you'rethe bad choice for that client.
I love that even like point you made earlier on, it's actually
better, usually better for the client to work with someone who
(19:38):
has the made the mistake and whoknows how to fix it and who
knows that that mistake will probably never happen again.
And depending on how that conversation goes, because look,
we all know the phrase better the devil you know better.
The person who have made the mistake.
I'm trying to grovel and get back the grass is not always
greener on the other side. Absolutely.
(19:58):
It's not about gaining your leads and.
Yeah, and then on the crime side, let's say play a bit of
the advocate for a second because you think to yourself,
OK, yes, you're you're annoyed you've lost a lot of budget
internally wanted to make it seem like if we fix the problem,
the problem was this advertiser who spent too much of our
budget. So what's the solution?
(20:19):
We fire the person who made the mistake.
That's not always the solution. And I think everyone should
learn this, whether it's the TVCadvertisers that are listening
to this now or clients, clients who are listening to this now.
If you're an in house person, the solution is not, it hardly
ever fired the person who made that mistake.
It's hardly ever the solution, especially if the person owns
(20:42):
the mistake and goes, Oh my, you're right.
I've know how to fix it. I will go and fix it.
I'll sort it out for you. It's a person that all of a
sudden becomes very hard to get a hold of.
And it's all oh, it wasn't me. Oh starts to make a whole bunch
of excuses as to what the error was.
That's the kind of person you want to fire.
(21:03):
It's not necessarily about the mistake.
It's about how the person responds to the what the mistake
was. And if the person is taking
accountability and earning it and knowing how to turn it
around, that's that should be a good partnership for the future,
I feel. Well, there was there was some
other funny stuff that I think was hilarious as part of the
story is the CEO was the one whohad a conversation with me and
(21:25):
he goes, OK, yeah, we found somebody keeper and I was like,
OK, cool, sounds good. You know, and I, I.
Yeah, it wasn't one of the mistake.
I don't think I stayed. It's just like out the car costs
now and I'm like what in the carleads as well.
They're good. Yeah, no, I know.
Like I, I, I would say that thisis not a, this is not a story
(21:46):
about a, about a bad climb. I'm very thankful for working
with them. And, and it was lovely to, to
work with both of them. I think it's also, you know,
here's another part of this sortof story.
And I think feel like all these stories have multiple layers.
Let's uncover all the layers of this, of this onion.
How many times the advertisers hire PPC specialists to like fix
(22:08):
the problem of demand for the entire company?
Like, like, oh, we are not growing.
We are training customers and weneed to like fix this hole in
our finances. And I feel like we could do it
with paid ads. And it's almost like I don't
(22:28):
know what the right solution is.I don't know if that is, I mean,
paid ads is really powerful. It's also really costly.
It's it's a high stakes game, You know, is it going to solve
bigger problems? No, absolutely not.
I mean, demand is creating, generating demand is so
integrated with all other aspects of marketing like your
website, this, everything else that you're doing.
(22:50):
So it definitely was helping them out.
You know, I think that they weremaking their money back with in
revenue and real revenue after they would close the deals.
But like the the margin for error was so razor thin.
It was like this needs to work. If it doesn't, I mean we are,
you know this, we're not in a great spot and that's also
(23:12):
really bad. You know that as a PPCI think
specialists to be helped to thattype of situation is like you
are the saviour here. Yeah.
No, I'd rather not. No, not from this.
Not yeah. Again, I will also repeat what
you said like this is not a dig at this client particularly, but
(23:34):
yeah, it's I think advertisers should be wary of clients who
think paid search is the answer when they have not really gone
through a robust marketing overall strategy and looking at
the product looking like if they've actually created a good
interest, a healthy interest. Because one thing that our
(23:55):
friend Jill's asking girls, I always say that is a lesson I've
got from her. I was like, actually you need to
understand your landing page, your websites, conversion rates
before you even start doing paidsearch.
You need to have been able to you need to have known what the
healthy organic traffic is and how that converts and then say,
OK, let's bring let's pay you dopaid such ads to it.
(24:16):
And then you can actually go, OK, maybe paid such ads is
actually good or not good. But you cannot know that really
well until you know the landing page is pure or daily traffic
high conversion rate for it. So, yeah, when clients have not
really done that after the analysis is to overall what's
creating the healthy demand for the brand itself, the product
(24:39):
itself. Yeah, you put a lot of a lot on
paid search shoulders and it yeah, it's not worth it.
This is not supposed to be a lot.
We could talk so much about thisand thanks, Peter.
This has been that has been sucha great topic to talk about.
Our questions are still on the topic itself.
What if someone is going throughthis same kind of issue right
(25:00):
now? What is your advice for them?
They've just, a client has just phoned up and said, Oh my God,
we've had so much traffic. Leads are not great.
And and you know, I'm not even sure what the problem is until
you kind of said it. What?
What's your advice to someone like that?
My policy is always honesty, so just own your mistakes.
(25:22):
Obviously you need to dig into what happened, but but when you
do find out what it is that caused this, you need to own
your mistake. If you do not, and if you're not
transparent about what it is that occurred.
And I think there can be a gut reaction to be like, Oh no, it
wasn't, it wasn't me, it was this, it was that blah, blah,
(25:42):
blah. Then I think that sews a tonne
of doubt into, yeah, you know, the client as to are you going
to catch this mistake in the future?
Yeah. Was it really that right?
Like, so I think that with the right client and with the right
partner, they'll say, OK, great,this was a good learning
experience. You'll learn a lot, right?
(26:03):
And I now feel more confident that you're not gonna stake in
the future. And that is just important
knowing that they are gonna do abetter job in the future.
Absolutely. And did this change anything for
you in terms of your process on working with?
Because unfortunately that client decided no, this is the
(26:24):
last time you're going to be allowed to make the mistake.
But did it inform how you do other things and how you work
with other clients or similar tothe data?
Yeah. So I actually I don't in terms
of client work like I keep in consistent communication with my
clients at all times. So all my clients we meet on a
weekly basis, I'm available by Slack.
(26:46):
So it wasn't a lack of communication, a lack of set of
eyes on the account. So there wasn't that much that I
felt like I learned from that perspective.
But I feel like I really got a hard lesson about how Google's
algorithm works. So Google's automated bidding is
at the at the end of the day needs to get like a good sample
(27:07):
size of traffic for any sort of search or category of it before
it says, yeah, search to go after or this is bad search to
go after. Yeah, but did it convert into
the leads or not that we wanted?And if that search category is
massive, it is going to need a lot of time, a lot of budget to
(27:30):
hit that minimum viable or that minimal sample size that it's
looking for. I don't know what that is.
Is that a percent of the search?Is that 10% of the search
traffic? Whatever it is to to feel, to
create that confidence that it knows what it's supposed to do.
And when you get a massive category, it's going to spend
indefinitely. And especially if you have like
a smaller budget like our, I think our budget was like 5-6
(27:53):
grand a month and it just kept spending on it and just never
figured out should it not keep spinning on it?
Should it keep spinning on it? And that won't have you got to
smart bidding where I said no, this is where smart bidding does
not work perfectly. Yeah.
And you need to make a mention cuz it's not just gonna figure
it out on its own. Absolutely, yeah.
(28:14):
So, yeah, Smart Bidding, have your eyes on it.
And it's what I do like to tell people about automation.
Don't just set it and forget it.Make sure you're putting those
daily cheques. Are there any tools that you
feel like you would have helped with this as well?
You know what, I have not explored this enough, but
obviously there's awesome tools like Optio and many of the other
(28:36):
ones out there. They get a little pricey
frankly. So you need to get a really good
value out of that. And I think they can can go up
pretty quickly when you have a lot of accounts saved.
Yeah, Yeah, one of those would have been, would have been I
think great for this particular account.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I also speak to our guests about
(29:01):
this is such AI think a brave thing that my guests are doing
and I'm really grateful already to every single person who's
like, how's the mess up? I did and this is how it I
turned around. This is why I learned and this
is how it made me a better marketer.
Do we talk enough, you feel about failures and should we
talk more about it? Based on what I read on
(29:23):
LinkedIn, we don't talk about failures at all.
I don't see any. Here, No, it's like I can't.
I can't. There's too much of this.
Like here's how I changed the world.
Let me tell you how in the sevenstep process and I'm like, I
can't read this anymore. I want to, you know, feel
depressed, I guess about am I doing enough?
(29:44):
I should just go on LinkedIn andread about people's great
successes online. But no, I actually think about
this a lot because obviously in the world of AI, anybody can
write our call. And and there's so many of these
people who I think are like LinkedIn influencers that have
now come up with their own like SAS product.
That's like, here's my platform for creating viral LinkedIn
(30:08):
posts, right? And it's got like a certain
script in there. It's probably like a ChatGPT
rapper and starting to sound thesame.
And I think about the fact that if you can talk about your fuck
ups and your failures and the face UPS are actually really
hard to say to people. Yeah.
And that's gonna be one of the last things that are gonna be
(30:29):
authentic and real in the world of AI because people don't
actually want to do these things.
Even this conversation, right? Like it's not totally
comfortable for me to share thisstory, but it is way more
interesting than like I am the best and I did all this.
So I think, yeah, I think that we don't we don't say this
enough. And I think that that this will
be the the Super powerful peoplewho can be vulnerable and which
(30:54):
is like built building in public, right.
That's what we that's what we call it now.
But some people are waiting moreextreme about that.
Adam Robinson talks about his like financials and firing
people and all that stuff. And we're just like all like
tuned in like it's a reality TV show because it's like really
unauthentic. So I think that yeah, it's.
We're hoping that this is going to be the PPC version of this
(31:16):
like PC reality show. We want to hear that each
other's human. And I love that you put that
aspect of life. Yeah.
AI is helping people to be that whole like have such a polished
purse kind of thing. And actually it's removing
authenticity from it. I just say that's one of like
our big issues with AI. And are there any others that
come to mind? I.
(31:39):
Think so the thing that I think about that, but I don't know how
this is going to change. But so when when these like we
see all these posts on LinkedIn and on social media and there's
all these like universal truths about how people like to consume
their information, right? Like we love narratives.
(32:00):
I guess it's different like archetypes or story archetypes
that have existed for like centuries.
And that's how we like Disney stories, right?
Like there's always like the follow up the hero and the hero
rises up, right? Like, but if we all start using
those archetypes in the content because like we don't need to be
(32:22):
good writers anymore, we could just add ChatGPT and be like,
use one of the common archetypesthat people like to use to
consume information. Is that going to create a new
archetype? Is there going to be a different
type of format for information that we're going to crave?
I think that's going to be so different from what everybody
else knows that we're going to throw, you know, the playbook
out of, like, how we've written narrative forever.
(32:45):
Yeah, I think about that. Like, what?
I don't know, like, and, you know, maybe people will be super
creative. That's original.
But I think that that's becoming, you know, really,
really tough. Interesting, Peter, this has
been such a great like over 1/2 an hour.
I tell people it's going to be less than half an hour.
But when you when I've got a good guest on this show, I'm not
(33:08):
going to hold them back. I'm going to let them say all
that we need to say. We didn't even ask all the
questions. Maybe pizza is going to have to
come back for a Part 2 of this so you might see him again and
we'll ask him more questions about, you know, the F up and
ways that we can learn from it. But before you go, I'm going to
ask you what I ask all my guests.
A nice, fun and non AI, non marketing, non PPC question.
(33:31):
If your career were a movie, what would be the title?
My career was a movie was eithertitle.
I feel like you're gonna have tohelp me find the right title for
it. But I really do love this quote.
And I forget who said this again, but that half of the work
is just about showing up. So the title can be showing up.
(33:54):
Showing up, this doesn't have tobe a real movie.
Why did I think that that was the case?
I was like, that's a really hardquestion.
Amazing. And Peter, you definitely embody
that. Like every time that I've done
like a last minute, oh God, Peter, I need you to show up for
this or help me with this. You 100% show up.
So that one I feel is very fitting.
(34:14):
Awesome of you. So honestly, thank you so much
for that fantastic chat and yeah, hope, hope to see you
again on the on the podcast sometime.
Soon likewise likewise. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Peter, for sharing that very honest and
transparent experience from those two stories.
The one that was a hilarious mistake of let's call it a
(34:36):
hilarious stake of putting like a competitors logo.
I was presenting a solution to another client to competitors
client. So yeah, look out for those kind
of things when you're writing all those putting all those
presentations. I know it's a lot of hard work
where attention to detail will win or lose a client.
So yeah. And it was just so great to hear
those stories that Peter gave him, that experience that he
(34:58):
gave with that second client. And even though how he lost, he
might have lost the client, although the agency might have
lost that client, but there was still a big learning and look at
that. Even though he lost the client
and the client decided they weregoing to go in a different
direction with a different paid tech expert.
Yeah, performance did not do as well.
Don't ever to advertisers, don'tbe too disheartened when you
(35:19):
feel like you've made a mistake.And then a few weeks later the
client goes, oh, yeah, we no longer want to work with you.
That's not necessarily the end of the world.
That's not necessarily a big failure.
It's as long as as Peter did, you were able to really turn
things around and fix things andbring leads in because honestly,
the person who has actually madethe a mistake on an account,
(35:40):
they're going to be the one thatworks twice as hard.
So that's not just a message foradvertisers, but also for
clients and brands who are out there being annoyed that their
pay search expert has made a mistake.
They are the ones now they are going to do everything they can
to continue to win your trust and to do going hard and ensure
that they're not another mistakes make mistake happen.
(36:02):
So yeah, I think those are the ones that you should really keep
keeping your back pocket becausethey're the ones that really
will try to win as hard for you as you would for yourself.
One question I forgot to ask Peter when we were chatting was
asking him where we could find him.
Yeah, you can find him on LinkedIn.
That's Peter Guber, last name Guba.
We'll also find him on his fantastic website.
(36:23):
That's Prophet Mill dot IO. So that's PROFITMILL dot IO.
So yeah, go check him out and check out the fantastic
feedback. He's got it from past clients
and the model that he uses and just he's able to bring so many
years of experience. Whether you're a small brand or
a big brand, he can definitely help you out.
(36:46):
And for all the information on the full transcript of this
fantastic chat, please go to podcast dot PBC dot live.
You'll get all the full details of the fantastic story that
Peter just shared. Of course, we can't leave you
without giving you some update about PPC Live and what's going
on. We've got 2 events coming up for
you in both June and July. We're going to be in Leeds in
(37:07):
June. We're going to be back in London
celebrating 3 years of PPC Live in July.
So make sure you go get your tickets for that.
If you go to ppclive.eventbrite.com, you'll
be able to get tickets to eitherof those events.
We hope to see you one of them Before I leave you.
I'd love to share that. I've also got coaching services
that I've started paid search coaching and you can book on an
(37:30):
hourly basis if you go to the marketing anode.com just to help
you guys reignite that passion for paid search to give you that
confidence that you are on the right path, especially with all
the changes that we're seeing, all the objects that we're
seeing. I get to see them first hand,
whether I like it or not. It's my job.
So I can help you give you that insight to ensure that you are
on the right path of what you'retrying to test for your client,
(37:52):
for your brand, or even how to question the agencies on what
they're doing. I'd love to support with that as
well. So you have to go to the
marketingannual.com. You'll be able to find more
details about that. And yeah, look forward to
bringing you more stories from PP for experts and more efforts
and triumphs next week. Thank you.
Bye.
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