June 26, 2025 • 28 mins
Host Anu interviews digital marketing executive Dii Pooler (11+ years experience) about the dark side of personal branding in PPC. Dii shares a vulnerable story about a corporate client consultation where she was put on the spot with complex YouTube and CTV questions outside her speciality area of paid search and lead generation.
Despite her expertise, not having an immediate, polished answer shifted the room's energy, leading to passive-aggressive comments and microaggressions. The episode examines how building a strong personal brand can lead to unrealistic expectations and pressure to be perfect in every situation.
- Building authority creates higher expectations that aren't always realistic
- "The criticism will shake the leaves, but it won't shake the roots" - Anchor your brand in purpose, values, and truth, not just money
- Be extremely intentional about client types and industries you specialise in
- Remember, consultations are two-way interviews - you're evaluating them too
For Freelancers/Agency Owners: Choose your environment wisely - with growth-minded people, owning mistakes leads to evolution; with accountability-avoidant people, honesty makes you the villain
For Managers: Ask "What happens when this person makes a mistake?" Respond with compassion and growth opportunities, not blame
- Don't resort all ad copy to AI - keep human language and connection
- Don't replace PPC specialists with AI audits - human insight remains crucial for changing market conditions
The PPC community talks about mistakes but often lacks compassion - we need more understanding and guidance, less snark and memes
Key TakeawaysPersonal Branding Reality CheckManaging MistakesAI in PPC WarningsIndustry Insight
0:00 Welcome to PPC Live: The Podcast
00:47 Introducing Today's Guest: Dii Pooler
01:43 Dii Pooler's Background and Expertise
03:02 Understanding the Waterfall Framework
06:04 Dii's Personal Story: When Personal Branding Goes Wrong
15:48 Lessons Learned and Advice for Others
22:27 The Role of AI in PPC and Common Missteps
25:06 Final Thoughts and Farewell
Find Dii on LinkedIn
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 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 the PPC
Chat Roundup. My name is Anu, the founder of
PPC Live. And if you're used to hearing
advice from PPC experts about how to ensure that you're
keeping up with the ever changing landscape of our
industry, don't worry, you're still in the right place.
But instead of relaying what thePPC experts are saying, I'm
(00:27):
bringing the PPC experts to you.Every week I'm going to be
speaking to a different PPC experts about their biggest
effort, but also how they turn things around, what was
surprising, what was disappointing, and literally
just what changed in terms of how they do things and make them
a better marketer. Today I'm going to be speaking
(00:48):
to the fantastic D Pula. If you're APPC Live community
follower, you would have seen her name, Popov, on different
articles. And she's, yeah, just such a
great contributor in terms of leaving checklists of how to use
performance mags and optimising landing pages and just things
that will always be effective ifyou're a paid search manager.
(01:08):
Today she's going to be sharing a story about an experience that
she had in a meeting early in her career and how the
expectations she actually quite said she would have said, she
said herself weren't actually quite met.
And yeah, how that caused a little bit of a rumble in a
client meeting. So I hope you enjoy.
Let's take it away today. Hello Dee, welcome to PPC Live,
(01:37):
the podcast. Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.My absolute pleasure.
Yeah. I'm so excited, guys, to have
Dee on the podcast today. She's such a great contributor.
I know I say this of several of my guests, but that's where I'm
going to get my guests from the people who have contributed so
much to PPC Live. So she's another one that legit.
(01:58):
She gives us amazing checklists,amazing how to's and I think I
literally did this was even likea last minute ask of D and I was
like, Dee, do you want to get onthe podcast?
Sure, why not? It's just so positive and can do
always ready to dig in and help.And no surprising at all in when
we actually when I say a little bit about what she's done.
(02:20):
Dee has been in the industry forabout 11 years now.
She's a digital marketing executive and she started up her
own company and she does like project management, especially
specialising in paid search and she builds high performance
Google, Facebook and Bing Ads that deliver an impressive
return on ad spends, especially when your budgets on the six
(02:41):
figure range. She plans the marketing
campaigns to collaborate and in a collaborative and delegated
way and cross departmentally, especially supervising and
ensuring marketing projects are completed and on on time and
within budget. And she sees projects from start
to finish within a waterfall andagile framework.
(03:02):
Now we were when we're going through that descriptions, I did
warn Dee that I want her to explain what she means by a
waterfall framework because I think it is a very cool and very
unique way of doing project management that I think is very
effective. So please go and Dee explain
what framework is. Thank you.
Thank you so much for that introduction.
(03:22):
That was wonderful. So in project management there
is a waterfall method and with waterfall it's a step by step
kind of chronological methodology.
So you do one thing, you finish it and then you move on to the
next. So you don't go jumping ahead to
other projects and it's no circling back.
So is what I would say is the waterfall method.
(03:43):
Go in your clients for example, you would start off with that
consultation. You would learn what they need
and their requirements. You put everything out there
upfront. Then you design their campaigns
or their strategies, you do yourimplementation and then from
there you either build their campaigns, you optimise it,
etcetera. So it's a waterfall framework.
(04:03):
Fantastic. Sounds great.
I'm going into some interesting facts about Dee.
She's a philanthropist. She volunteers a lot for our
community. She's also a dog mom, an amateur
boxer and I have won like 75. So don't look at her as thinking
that, oh, she's so demure and lovely and gentle.
She can kick ass and I love thatabout her.
(04:25):
Is there any parts of that you want to share with more with us?
No, you did a great job. I'm really big on philanthropy.
I am a listener for an app called Low Key.
I write letters to Hospice. I also do some charitable work
where I help pack boxes and Phoenix at the church.
So I'm really big on giving backto the community because the
(04:47):
community has always poured intome, specifically the PPC
community. So it's been great.
Amazing. You have definitely given into
the PPC community as much, probably much more than you do
when received. And you have no idea.
It's people like you that makes me go.
This is how I know our PPC community is going to keep on
thriving because we just got into, because I've been in this
(05:09):
in the industry for close to 20 years and very much at the
beginning, we're all like learning, not knowing really
what the best practises was. Google.
It seemed a bit simple. Then things got a bit
complicated, but there was stilla bit of gatekeeping.
And then in the past few years or so, especially during the
pandemic years, I think we then just realised this whole
gatekeeping is not the way to dothings.
(05:31):
And everybody was just open and sharing all their knowledge,
first on Twitter, then a lot on LinkedIn.
So yeah, you're, you're definitely one of us in terms of
the people who love sharing in this industry.
It's really great. So anyway, without further ado,
we've kept our listeners waitinglong enough.
We want to get into the thick ofthe stories about an F up you've
(05:52):
experienced, as the broadcast titled is.
It's all about the F ups and thetriumphs that we face and how
we've turned those F ups into triumphs.
D What effort do you want to share with us today?
Yeah, I want to talk about how personal branding can go wrong.
So I have a story and and pertains to that.
(06:13):
Sure, go ahead. Awesome.
So I would like to just give youa quick back story.
So I built a personal brand, I built my authority, but what I
didn't realise was that I was also building expectations that
I couldn't always meet. So yeah, I have a strong
personal brand that got me in the room, but it also gave me a
(06:33):
higher bar to, to meet higher expectations.
And it put me in a place where Icould never make a mistake.
I can never miss. I can never say I don't know.
So I had a particular experiencewhere I had a corporate client
schedule a consultation with me with layered questions on
YouTube, CTV and multi attribution just on the fly.
(06:57):
A little bit about me, I do havesome experience, 10 years or so
experienced in paid search. I specialise in Legion.
So when I didn't have this polished answer in .05 seconds,
the energy in the room just flipped like it went stable.
OK. And now here comes like the
(07:18):
passive aggressive jokes and themicroaggressions.
It's like Comedy Central, which is hard to smile through because
I give back to the PPC communityas much as I can.
And it's not my 9:00 to 5:00. This is my 24 hours because I'm
really passionate and I love what I do in the industry and
(07:39):
because I genuinely love what I do it.
It's hard to stomach, but I did.I stomach did.
And when you're in a private consultation, you're set up to
answer these questions. And if you have a slip up, it's
almost like people are setting you up to go, aha, you're not
that smart. Yeah, I can do that too,
(08:00):
especially if they are also at the same place as me.
Maybe they have five to seven years of experience in the PPC
industry and they need an expertto come in and speak on a
matter. Or if they need an expert to go
in and help optimise a campaign,do an audit, and they haven't
also built their personal brand,they look at you as a threat
(08:21):
almost because you've taken the opportunity to do it, but they
haven't. And so they have this like
egotistical power move that theythink one.
But consultation, even in a consultation, we're not talking
interviews. Yeah, that's what my experience
has been. Thank you for sharing that.
That is very. I imagine that's not something
(08:43):
that we'd we'd want to admit because, yeah, we put this
version of ourselves out there and sometimes you just don't
know what people are going to read into it.
So to try and tease that story out a little bit more, you know,
what kind of way the comments that were coming at you.
And how did you then, in what state did you leave that
(09:05):
meeting? Did you leave that meeting?
OK. You had you did end up answering
the questions or we had to be like, sorry, I have to come back
to this at another time? Yeah, a great question.
So one of the comments that stung was I was saying that in
Google Ads in particular, there's no right way.
Even if there are best practises, everything works
(09:27):
different for every single industry, even if it's nation
like everything works different for every specific type of
campaign. I can say Search Partner Network
doesn't work at all, but I have seen it work for a very specific
type of client. That's just the truth.
And they said exactly, I agree with you and that's why I don't
believe anyone should write a playbook.
(09:49):
It was a very smooth, underhanded comet because I have
a playbook. I have a full 800 page that I
wrote recently. This isn't something that I
wrote six years ago. But even then, when you're
writing a book in this industry,it's forever changing.
You always have to give some alterations to it.
(10:09):
But my reaction? So honestly, I reacted pretty
well. I was OK with it, but internally
I got really defensive and I hadto take time to really process
my thoughts and my inner dialogue because what my inner
dialogue is saying is OK. I've spent years managing
accounts and helping clients scale, mentoring peers within my
(10:32):
space, building my brand while being 10 toes down with my
family. So when it comes to my passion
and love for PPCI, Stand on business.
Yeah, when someone acts like onemistake or one imperfect moment
outweighs the bloodshed tears that you put into your work, it
fits a little different. Especially being a woman in a
(10:54):
male dominated field. A woman of colour in a male
dominated field. You fumble once and suddenly
you're the butt of the joke. I think for me, I had to stop
confusing other people's projections.
That's theirs to sort out. My personal brand.
(11:15):
When it comes to your personal brand, the pressure doesn't come
from you. It comes from people's idea of
who they think you should be. Yeah, I'm not.
Damn it, Mom. I'm quirky.
I'm a little socially awkward. That's really me.
It's not who you think I should be.
Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely.
And who, who was like your support in that moment?
(11:40):
Is, was there anyone that you felt that you talked through in
that moment and what was the advice to you in that moment?
Yeah. So a few people, this is going
to be interesting. First, I'm very like intuitive
and I know how to talk myself down from situations like this.
I spoke to my dad and honestly this community be having the
opportunity to speak to you to speak to our peers about what's
(12:05):
happening in our industry with APC branding.
So even telling you has been very therapeutic and West London
and I'm hoping that my experience helps give people
some type of perspective. So, yeah, absolutely this kind
of very much in this sense of situations all about
perspectives. Was there any, I would say,
(12:27):
opinions from people that surprised you, would you say as
to how you should have approved the situation or did it all make
sense? And in terms of the pathway
where then you like they even fly from your dad or your or
any, any of the colleagues in our field that were like, oh,
didn't think that's what I should do in that situation and
(12:48):
really gave you food for thoughtin terms of approaching
situations like this. I don't think there was.
OK. What I thought was interesting
in terms of reactions is that even though I was the butt of
the joke in that moment, they still publicly supported me in
terms of still following me on LinkedIn, still interacting with
me. So I found that to be
(13:09):
interesting in terms of their response.
In terms of my peers in the industry, I'm speaking about
clients in particular, but my peers have always been
supported. I've never had any issues with
the PPC industry in terms of my peers and my colleagues and
things of that nature. But it's clients that I'm trying
to give the warning that they have this expectation because I
(13:31):
think there are other marketers who come in and they oversell
and they over promise and they say, hey, I can give you X
amount of leads at this cost perlead.
I can give you this customer acquisition number consistently.
It's, it's a little bit jarring because when clients do meet
(13:51):
someone who's going to be completely honest and
transparent, they're like, I want to go to the the person who
is promising the most and movingthe quickest and who claims that
they're going to give me rainbows and yeah, whatever.
Yeah, unlike looking back, was there like even let's say we
(14:12):
look back to before the meeting,was there any signs that you
feel that maybe you missed that you don't think back of all?
I should have picked on the factthat this is this kind of client
is this way or this kind of meeting is going to go this way
because of XYZ that you feel like now you're going to look
out for those things in future meetings.
(14:34):
Yeah, there were a couple of signs.
So one is being completely honest about my background and
what I specialise in. I have a lot of speciality and a
lot of specific industry, so real estate, automotive,
etcetera. And this client was corporate
and the people who I was workingwith, they worked at a lot of
like Fang type of companies and I don't have that experience.
(14:57):
I work solely for about 7 to 8 years of my professional career
in agency. So it was a different type of
meeting because we speak a different language.
They speak, there's corporate politics and I was the shiny new
thing that they wanted to try out and see if I could
(15:17):
potentially mesh with. So there was that.
Also, they did let me know aheadof time that YouTube was a main
focus. Also performance Max, but with
performance Max. That's my thing.
I love performance Max. I love all of the updates.
I'm a I'm a realist, but I'm a Google optimist because that's
what I. Do.
And but YouTube, it's not my strongest suit and so I knew
(15:41):
that going in, but I still wanted to entertain the
conversation. Yeah, absolutely.
Someone is going through this right now, let's say.
What advice would you give them in terms of, because especially
if we go back to when you, how you started the story, it's
almost not necessarily that you'd misrepresented yourself or
(16:04):
it's more like they put you on apedestal that you didn't
necessarily have put yourself on.
And it made you sound like you weren't as experienced as you
might have wanted to seem in theroom or, or, or they make you
sound as experienced as you are in yourself.
Would you, would you have done anything differently?
And what's the big advice that you then give to anyone going
(16:25):
through that same the same situation?
Yeah. My main advice is you definitely
want to build your personal brand and give back to the
community like the everyone knows that's important.
But the main advice when building your personal brand
specifically in PPC is you have to anchor yourself.
And I would say building your brand for a purpose that's
(16:45):
bigger than you, whether that's family, your legacy, your truth,
your values, and needs to have depth.
It can't just be about money if that is the case, because with
building your personal brand, criticism is going to come.
It will come. That's whatever you do.
And so when you're anchored, thecriticism will shake the leaves,
(17:07):
but it won't shake the roots of who you are.
The criticism will shake the leaves where it wouldn't shake
the roots. That's going to be a clip we're
going to share to people. That is such a great thing.
That is such a great thing to remember.
Know who you are. Know, know, know what you're
doing it for. Don't all.
Don't be all about chasing the money.
(17:27):
Yeah, I love those tips. So that kind of meeting, did it
change anything for you in termsof your process, in terms of
process with clients, what you do before, during, after?
Is there anything specifically that changed for you and how you
do things? Yeah, being extremely
intentional about the types of industries, the types of clients
(17:48):
like just being extra picky because they're being picky too.
When you're going into these consultations with your clients,
they're interviewing you, you'reinterviewing them.
It's the two way street. So just being honest about the
type of work that I want to do and the type of impact that I
want. To make amazing.
That's true. And being able to say, it's not
(18:08):
even about saying, because I've one thing that I've spoken about
with several of the experts on the podcast is about saying yes
or no to certain clients. And it's also OK to even say yes
or no to some industries. There's some industries that
you're like, look, that's not mystrength.
That's not the area I want to do.
And just making that clear, communicating that clear so that
people don't have high expectations of you.
(18:30):
Yeah, just be intentional about what area you want to focus in.
And yeah, go all in those areas.So that's been a very great
conversation about the story. But yeah, I would also like us
to even discuss further more about the industry and the
mistakes that we may see or we may not see.
It's even more so though not seeI would say.
(18:52):
Do you feel that we talk like wetalk about mistakes enough?
And why do you think it's important that we actually talk
about mistakes in the industry? I feel like we do talk about
mistakes quite a bit, but it's not that we're not talking about
it, it's the way we're talking about it.
Like I feel like when you go on Twitter and you go on LinkedIn,
it can be a little bit snarky and very mean.
(19:14):
And hey, let's try to change things up.
And it's not very compassionate.Like this way that you're going
about with your podcast. We need to have more compassion
and understanding and more guidance instead of the snarky
jokes is what I was saying. Yeah, yeah.
So like it is talked about a bit, but we need a bit more
(19:35):
compassion in how we do it. Fantastic.
Is there a Safeway though that we can do it?
So you mentioned this podcast and I promise, guys, I did not
plug that to Dee to dear like indifferent companies.
So you manage teams, you have a team of manager you deal with.
And I can imagine like Virginia staff, what I think is important
(19:59):
that was this is what's been said at several episodes.
I'm not even going to belabour this, that you will make a
mistake at some point in your career.
And it's not about if it went. That's where you learn the most
when you're testing, you're learning and you're learning
from things that have gone wrong.
And so you learn to do better. But would you say is that is, is
that an advice that you can givefrom managers to encourage like
(20:20):
their team to so that they do not feel too scared?
To make that mistake or to open up to communicate about the
mistake of where they've gone wrong so that the fix can come
quicker. Yeah, there's two things.
I want to talk to the managers and I want to talk to
freelancers, agency owners for freelancers and agency owners.
(20:41):
When you own your mistakes around people who value growth,
you get evolution, you evolve. But we are around people who
don't take accountability. They look at your mistakes as an
opportunity. They use that as an opportunity
to paint you as the villain. So with the right people, owning
(21:03):
your SHIT leads to elevation. With the wrong people, it makes
you easier to blame. So ask yourself, now this is to
hiring managers. What happens when this person
makes a mistake, even if they don't own it?
What is your reaction? What is the energy?
How are you supporting them? Are you making them the villain?
(21:24):
Are you blaming them? Or are you looking at
opportunities to fix it, grow and evolve?
So that's the main question. Amazing.
So was that you said that then that's to managers.
So like freelancers, be more intuitive and take a look at
yourself. Go to freelancers, agency owners
when you own your mistakes. Around people who value growth,
(21:47):
you evolve, But around people who avoid accountability, your
honesty makes you the villain. Sam.
Remember who you're around now for the agency owners, and
excuse me, not agency owners, managers, hiring managers,
etcetera. Look at how you are responding
(22:07):
to it. Are you responding to it with
compassion, an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to evolve,
an opportunity to fix something?Or are you getting scared,
frustrated and looking for someone to blame?
Yeah, that's how you can manage mistakes.
Amazing. Absolutely love that.
That is so key now in our era, very much of AII never want
(22:30):
this. The whole conversation to start
from what's the AI issue? But I'm sure we see a lot of
this and even going specific arethere?
Some. Ways that you feel that you've
seen AI has been used that is used wrongly in terms of or
maybe something that is really very much actually being
misunderstood in terms of how people are using like let's say
(22:53):
P Max campaigns or any other AI functionality that you're like,
people are actually effing that up and you'd like to help set
the record straight here. Yeah, there's two things that
I'm a little bit concerned with.AI is resorting all of your ads
to an AI agency. We don't want to do that.
(23:13):
We don't want all of our ads written by AI.
Like that's the wrong way to go about it.
We needed to be written in humanlanguage so people can relate to
it, because marketing is about connecting with other people in
whatever way that you're meant to.
But the next thing that I get a little bit concerned about, so I
did do a consultation with a company that wanted to hire
(23:33):
someone to help train their AI to perform audit
recommendations. Great.
Cool. I love AII, love that we're
doing that. However, it seems like they're
trying to do that to replace PPCspecialists.
And with everything in life, marketing in particular, life is
ever changing, The economy is changing, the industry is
(23:56):
changing. And trying to resort your PPC
analytics to an AI agent, it's not, it's not a good move
because a lot of things can happen overseas, a lot of things
can happen with tariffs that canaffect how people interact with
your ads. So we have to keep that human
element in mind before we go andtrain an AI agent.
(24:19):
So those are the only thing, thetwo things that I'm a little bit
concerned with AI, but other than that, I'm a proponent of
it, I utilise it. I think we should get with it
instead of trying to make it getlost.
Yeah, yeah. I think this is just a learning
curve that we need to try to understand and not necessarily
use it for everything, but definitely test it out.
(24:39):
Definitely test it as you're almost like your PA.
That helps you organise your thoughts, that helps you
organise what you have in terms of what you've thought
strategically, and then it helpsyou like organise it in a good
way. Dee, this has been such a great
charge. You've given so many great
insights and yeah, this, this isthe length of the podcast.
I just as I used to because I want them to almost like binge
(25:02):
through the episodes and want tobe used to as many as possible.
So we're going to leave the things here.
But before we go, I have anotherquestion, one last question that
is just, no, not BBC related, not marketing relation, and just
something that's fun out there that I ask all my guests before
they leave. If your career were a movie,
what would be the title? It would be the PPC strategist
(25:26):
escaping the matrix. Oh wow, the PPC strategist.
It should be the blanket. OK, like a bit more.
Do you feel like we're in the matrix?
Very spiritual. So I believe reality is very
similar to The Matrix. Yeah, I think with PPC in
particular, you're fighting to be yourself, to stand out, to
(25:49):
help people. You have to go against the grain
a little bit. Yeah, And it's about owning who
you truly are and giving your authentic self to people.
You get eaten by the Matrix, andthen you learn how to escape
from it. And I'm at the point where I'm
owning my own lane. So owning your own lane, love
it. Owning your own lane, I'd say
(26:10):
that could be a good backup title.
Owning your own lane, that couldbe a good another good fee
title. Thank you so much, Dee for this
fantastic chat and for yeah, taking time out of your.
We show a very busy day with allthe fantastic things you do,
whether it's really paid search or your volunteer work.
It's been such a great chatting with you, Sir.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
(26:31):
Thank you so much, Dee, for sharing that very honest and
transparent experience. Remember, if you're if you know
what you're doing and you know what you're talking about and
you're confident in yourself in terms of what you're working on,
you might have your leaves shaken, but the roots will never
be shaken. So the leaves might be shaken,
(26:52):
but the roots might not be shaken.
Go back to the episode to remember exactly what the phrase
was there. But yeah, make sure your roots
are strong. And when your leaves get shaken,
don't worry about that. They just keep moving on and
keep being strong in knowing what you're doing.
For more information about that all that all we've shared on
that episode and yeah, the full transcript, not just in the show
(27:13):
notes, go to podcast dot PPC dotlive.
In terms of PPC Live and our PPCLive events, we've got our July
event coming up in London on the31st, which is our third year
anniversary event. I can't wait to celebrate with
you all. So yes, please get your early
bird tickets. That's happening on July the
31st to just go up to PPC Dot Live to get your tickets before
(27:37):
I leave you. I'm also delighted to share that
I am taking on creating clients and if you book them at hourly
slots, we can have a one to one conversation about how to direct
your career, how to work on a client that you just can't
figure out, or how to even help with managing an agency that
you're working with in house. So yeah, just book a time, go to
(27:58):
themarketingannual.com to get more on that being to book that
some time with me. So yeah, I hope you have enjoyed
the show and I look forward to bringing you more PPCF hubs and
triumphs next week. Bye.
Hello and welcome to PPC Live, the podcast formerly the PPC
Chat Roundup. My name is Anu, the founder of
PPC Live. And if you're used to hearing
advice from PPC experts about how to ensure that you're
keeping up with the ever changing landscape of our
industry, don't worry, you're still in the right place.
But instead of relaying what thePPC experts are saying, I'm
(00:27):
bringing the PPC experts to you.Every week I'm going to be
speaking to a different PPC experts about their biggest
effort, but also how they turn things around, what was
surprising, what was disappointing, and literally
just what changed in terms of how they do things and make them
a better marketer. Today I'm going to be speaking
(00:48):
to the fantastic D Pula. If you're APPC Live community
follower, you would have seen her name, Popov, on different
articles. And she's, yeah, just such a
great contributor in terms of leaving checklists of how to use
performance mags and optimising landing pages and just things
that will always be effective ifyou're a paid search manager.
(01:08):
Today she's going to be sharing a story about an experience that
she had in a meeting early in her career and how the
expectations she actually quite said she would have said, she
said herself weren't actually quite met.
And yeah, how that caused a little bit of a rumble in a
client meeting. So I hope you enjoy.
Let's take it away today. Hello Dee, welcome to PPC Live,
(01:37):
the podcast. Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.My absolute pleasure.
Yeah. I'm so excited, guys, to have
Dee on the podcast today. She's such a great contributor.
I know I say this of several of my guests, but that's where I'm
going to get my guests from the people who have contributed so
much to PPC Live. So she's another one that legit.
(01:58):
She gives us amazing checklists,amazing how to's and I think I
literally did this was even likea last minute ask of D and I was
like, Dee, do you want to get onthe podcast?
Sure, why not? It's just so positive and can do
always ready to dig in and help.And no surprising at all in when
we actually when I say a little bit about what she's done.
(02:20):
Dee has been in the industry forabout 11 years now.
She's a digital marketing executive and she started up her
own company and she does like project management, especially
specialising in paid search and she builds high performance
Google, Facebook and Bing Ads that deliver an impressive
return on ad spends, especially when your budgets on the six
(02:41):
figure range. She plans the marketing
campaigns to collaborate and in a collaborative and delegated
way and cross departmentally, especially supervising and
ensuring marketing projects are completed and on on time and
within budget. And she sees projects from start
to finish within a waterfall andagile framework.
(03:02):
Now we were when we're going through that descriptions, I did
warn Dee that I want her to explain what she means by a
waterfall framework because I think it is a very cool and very
unique way of doing project management that I think is very
effective. So please go and Dee explain
what framework is. Thank you.
Thank you so much for that introduction.
(03:22):
That was wonderful. So in project management there
is a waterfall method and with waterfall it's a step by step
kind of chronological methodology.
So you do one thing, you finish it and then you move on to the
next. So you don't go jumping ahead to
other projects and it's no circling back.
So is what I would say is the waterfall method.
(03:43):
Go in your clients for example, you would start off with that
consultation. You would learn what they need
and their requirements. You put everything out there
upfront. Then you design their campaigns
or their strategies, you do yourimplementation and then from
there you either build their campaigns, you optimise it,
etcetera. So it's a waterfall framework.
(04:03):
Fantastic. Sounds great.
I'm going into some interesting facts about Dee.
She's a philanthropist. She volunteers a lot for our
community. She's also a dog mom, an amateur
boxer and I have won like 75. So don't look at her as thinking
that, oh, she's so demure and lovely and gentle.
She can kick ass and I love thatabout her.
(04:25):
Is there any parts of that you want to share with more with us?
No, you did a great job. I'm really big on philanthropy.
I am a listener for an app called Low Key.
I write letters to Hospice. I also do some charitable work
where I help pack boxes and Phoenix at the church.
So I'm really big on giving backto the community because the
(04:47):
community has always poured intome, specifically the PPC
community. So it's been great.
Amazing. You have definitely given into
the PPC community as much, probably much more than you do
when received. And you have no idea.
It's people like you that makes me go.
This is how I know our PPC community is going to keep on
thriving because we just got into, because I've been in this
(05:09):
in the industry for close to 20 years and very much at the
beginning, we're all like learning, not knowing really
what the best practises was. Google.
It seemed a bit simple. Then things got a bit
complicated, but there was stilla bit of gatekeeping.
And then in the past few years or so, especially during the
pandemic years, I think we then just realised this whole
gatekeeping is not the way to dothings.
(05:31):
And everybody was just open and sharing all their knowledge,
first on Twitter, then a lot on LinkedIn.
So yeah, you're, you're definitely one of us in terms of
the people who love sharing in this industry.
It's really great. So anyway, without further ado,
we've kept our listeners waitinglong enough.
We want to get into the thick ofthe stories about an F up you've
(05:52):
experienced, as the broadcast titled is.
It's all about the F ups and thetriumphs that we face and how
we've turned those F ups into triumphs.
D What effort do you want to share with us today?
Yeah, I want to talk about how personal branding can go wrong.
So I have a story and and pertains to that.
(06:13):
Sure, go ahead. Awesome.
So I would like to just give youa quick back story.
So I built a personal brand, I built my authority, but what I
didn't realise was that I was also building expectations that
I couldn't always meet. So yeah, I have a strong
personal brand that got me in the room, but it also gave me a
(06:33):
higher bar to, to meet higher expectations.
And it put me in a place where Icould never make a mistake.
I can never miss. I can never say I don't know.
So I had a particular experiencewhere I had a corporate client
schedule a consultation with me with layered questions on
YouTube, CTV and multi attribution just on the fly.
(06:57):
A little bit about me, I do havesome experience, 10 years or so
experienced in paid search. I specialise in Legion.
So when I didn't have this polished answer in .05 seconds,
the energy in the room just flipped like it went stable.
OK. And now here comes like the
(07:18):
passive aggressive jokes and themicroaggressions.
It's like Comedy Central, which is hard to smile through because
I give back to the PPC communityas much as I can.
And it's not my 9:00 to 5:00. This is my 24 hours because I'm
really passionate and I love what I do in the industry and
(07:39):
because I genuinely love what I do it.
It's hard to stomach, but I did.I stomach did.
And when you're in a private consultation, you're set up to
answer these questions. And if you have a slip up, it's
almost like people are setting you up to go, aha, you're not
that smart. Yeah, I can do that too,
(08:00):
especially if they are also at the same place as me.
Maybe they have five to seven years of experience in the PPC
industry and they need an expertto come in and speak on a
matter. Or if they need an expert to go
in and help optimise a campaign,do an audit, and they haven't
also built their personal brand,they look at you as a threat
(08:21):
almost because you've taken the opportunity to do it, but they
haven't. And so they have this like
egotistical power move that theythink one.
But consultation, even in a consultation, we're not talking
interviews. Yeah, that's what my experience
has been. Thank you for sharing that.
That is very. I imagine that's not something
(08:43):
that we'd we'd want to admit because, yeah, we put this
version of ourselves out there and sometimes you just don't
know what people are going to read into it.
So to try and tease that story out a little bit more, you know,
what kind of way the comments that were coming at you.
And how did you then, in what state did you leave that
(09:05):
meeting? Did you leave that meeting?
OK. You had you did end up answering
the questions or we had to be like, sorry, I have to come back
to this at another time? Yeah, a great question.
So one of the comments that stung was I was saying that in
Google Ads in particular, there's no right way.
Even if there are best practises, everything works
(09:27):
different for every single industry, even if it's nation
like everything works different for every specific type of
campaign. I can say Search Partner Network
doesn't work at all, but I have seen it work for a very specific
type of client. That's just the truth.
And they said exactly, I agree with you and that's why I don't
believe anyone should write a playbook.
(09:49):
It was a very smooth, underhanded comet because I have
a playbook. I have a full 800 page that I
wrote recently. This isn't something that I
wrote six years ago. But even then, when you're
writing a book in this industry,it's forever changing.
You always have to give some alterations to it.
(10:09):
But my reaction? So honestly, I reacted pretty
well. I was OK with it, but internally
I got really defensive and I hadto take time to really process
my thoughts and my inner dialogue because what my inner
dialogue is saying is OK. I've spent years managing
accounts and helping clients scale, mentoring peers within my
(10:32):
space, building my brand while being 10 toes down with my
family. So when it comes to my passion
and love for PPCI, Stand on business.
Yeah, when someone acts like onemistake or one imperfect moment
outweighs the bloodshed tears that you put into your work, it
fits a little different. Especially being a woman in a
(10:54):
male dominated field. A woman of colour in a male
dominated field. You fumble once and suddenly
you're the butt of the joke. I think for me, I had to stop
confusing other people's projections.
That's theirs to sort out. My personal brand.
(11:15):
When it comes to your personal brand, the pressure doesn't come
from you. It comes from people's idea of
who they think you should be. Yeah, I'm not.
Damn it, Mom. I'm quirky.
I'm a little socially awkward. That's really me.
It's not who you think I should be.
Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely.
And who, who was like your support in that moment?
(11:40):
Is, was there anyone that you felt that you talked through in
that moment and what was the advice to you in that moment?
Yeah. So a few people, this is going
to be interesting. First, I'm very like intuitive
and I know how to talk myself down from situations like this.
I spoke to my dad and honestly this community be having the
opportunity to speak to you to speak to our peers about what's
(12:05):
happening in our industry with APC branding.
So even telling you has been very therapeutic and West London
and I'm hoping that my experience helps give people
some type of perspective. So, yeah, absolutely this kind
of very much in this sense of situations all about
perspectives. Was there any, I would say,
(12:27):
opinions from people that surprised you, would you say as
to how you should have approved the situation or did it all make
sense? And in terms of the pathway
where then you like they even fly from your dad or your or
any, any of the colleagues in our field that were like, oh,
didn't think that's what I should do in that situation and
(12:48):
really gave you food for thoughtin terms of approaching
situations like this. I don't think there was.
OK. What I thought was interesting
in terms of reactions is that even though I was the butt of
the joke in that moment, they still publicly supported me in
terms of still following me on LinkedIn, still interacting with
me. So I found that to be
(13:09):
interesting in terms of their response.
In terms of my peers in the industry, I'm speaking about
clients in particular, but my peers have always been
supported. I've never had any issues with
the PPC industry in terms of my peers and my colleagues and
things of that nature. But it's clients that I'm trying
to give the warning that they have this expectation because I
(13:31):
think there are other marketers who come in and they oversell
and they over promise and they say, hey, I can give you X
amount of leads at this cost perlead.
I can give you this customer acquisition number consistently.
It's, it's a little bit jarring because when clients do meet
(13:51):
someone who's going to be completely honest and
transparent, they're like, I want to go to the the person who
is promising the most and movingthe quickest and who claims that
they're going to give me rainbows and yeah, whatever.
Yeah, unlike looking back, was there like even let's say we
(14:12):
look back to before the meeting,was there any signs that you
feel that maybe you missed that you don't think back of all?
I should have picked on the factthat this is this kind of client
is this way or this kind of meeting is going to go this way
because of XYZ that you feel like now you're going to look
out for those things in future meetings.
(14:34):
Yeah, there were a couple of signs.
So one is being completely honest about my background and
what I specialise in. I have a lot of speciality and a
lot of specific industry, so real estate, automotive,
etcetera. And this client was corporate
and the people who I was workingwith, they worked at a lot of
like Fang type of companies and I don't have that experience.
(14:57):
I work solely for about 7 to 8 years of my professional career
in agency. So it was a different type of
meeting because we speak a different language.
They speak, there's corporate politics and I was the shiny new
thing that they wanted to try out and see if I could
(15:17):
potentially mesh with. So there was that.
Also, they did let me know aheadof time that YouTube was a main
focus. Also performance Max, but with
performance Max. That's my thing.
I love performance Max. I love all of the updates.
I'm a I'm a realist, but I'm a Google optimist because that's
what I. Do.
And but YouTube, it's not my strongest suit and so I knew
(15:41):
that going in, but I still wanted to entertain the
conversation. Yeah, absolutely.
Someone is going through this right now, let's say.
What advice would you give them in terms of, because especially
if we go back to when you, how you started the story, it's
almost not necessarily that you'd misrepresented yourself or
(16:04):
it's more like they put you on apedestal that you didn't
necessarily have put yourself on.
And it made you sound like you weren't as experienced as you
might have wanted to seem in theroom or, or, or they make you
sound as experienced as you are in yourself.
Would you, would you have done anything differently?
And what's the big advice that you then give to anyone going
(16:25):
through that same the same situation?
Yeah. My main advice is you definitely
want to build your personal brand and give back to the
community like the everyone knows that's important.
But the main advice when building your personal brand
specifically in PPC is you have to anchor yourself.
And I would say building your brand for a purpose that's
(16:45):
bigger than you, whether that's family, your legacy, your truth,
your values, and needs to have depth.
It can't just be about money if that is the case, because with
building your personal brand, criticism is going to come.
It will come. That's whatever you do.
And so when you're anchored, thecriticism will shake the leaves,
(17:07):
but it won't shake the roots of who you are.
The criticism will shake the leaves where it wouldn't shake
the roots. That's going to be a clip we're
going to share to people. That is such a great thing.
That is such a great thing to remember.
Know who you are. Know, know, know what you're
doing it for. Don't all.
Don't be all about chasing the money.
(17:27):
Yeah, I love those tips. So that kind of meeting, did it
change anything for you in termsof your process, in terms of
process with clients, what you do before, during, after?
Is there anything specifically that changed for you and how you
do things? Yeah, being extremely
intentional about the types of industries, the types of clients
(17:48):
like just being extra picky because they're being picky too.
When you're going into these consultations with your clients,
they're interviewing you, you'reinterviewing them.
It's the two way street. So just being honest about the
type of work that I want to do and the type of impact that I
want. To make amazing.
That's true. And being able to say, it's not
(18:08):
even about saying, because I've one thing that I've spoken about
with several of the experts on the podcast is about saying yes
or no to certain clients. And it's also OK to even say yes
or no to some industries. There's some industries that
you're like, look, that's not mystrength.
That's not the area I want to do.
And just making that clear, communicating that clear so that
people don't have high expectations of you.
(18:30):
Yeah, just be intentional about what area you want to focus in.
And yeah, go all in those areas.So that's been a very great
conversation about the story. But yeah, I would also like us
to even discuss further more about the industry and the
mistakes that we may see or we may not see.
It's even more so though not seeI would say.
(18:52):
Do you feel that we talk like wetalk about mistakes enough?
And why do you think it's important that we actually talk
about mistakes in the industry? I feel like we do talk about
mistakes quite a bit, but it's not that we're not talking about
it, it's the way we're talking about it.
Like I feel like when you go on Twitter and you go on LinkedIn,
it can be a little bit snarky and very mean.
(19:14):
And hey, let's try to change things up.
And it's not very compassionate.Like this way that you're going
about with your podcast. We need to have more compassion
and understanding and more guidance instead of the snarky
jokes is what I was saying. Yeah, yeah.
So like it is talked about a bit, but we need a bit more
(19:35):
compassion in how we do it. Fantastic.
Is there a Safeway though that we can do it?
So you mentioned this podcast and I promise, guys, I did not
plug that to Dee to dear like indifferent companies.
So you manage teams, you have a team of manager you deal with.
And I can imagine like Virginia staff, what I think is important
(19:59):
that was this is what's been said at several episodes.
I'm not even going to belabour this, that you will make a
mistake at some point in your career.
And it's not about if it went. That's where you learn the most
when you're testing, you're learning and you're learning
from things that have gone wrong.
And so you learn to do better. But would you say is that is, is
that an advice that you can givefrom managers to encourage like
(20:20):
their team to so that they do not feel too scared?
To make that mistake or to open up to communicate about the
mistake of where they've gone wrong so that the fix can come
quicker. Yeah, there's two things.
I want to talk to the managers and I want to talk to
freelancers, agency owners for freelancers and agency owners.
(20:41):
When you own your mistakes around people who value growth,
you get evolution, you evolve. But we are around people who
don't take accountability. They look at your mistakes as an
opportunity. They use that as an opportunity
to paint you as the villain. So with the right people, owning
(21:03):
your SHIT leads to elevation. With the wrong people, it makes
you easier to blame. So ask yourself, now this is to
hiring managers. What happens when this person
makes a mistake, even if they don't own it?
What is your reaction? What is the energy?
How are you supporting them? Are you making them the villain?
(21:24):
Are you blaming them? Or are you looking at
opportunities to fix it, grow and evolve?
So that's the main question. Amazing.
So was that you said that then that's to managers.
So like freelancers, be more intuitive and take a look at
yourself. Go to freelancers, agency owners
when you own your mistakes. Around people who value growth,
(21:47):
you evolve, But around people who avoid accountability, your
honesty makes you the villain. Sam.
Remember who you're around now for the agency owners, and
excuse me, not agency owners, managers, hiring managers,
etcetera. Look at how you are responding
(22:07):
to it. Are you responding to it with
compassion, an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to evolve,
an opportunity to fix something?Or are you getting scared,
frustrated and looking for someone to blame?
Yeah, that's how you can manage mistakes.
Amazing. Absolutely love that.
That is so key now in our era, very much of AII never want
(22:30):
this. The whole conversation to start
from what's the AI issue? But I'm sure we see a lot of
this and even going specific arethere?
Some. Ways that you feel that you've
seen AI has been used that is used wrongly in terms of or
maybe something that is really very much actually being
misunderstood in terms of how people are using like let's say
(22:53):
P Max campaigns or any other AI functionality that you're like,
people are actually effing that up and you'd like to help set
the record straight here. Yeah, there's two things that
I'm a little bit concerned with.AI is resorting all of your ads
to an AI agency. We don't want to do that.
(23:13):
We don't want all of our ads written by AI.
Like that's the wrong way to go about it.
We needed to be written in humanlanguage so people can relate to
it, because marketing is about connecting with other people in
whatever way that you're meant to.
But the next thing that I get a little bit concerned about, so I
did do a consultation with a company that wanted to hire
(23:33):
someone to help train their AI to perform audit
recommendations. Great.
Cool. I love AII, love that we're
doing that. However, it seems like they're
trying to do that to replace PPCspecialists.
And with everything in life, marketing in particular, life is
ever changing, The economy is changing, the industry is
(23:56):
changing. And trying to resort your PPC
analytics to an AI agent, it's not, it's not a good move
because a lot of things can happen overseas, a lot of things
can happen with tariffs that canaffect how people interact with
your ads. So we have to keep that human
element in mind before we go andtrain an AI agent.
(24:19):
So those are the only thing, thetwo things that I'm a little bit
concerned with AI, but other than that, I'm a proponent of
it, I utilise it. I think we should get with it
instead of trying to make it getlost.
Yeah, yeah. I think this is just a learning
curve that we need to try to understand and not necessarily
use it for everything, but definitely test it out.
(24:39):
Definitely test it as you're almost like your PA.
That helps you organise your thoughts, that helps you
organise what you have in terms of what you've thought
strategically, and then it helpsyou like organise it in a good
way. Dee, this has been such a great
charge. You've given so many great
insights and yeah, this, this isthe length of the podcast.
I just as I used to because I want them to almost like binge
(25:02):
through the episodes and want tobe used to as many as possible.
So we're going to leave the things here.
But before we go, I have anotherquestion, one last question that
is just, no, not BBC related, not marketing relation, and just
something that's fun out there that I ask all my guests before
they leave. If your career were a movie,
what would be the title? It would be the PPC strategist
(25:26):
escaping the matrix. Oh wow, the PPC strategist.
It should be the blanket. OK, like a bit more.
Do you feel like we're in the matrix?
Very spiritual. So I believe reality is very
similar to The Matrix. Yeah, I think with PPC in
particular, you're fighting to be yourself, to stand out, to
(25:49):
help people. You have to go against the grain
a little bit. Yeah, And it's about owning who
you truly are and giving your authentic self to people.
You get eaten by the Matrix, andthen you learn how to escape
from it. And I'm at the point where I'm
owning my own lane. So owning your own lane, love
it. Owning your own lane, I'd say
(26:10):
that could be a good backup title.
Owning your own lane, that couldbe a good another good fee
title. Thank you so much, Dee for this
fantastic chat and for yeah, taking time out of your.
We show a very busy day with allthe fantastic things you do,
whether it's really paid search or your volunteer work.
It's been such a great chatting with you, Sir.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
(26:31):
Thank you so much, Dee, for sharing that very honest and
transparent experience. Remember, if you're if you know
what you're doing and you know what you're talking about and
you're confident in yourself in terms of what you're working on,
you might have your leaves shaken, but the roots will never
be shaken. So the leaves might be shaken,
(26:52):
but the roots might not be shaken.
Go back to the episode to remember exactly what the phrase
was there. But yeah, make sure your roots
are strong. And when your leaves get shaken,
don't worry about that. They just keep moving on and
keep being strong in knowing what you're doing.
For more information about that all that all we've shared on
that episode and yeah, the full transcript, not just in the show
(27:13):
notes, go to podcast dot PPC dotlive.
In terms of PPC Live and our PPCLive events, we've got our July
event coming up in London on the31st, which is our third year
anniversary event. I can't wait to celebrate with
you all. So yes, please get your early
bird tickets. That's happening on July the
31st to just go up to PPC Dot Live to get your tickets before
(27:37):
I leave you. I'm also delighted to share that
I am taking on creating clients and if you book them at hourly
slots, we can have a one to one conversation about how to direct
your career, how to work on a client that you just can't
figure out, or how to even help with managing an agency that
you're working with in house. So yeah, just book a time, go to
(27:58):
themarketingannual.com to get more on that being to book that
some time with me. So yeah, I hope you have enjoyed
the show and I look forward to bringing you more PPCF hubs and
triumphs next week. Bye.
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