August 6, 2025 • 35 mins
In this episode of PPC Live The Podcast, formerly known as PPC Chat Roundup, host Anu introduces the podcast's new format where she brings PPC experts to share their insights. This week's guest is Gareth Westhead, a digital director with 18 years of industry experience. Gareth shares his first-hand experience of a major mistake he made early in his career.
He discusses the importance of not working in silos and ensuring that marketing efforts align with sales capabilities to avoid wasteful spending. Gareth emphasizes the need for thorough communication between marketing and sales teams and the value of testing and optimizing campaigns thoughtfully. The episode also explores broader industry insights and the evolving role of AI in PPC. Tune in to learn valuable lessons from Gareth's transparent and honest recounting of his journey.
00:00 Introduction to PPC Live The Podcast
00:37 Meet Gareth Westhead: Industry Veteran
04:34 Gareth's Biggest Mistake and Lessons Learned
07:23 The Importance of Communication Between Marketing and Sales
10:50 Reflecting on Mistakes and Moving Forward
15:01 Key Takeaways and Advice for Marketers
18:19 Celebrate Your Successes
18:54 Interrogating the Brief
20:10 Testing and Experimentation
22:54 Common Mistakes in Paid Media
25:28 The Role of AI in Marketing
29:12 The Future of Keywords
30:42 Fun and Final Thoughts
Find Gareth on LinkedIn
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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.
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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, the founder of
PPC Live. And if you're used to hearing
advice from PPC experts about how to ensure that we are
keeping up with the ever changing landscape, don't worry,
you are in the right place. But instead of relaying what the
(00:24):
PPC experts are saying, I'm bringing the PPC experts to you.
Every week I'm going to be speaking to a different paid
search expert about their biggest F up, but also how
they've turned things around. This week I speak to Gareth W
Head, who is someone that has been in the industry for many
years and like most, will agree that you don't go that far in
(00:47):
being in the industry without making a few Boo boos.
And yeah, this time he shows us a very different side in terms
of mistakes that he's made, and very rightfully so, because he's
someone that loves integration with the different channels.
He hates when channels are working in silos.
He's all about collecting datas from all the different channels,
(01:08):
and he's actually going to speakabout the experience.
Experience. They're really formed this view
of him. You always say that people are
the best experts in an area because they made a mistake in
that specific area at some point, and they never wanted to
make that mistake again. So for someone who hates silos,
he's going to talk to you about what it was, what life was like
(01:29):
for him before that whole him hating silos when he was OK with
the silos and what that cost himand cost his clients.
So yeah, let's go speak to Gareth.
Hello Gareth, Welcome to PPC LIVE, the podcast.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been a long time
coming. Really happy to be here thing.
Absolutely. I know Gareth, I'm so privileged
(01:50):
that we've got Gareth's time in here.
I saw him booking sometimes and then having to cancel them
booking again and then the last time I was like, Gareth, please
keep it. We really want to talk to you.
So I'm really grateful, guys, that you're on here on the show
today. So Guide is a digital director
who has 18 years of experience in this industry.
I don't think I've spoken to anybody that has anything less
(02:10):
than 10 years, guys. It's all about the experts that
you know that I'm bringing you to speak with his workbook
agency and client side, and he'snow an independent consultant
across the full performance marketing mix.
He's managed somewhere around 150 million in marketing budget
directly and consulted on more. And his keen interest, which is
(02:33):
someone who's just, yeah, got the same kind of heart and soul
similar to mine, is about connecting data sources together
to tell the full story of performance, making sure that
you're not working in silos. It's why people sometimes will
get confused whether PPC live events and they'll see someone
that is SEO or they'll see someone that's paid social.
And I'm like, yeah, guys, I knowthis is PPC Live, but PPC does
(02:57):
not work in a signer. All the different channels don't
work in the signer. We need to be talking together
with all the different channels and even understanding them,
even if you're not going to be an expert.
And a lot of them understand them.
And yeah, I think Gareth has very much that kind of money set
as well. I asked him for a fun fact, and
his fun fact is that he's got two kids that take up a lot of
his time and they're going to begoing on holiday very soon.
(03:20):
Where you guys off to for the summer holiday?
Yeah, we're off to the, we're off to the South of Spain.
I'm just looking at temperaturesat the moment, close to 40° in a
couple of areas. So looking forward to physically
getting cooked while we're in while we're in Spain.
That could always is always a great idea.
I although you we have had, I don't know whether it's there
because you're based in Manchester, am I correct?
(03:41):
Not in Manchester yet. Yeah, we're based in Manchester
and the past few months in London here has been
ridiculously hot, sometimes over30s, and it has not been
enjoyable. And I think there's just a
difference between heat in London and heat on the beach.
We don't mind close to 40° on the beach, but we don't want
close to 40° in the city going. That's what my wife keeps
(04:02):
saying, that I'm very nervous about temperatures.
Anything that starts to get up above 30° and I guess start to
get nervous. I've got absolutely no hair, so
I've got a I've got so many to protect my poor little head.
But now I'm looking forward to the damn time.
I just hope the temperatures arekind to us.
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. But anyway, look, that's all
lovely. We hope some people are even
(04:24):
listening to this episode from the holiday and from their
holiday destination because that's what August is about.
But let's get straight into our very interesting conversation as
we know what we talk about with our expertise, the Air Force
that they've experienced the times that they've just missed
something and it's cost budget. And maybe it's because of
(04:45):
communication or we're not double checking things properly.
But as I've, as I keep on sayingnow, we don't leave on a
defeated note. As I've said, Gareth has been in
this industry from 18 years. He's going to share something
from early in his career. He's still winning for his
clients, winning revenue for hisclients.
So these are the kind of storiesthat we should hear about how
the biggest successes in our industry are people who have
(05:07):
weathered the storm. So we're going to go to Gareth
to share one of those with us. Gareth, please share with us.
What FF do you want to share with the audience today?
Yeah. So I think when you talk about
our folks, you hear things or I've missed this or I've made
that mistake, I've spent too much here or I've made a
spelling mistake or something like that.
The one I want to kind of touch on, and it's not something that
I've shared too much before, butit stuck with me throughout my
(05:30):
career. This was around what, around 12
years ago that this happened andI've just taken over the account
for manufacturing company early,fairly early in my career.
Still. I was still really enthusiastic
about it. Looking back now, probably a bit
too enthusiastic. They immediately spotted a load
of opportunities straight in theaccount and got to work straight
away. And what I did, I made a lot of
(05:50):
changes really quickly, optimised campaigns, rebuilt, we
wrote ad copy, I increased the spend as we were actually on the
budget based on the brief that I'd been given.
We were on the budget and to my mind it worked really well.
Leads went up, converted conversions came in, leads with
leads were going up and I was hitting my lead targets really
quickly. But the F up side of it was that
(06:13):
sales couldn't keep up. They were, they were overwhelmed
to their processes. They weren't geared up.
They didn't have enough resourceto to actually deal with the
number of leads that were comingin.
And yeah, the majority problems in performance marketing come
back to wasted budget. It's not all of them, but a lot
of them do come back and we werewasting budget because we were
sending the leads, but they weren't being followed up.
So ultimately they were wasted. Absolutely.
(06:35):
And that just sounds like because you said you're hitting
your targets, but this is actually an important point to
actually talk about targets and what's a proper target is and
who should be involved in talking about all these targets.
Because I've worked in house before and sometimes in ages who
were like, oh, this is our target.
And I'm like, we can't handle that in house thing.
(06:58):
We can handle that. And who's going to tell them and
who's really having these conversations?
So what I don't want to start doing pointing fingers kind of
thing, but why would you say that went wrong?
Who should have caught that out really in terms of at what point
should the court discussion should have been, this is what
we can actually handle, would you say?
(07:20):
Before I started doing any work,I think, I mean, I think when it
first happened, my my reaction was I've done my job.
That was back, back then, Cpas were down, leads were off.
It was from a marketing point ofview, absolutely brilliant.
Everything I was asked that I'd done.
But what should have happened? And it's one of those things
that you hindsight, it's a wonderful thing.
(07:41):
It really is for what should have happened is at the point of
briefing we should have discussed both marketing and
sales. If we were to hit that, that
lead target, can you deal with it?
Is that something you could dealwith within a month?
Is that a six month thing? Is that the next financial year
that impact that hitting those marketing targets could have on
the business should have been discussed before we'd either
(08:02):
started to make any optimizations, Because I was
coming into it a bit that they hadn't been managed previously
by somebody who had just done it.
It was somewhat internally, it'sthat old story or it's the CEO's
nephew or something had done that.
It was OK, the leads were comingin, but there was just so much
opportunity within it. But for somebody coming in who
have been doing it a few years at this point that I should have
(08:23):
had the conversation. If we make this work, what can
you deal with and the planning outside of marketing?
It's very easy for marketing to take.
We're going to our target, but what does that then mean to the
wider business? OK.
And what was the communication like relationship with the with
the company, with the brand because were you in house or you
(08:44):
were part of it? Was your agency, you were in an
agency that was doing marketing?Yeah, I was agency side at this
point and it was probably it wasquite a standard for the agency
line of communication. There was there was an account
manager that sat directly between me and the client.
There wasn't loads of opportunity for me to actually
say to directly to to the business.
(09:05):
It was the communication was done through the account
managers. But generally speaking, after a
little while, I think I worked, I worked up to having a more of
a relationship with the internalmarketing team and by a dotted
line into the head of sales. And then the communication was
never was never bad. I think I got the feeling early
on that the sales reps, they were very stressed into, there
(09:27):
were just too many leads for them.
They were too busy. But haven't you been any
immediate kind of Plan B? If this was to happen, how
quickly? I mean, can we hire people in?
And this was before the days of real automation.
We wouldn't have the same problem now because automation
could help an awful lot. That head of sales and this kind
of these conversations with thishead of sales, they stick with
me for a contested with me for the last 10-12 years now.
(09:50):
He didn't get annoyed, he didn'tshout, he didn't point fingers.
He openly said in a meeting, look, we just weren't ready for
it. It was very mature of him to say
that. I think he could have quite
easily got all hot headed and started to say you're doing it
wrong and things like that. And it was kind of him
recognising love, the enthusiasmthat you've got here, don't do
(10:12):
it again. But it was a really good
conversation. And from that point, then we
could scale back, we could actually start to.
And what we did do was put it inplace something in mind 1212
years ago, some rude, fairly rudimentary lead scoring.
Just in terms of, look, these leads are hot.
If they're coming from this conversion point, they're hot.
If they're coming from this, they're warm.
If they're coming from others, then don't send them to sales.
(10:35):
And it was a fairly quick kind of pivot into something that
that worked. But yeah, I mean, we'd wasted
probably about 2530 K in in budget by that point on leads
that could have been good, but they just didn't get, they just
didn't get followed up. They did.
So it taken me a little bit evenmore personal because I feel
like you came in enthusiastic and you knew, you saw this, you
(10:58):
had a strategy that you knew would work, you were
implementing it. I'd say that with agencies and
clients, there's usually like a regular cadence of like meetings
to report back like every week or every month kind of thing.
And so I'd say that, so when youstarted increasing the volume,
you've report back and they'd belike, great, thanks, great,
(11:21):
thanks. And then it took a while for
them to actually then the sales guy to be like, actually, no,
you've sent actually too much. What did that do for your
confidence? Did it be like, was there a bit
of frustration? How did you feel just hearing
that? Why didn't you tell me this a
lot earlier? No, I think I was quite
defensive at first because it was very much look you, you've
(11:43):
given me this brief, I've hit this brief.
So it was defen defensive at first.
What? I think very personally, I took
a lot of confidence from it because it was my process works.
So the process that I'd followed, it works.
But then also it did help me reflect internally and
internalise actually. Do you know what?
(12:04):
I've got to start talking to people outside of performance
marketing here. I could because I can go ahead
and do what I need to do in platform and things like that.
But if that's not working for the wider business, then it's
not working. And it's applicable to both B to
B&B to C, because if you're sending too much to the
business, and it's not the worstproblem to have by any means,
but if you're sending too much to the business, then you're
(12:26):
still wasting money. And that's the crux of it.
Absolutely, totally agree with that.
And now looking back, were thereany maybe like signs that you
feel like you missed that because fair enough.
If the client hadn't told you that there weren't those leads
were too much you can't really know or is that or it was that
(12:47):
is there actually something thatyou could have looked at that
you maybe you didn't look at? They're like, oh, next time,
even if let's say I can't get intouch with the sales guy,
there's something that I can look at my end.
I'll make it clear that OK, I ampushing too much and maybe I
should pull back. Looking at it now, all of the
fans, literally all of them. And I think it's one, it's one
(13:10):
of those I was looking at thingsinside a dashboard.
I was looking at clicks, I was looking at conversions, I was
looking at cost per acquisition and the lead numbers thought,
but I wasn't looking at was the percentage of leads that weren't
being followed up, looking at gaps between handover points,
between the different points in the sales process.
(13:30):
The key, I think the key piece that I've missed, the key piece
that I was missing in my day-to-day reporting was that
percentage of leads not being followed up.
I think if I'd have had that, ifI'd have spotted that and seen
that was going off, then the conversation could have been why
are there are they crap leads, other, other, too many, which is
what the case turned out to be. So it wasn't that I was
measuring the wrong stuff. I was just missing some of the
(13:54):
key metrics in terms of joining sales and marketing together.
Yeah. And that's why there's so much
importance in bringing everybody's reporting data
involved. Was that something that they had
provided and or they or you hadn't asked for?
Like how come you didn't have access to that piece of data?
It was very much that old kind of classic case of marketing is
(14:17):
targeted on leads. We're not targeted on revenue
and sales. It was very much like we're
going to stay, we're we're in our lane, we're going to stay in
our lane. And yeah, we just didn't, we
just didn't ask for we knowing that now it's one of the very,
very first things that I will ask for is how are sales and
marketing working together back then?
This is your lane. Let's stick in it.
Let's stay in it. Absolutely, Yeah.
(14:39):
So everybody, your lesson is make sure you.
Yeah, even though you have your lane to stick in, make sure you
understand how it's feeding intoother marketing lanes.
What we said at the beginning, don't work in silos.
Knowing how the channels feed into each other.
Marketing and sales are not so separate.
You need to know how your marketing is leading to sales
and you help each other to succeed.
(15:01):
So it's yeah, I feel it's what you've already said is full of
advice as to what we should do. But if you just wrap it up in
one summary, someone is going through something like this,
they feel like they've been doing their best.
They're seeing the great PPC results or marketing results,
whatever the channel. It's not leading to good quality
leads. It's not leading to increase in
(15:22):
revenue. What's your advice to people?
It comes in three stages. And yeah, that side, they're
just thinking out loud because I've thought about this so many
times. I think first of all is just
stop. Just take a breath.
I think it's very easy when you're in the moment to kind of
think the world is just falling in on you.
And it's not most mistakes that that happen.
(15:42):
They feel bigger to us than theyactually look on the outside.
So first of all, just stop and breathe.
Sometimes you have to slow down to then go faster.
And then the second is get it out in the open.
And I did this early on in my career was to try and cover up
these things. You try and slightly fix
something, small issues, you canabsolutely do that.
But if it's really a burning issue, get it out in the get it
out in the open. Talk to the key people that you
(16:03):
need to talk to because you willactually be amazed how many
people are willing to help. You need stressed out enough.
It's not embarrassing to say I'mstruggling.
It can feel like it, but it's really not.
And when you're talking about kind of cross functional teams
and multiple moving parts, talk to people.
But I think the ultimate take away here is don't confuse your
(16:25):
effort with being effective. Just because you're working
really hard on something, just because it looks like it's
working for you, doesn't mean that the result is spot on for
everybody else. And that example that I've said
that I've given hopefully will help people contextualise this
is that even though in platform my conversion numbers look
brilliant, the business was struggling for it because the
(16:46):
metrics weren't right for everybody.
We're right for everybody else. Yeah, absolutely.
And I think some a theme that has actually followed through
from a few episodes already is don't necessarily be LAX when
things look like they're going so well.
Even with the great results thatyou see.
Investigate that till you've reached all the numbers, till
(17:08):
you've reached the fact that your performance is directly
leading to good revenue. Because we've experienced that
in the past that even if things are going well, figure out why
it's going well. That's don't just sit back and
be like, oh, OK, he's going to actually figure out what's going
well because you want to then replicate that.
But then if it's something, if you don't, if you don't
investigate, it's so well, you might just replicate it and then
(17:30):
get bad performance and then you're confused as to wait.
It worked well the last time. Why is it not working well this
time? It's because the last time
actually you'd investigated hardenough and there was something
that was going wrong. So yeah, even with good
performance, due diligence and knowing whether it's actually it
in the right revenue, I'd say it's a good.
Yeah, I love that because you gothrough the process and it's
(17:52):
very easy to say that went wrong, why did it go wrong?
But one of the things that businesses sometime, and it does
still happen quite a lot is theydon't check in on what's gone
and why it's gone. Well, they just gloss over it.
That's gone well. OK, brilliant.
Let's focus on the stuff that we've not done so well.
But ultimately you play it. If something's gone, you're
playing to your strengths. And if you can do more of that's
where the that's where the routeto scale is of course, fixing
(18:13):
things that aren't going well. But actually, and this again, I
can give people the the advice here.
Hopefully, if you think something's going well, raise it
with the business, investigate it like you just said, but make
a case for yourself because if you think something's going
well, tell someone that it's going well and yeah, have a
party for yourself. I think pat yourself on the
back. There's absolutely if you're
(18:35):
doing something well, the business should know about it.
Yeah, that's how you get your promotions.
That's how you win awards. That's how you like you.
Yeah, you get the recognition that you deserve.
Yeah. Pushing, making sure that you
can show that the good performance that's happening is
because of something you've donenow that's fantastic.
And also you said that you do things differently now.
(18:57):
So what are the specific things that you'll say that you do
differently because of this issue that happened
specifically? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, there's 22 stages to it.
One is before anything happens and that is at that point when
the brief comes in, it's to really interrogate that brief.
What problem am I being? It's to, am I being, it's to
solve here? Is it the right problem?
First of all, key people who arethe key components of that
(19:20):
problem we're trying to solve. And if I was to solve that
problem, what impact impact is that going to have on those key
people? Because if we're saying, for
example, look, we're getting 100leads a month at the moment in a
business, if we were to take that to 200 to 300 to 500, what
what's going to happen? Can we cope with those?
Do we need to do further resource planning on that?
(19:41):
So yeah, first of all, really interrogate the brief, make sure
you're solving the right problem, understand the problem
you're trying to solve, make sure it's the right problem and
make sure that there are there is resource in the business to
back that up. And on the B to C side, if you
were to start really shifting volume in a particular line of
products, is there enough supplyin the on the back end to do
that? That's the B to C equivalent of
(20:03):
kind of driving too many leads. If you're driving too many
sales, then ultimately you mightrun out of a product and have a
different problem within the business.
Secondly. When you're running a campaign
or when you're running campaigns, it's try things in a
on a smaller scale. So if you are going to fail, you
fail small, you fail early, you fail loudly, I think is the key.
(20:24):
And here if you've got, if you've got thoughts on
something, share them before they're fully formed, before
they're perfect. If you're making smaller bets on
something before you go in all in, then you're limiting the
liability. You're gambling far less if
you're reliant on one big campaign idea.
If you're relying on one campaign doing well, that's more
(20:45):
akin to gambling. But if you're going to doing a
lot of small things on the move,then I think you you are.
You're setting yourself up for learning far smaller, far
quicker and you can scale because when you make up a bold
call, of course you're trying todrive growth.
You trying to, you've spotted anopportunity, you try to move
forward with it. Given that is not a mistake,
(21:07):
it's never a mistake to try and do that.
Sometimes you can implement it wrong, Sometimes you can, you
can get things wrong, but sometimes it's just we're doing
the right thing. It's just at the wrong time.
We're talking to people, talkingto other people about that.
You can get their thoughts on itand then they can put plans in
that they need to put in for youto then go and do the thing
that's going to drive the scale.Absolutely.
(21:29):
I that is brilliant. Do not be scared to test, but
always be good in communicating along the way and what your
ideas are, what you're trying totest.
But yeah, really do not be scared to test.
I think that was actually something that came on in our
latest PTC live event that happened just last Thursday.
Someone was asking, Oh my God, with this new AIS and with P
(21:49):
Mads and AI Mads, how do we get the confidence to tell our
clients that we want to test andwe when everybody's seen it's
bad results? It's all about communication and
you need to test stuff because nobody really went further in
their career by just playing it safe and just doing the same
things that they've been doing all over again.
And with Google, those same things will they will just get
(22:11):
rid of them. Like you can't do text ads the
way they used to be done like maybe 10 years ago at all.
Extended text ads doesn't exist anymore.
So if you're like, oh, I don't want to test RSA, then you don't
want to do paid search. Really, you don't even want to
be in the industry. So you've got to be bold to go
out. And thank you, Garrett, for
giving us that nice template of how to go about doing it.
(22:33):
It's just go out and do it. And you'll be surprised at that
result. Thank you, Gary, for that
fantastic story. I know it's always, I can be a
little bit heartache to go back and look at some of that, some
mistakes that you've made earlier in your career.
So I'm really good. We're really grateful that you
shared that with us. Now taking the different
spotlights away from you and nowto our industry.
(22:54):
You were sure you've also already also experienced or
overseeing other people just making some mistakes that you're
like, guys, this is avoidable. What's are your biggest pet
peeves in terms of mistakes thatyou see some folks make?
So I've I've seen yes, so many of these and to the point where
it's water off the ducks back now that they happen and it's
(23:16):
part for the course really when it comes to to paid media
performance marketing. But I think it for me and it's
because I've been there and I'vemade these mistakes.
It's just often attention to detail and that is things like
set setting budgets correctly. Budget pacing is another one,
particularly when you're workingin an industry that is, you're
(23:36):
working for a company that has abudget that's very set, it's
laid down at the start of the financial year and that there's
not really room to scale it. So it's, yeah, getting the
budget pacing wrong, spelling mistakes in ads that use it,
using the wrong campaign bid, sorry, the bid models using the
wrong bid models. And I think it's also blindly
(23:57):
following the recommendations that Google give.
Google comes at these and I think some of them if you think
about it, they make sense, but they're not always right for the
account that you're managing. It's very much being aware that
Google is a revenue generated machine.
It's not just an operation, it'sa machine.
And all of those recommendations, they are geared
(24:19):
in some way to drive in more revenue for Google.
That can work very well for a business fine, but it's very,
it's been very aware. That's the overall aim of Google
Ads is to get more revenue for Google.
Your revenue or your leads, yourscale as a business is just a by
product of that. And it's just make sure you're
(24:39):
flipping those recommendations on their head and making sure
that the first priority is that recommendation going to make me
scale, not just drive more moneyfor Google's Christmas party.
Exactly. Google's tools are there to make
Google money. You're a secondary priority for
them. Like sometimes even tertiary
because it's like they they go board members, they go other
(25:02):
than product partners that they want to make money for.
So yeah, you see a lot of peoplegetting so annoyed.
Oh, this doesn't work for me. Why Google are you doing this?
Because it makes money for them.I got chill Pearl and just it's
your just to decipher what will work for you and trash this
stuff and wouldn't work for you and there will be a lot of pain.
(25:24):
So just yeah, everything is about being aware about it.
And we talked a bit about I mentioned the whole like, yeah,
the AI chat that we had at the previous PPC live.
When it does come to AI, what would you say are people's also
biggest value at the moment? People are getting AI wronged in
the sense of the inputs that they're that it's the
(25:47):
fundamentals, the inputs that they're giving it.
I think some of the the AI campaign types performance marks
early on with some of the kind of the maximised conversions bid
models, the targets EPA, the robust bid models, the early
foray and into more automated and now AI driven the models.
I think they've it's the inputs you give it.
I think if you as the old sayingshit in shit out.
(26:08):
And I think if you're starting acampaign with hoefully not.
But if you're starting it with bad data, the wrong customers,
the wrong audiences, if you're giving it the wrong audience
signals, if you're giving it thewrong kind of search term
signals, you're not, you're setting yourself up to fail
straight away. But also, I think it's around
(26:29):
the structure of campaigns from,and I've used performance Max
law from the B to C side of things and it moves over into
shopping a little bit as the whole debate as to whether you
should run performance Max or whether you should just run
traditional shopping. I am, I am an advocate of
running performance Max shopping.
Shopping campaigns still work. Yeah.
But I'm, I am an advocate of performance Max.
(26:50):
But I think in terms of how you segment that it's not just about
segmenting it in the old ways. You'd segment by the basically
by the navigation website, product types, service types or
whatever. Now I think it's much more about
segmenting by product performance and that is in terms
of your high margin products, your low margin products.
And then you can prioritise budget, you can prioritise
(27:10):
structure based on what's actually going to perform.
And it gives you a lot more flexibility in the sense of it.
You can move products around. You can move budgets around.
If you're. Saying look, we've got this
budget for this product line, this budget for this product
line. It's then what happens if there
are products within that productline that are outperforming
others? What what happens if products
are underperforming? How do you then segment those?
(27:31):
It's segmented of based on performance.
But with that then I would put that top for hours on this and I
won't. But it then comes down to, OK,
we are, we've got over performers, we've got
underperformers. But sometimes the product that
actually drives the drives the visit isn't the product that
then that people then buy. So there's them that comes into
it. There's just, there's so many
(27:52):
different rabbit holes you couldgo down with the AI campaign
types. The data that you put in is the
single, for me, the single most important thing.
The second is the structure and how you prioritise that.
And that's different per business.
It's different per product line.But yeah, that's the second most
important thing. But also it's getting over this
idea that it is just a black box.
(28:14):
I think there there is less information that we get out of
some of the AI campaign types. And I recently, more recently
started to experiment with AI, with AI for search AI Max and
that it's been a slow start withsome of those campaigns.
But again, it's just experimenting small budget and
feeling, feeling the way into it.
But don't be afraid of them thatthere's less information comes
(28:37):
out of them. It's getting better, but it
still doesn't mean that you shouldn't experiment with them
because it's almost going back to that point around all of the
tools that Google give us, they're all aimed at driving
revenue for Google and these campaign types are no different.
However, this is where Google is, this is where Google is
moving and you've almost got to play the game a little bit and
you've got to, you've got to understand that look, this is
(28:58):
where it's going. So test and learn while it's
while you still can, while you've still got the other
campaign types to fall back on. He tested it with a small budget
and move into it because ultimately that's where we're
going to be in the next few years.
Absolutely. So do you think keywords is
going to die out all together? From the perspective of us as
(29:20):
current managers, I think, I think so.
I think keywords in terms of howpeople search, they're always
going to be there. But in terms of the
functionality that we have, I think that it might not be
keywords. Doesn't you type them that
people have been saying for the last what, 15 years that it's
the year of voice. And I think voice is becoming a
lot more, a lot more prevalent, a lot more prominent.
(29:41):
But I think people are generallygoing to search via keywords or
via sentences, via natural language.
But in terms of the tools that we have available, keywords are
probably going to go away. Yeah.
Do you have an exact timeline? You can do a crystal bowl of a
year or two years. Wow.
I would say I'm going to be veryconservative here.
(30:03):
Within the next five years, we won't have any, any keywords or
we'll have less keywords, but nopotentially within the three.
Just looking at the speed of development on P Max and AI
research and think AI research and things like that.
I think, yeah, just with it within the next few years, I
think it's we're going to see a even bigger change than what
we've seen in the last few years.
OK, so in the next three to fiveyears, so guys, save this
(30:24):
episode, come back to Gareth in 20-30, is it we should have had
a skew words that we're right there with 20.
Five years away read. These bad times fly.
Oh makes you scary Gareth. This has been so wonderful.
We've come to the end of this chat now, but just before we go,
(30:46):
I like asking people a very fun,non-technical question.
If your career were a movie, your PPC career, paid media, or
marketing career were a movie, what would be the title?
Yeah. So I saw this the questions you
sent over and I've thought that this probably more than I should
have done. But no, I'm a big, I'm a big
(31:06):
Lord of the Rings fan. And I think, oh, wait, given
kind of the theme of what we've talked about here and the real
delivered passion I've got for actually sales, talking to
marketing and operations and allthe other departments, I think
it would have to be and played. People don't hate me for this.
Don't unfriend me on LinkedIn and things.
But I think the fellowship of the budget, just making sure,
(31:27):
look, it's my budget in marketing, but it's also a nails
budget. It's a business budget.
So yes, the fellowship of the budget.
The Fellowship of the Budget, I'm a load of a range fan and
I'm always, I've gone to so manytalks where they have a
reference there and it makes sense and I love it.
So yes, the Fellowship of the Budget, that is so fantastic.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday.
(31:48):
Garrett, where can people find you?
They want to follow you, but more people are going to follow
you. We're going to send the Lord of
the Rings fans your way where they can.
They find you. Please dude, no, I'm pretty
active on LinkedIn and yeah, maybe we can share the link if
people do want to. Do you want to come say hi on
LinkedIn? I'm in the process of building
building out a blog, possibly a sub stack as well.
But yeah, stay tuned for news onthose.
(32:09):
OK, fantastic. Thank you so much for that,
Gareth. And yeah, bye.
Thank you very much. Bye bye.
Thank you so much Gareth for sharing that.
Very honest and transparent experience.
So yeah, remember don't work in silos.
Make sure you understand not just your data, but what it's
feeding into marketing team, talk to the sales team.
(32:31):
You might be sending so many great quality leads.
You've cracked P Max, you've cracked AI Max, you've cracked
using your research ads. And yeah, they're getting the
the types of customers that theywant, but they are not actually
having the capacity to convert all that fantastic traffic and
leads that you're sending through.
So they're having that full funnel view of what you're
(32:53):
sending is really important so that you don't waste your
clients budget. So yeah, Please remember that
For more information about that and yeah, the full transcript of
that fantastic conversation withGareth, you can go to podcast
dot PPC dot live to yeah, get the details, watch the video,
listen to it however you wanted and share with your friends and
rate of review if you did enjoy that podcast episode with that
(33:17):
would be really appreciated. In regards to our PBC live
fantastic events. Our last event was went off
without it. I was going to say without a
hitch. That is not true.
There was a few hitches, but it did it did go ahead.
It was a great success. There was cake, there was pizza,
there was drinks. Everybody enjoyed it.
So yeah, we will definitely be coming again on October the
(33:39):
22nd. That's October the 22nd, this
time on a Wednesday because we want to give you guys a chance
to experience going coming to PPC Live as well as going to
Brighton SEO the next day if youchoose to.
So yeah, please join us on October 22nd and go to PPC dot
live for the information about it.
Although beforehand there will be an online version of our PPC
(34:00):
Live 17th and that's happening on August the 14th.
So yeah, I missed it, mistook that.
So even before October, there's an August the 14th online
version. Jill Saskin Gills, who's one of
our ambassadors is going to be Britain leading the talks and
we're going to be live streaming, not not quite live,
but we're going to be streaming the talks, all three of the
talks and two of our speakers, especially Paul Salami and Aisha
(34:23):
Yusef are going to be joining for a live Q&A.
That one will definitely be liveand not a prerecording.
So you'll be able to ask them questions and they'll be able to
give you the answer for that. So yeah, go to PPC dot live.
The details for that will be up by now by the time you're
listening to this. So yeah, join us on August the
14th, but if you want an in person experience, join us on
October the 22nd for that as well.
(34:46):
Before now, I leave you as well.I'm delighted to share that I am
taking on coaching clients. So yeah, just a few clients a
month and I'd love to, yeah, if you need help, I'd love to help
you out in terms of building your confidence and taking hold
of your career. So if you go to the marketing
annu.com for that, you'll be able to get all the information
about that. So yeah, I hope you've enjoyed
(35:07):
the show and I look forward to bringing more PPCF ups 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, the founder of
PPC Live. And if you're used to hearing
advice from PPC experts about how to ensure that we are
keeping up with the ever changing landscape, don't worry,
you are in the right place. But instead of relaying what the
(00:24):
PPC experts are saying, I'm bringing the PPC experts to you.
Every week I'm going to be speaking to a different paid
search expert about their biggest F up, but also how
they've turned things around. This week I speak to Gareth W
Head, who is someone that has been in the industry for many
years and like most, will agree that you don't go that far in
(00:47):
being in the industry without making a few Boo boos.
And yeah, this time he shows us a very different side in terms
of mistakes that he's made, and very rightfully so, because he's
someone that loves integration with the different channels.
He hates when channels are working in silos.
He's all about collecting datas from all the different channels,
(01:08):
and he's actually going to speakabout the experience.
Experience. They're really formed this view
of him. You always say that people are
the best experts in an area because they made a mistake in
that specific area at some point, and they never wanted to
make that mistake again. So for someone who hates silos,
he's going to talk to you about what it was, what life was like
(01:29):
for him before that whole him hating silos when he was OK with
the silos and what that cost himand cost his clients.
So yeah, let's go speak to Gareth.
Hello Gareth, Welcome to PPC LIVE, the podcast.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been a long time
coming. Really happy to be here thing.
Absolutely. I know Gareth, I'm so privileged
(01:50):
that we've got Gareth's time in here.
I saw him booking sometimes and then having to cancel them
booking again and then the last time I was like, Gareth, please
keep it. We really want to talk to you.
So I'm really grateful, guys, that you're on here on the show
today. So Guide is a digital director
who has 18 years of experience in this industry.
I don't think I've spoken to anybody that has anything less
(02:10):
than 10 years, guys. It's all about the experts that
you know that I'm bringing you to speak with his workbook
agency and client side, and he'snow an independent consultant
across the full performance marketing mix.
He's managed somewhere around 150 million in marketing budget
directly and consulted on more. And his keen interest, which is
(02:33):
someone who's just, yeah, got the same kind of heart and soul
similar to mine, is about connecting data sources together
to tell the full story of performance, making sure that
you're not working in silos. It's why people sometimes will
get confused whether PPC live events and they'll see someone
that is SEO or they'll see someone that's paid social.
And I'm like, yeah, guys, I knowthis is PPC Live, but PPC does
(02:57):
not work in a signer. All the different channels don't
work in the signer. We need to be talking together
with all the different channels and even understanding them,
even if you're not going to be an expert.
And a lot of them understand them.
And yeah, I think Gareth has very much that kind of money set
as well. I asked him for a fun fact, and
his fun fact is that he's got two kids that take up a lot of
his time and they're going to begoing on holiday very soon.
(03:20):
Where you guys off to for the summer holiday?
Yeah, we're off to the, we're off to the South of Spain.
I'm just looking at temperaturesat the moment, close to 40° in a
couple of areas. So looking forward to physically
getting cooked while we're in while we're in Spain.
That could always is always a great idea.
I although you we have had, I don't know whether it's there
because you're based in Manchester, am I correct?
(03:41):
Not in Manchester yet. Yeah, we're based in Manchester
and the past few months in London here has been
ridiculously hot, sometimes over30s, and it has not been
enjoyable. And I think there's just a
difference between heat in London and heat on the beach.
We don't mind close to 40° on the beach, but we don't want
close to 40° in the city going. That's what my wife keeps
(04:02):
saying, that I'm very nervous about temperatures.
Anything that starts to get up above 30° and I guess start to
get nervous. I've got absolutely no hair, so
I've got a I've got so many to protect my poor little head.
But now I'm looking forward to the damn time.
I just hope the temperatures arekind to us.
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. But anyway, look, that's all
lovely. We hope some people are even
(04:24):
listening to this episode from the holiday and from their
holiday destination because that's what August is about.
But let's get straight into our very interesting conversation as
we know what we talk about with our expertise, the Air Force
that they've experienced the times that they've just missed
something and it's cost budget. And maybe it's because of
(04:45):
communication or we're not double checking things properly.
But as I've, as I keep on sayingnow, we don't leave on a
defeated note. As I've said, Gareth has been in
this industry from 18 years. He's going to share something
from early in his career. He's still winning for his
clients, winning revenue for hisclients.
So these are the kind of storiesthat we should hear about how
the biggest successes in our industry are people who have
(05:07):
weathered the storm. So we're going to go to Gareth
to share one of those with us. Gareth, please share with us.
What FF do you want to share with the audience today?
Yeah. So I think when you talk about
our folks, you hear things or I've missed this or I've made
that mistake, I've spent too much here or I've made a
spelling mistake or something like that.
The one I want to kind of touch on, and it's not something that
I've shared too much before, butit stuck with me throughout my
(05:30):
career. This was around what, around 12
years ago that this happened andI've just taken over the account
for manufacturing company early,fairly early in my career.
Still. I was still really enthusiastic
about it. Looking back now, probably a bit
too enthusiastic. They immediately spotted a load
of opportunities straight in theaccount and got to work straight
away. And what I did, I made a lot of
(05:50):
changes really quickly, optimised campaigns, rebuilt, we
wrote ad copy, I increased the spend as we were actually on the
budget based on the brief that I'd been given.
We were on the budget and to my mind it worked really well.
Leads went up, converted conversions came in, leads with
leads were going up and I was hitting my lead targets really
quickly. But the F up side of it was that
(06:13):
sales couldn't keep up. They were, they were overwhelmed
to their processes. They weren't geared up.
They didn't have enough resourceto to actually deal with the
number of leads that were comingin.
And yeah, the majority problems in performance marketing come
back to wasted budget. It's not all of them, but a lot
of them do come back and we werewasting budget because we were
sending the leads, but they weren't being followed up.
So ultimately they were wasted. Absolutely.
(06:35):
And that just sounds like because you said you're hitting
your targets, but this is actually an important point to
actually talk about targets and what's a proper target is and
who should be involved in talking about all these targets.
Because I've worked in house before and sometimes in ages who
were like, oh, this is our target.
And I'm like, we can't handle that in house thing.
(06:58):
We can handle that. And who's going to tell them and
who's really having these conversations?
So what I don't want to start doing pointing fingers kind of
thing, but why would you say that went wrong?
Who should have caught that out really in terms of at what point
should the court discussion should have been, this is what
we can actually handle, would you say?
(07:20):
Before I started doing any work,I think, I mean, I think when it
first happened, my my reaction was I've done my job.
That was back, back then, Cpas were down, leads were off.
It was from a marketing point ofview, absolutely brilliant.
Everything I was asked that I'd done.
But what should have happened? And it's one of those things
that you hindsight, it's a wonderful thing.
(07:41):
It really is for what should have happened is at the point of
briefing we should have discussed both marketing and
sales. If we were to hit that, that
lead target, can you deal with it?
Is that something you could dealwith within a month?
Is that a six month thing? Is that the next financial year
that impact that hitting those marketing targets could have on
the business should have been discussed before we'd either
(08:02):
started to make any optimizations, Because I was
coming into it a bit that they hadn't been managed previously
by somebody who had just done it.
It was somewhat internally, it'sthat old story or it's the CEO's
nephew or something had done that.
It was OK, the leads were comingin, but there was just so much
opportunity within it. But for somebody coming in who
have been doing it a few years at this point that I should have
(08:23):
had the conversation. If we make this work, what can
you deal with and the planning outside of marketing?
It's very easy for marketing to take.
We're going to our target, but what does that then mean to the
wider business? OK.
And what was the communication like relationship with the with
the company, with the brand because were you in house or you
(08:44):
were part of it? Was your agency, you were in an
agency that was doing marketing?Yeah, I was agency side at this
point and it was probably it wasquite a standard for the agency
line of communication. There was there was an account
manager that sat directly between me and the client.
There wasn't loads of opportunity for me to actually
say to directly to to the business.
(09:05):
It was the communication was done through the account
managers. But generally speaking, after a
little while, I think I worked, I worked up to having a more of
a relationship with the internalmarketing team and by a dotted
line into the head of sales. And then the communication was
never was never bad. I think I got the feeling early
on that the sales reps, they were very stressed into, there
(09:27):
were just too many leads for them.
They were too busy. But haven't you been any
immediate kind of Plan B? If this was to happen, how
quickly? I mean, can we hire people in?
And this was before the days of real automation.
We wouldn't have the same problem now because automation
could help an awful lot. That head of sales and this kind
of these conversations with thishead of sales, they stick with
me for a contested with me for the last 10-12 years now.
(09:50):
He didn't get annoyed, he didn'tshout, he didn't point fingers.
He openly said in a meeting, look, we just weren't ready for
it. It was very mature of him to say
that. I think he could have quite
easily got all hot headed and started to say you're doing it
wrong and things like that. And it was kind of him
recognising love, the enthusiasmthat you've got here, don't do
(10:12):
it again. But it was a really good
conversation. And from that point, then we
could scale back, we could actually start to.
And what we did do was put it inplace something in mind 1212
years ago, some rude, fairly rudimentary lead scoring.
Just in terms of, look, these leads are hot.
If they're coming from this conversion point, they're hot.
If they're coming from this, they're warm.
If they're coming from others, then don't send them to sales.
(10:35):
And it was a fairly quick kind of pivot into something that
that worked. But yeah, I mean, we'd wasted
probably about 2530 K in in budget by that point on leads
that could have been good, but they just didn't get, they just
didn't get followed up. They did.
So it taken me a little bit evenmore personal because I feel
like you came in enthusiastic and you knew, you saw this, you
(10:58):
had a strategy that you knew would work, you were
implementing it. I'd say that with agencies and
clients, there's usually like a regular cadence of like meetings
to report back like every week or every month kind of thing.
And so I'd say that, so when youstarted increasing the volume,
you've report back and they'd belike, great, thanks, great,
(11:21):
thanks. And then it took a while for
them to actually then the sales guy to be like, actually, no,
you've sent actually too much. What did that do for your
confidence? Did it be like, was there a bit
of frustration? How did you feel just hearing
that? Why didn't you tell me this a
lot earlier? No, I think I was quite
defensive at first because it was very much look you, you've
(11:43):
given me this brief, I've hit this brief.
So it was defen defensive at first.
What? I think very personally, I took
a lot of confidence from it because it was my process works.
So the process that I'd followed, it works.
But then also it did help me reflect internally and
internalise actually. Do you know what?
(12:04):
I've got to start talking to people outside of performance
marketing here. I could because I can go ahead
and do what I need to do in platform and things like that.
But if that's not working for the wider business, then it's
not working. And it's applicable to both B to
B&B to C, because if you're sending too much to the
business, and it's not the worstproblem to have by any means,
but if you're sending too much to the business, then you're
(12:26):
still wasting money. And that's the crux of it.
Absolutely, totally agree with that.
And now looking back, were thereany maybe like signs that you
feel like you missed that because fair enough.
If the client hadn't told you that there weren't those leads
were too much you can't really know or is that or it was that
(12:47):
is there actually something thatyou could have looked at that
you maybe you didn't look at? They're like, oh, next time,
even if let's say I can't get intouch with the sales guy,
there's something that I can look at my end.
I'll make it clear that OK, I ampushing too much and maybe I
should pull back. Looking at it now, all of the
fans, literally all of them. And I think it's one, it's one
(13:10):
of those I was looking at thingsinside a dashboard.
I was looking at clicks, I was looking at conversions, I was
looking at cost per acquisition and the lead numbers thought,
but I wasn't looking at was the percentage of leads that weren't
being followed up, looking at gaps between handover points,
between the different points in the sales process.
(13:30):
The key, I think the key piece that I've missed, the key piece
that I was missing in my day-to-day reporting was that
percentage of leads not being followed up.
I think if I'd have had that, ifI'd have spotted that and seen
that was going off, then the conversation could have been why
are there are they crap leads, other, other, too many, which is
what the case turned out to be. So it wasn't that I was
measuring the wrong stuff. I was just missing some of the
(13:54):
key metrics in terms of joining sales and marketing together.
Yeah. And that's why there's so much
importance in bringing everybody's reporting data
involved. Was that something that they had
provided and or they or you hadn't asked for?
Like how come you didn't have access to that piece of data?
It was very much that old kind of classic case of marketing is
(14:17):
targeted on leads. We're not targeted on revenue
and sales. It was very much like we're
going to stay, we're we're in our lane, we're going to stay in
our lane. And yeah, we just didn't, we
just didn't ask for we knowing that now it's one of the very,
very first things that I will ask for is how are sales and
marketing working together back then?
This is your lane. Let's stick in it.
Let's stay in it. Absolutely, Yeah.
(14:39):
So everybody, your lesson is make sure you.
Yeah, even though you have your lane to stick in, make sure you
understand how it's feeding intoother marketing lanes.
What we said at the beginning, don't work in silos.
Knowing how the channels feed into each other.
Marketing and sales are not so separate.
You need to know how your marketing is leading to sales
and you help each other to succeed.
(15:01):
So it's yeah, I feel it's what you've already said is full of
advice as to what we should do. But if you just wrap it up in
one summary, someone is going through something like this,
they feel like they've been doing their best.
They're seeing the great PPC results or marketing results,
whatever the channel. It's not leading to good quality
leads. It's not leading to increase in
(15:22):
revenue. What's your advice to people?
It comes in three stages. And yeah, that side, they're
just thinking out loud because I've thought about this so many
times. I think first of all is just
stop. Just take a breath.
I think it's very easy when you're in the moment to kind of
think the world is just falling in on you.
And it's not most mistakes that that happen.
(15:42):
They feel bigger to us than theyactually look on the outside.
So first of all, just stop and breathe.
Sometimes you have to slow down to then go faster.
And then the second is get it out in the open.
And I did this early on in my career was to try and cover up
these things. You try and slightly fix
something, small issues, you canabsolutely do that.
But if it's really a burning issue, get it out in the get it
out in the open. Talk to the key people that you
(16:03):
need to talk to because you willactually be amazed how many
people are willing to help. You need stressed out enough.
It's not embarrassing to say I'mstruggling.
It can feel like it, but it's really not.
And when you're talking about kind of cross functional teams
and multiple moving parts, talk to people.
But I think the ultimate take away here is don't confuse your
(16:25):
effort with being effective. Just because you're working
really hard on something, just because it looks like it's
working for you, doesn't mean that the result is spot on for
everybody else. And that example that I've said
that I've given hopefully will help people contextualise this
is that even though in platform my conversion numbers look
brilliant, the business was struggling for it because the
(16:46):
metrics weren't right for everybody.
We're right for everybody else. Yeah, absolutely.
And I think some a theme that has actually followed through
from a few episodes already is don't necessarily be LAX when
things look like they're going so well.
Even with the great results thatyou see.
Investigate that till you've reached all the numbers, till
(17:08):
you've reached the fact that your performance is directly
leading to good revenue. Because we've experienced that
in the past that even if things are going well, figure out why
it's going well. That's don't just sit back and
be like, oh, OK, he's going to actually figure out what's going
well because you want to then replicate that.
But then if it's something, if you don't, if you don't
investigate, it's so well, you might just replicate it and then
(17:30):
get bad performance and then you're confused as to wait.
It worked well the last time. Why is it not working well this
time? It's because the last time
actually you'd investigated hardenough and there was something
that was going wrong. So yeah, even with good
performance, due diligence and knowing whether it's actually it
in the right revenue, I'd say it's a good.
Yeah, I love that because you gothrough the process and it's
(17:52):
very easy to say that went wrong, why did it go wrong?
But one of the things that businesses sometime, and it does
still happen quite a lot is theydon't check in on what's gone
and why it's gone. Well, they just gloss over it.
That's gone well. OK, brilliant.
Let's focus on the stuff that we've not done so well.
But ultimately you play it. If something's gone, you're
playing to your strengths. And if you can do more of that's
where the that's where the routeto scale is of course, fixing
(18:13):
things that aren't going well. But actually, and this again, I
can give people the the advice here.
Hopefully, if you think something's going well, raise it
with the business, investigate it like you just said, but make
a case for yourself because if you think something's going
well, tell someone that it's going well and yeah, have a
party for yourself. I think pat yourself on the
back. There's absolutely if you're
(18:35):
doing something well, the business should know about it.
Yeah, that's how you get your promotions.
That's how you win awards. That's how you like you.
Yeah, you get the recognition that you deserve.
Yeah. Pushing, making sure that you
can show that the good performance that's happening is
because of something you've donenow that's fantastic.
And also you said that you do things differently now.
(18:57):
So what are the specific things that you'll say that you do
differently because of this issue that happened
specifically? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, there's 22 stages to it.
One is before anything happens and that is at that point when
the brief comes in, it's to really interrogate that brief.
What problem am I being? It's to, am I being, it's to
solve here? Is it the right problem?
First of all, key people who arethe key components of that
(19:20):
problem we're trying to solve. And if I was to solve that
problem, what impact impact is that going to have on those key
people? Because if we're saying, for
example, look, we're getting 100leads a month at the moment in a
business, if we were to take that to 200 to 300 to 500, what
what's going to happen? Can we cope with those?
Do we need to do further resource planning on that?
(19:41):
So yeah, first of all, really interrogate the brief, make sure
you're solving the right problem, understand the problem
you're trying to solve, make sure it's the right problem and
make sure that there are there is resource in the business to
back that up. And on the B to C side, if you
were to start really shifting volume in a particular line of
products, is there enough supplyin the on the back end to do
that? That's the B to C equivalent of
(20:03):
kind of driving too many leads. If you're driving too many
sales, then ultimately you mightrun out of a product and have a
different problem within the business.
Secondly. When you're running a campaign
or when you're running campaigns, it's try things in a
on a smaller scale. So if you are going to fail, you
fail small, you fail early, you fail loudly, I think is the key.
(20:24):
And here if you've got, if you've got thoughts on
something, share them before they're fully formed, before
they're perfect. If you're making smaller bets on
something before you go in all in, then you're limiting the
liability. You're gambling far less if
you're reliant on one big campaign idea.
If you're relying on one campaign doing well, that's more
(20:45):
akin to gambling. But if you're going to doing a
lot of small things on the move,then I think you you are.
You're setting yourself up for learning far smaller, far
quicker and you can scale because when you make up a bold
call, of course you're trying todrive growth.
You trying to, you've spotted anopportunity, you try to move
forward with it. Given that is not a mistake,
(21:07):
it's never a mistake to try and do that.
Sometimes you can implement it wrong, Sometimes you can, you
can get things wrong, but sometimes it's just we're doing
the right thing. It's just at the wrong time.
We're talking to people, talkingto other people about that.
You can get their thoughts on itand then they can put plans in
that they need to put in for youto then go and do the thing
that's going to drive the scale.Absolutely.
(21:29):
I that is brilliant. Do not be scared to test, but
always be good in communicating along the way and what your
ideas are, what you're trying totest.
But yeah, really do not be scared to test.
I think that was actually something that came on in our
latest PTC live event that happened just last Thursday.
Someone was asking, Oh my God, with this new AIS and with P
(21:49):
Mads and AI Mads, how do we get the confidence to tell our
clients that we want to test andwe when everybody's seen it's
bad results? It's all about communication and
you need to test stuff because nobody really went further in
their career by just playing it safe and just doing the same
things that they've been doing all over again.
And with Google, those same things will they will just get
(22:11):
rid of them. Like you can't do text ads the
way they used to be done like maybe 10 years ago at all.
Extended text ads doesn't exist anymore.
So if you're like, oh, I don't want to test RSA, then you don't
want to do paid search. Really, you don't even want to
be in the industry. So you've got to be bold to go
out. And thank you, Garrett, for
giving us that nice template of how to go about doing it.
(22:33):
It's just go out and do it. And you'll be surprised at that
result. Thank you, Gary, for that
fantastic story. I know it's always, I can be a
little bit heartache to go back and look at some of that, some
mistakes that you've made earlier in your career.
So I'm really good. We're really grateful that you
shared that with us. Now taking the different
spotlights away from you and nowto our industry.
(22:54):
You were sure you've also already also experienced or
overseeing other people just making some mistakes that you're
like, guys, this is avoidable. What's are your biggest pet
peeves in terms of mistakes thatyou see some folks make?
So I've I've seen yes, so many of these and to the point where
it's water off the ducks back now that they happen and it's
(23:16):
part for the course really when it comes to to paid media
performance marketing. But I think it for me and it's
because I've been there and I'vemade these mistakes.
It's just often attention to detail and that is things like
set setting budgets correctly. Budget pacing is another one,
particularly when you're workingin an industry that is, you're
(23:36):
working for a company that has abudget that's very set, it's
laid down at the start of the financial year and that there's
not really room to scale it. So it's, yeah, getting the
budget pacing wrong, spelling mistakes in ads that use it,
using the wrong campaign bid, sorry, the bid models using the
wrong bid models. And I think it's also blindly
(23:57):
following the recommendations that Google give.
Google comes at these and I think some of them if you think
about it, they make sense, but they're not always right for the
account that you're managing. It's very much being aware that
Google is a revenue generated machine.
It's not just an operation, it'sa machine.
And all of those recommendations, they are geared
(24:19):
in some way to drive in more revenue for Google.
That can work very well for a business fine, but it's very,
it's been very aware. That's the overall aim of Google
Ads is to get more revenue for Google.
Your revenue or your leads, yourscale as a business is just a by
product of that. And it's just make sure you're
(24:39):
flipping those recommendations on their head and making sure
that the first priority is that recommendation going to make me
scale, not just drive more moneyfor Google's Christmas party.
Exactly. Google's tools are there to make
Google money. You're a secondary priority for
them. Like sometimes even tertiary
because it's like they they go board members, they go other
(25:02):
than product partners that they want to make money for.
So yeah, you see a lot of peoplegetting so annoyed.
Oh, this doesn't work for me. Why Google are you doing this?
Because it makes money for them.I got chill Pearl and just it's
your just to decipher what will work for you and trash this
stuff and wouldn't work for you and there will be a lot of pain.
(25:24):
So just yeah, everything is about being aware about it.
And we talked a bit about I mentioned the whole like, yeah,
the AI chat that we had at the previous PPC live.
When it does come to AI, what would you say are people's also
biggest value at the moment? People are getting AI wronged in
the sense of the inputs that they're that it's the
(25:47):
fundamentals, the inputs that they're giving it.
I think some of the the AI campaign types performance marks
early on with some of the kind of the maximised conversions bid
models, the targets EPA, the robust bid models, the early
foray and into more automated and now AI driven the models.
I think they've it's the inputs you give it.
I think if you as the old sayingshit in shit out.
(26:08):
And I think if you're starting acampaign with hoefully not.
But if you're starting it with bad data, the wrong customers,
the wrong audiences, if you're giving it the wrong audience
signals, if you're giving it thewrong kind of search term
signals, you're not, you're setting yourself up to fail
straight away. But also, I think it's around
(26:29):
the structure of campaigns from,and I've used performance Max
law from the B to C side of things and it moves over into
shopping a little bit as the whole debate as to whether you
should run performance Max or whether you should just run
traditional shopping. I am, I am an advocate of
running performance Max shopping.
Shopping campaigns still work. Yeah.
But I'm, I am an advocate of performance Max.
(26:50):
But I think in terms of how you segment that it's not just about
segmenting it in the old ways. You'd segment by the basically
by the navigation website, product types, service types or
whatever. Now I think it's much more about
segmenting by product performance and that is in terms
of your high margin products, your low margin products.
And then you can prioritise budget, you can prioritise
(27:10):
structure based on what's actually going to perform.
And it gives you a lot more flexibility in the sense of it.
You can move products around. You can move budgets around.
If you're. Saying look, we've got this
budget for this product line, this budget for this product
line. It's then what happens if there
are products within that productline that are outperforming
others? What what happens if products
are underperforming? How do you then segment those?
(27:31):
It's segmented of based on performance.
But with that then I would put that top for hours on this and I
won't. But it then comes down to, OK,
we are, we've got over performers, we've got
underperformers. But sometimes the product that
actually drives the drives the visit isn't the product that
then that people then buy. So there's them that comes into
it. There's just, there's so many
(27:52):
different rabbit holes you couldgo down with the AI campaign
types. The data that you put in is the
single, for me, the single most important thing.
The second is the structure and how you prioritise that.
And that's different per business.
It's different per product line.But yeah, that's the second most
important thing. But also it's getting over this
idea that it is just a black box.
(28:14):
I think there there is less information that we get out of
some of the AI campaign types. And I recently, more recently
started to experiment with AI, with AI for search AI Max and
that it's been a slow start withsome of those campaigns.
But again, it's just experimenting small budget and
feeling, feeling the way into it.
But don't be afraid of them thatthere's less information comes
(28:37):
out of them. It's getting better, but it
still doesn't mean that you shouldn't experiment with them
because it's almost going back to that point around all of the
tools that Google give us, they're all aimed at driving
revenue for Google and these campaign types are no different.
However, this is where Google is, this is where Google is
moving and you've almost got to play the game a little bit and
you've got to, you've got to understand that look, this is
(28:58):
where it's going. So test and learn while it's
while you still can, while you've still got the other
campaign types to fall back on. He tested it with a small budget
and move into it because ultimately that's where we're
going to be in the next few years.
Absolutely. So do you think keywords is
going to die out all together? From the perspective of us as
(29:20):
current managers, I think, I think so.
I think keywords in terms of howpeople search, they're always
going to be there. But in terms of the
functionality that we have, I think that it might not be
keywords. Doesn't you type them that
people have been saying for the last what, 15 years that it's
the year of voice. And I think voice is becoming a
lot more, a lot more prevalent, a lot more prominent.
(29:41):
But I think people are generallygoing to search via keywords or
via sentences, via natural language.
But in terms of the tools that we have available, keywords are
probably going to go away. Yeah.
Do you have an exact timeline? You can do a crystal bowl of a
year or two years. Wow.
I would say I'm going to be veryconservative here.
(30:03):
Within the next five years, we won't have any, any keywords or
we'll have less keywords, but nopotentially within the three.
Just looking at the speed of development on P Max and AI
research and think AI research and things like that.
I think, yeah, just with it within the next few years, I
think it's we're going to see a even bigger change than what
we've seen in the last few years.
OK, so in the next three to fiveyears, so guys, save this
(30:24):
episode, come back to Gareth in 20-30, is it we should have had
a skew words that we're right there with 20.
Five years away read. These bad times fly.
Oh makes you scary Gareth. This has been so wonderful.
We've come to the end of this chat now, but just before we go,
(30:46):
I like asking people a very fun,non-technical question.
If your career were a movie, your PPC career, paid media, or
marketing career were a movie, what would be the title?
Yeah. So I saw this the questions you
sent over and I've thought that this probably more than I should
have done. But no, I'm a big, I'm a big
(31:06):
Lord of the Rings fan. And I think, oh, wait, given
kind of the theme of what we've talked about here and the real
delivered passion I've got for actually sales, talking to
marketing and operations and allthe other departments, I think
it would have to be and played. People don't hate me for this.
Don't unfriend me on LinkedIn and things.
But I think the fellowship of the budget, just making sure,
(31:27):
look, it's my budget in marketing, but it's also a nails
budget. It's a business budget.
So yes, the fellowship of the budget.
The Fellowship of the Budget, I'm a load of a range fan and
I'm always, I've gone to so manytalks where they have a
reference there and it makes sense and I love it.
So yes, the Fellowship of the Budget, that is so fantastic.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday.
(31:48):
Garrett, where can people find you?
They want to follow you, but more people are going to follow
you. We're going to send the Lord of
the Rings fans your way where they can.
They find you. Please dude, no, I'm pretty
active on LinkedIn and yeah, maybe we can share the link if
people do want to. Do you want to come say hi on
LinkedIn? I'm in the process of building
building out a blog, possibly a sub stack as well.
But yeah, stay tuned for news onthose.
(32:09):
OK, fantastic. Thank you so much for that,
Gareth. And yeah, bye.
Thank you very much. Bye bye.
Thank you so much Gareth for sharing that.
Very honest and transparent experience.
So yeah, remember don't work in silos.
Make sure you understand not just your data, but what it's
feeding into marketing team, talk to the sales team.
(32:31):
You might be sending so many great quality leads.
You've cracked P Max, you've cracked AI Max, you've cracked
using your research ads. And yeah, they're getting the
the types of customers that theywant, but they are not actually
having the capacity to convert all that fantastic traffic and
leads that you're sending through.
So they're having that full funnel view of what you're
(32:53):
sending is really important so that you don't waste your
clients budget. So yeah, Please remember that
For more information about that and yeah, the full transcript of
that fantastic conversation withGareth, you can go to podcast
dot PPC dot live to yeah, get the details, watch the video,
listen to it however you wanted and share with your friends and
rate of review if you did enjoy that podcast episode with that
(33:17):
would be really appreciated. In regards to our PBC live
fantastic events. Our last event was went off
without it. I was going to say without a
hitch. That is not true.
There was a few hitches, but it did it did go ahead.
It was a great success. There was cake, there was pizza,
there was drinks. Everybody enjoyed it.
So yeah, we will definitely be coming again on October the
(33:39):
22nd. That's October the 22nd, this
time on a Wednesday because we want to give you guys a chance
to experience going coming to PPC Live as well as going to
Brighton SEO the next day if youchoose to.
So yeah, please join us on October 22nd and go to PPC dot
live for the information about it.
Although beforehand there will be an online version of our PPC
(34:00):
Live 17th and that's happening on August the 14th.
So yeah, I missed it, mistook that.
So even before October, there's an August the 14th online
version. Jill Saskin Gills, who's one of
our ambassadors is going to be Britain leading the talks and
we're going to be live streaming, not not quite live,
but we're going to be streaming the talks, all three of the
talks and two of our speakers, especially Paul Salami and Aisha
(34:23):
Yusef are going to be joining for a live Q&A.
That one will definitely be liveand not a prerecording.
So you'll be able to ask them questions and they'll be able to
give you the answer for that. So yeah, go to PPC dot live.
The details for that will be up by now by the time you're
listening to this. So yeah, join us on August the
14th, but if you want an in person experience, join us on
October the 22nd for that as well.
(34:46):
Before now, I leave you as well.I'm delighted to share that I am
taking on coaching clients. So yeah, just a few clients a
month and I'd love to, yeah, if you need help, I'd love to help
you out in terms of building your confidence and taking hold
of your career. So if you go to the marketing
annu.com for that, you'll be able to get all the information
about that. So yeah, I hope you've enjoyed
(35:07):
the show and I look forward to bringing more PPCF ups and
triumphs next week. Thank you.
Bye.
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