PPCChat | PPC Problem Solving | June 5, 2018

This week’s PPCChat session was hosted by Julie F Bacchini and the  discussion was about the common PPC problems faced, strategies to tend the issues, the most challenging issues PPC experts have faced, what approach they adopted and tactics required for problem solving in your PPC career. 

Here is the screencap of the discussion that took place.

Q1: What is the most common problem you face in your day to day PPC work? And how often do you face it?

A1a: The new Adwords interface. A1b: Mostly in my nightmares. – @ericdfarmer

Tools and/or platforms not working properly is the one I have been dealing with most frequently lately. It is maddening. Happens multiple times per week. – @NeptuneMoon

Clients not having thank you pages / Google Analytics Goals for conversion tracking. – @gravymatt

Probably an amorphous “well this ain’t workin.” We use a pretty standardized setup and so to see something not acting like our other accounts is a good way to ID issues. – @ferkungamaboobo

Improving QS/Relavancy Score when you don’t have control of landing pages! Still possible, but very frustrating! I’d also say, keeping an eye on daily spend for accounts where I make a lot of changes with @adwords now having the freedom to double it. – @markpgus

making sure all the consistent stuff we need to do doesn’t get missed (ie SQR, Pacing/budget reallocation, Spotting for out of norm performance). – @JonKagan

Q2: Do you have strategies you regularly use when you run into a problem or do you tend to just wing it?

Depends on the problem, if it’s a technical problem there is likely some sort of process we have for dealing with it. If it’s a communication problem, my process is to write a REALLY long email & then have @_ericm or @timmhalloran proof it and tell me to trim it. – @PPCKirk

Most problems have occurred before so I run through my checklist of possible solutions. If it’s new, I usually reach out to other team members to see if 1) I’m the only one experiencing it and/or 2) if anyone else has found a solution to the same or similar problem. – @akaEmmaLouise

No other choice than to wing it with all the technical issues in platforms as of late. – @timothyjjensen

Being a digital dinosaur, there are not a lot of things that crop up that I haven’t seen in some form before, so I tend to draw from that experience to formulate my plan/response. So, basically winging it… – @NeptuneMoon

Every scenario will fall into a handful of types. We’ve tried to turn as much of the day to day into templated activity, which includes buffer time for handling (and documenting) scenarios that may be new. – @jimbanks

Whenever I’m limited by creative assets/ LP creation I just stress to the client/ person I report to the limitations in place, and try to give them an idea of how that affects the overall picture. This usually puts pressure on them to provide or lessens expectaions. – @markpgus

we def have a progressive checklist for issues. You must go in a specific order to determine issue and fix, once you exhaust the list, you escalate to an inhouse SME. – @JonKagan

Q3: Do you find that the non-technical issues you encounter are more typically with coming up with strategy, implementing strategy, continuing to improve performance, human/client type issues or something else?

I find that the non-technical issues are almost entirely around some miscommunication or misunderstanding. So much can be solved by making sure first we’re (team member or client) on the same page in definitions/objectives.  – @PPCKirk

Finishing a strategy that’s nearly implemented. Like the difference from the prototype to the finished product. Once I’m nearly finished I tend to obsess over the finer points so it’s more rep of my vision which isn’t helpful, especially when you just need to ship it. – @timmhalloran

Most frequently is a mix of 1 & 3. Finding appropriate strategies that will get us to continually improve performace. There’s always new things to try, but figuring out which ones make sense for a given client and which I can recommend with some level of confidence.  – @akaEmmaLouise

Probably a tie between moving performance past a plateau, dealing w/ a client w/ bad internal sales team who can’t close leads you bring and general communication stuff. – @NeptuneMoon

Often it’s new people joining the team at clients that can be disruptive. Client education is really important. We dig our heels in HARD to make our project tools and process be the ones adopted. Otherwise we end up using 20 different project management tools. – @jimbanks

I think in terms of strategey, I have a pretty solid go to. The challenge arises in continuing to improve performance for campaigns that perform well. Sometimes the data doesn’t tell a story when using Smart Bidding. – @markpgus

As bad as it sounds, majority of issues are often user error (ie human error), and only fix is education. – @JonKagan

Q4: Which type of issue do you find most challenging and why?

The types that involve client / agency objective mismatch. These are typically more challenging because unless we can change an entire C-Suite (or VP or whoever)’s perspective on the funnel and marketing, we just won’t see eye to eye on how to make PPC work. – @PPCKirk

Clients who stick with reporting on anything and are not open for recommendations… that’s sooooo annoying. – @Khalifounours

Most challenging is probably when personalities and communication styles just don’t mesh. Hard to build the rapport and trust needed to navigate difficult times, and makes every bump feel like a crisis. – @akaEmmaLouise

People stuff can always be sticky. But the piece that drives me nuts is things not working right (I’m looking at you Facebook ads) and me not being able to do what I planned and need to do. – @NeptuneMoon

TRACKING ISSUES. When an account is not set up properly and you fix tracking, clients will still treat the old “inaccurate” metrics as the standard. On the other hand, clients that don’t care about tracking…. it’s nice until someone asks them for HARD ROI numbers. – @markpgus

Process-related issues. Either someone not following a process, or the process being out of date, or the process being just bad for the situation. “We do it this way.” “But wait, here’s three reasons why you shouldn’t do it that way” – @ferkungamaboobo

Tough question! Having to deal with internal politics at some clients. They have internal teams all vying for the “credit” whereas we let the data and attribution models dictate what happens and who gets credit. I used to be protective of PPC, now I am more pragmatic. – @jimbanks

Human. You can fix and revise a tech issue. Once you find incompetence, if your lucky you have a 50/50 shot to fix it. – @JonKagan

Q5: We all have our moments and days when things are easier or harder for us. What was a problem you encountered recently (we will get to how you addressed in in the next question)?

One problem I have recently been facing is getting blinders after being in an account for super long and trying to get out of the “autopilot” mindset. – @KyleShurtz

Client contact replaced 60 days into 90-day onboarding and having to repeat the same convos, explain the state of the account when we got it and what we’d been doing for 2 months, balancing requests outside of scope-of-work while building/retaining client confidence. – @akaEmmaLouise

Champagne aspirations on beer budgets. – @NeptuneMoon

Sometimes the challenge is the PPC results over-deliver, so we end up throttling. I hate throttling. I always try to ensure clients never run out of whatever it is we are selling. Puts us under pressure to deliver.  – @jimbanks

I’ve recently moved from an Agency where my clients though the world of me and trusted my expertise, to an in-house role where the traditional marketing guys don’t involve digital in the decision process and thinks as digital as simply a way to execute their ideas! – @markpgus

As weird as it sounds, it was inappropriate client behavior

Q6: How did you address this issue? Was your approach successful?

We have been doing account swaps on Friday to help get new eyes on the account and give good feedback on things to do. – @KyleShurtz

LOTS of open communication with the client, and tons of internal discussions for our team. Approach seems to have been successful–we are on a great path now and both we and the client feel confident in the alignment of priorities. – @akaEmmaLouise

Encouraged narrowing the focus to try to maximize what we could do for the limited $$ available. Successful? Not sure yet. – @NeptuneMoon

I always insist on a post-campaign review. If there was scope creep, under/over delivery, stock outages, you need to ensure they don’t happen again. That whole “definition of insanity” springs to mind #ppcchat Ultimately we are all one team and all accountable. – @jimbanks

We addressed it head on, client was not receptive, we ceased relationship. – @JonKagan

Q7: What is the most difficult problem you’ve faced in your PPC career? How did you address it?

Learning to provide real value to Lead Gen clients. ROI is much easier to calculate for eComm bc revenue is traceable. I’ve learned to set expectations with Lead Gen clients and start talking about lead quality and back end data early on and optimize toward that. – @akaEmmaLouise

Biggest problem was not saying no when I should have in any number of circumstances. Whether not a great fit, red flags with client personality, unrealistic expectations. I have learned, over the years, to really, really trust my instincts on things. Every time I have gone against my gut, I have ultimately regretted it. Hone your spidey sense and listen to it! – @NeptuneMoon

I think my biggest problem was blinders ignoring the rest of marketing. One example: a client’s reputation problems can kill an account – and it’s somethign that you *can* help with through PPC but your team can’t leave its teammates in the cold about it. – @ferkungamaboobo

Once had a client that was awful with communication. We stressed syncing leads with their back-end sales, but they didn’t respond to our emails. Meanwhile, our CPLs shot way down bidding only on approved keywords… Long story short, revenue decreased 75%. – @markpgus

back in ’07, when Google content defaulted on, and I forgot to turn it off on a setup, and it blew through 6 months of budget in a weekend (yeah there were other mistakes with the setup). I had to explain to the client it was my fault, and beg them not to fire us. – @JonKagan

Q8: What do you wish you were better at when it comes to PPC Problem Solving?

I wish I were better at talking about strategy. The strategies are present, well thought-out, and driving all the tactical decisions, but I’m so much more comfortable explaining tactics vs. tying back to big-picture strategy in client communication. Also, not stressing/freaking out when clients do. A lot of “fires” are really the result of a bad day in my client contact’s work life, or some other temporary concern, and doesn’t need to cross over into my head space. – @akaEmmaLouise

I wish I was better with automation. I tend to do things manually when I could probably shift a decent portion to a tool to become more efficient. – @NeptuneMoon

Lateral thinking with strategy, then communicating that lateral thinking in a client-friendly way. “You asked for X, but we can’t fairly deliver on that. But how about ABC? It’s a little different but will achieve goals A & C well.” – @ferkungamaboobo

I wish I dug my heels in more with start-up clients. Ultimately, you end up doing so much more than their PPC because they are new to their business. That’s not reflected in the commercials. – @markpgus

While I have a grasp, I know holistic down funnel media attribution is something I wish I could be better at, but just don’t focus enough on. – @JonKagan

PPCChat Participants:

• Julie F Bacchini – @NeptuneMoon
• Jon Kagan – @JonKagan
• Jim Banks – @jimbanks
• Kirk Williams – @PPCKirk
• Kyle Shurtz – @KyleShurtz
• Matt Graves –  @gravymatt
• Emma Franks – @akaEmmaLouise
• Mark Gustafson –  @markpgus
• Doug R Thomas –  @ferkungamaboobo
• Timothy Jensen –  @timothyjjensen
• Tim Halloran –  @timmhalloran
• Khalifa –  @Khalifounours
• Eric Farmer –  @ericdfarmer

Related Links:

• Monthly Roundup | Top PPC Posts – May, 2018
• PPCChat | PPC For Beginners | May 23, 2018
• PPCChat | PPC Potpourri | May 16, 2018