How To Use Systems To Grow Your PPC Agency Without Going Crazy (Episode 180)

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Show Notes:

Welcome back to the PSP! This week we’re starting a month-long series on running a PPC/Google Ads agency. The first episode in this series is on how we use systems to run all aspects of a PPC agency, including marketing, selling, builds and management, reporting, and customer service.

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Transcript:

Jason Rothman:
Jimmy.

Jason Rothman:
Yes.

Jason Rothman:
Would you like a glass of diet soda in a handmade Moroccan glass?

Jason Rothman:
No, thanks. I already have that in my hand.

Jason Rothman:
Okay, Jimmy. I’ve always liked how much of a resourceful young man you are or turning into I should say, my little boy.

Jason Rothman:
Thanks, mom.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, it’s mom. So many revealed mysteries.

Jason Rothman:
Hey, everybody. Oh yes. Yes.

Chris Schaeffer:
There it is.

Jason Rothman:
Welcome back to the Paid Search Podcast. My name is Jason Rothman. As always, I’m joined by the great Chris Schaeffer on this 180th episode of the Paid Search Podcast. Chris, how are you doing today?

Chris Schaeffer:
Today, I’m good. Today, we’ve celebrated Thanksgiving. Christmas is not too far. Jason, it’s a great time of year. It’s not hot in Texas, which is always a wonderful time. The chickens are laying eggs. The cat is sleeping, and all is right.

Jason Rothman:
I’ve got a bone to pick with you, to be honest. Yesterday we met. It was nice. Before today’s recording day, planned out the episode. And I was about to say goodbye to you. I was about to say have a nice afternoon, and you rushed me off the call like a scrub. You rushed me off the call like someone who has a personality defect where they can’t handle a conversation, and they don’t know when to end it. And they can’t take verbal and visual cues. You just go, “I got to get a haircut. Bye,” in the middle of our conversation. I mean, I was going to say bye in like a minute. So number one, I’m kind of suspect of that because your hair’s still long-ish. I would call it more maybe hair styling you went in for. Question, what did you tell the hairdresser when you sat down in the chair in terms of what you wanted? Your exact words.

Chris Schaeffer:
My exact words.

Jason Rothman:
How did that happen is what I’m wondering.

Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, I’m so vain that I cannot accept imperfection in my look, not one hair can be off. So I show her a picture to remind her of the beauty-

Jason Rothman:
Are you serious?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I didn’t say a word. I just show her a picture.

Jason Rothman:
You show her a picture.

Chris Schaeffer:
I show her a picture, and I say, “This. This is me from four weeks ago. Do it again.” And she does it, and I leave.

Jason Rothman:
Nice. Okay. That’s what I wanted to know. I just didn’t know what you would say. I would tell her job well done. It looks great.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yes. It’s a little-

Jason Rothman:
Really short on the sides. I don’t think I’ve seen it that much of a fade or whatever. But it looks great. Very cool.

Chris Schaeffer:
My wife had a little something to say about that. She started saluting me and called me Captain Sir. Because she says I look like I’m about to join the Navy or something.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, I mess with you on this show and do some jokes, but I think the reason you’re able to handle it so well… By the way, much better than our audience. I get so many messages like, “Stop being mean to Chris. Is Chris okay? You shouldn’t have said this about Chris.” And the reason he handles it so well I think is because from the few times I’ve seen your wife on our call here, man, she busts your chops, dude.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh yeah.

Jason Rothman:
It’s nonstop, dude, when she comes in the room. It’s physical. It’s verbal. It’s emotional. She cuts deep. So it sounds familiar when you tell me she makes fun your haircut like I do.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. She’s a very special lady, Jason. Very special lady.

Jason Rothman:
All right. Chris, well let’s get into today’s review of the week. I made a call for some very drastically positive reviews, like just over the top some would say, but I would say right where they need to be. And people delivered. So we’re going to start doing reviews again. And this one’s just very short. It’s very British, if you will. Very old world, Great Britain. No good on 5S is the reviewer. And it’s five stars, Apple Podcast.

Jason Rothman:
“Need to understand Google Ads, you are in the right place. Jason and Chris are on the money. This is the only Google podcast you need. Listen and learn.”

Jason Rothman:
Just short and to the point. And yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. I like it. So thank you for that review. Reviews help us grow the show. Speaking of the show, speaking of December, speaking of business, we have decided to do something very interesting here on this show, Chris. Why don’t you tell the people what we’re going to do in December, and then our partner that we’re doing it with?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. So guys, you’re in a for a treat because up until today, the kind of stuff we’re going to talk about honestly has been behind a pay wall. I mean, we’ve offered this kind of discussion before, but it’s been very reserved. And we don’t just talk openly about everything. But today is a really special treat. We are going to talk about agency stuff, Google Ads stuff. I mean, detailed stuff about getting clients, selling to clients, managing for clients and reporting to clients. And all the things that go with that, types of clients, how to win over new prospects. All that is coming up. Lots of great content. And today we’re talking about systems. And we’re excited today because today is the beginning of our launch with our partner WordStream. Today we’re talking about systems, and before we get started, I got to talk about WordStream our sponsor.

Chris Schaeffer:
WordStream’s offering an exclusive deal to Paid Search Podcast listeners. You get an extended 14 day trial and their sales tool add on. Today we’re going to talk about how we had tons of failures working through our own system. But you don’t have to do that. WordStream has an amazing pre-built system that works. The WordStream advisor for agencies system covers every single point from the management process, from selling to reporting.

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. Let’s go through a couple of these.

Chris Schaeffer:
Selling. You can create proposals in minutes. Beautiful proposals with just a click. I tried to create proposals. Anybody who’s worked with me knows I don’t do proposals because it can take hours. This tool makes it super fast. You’ve sold the client. Now you’re onboarding. You’ve got the client, now you need to build new campaigns. You need to get results really quick. Their agency tools are perfect from keyword research to writing ad copy.

Chris Schaeffer:
Now management. Managing the campaigns. This is the daily grind of Google Ads management. They have a great system called the 20 minute work week. Throw out that dated checklist that you’ve been using. You’ve got to see their management system. It’s super effective for agencies. Whether you are managing Google Ads, Bing, Facebook, this system is cross platform. It works with everything.

Chris Schaeffer:
And then finally, the big sale, reporting. Now you need to report on all your hard work. WordStream advisor for agencies system has excellent reports. And they’re really easy to create. Listen, I think I’ve tried every reporting tool out there. Jason, I know you have too. And I really like how clean and nice the reports. I’m a fan.

Chris Schaeffer:
Ready to try it out? The site is WordStream.com/paidsearchpodcast. Remember, this is an extended 14 day trial and a free sales tool that our agency listeners are really going to love. To sign up, try it out, you don’t even have to give them a credit card. Super easy stuff. WordStream.com/paidsearchpodcast.

Jason Rothman:
Okay. Thank you, Chris. And on today’s kind of first episode in this month long series about running a PPC Google Ads agency, this first episode we’re going to focus on systems. And we want you guys feedback on these episodes. We want your questions. Contact page of our webpage, PaidSearchPodcast.com, Patreon forum, wherever you want to reach us, ask us your agency business questions. Give us your advice, and give us your feedback and let us know what you do. But I think, Chris, we’ve got some great episodes planned for the month. But it all starts for me with systems. That’s why I wanted to do this episode as the first episode in the series.

Jason Rothman:
I don’t know about you, dude, but I got into this I was okay at business. I was really good at Google Ads and marketing. But I wasn’t good at business. I was okay but I wasn’t good. And the more I’ve been in business every year, it’s about growing. But how do you grow without getting stressed and going crazy and actually grow profitably? That’s kind of been my battle for the last five years. It’s what I think about every week. And I’ve read a ton of books. I’ve looked at a ton of stuff online, and the one thing it always comes back to for me is the word systems. And that’s just not Google Ads, PPC management, agency. That’s just like good business, and I think if I was teaching a business class to people, it would be all about how to use systems and focusing on systems to run your business correctly.

Jason Rothman:
So just talk to me, Chris, about the word systems. When did you stumble upon this epiphany that this is actually why… one reason you’re successful. And how much you focus on systems these days.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I think that’s a good point, Jason. The reason I started a Google Ads business, number one is because I got fired from my agency job. And number two is because I was good at Google Ads. Just like you said, I wasn’t good at business. I didn’t get a business degree. I didn’t know how to run a business. I never wanted to be my own boss. I just wanted to work for someone else.

Chris Schaeffer:
So the whole business thing was new, and what I didn’t realize is people would say things like you need a system. And I didn’t really understand what system meant. I didn’t know really what they were referring to. For my little brain, now I realize what they mean by system is they mean ironed out, complete, fully thought out process. That is what’s important. And I thought system meant you need to have some super smart AI thing where you punch a code in and automatically sends out stuff for you, emails and stuff. No, what it means is when X happens, you do Y. In that process, it’s very simple. You follow an action with a reaction to this. So when a new person comes in, you do this. When something happens in Google Ads, you do this. And if you don’t have that process worked out, I mean, you’re going to fail.

Chris Schaeffer:
I remember one of the first things I learned in Google Ads management was when you build a campaign, you use the same success process that you did for other campaigns. If you do something unique every time you build a new campaign, you’re going to end up in failure because it’s impossible to set up a process when everything is different. You go to one campaign, and it’s built on SKAGs. And one campaign that’s built on one ad group with 50 keywords in it. And another one that’s using high funnel YouTube stuff. It’s very difficult to set up a system because you don’t know which… Should I do this here? Should I do that? You really get lost in the whole process.

Jason Rothman:
Yeah, and it’s everything in business, there is a balance. So if you’re selling hamburgers and you have a great system at a restaurant for selling hamburgers, then all of a sudden people want to buy fake meat. It’s just selling off the charts, and you don’t have fake meat in your store. You have to get it because people want it. Or if they’re into salads in a glass or they’re into shakes or whatever. And so the way that works in our business is yes, we do Google Ads. Yes, we do Bing. Some people do Facebook and YouTube and all that. And you have your system. But then when new stuff comes into play like lead form extensions, they come into the play, you have to be aware of how new factors can change your system. Or when clients start asking for a certain kind of keyword or certain kind of ad or a new feature, you got to work stuff in. So you still have to be flexible, but it is always about having the system.

Jason Rothman:
And so I think first, Chris, before we get into the five areas that we have systems for, I think it’s important just to say you got to have a vision for your business. What are you? Who do you help? Where do you want to go? I think that’s really important as a PPC agency. And it can mean different things for different people. Some people just specialize in one industry. Some people just specialize in one platform. But I think having a clear vision of where you want to go and what your goals are helps influence your system.

Jason Rothman:
And for me, I used to work at an agency. It didn’t really go good when I was there. It wasn’t being managed the right way. Then a few years later I see my former boss on an interview talking about that time in his life and how crazy the business was. And he didn’t think he was going to make it. And he was talking about he didn’t have systems. He didn’t have a vision for his company. It was amazing because it was like he was talking about something, I was like, “Oh, man. I know this person. This is so true.” He was just getting real with people. It was just interesting to see someone who was not in the system vision game then go into it, and it gave him a very clear path for his business. So you got to have a vision, and the vision guides a system.

Jason Rothman:
Now, Chris, let’s talk about the five areas of PPC management that you and I have systems for. These all could be episodes on their own. So we’re just going to kind of give an overview. But we’re just going to kind of talk about our experience of where we were and how we got to where we are in the different areas. So just briefly we’ll overview them, then we’ll jump into the first one.

Jason Rothman:
So when Chris and I think about agencies, PPC agencies, we broke it down into five factors. New leads, getting new leads in marketing. Sales, selling, onboarding, signing up, new clients. Building and managing the accounts month to month. Reporting, and then customer service. That’s kind of our vision of what a PPC agency looks for, Chris. So let’s just get started. How do you use systems or how have you not used systems and messed up when it comes to leads and marketing and getting new clients?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. So, Jason, first of all, this January is 10 years of Google Ads self employed for me. I’ve been running my own business for 10 years now, which is a wonderful thing. I’ve been immensely blessed to continue to do this for so long. Very few businesses make it that long. And so for me, more than successes, I often had failures. And I have a couple examples that come to mind when I think about getting new leads. One of the things that I did was my marketing process was basically cold calls. And the problem was I was calling… I called agencies mainly is what I wanted to reach. I wanted to reach agencies that wanted to hire me to outsource the work. And the problem is-

Jason Rothman:
Smart.

Chris Schaeffer:
It was smart. It was really great. And it started working really well. But the problem was I was doing the marketing work instead of doing my management work. My system of trying to put a bunch of time into getting new clients was eating into my management-

Jason Rothman:
It took too much time.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I was too much time. So after a while the cold call thing… Because you know, you then have to have a call. You have to explain what you do, who you are. You have to establish some credibility. All of that takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of time. So I realized my process of marketing was way too time intensive. I was getting some really good leads, and every now and then I would get, “Okay. Sure. We’ll send you one or two clients.” And then it would be a big task to get those going. But what I really needed was a more efficient marketing, new lead generation system. What I found for me worked really well was using what used to be oDesk and Elance, which is now Upwork. Basically any type of online system where you can automate that process. People come to a organized online platform and discuss your services, and everyone already knows what your price might be. You give them a bid, they know that they want your work, and you know that you want to work with them. That’s what happened for me because I never did really do a whole bunch of advertising. Mainly my thing was just reaching out and being a part of those third party platforms. Because they were so much less time intensive as a freelancer. That’s what I’ve always been so-

Jason Rothman:
But there’s consultants and freelancers and agencies sitting around right now going, “Oh, that’s not true. When I get on now what’s Upwork, it takes a bunch of time for me to make these proposals and answer jobs.” So did you systemize that process?

Chris Schaeffer:
I did, but to a point. But yes, what I did is I had a template where I wrote up a few points. And I would copy and paste the areas that would work well for this job application and this proposal and then customize it as needed. But yes, I absolutely had a-

Jason Rothman:
That’s a system.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I had a system in place that would already have some screenshots, some successes, some write ups that were working for that. Then I would place them appropriately, and then I had a write up based on here’s what I’m looking for, reminder for what I was looking for and what I didn’t want. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was very rough system. It wasn’t nearly as refined as it should’ve been. But yes, there was an early workings of a system back then.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, that’s great information. I’m the same way. I think getting new leads and prospects in terms of running a PPC agency, it’s part of the foundation because as good as anyone can be at Google Ads and Bing and Facebook and getting clients leads, there will always be some level of churn. There just will be. People go up and down in their own businesses, partners break up businesses, and then they fire the people and they bring in the new partners people and all that kind of stuff. Some clients get itchy and they go elsewhere. It’s just there’s always going to be churn. So from when I think about a business or running an agency, I’m super focused on always bringing in leads and having systems to do that.

Jason Rothman:
I guess my first kind of wake up call to everyone listening is if you’re in this business, aren’t you a marketer? So if you can’t get leads for your own company, what right do you have to be charging other people to get leads for them? So this is something you have to figure out how to do. So my biggest piece of advice when it comes to getting a lead generation system is that it’s going to be different for everybody. My piece of advice is to play to your strengths.

Jason Rothman:
So for myself, I’m extremely talented I think at three things that we talked about on Patreon a few weeks ago. Some people might recall what those three things were. And just an update for everyone, I’ve been told I used to be good at one of those three things. I’m not good anymore. But I was good in my prime.

Jason Rothman:
Anyway, one of the things I’m really good at, Chris, is the written word. I’m just amazing at it, and it’s a natural gift. I’ve-

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. You blog a lot.

Jason Rothman:
I’ve worked on that gif. That’s one way I get clients is through content. That just works for me. Some people are extremely charismatic and extremely good looking. And also some people aren’t just interesting in places like there’s some vloggers on YouTube who are in New York City. It’s so much easier to vlog in New York City than it is in different cities because there’s so much going on there. So if you’re charismatic, if your visual, you could be on Instagram, you could be on YouTube, you could be creating content that way. Advertising for your agency, coming up with a referral system, posting on Upwork. That’s where I started, Chris, posting on Elance. Coming up with your own content, word of mouth, local business groups like local business breakfast meeting networking things. If that place are your strengths.

Jason Rothman:
So that’s my biggest piece of advice is come up with a system for your agency that plays to your strengths. And if people don’t know where to get started, like think about the last place you worked for, the last agency you worked for. How did they get their business? Think about that. And that gives you a place to start. So definitely having a system for new leads in marketing is crucial, Chris. But once you get those leads, you have to sell. And this is a lot of people… This is kind of like quick sand because you think you’re doing business when you’re selling, you think you’re making money. But if you don’t have a system, if you don’t do it the right way, you could be wasting a lot of time. So I want you to talk about that, Chris.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Such a boast to your ego, confirmation that your system’s working is whenever you get someone that is interested and wants to have a conversation and calls you. And you invest 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour into-

Jason Rothman:
45 minutes.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Into talking to them. Now you get so hungry for this to work and for your time to pay off. It’s so funny because… Well, for me, I say you, but I’m reflecting on myself. But I get so invested in I’ve put so much time into this, now I need to make money. I want to hook them. I’m interested in how this conflict is going to resolve. Is he going to go with me or not? In the end, they decide to go with me. And then I realize, “Oh my gosh. They’re spending $300 and they’re selling yard services in a giant metro.” What am I doing? Why did I accept this? They’re going to get wiped. They’re never going to see themselves, they’re not going to get any traffic.

Chris Schaeffer:
So for me, I’m sure you have good advice on selling because you’re an excellent salesman. And for me, I don’t think I’m that good of a salesman, I just ended up being so nice to everyone, I kept saying yes to everyone. And I’d have to work my butt off because then I’d have to follow up with that guy that I didn’t really want to work with that was under funded, in a bad industry, and something that didn’t really sell well on Google anyway. And then I have to do it.

Chris Schaeffer:
So my advice is I still struggle with this today is setting standards on what you accept and what you don’t accept. And as you change, as your business change, you change the system to reflect what you want to work with. Maybe that means you’re minimum changes. Maybe at first you don’t have a minimum. You’re willing to work with anybody. But then you slowly change that and you say, “Okay. Only 1000 and up, only 2000 and up.” Stuff like that. That’s a big way to make your system grow and your business grow without going crazy.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, you’re not going to like to hear this, but I put a 71 year pause on giving to charities.

Chris Schaeffer:
What?

Jason Rothman:
After 71 years, I will give to charity again. But for 71 year-

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s horrible.

Jason Rothman:
… I’m no longer giving to charity. I knew you wouldn’t like it. I’m just trying to be honest with you, Chris.

Chris Schaeffer:
I want to know why.

Jason Rothman:
71 year pause.

Chris Schaeffer:
Tell me why. I know there’s a reason.

Jason Rothman:
Because I have given a lifetime of charity away to-

Chris Schaeffer:
There it is.

Jason Rothman:
… Google Ads advertisers, to agencies on what were sales calls that became free consulting sessions with the greatest Google Ads expert on the planet. And if you don’t believe me, I have a trophy to show it. Chris has seen the trophy.

Chris Schaeffer:
Award winning, absolutely. It came in the mail. Just delivered straight to him. Yeah. I’ve been there too. It’s-

Jason Rothman:
Yeah, but I don’t think you’ve been there to the extent that I’ve been there. It’s ridiculous.

Chris Schaeffer:
No because you-

Jason Rothman:
It makes me hate myself.

Chris Schaeffer:
I would see you once a week, and you would be so frustrated with yourself. You’re like… We’d have our talk. So this is before the podcast. We have our talks, and you’d be like, “Dude, I wasted so much time this week.”

Jason Rothman:
Yeah. I’m the king of analogies and metaphors. Chris, I had a metaphor that had to do with a trade and not collecting money for it. But I’m not going to go down that road. That’s how it feels to me. Because, Chris, this happened to me so many times before I had a system because it just plays on my personality. I’m so easy to toy with. You play to my ego just a little bit, I’ll just go off for hours and give you all the information I know. And that’s what was happening to me. And number one, it wastes time. Number two, it gives away too much information for free. And number three, it’s not focused on the goal of selling and onboarding new clients.

Jason Rothman:
So what I’ve done, again, all these systems, they’re what play to your own strengths, what worked for your own agency. But some things that I focused on that worked for me, Chris, is I have a system. And we’re going to talk about it when I talk about WordStream at the end of the episode. This is when they got me was with their proposal generator because that’s when I was wasting the most time. I get asked so many times by agencies and clients, “Hey, I want to work with you. But show me what it’s going to look like.” And I’m like, “Where am I supposed to pull those numbers?” It takes forever. So that’s why I use their proposal generator. So that’s one part of the system.

Jason Rothman:
But before I create the proposal, what I do is it’s very simple. I get leads. We talked about that. I get leads. Then when they get into my selling system, it’s very simple. I send them information. I help them qualify themselves. I say, “This is what I charge. This is what I do. This is who I work with. This is the kind of results you can expect. If you like that, let’s do a phone call. If you don’t like that, let’s not.” So I give them a chance to pre qualify themselves. Then they schedule a call with me. Free bonus tip for all the agencies, Calendly. Anybody use Calendly out there?

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh yeah.

Jason Rothman:
Schedule calls.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yup.

Jason Rothman:
So then we get on a call. I’ve cut my calls to 15 minutes tops. Everything we can…

Chris Schaeffer:
Wow.

Jason Rothman:
What do you want me to do, Chris? You want me to go on for 40 minutes? If it’s not 15 minutes, then when is it? You know what I’m saying?

Chris Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jason Rothman:
So I just set an alarm on my phone, and it goes off at 15 minutes because I just lose track of time when I’m talking. So we nail out if we’re going to work together over 15 minutes, and then part three of sales is the onboarding. I have a preset form that I send to my clients, all clients, all prospects when they sign up with me, and they give me the information they need. And that’ll save me so much back and forth time in terms of where do you want your ads to run, what do you want your budget to me, what’s okay to say in the ads, what’s not. I have found an onboarding form to be a crucial part of the sales process. Do you like that, Chris?

Chris Schaeffer:
I love it. And I’ll tell you-

Jason Rothman:
Did I teach you that, Chris?

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh. I’m pretty sure you did because let me tell you what I used to do. Well, you probably don’t know. But I had a form.

Jason Rothman:
You had this stupid notebook.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I had a notebook.

Jason Rothman:
I’m going to take notes.

Chris Schaeffer:
I had a notebook, and I made the mistake of going through that form with them over the phone. So, Jason, do you know what that turned into? That turned into an hour long discussion about what kind of keywords I would choose. I asked them what are five important products of-

Jason Rothman:
That’s not their job, Chris. That’s your job.

Chris Schaeffer:
What’s your most important service? Give me some examples, two examples of keywords that would be good for that service. I asked them those. It turned into this long discussion. It was miserable for them and for me. They’re just like, “Gosh. I just want a good campaign.”

Jason Rothman:
It wasn’t value adding for anybody.

Chris Schaeffer:
No. I thought that it was helping me because it would give me more information, help me understand their business more. But in the end, I’m more confused because my notes are so long and detailed. I’m overwhelmed. I have so much more to build and work on and only half of it is going to work because the rest of it was just fluff. So the form is critical. And then once we get into the form, you sign the client. You get all that moving, and then we get into building and management.

Chris Schaeffer:
I feel like we probably don’t have to say too much about this because this is probably where we talk about stuff every day. I mean, we talk about building and management of campaigns every day. And the important part about the system that I’ll tell you that goes beyond all the stuff about keywords and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you can listen to 179 other episodes to get that. But the over arcing thing for me that I’ve learned is that I finally found a system that will continue to push my most critical points at the top. It always has a reoccurring check this, check this, check this, and I go through the system. And by the end of the process, I’ve hit every aspect of the campaigns that I need to hit for that day.

Chris Schaeffer:
My critical campaigns are up first. Then I move through the other ones. And I always try and do that at a certain time of day. I do it with a certain process because I found that if I change that, if I deviated from that… Like in the mornings if I woke up and immediately started answering emails, my whole day’s shot because my emails are going to come pouring in even more around 10 or 11. And now I have more emails to worry about. And I still haven’t done my checks. So for me, it’s system, system, system. It’s about a system that can continue to deliver you to the focal points that you need to focus on. Not looking at a Google Ads screen and going, “Oh my gosh. I’m so overwhelmed. What do I even do?” It’s like writer’s block for Google Ads managers. You look at it, and you think, “I don’t even know where to start.”

Jason Rothman:
Right. And for me, Chris, we’ve talked about the ultimate management system checklist. It’s an episode out there. You can look it up. Just search for it. And then I’ve also created a build checklist, Chris. Everything from adding the credit card to the account or making sure the client does that to making the campaigns to the settings, to the schedule, to the location. I don’t like to think. I just can’t think anymore than I already do. And like you’re saying, you get in there. There’s so many aspects of it. I like to stay focused. I like my employees to stay focused. Very focused on the build checklist. And what we do is we just initial each item as we go down the build checklist.

Jason Rothman:
And another nice thing about having a build checklist… “What should be on the build checklist,” people are saying. Well, it’s your own thing. It’s unique to everybody. Your system has to be your system. But my advice would be having a build checklist. So next time you do a build, write down what each aspect of the build is, and then that’s how you can come up with your checklist. But one great thing about having a checklist for the build, Chris, you just initial each line item when it’s done. And then beautiful thing about it is you can knock off 20 minutes in the morning on a Tuesday. And then you can pick up Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. You know exactly where you left off. So it takes the monotony, the kind of just energy draining process of a build, and also just the anxiousness of how big a build is before you start. It kind of eliminates those issues that can make a build take longer than it should because you can chip away at it and focus on that checklist. So I have a checklist for that.

Jason Rothman:
And then with management, Chris, I have the weekly management checklist where I just do all the things in a campaign. We’ve done an episode on it. What I like to do, I like to do manual checklist, and then I also like to go into a tool like WordStream and do their 20 minute work week. And do all the kind of machine things, like check for duplicates, optimize placements, those kind of things that I’m not really seeing manually inside the account. I like to have a machine software kind of thing to kind of stand on its shoulders basically and help that guide me. But those are the two things I do week to week.

Jason Rothman:
You made a great point about timing, Chris. All this stuff, the time you put into marketing, the time you put into selling. When you have phone calls, which employee in your office does the selling. When you do your builds, when you do your management. And we’ll get to customer service later on. But when you do your customer service. I think for both of us, we found different parts of the day when we like doing those things. Is that accurate? And you stick to that, is that true?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Oh sure. Yeah. I mean, for me, emails early in the morning are a disaster because you’re going to send those emails. And then by the end of the day, if you keep responding immediately to those emails, you’ve sent five, six, seven emails throughout the day. And it’s not that I’m against responding to emails quickly. It’s just that most of the time emails are… Non-critical emails are going to pull away from the critical items that you need to take care of. So answering someone’s questions about how much they spent last month, unless they say it’s critical, is not more important than making sure they’re spending the right amount this month. You’re going to end up screwing up the present just to make sure that the past is accounted for. So it’s not going to worth it.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, just a word to the wise, we’re talking about marketing. We’re talking about customer service, reporting, selling, all that kind of stuff. It is all important. However, you can’t forget about management. That’s why food is on the table. So the whole thing with growing an agency is how do I take on more and more accounts as efficiently as possible? That means you got to be efficient. But at the same time, you still have to get results.

Jason Rothman:
So just two quotes I always like to remember. Number one, Shania Twain, “Dance with the one that brought you.” I think your line dancing experience, that would come into mind there. Although sometimes, Chris, I hear that you and yours don’t dance with the one that brought you, but that’s a different-

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, different story.

Jason Rothman:
Different story for a different day.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. That’s a Patreon.

Jason Rothman:
I remember that episode.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s a Patreon episode, yeah.

Jason Rothman:
So, “Dance with the one that brought you,” Shania Twain. And then also Charley Munger, “The best source of new business is the work on your desk.” He was a lawyer before he was an investor. And his whole thing was, “Look, if I just do a great job with the work on my desk, clients will recommend me word of mouth,” and all that kind of stuff. So you can’t forget about management. You want to be as efficient as possible. But you can’t forget about being effective. Because, Chris, the fourth area where you need a system and a PPC agency will remind you if you’re being effective or not. Reporting.

Jason Rothman:
So question, Chris, do you have to have a system for reporting, or can you just write up a few paragraphs and fill in a few pieces of data on a nice little spreadsheet for your clients each week for each client? Does that work out? How does that work out, buddy?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. It’s so you know me. We’ve been together so long, you know me well. You know the story on this one. You’ve been down this road too. If you do not have a system for reporting, the first of the month becomes so overwhelming. All other systems will shut down. You will no longer do management. You certainly can’t do new builds, and you can’t take calls, sell or do any kind of marketing because your whole staff is overwhelmed with making cute little graphics to show little up arrows and writing comments and making analysis emails that no one’s going to read. Okay?

Jason Rothman:
Wow.

Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, I’ve spent… You talk about not giving to charity anymore. I put so much time into writing these things, and nobody cares. They would fire me just like they would any other time. They don’t care how much time I’ve put in and how much I’ve convinced them about how good my work is and all that I’ve done. They usually have one or two things that they care about. And if you don’t communicate that, if you don’t have that in a report, you don’t make that clear, they don’t care how good their search terms are or how good their search impressions are or how many conversions. They want to know, “Hey, I googled myself, and I don’t see my name.” That’s all they care about. That’s all they care about.

Jason Rothman:
Or, “My phone’s not ringing.”

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. It’s useless.

Jason Rothman:
Yeah, so Chris, reporting matters. It does not matter as much as getting good results and making sure the client’s businesses are doing well to the most extent that you can influence that. However, it does still matter. The whole thing about recurring revenue, getting clients to stay with you month after month, it’s very nice to when you send them that invoice, also send them a report and show them the work you’ve been doing, the results you’re getting. But it is about systems.

Jason Rothman:
We get asked about this all the time. What do you use? I use WordStream. We get that question all the time. What do you use to do reporting? That’s what I use. It has to be automated if you’re running an agency at scale. The process of reporting has to be automated. So what you can do and what I do whether you want to do it daily, probably not. But if you do, you can. You want to do it weekly or you want to do it monthly. You have to have a system where the software spits out the report by email or a fixed link, a stationary link they can do to where it spits it out automatically. That happens automatically. The client receives the report automatically. And then that’s all you have to do.

Jason Rothman:
So Chris has this nice… We have this nice little game we play like in the first of the month. Who’s kind of more relaxed? Who’s got their business done with reporting first? And it’s always Chris. I’m telling you, this guy’s more efficient than me at that. Chris, my worse it’s ever been is I think I spent… When I moved into my new home a few years ago, we were moving in, and it was the first of the month, and I wasn’t as efficient with an automated reporting schedule. And I had gotten lazy on putting new clients on that report for the end of the month, the end of their first month. So I was having to make some manually, generate them manually and send them out. Five days.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh man.

Jason Rothman:
I’m not kidding. I don’t know what my mood has been lately, but I’ve just been in a nice beat myself up mood publicly on the internet. So on Patreon, I’m going to talk about how I built a campaign the other day and it quality scores of one. Just one.

Chris Schaeffer:
I want to hear that.

Jason Rothman:
On every single keyword. That’s what I’m talking about today. One very single keyword, except a handful of them, we got a one. A one. A one. Okay? And then the few keywords that we did get more than a one, we got three. So I put a thing on Patreon about that, a post about that. So I beat myself up publicly there. And then on this show, I talked about how the reporting process one time within the last couple years took me five days, Chris. That’s not an exaggeration. I was staying up way too late in the night doing it. Like five days. It was horrible. And someone asked, “How does that happen?” Well if you’re managing a certain number of clients; and you’re dealing with the customer support, which we’ll talk about; and you don’t have systems in place; and you have a good reporting system in place, I know it sounds crazy, five days, Chris.

Chris Schaeffer:
No.

Jason Rothman:
But that’s what happened.

Chris Schaeffer:
No, absolutely not crazy. I mean-

Jason Rothman:
Not crazy at all.

Chris Schaeffer:
Year ago, before I was such an incredibly smart, handsome man that I am now, I would arrange my family vacations, I would arrange birthday events, outings around the first of the month. My family and my extended family knew you don’t do anything, you don’t come here on the first of the month. You don’t plan anything. Chris does nothing but work and that’s it. And now look at me. Look at me. That’s it.

Jason Rothman:
We’re all looking. We’re just-

Chris Schaeffer:
Just look at me.

Jason Rothman:
We’re just in awe.

Chris Schaeffer:
What was it? Stock image model. Stock image.

Jason Rothman:
I said that.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, you said that last week I think.

Jason Rothman:
No, you got to do the handshake.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh yeah.

Jason Rothman:
Like you’re going in for a deal.

Chris Schaeffer:
Like that.

Jason Rothman:
There you go.

Chris Schaeffer:
I’m ready to sign, sir. There you go.

Jason Rothman:
So, Chris, you got to have a system for reporting and basically by that, it means you got to have an automated software sending out your reports.

Jason Rothman:
Now, Chris, there’s a boomerang factor. And for those of you outside of Australia, that’s where the boomerangs from, right?

Chris Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think so.

Jason Rothman:
When you throw a boomerang, it comes all the way back to you. So when you throw out these reports every month-

Chris Schaeffer:
He’s getting there.

Jason Rothman:
Well, I was just thinking about local Australia news because I do keep up with the news in Australia. I was reading about some news in the northern territory this week. Yes, I was. I was also reading about some political divides in the country. Also reading about their international relations, and I’m very up to date with Australia. So if any of our Australian listeners want to talk current events-

Chris Schaeffer:
Wow.

Jason Rothman:
Hit me up, mate. Chris, you send out those reports, right? You send them out. Boom, there they go out every month. Guess what happens when you send out reports, customer service. It’s part of running an agency. So you have to embrace it. So some people have chats on their website. Some people have ticket systems. Some people do phone calls. Maybe they have a smaller number of high value clients, and they set up routine phone calls. Conference calls, people in business like to call them. Some people do it through emails. Customer service has a bog you down in the past, Chris? Have you gotten better at it? What do you think about when I talk about having customer service being one of the core five parts of running an agency?

Chris Schaeffer:
I know I’ve talked about this before. And it’s something that I struggled with. Calendly has made a difference. We keep mention this. It’s a great tool. But it’s not particularly Calendly that’s the tool. It’s the system that it provides. So systems are what’s so important. And if you can force clients through a process in order to ask questions, whether that’s an email process, a ticket system, a call, booking a call, something like that. If you can force that through a funnel and a system that you can delegate to your employees, that you can do yourself, that is incredibly important. And one of the things that I’ve done is I use that. I use a system like that, and I stop using four page emails with screenshots to explain a point to someone.

Chris Schaeffer:
Now I use wonderful technology of video chat where I can immediately send them a video and explain my point in two minutes. And they visually see and hear me talk about it. And it’s way more effective. So systems like that where you have an approach, when someone approaches, you know how to answer it and how to do it efficiently. And when you work out a system like that I mean, it’s incredibly valuable. It’s like coming up with a automated reporting system that’s done in a matter of hours rather than five days.

Jason Rothman:
Yeah, Chris. There’s no getting around customer service when you run a PPC agency because you as the PPC expert agency know a lot more about these platforms and your clients. Hence, I love using that to sound-

Chris Schaeffer:
Very smart.

Jason Rothman:
… very arrogant. Hence-

Chris Schaeffer:
It’s British. Is that a British word? It’s probably British.

Jason Rothman:
Hence why they hire you. Hence why they give you money because you’re better at the system then. So they need help. So they’re not going to understand things by default. So you have to embrace customer service. For me, Chris, I still like email. I like email. Call me old school. I like it. I have a system that I use in my email. I have a system with how much time I spend on emails. I have a system on what parts of the day we handle emails as a company. And that’s what’s worked for me. But the main thing is understanding that customer service is an aspect of your business as a PPC agency and having a system in place.

Jason Rothman:
So, Chris, I think that’s it for today’s system episode. Coming up over the month of December, thanks to WordStream, we are going to be talking about these business of PPC topics, including how to win over an interested PPC prospect, how to manage lots of client accounts, and also client personas, the different types of clients and how to handle them. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about in December. We want to thank you guys for listening today. The reason we’re doing these episodes is because we have partnered with WordStream. They have offered a free 14 day special extended trial to listeners of the Paid Search Podcast, including sales tools add ons for listeners of the Paid Search Podcast. You go to WordStream.com/paidsearchpodcast. No credit card required, start your free trial. WordStream is a Facebook marketing partner. They’re a Google Premiere partner, and they’re a Microsoft Advertising partner.

Jason Rothman:
For me, I’m telling you guys, the most frustrating part of running an agency was creating proposals for prospects. It’s just not in my skill set. It’s not something I’m good at. I was literally wasting hours doing that, and then of course not every prospect becomes a client. So I was wasting tons of time. Now I use WordStream’s proposal generator. All you have to do is put in a few pieces of information about your prospect, what industry they’re in, what area they’re in, some sample keywords. Boom, you click a button, and then you get a nice report with the client’s information on it, the prospect’s information on it that tells you how many clicks they can expect, how many impressions, how many conversions. All the things that prospects want to see. So that’s one thing I love about WordStream advisor for agencies.

Jason Rothman:
The other thing I really been loving is Google Ads and Bing management in one place. I don’t have to go back and forth. I don’t have to put in changes from Google Ads to Bing. I can just go into WordStream. I can make management decisions on Google Ads and Bing in one place. If you do Facebook, you can also do Facebook changes right from within the WordStream platform. So we want to tell you guys right now, go to WordStream.com/paidsearchpodcast. We’ll have links in the description. Get a free special 14 day extended trial only for listeners of the Paid Search Podcast. Start your trial, see how WordStream can help your agency grow.

Jason Rothman:
So, Chris, I want to thank WordStream. I want to thank you, Chris. As I’ve previewed, I have some very embarrassing information for Patreon. Go to Patreon.com/paidsearchpodcast everybody and sign up. And we do an after show there every week, and that’s where we will be right now.

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