The Paid Search Podcast

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PPC Agency Clients and How to Best Serve Them (Episode 183)

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Show Notes:

Hi everyone! This week we’re finishing up the PPC Agency series. In this episode we talk about the different types of PPC agency clients that we’ve experienced over the years. We discuss the different types of clients, what characteristics make them unique, and how to best serve them and get them the best possible results for their campaigns. We hope you enjoy the episode and thanks for listening!

Please leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, please share the show with your friends, and join us for the after show every week on Patreon! It’s just $2 or $4 a month and we do an after show every week.

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Transcript:

Jason:
Hey everybody. Yes. Welcome back to the Paid Search podcast. My name is Jason Rothman. As always, I’m joined by the underwear model, the great Chris Shaffer. Chris is it Hanes or Fruit of the Loom? Who’s paying you today? I feel I just walked into JCPenney, spend my Christmas gift card, get some underwear and you’re right there on the package in the gray undershirt with the buttons. You look great Chris. How’s it going today?

Chris:
Jason, from the nipples up I am flawless because that’s the only distance you’ve ever seen me. It’s just from here up. You don’t want to see below.

Jason:
How soft is that cotton on that shirt right now? It looks so soft.

Chris:
I forgot I had a shirt on. I forgot. You hear that? It sounds like skin but there’s actually cotton. I mean it’s so supple.

Jason:
Whoa. If you don’t know, this is a podcast about Google ads, pay per click marketing. Chris and I both do this for a living, manage client campaigns and today Chris, we’re talking about the different types of search engine marketing clients and advice for managing them. Chris, any final words before we begin today’s episode? Do you want to tell people when we’re recording this? Give them a little insight behind the scenes.

Chris:
Technically it’s before Christmas. We are recording this a bit early, but I always like to fast forward and be in the future, which will be in the past for them and say…

Jason:
So let me ask you, how was your Christmas?

Chris:
Christmas was amazing.

Jason:
Good.

Chris:
I’m blown away. I mean, I was really distracted to learn about the horrible news that happened on December 29th but everything else has been great.

Jason:
Oh wow.

Chris:
I have no idea. I’m just making a guess. There’s always something bad happening. How about you? How was your Christmas?

Jason:
My Christmas was great. Yeah Chris the 29th what a tragedy. We’re still processing it. Yeah, no, it is weird talking about the future in the past and then knowing we’re going to watch this back in the future and that’ll be the past talking about the future of watching it in the future and we better just start today’s show before [crosstalk 00:02:24]

Chris:
Before something bad actually happens on the 29th and we have to apologize.

Jason:
All right, Chris. Well first before we start today’s episode, I want to take a minute and talk about today’s sponsor WordStream. WordStream is the reason we are able to do this PPC agency series throughout the month of December and WordStream is an award winning PPC software. They’ve analyzed over $1.5 billion of marketing spend. They’re a Facebook marketing partner, a Google premier partner, and a Microsoft Bing ads partner. WordStream has a wonderful tool for PPC agencies, a platform called WordStream Adviser for agencies. This is what we use and recommend. You can learn more about it and how it can help your PPC agency at wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast. As we talked about last week, there’s a ton of cool things you can do inside WordStream Adviser for agencies to run your PPC agency as efficiently as possible including generating audit and sales proposals and the client center and the 20 minute work week, but every client, as we’re going to talk about in today’s episode has our own set of needs and WordStream Advisor for agencies has the tools to help you manage all sorts of clients.

Jason:
For example, for clients that are very eager about statistics and getting regular performance updates, you can set up and customize automated success reports that go out to clients by email automatically that give them all the data they want to see on a regular basis and it doesn’t take up any of your time. For clients that need a better website experience for the ad traffic that you send to their website, WordStream Adviser for agencies has a conversion rate optimization toolkit that will help you create beautiful popups and landing pages in just minutes. There’s an intuitive drag and drop builder and there’s also dozens of professionally designed themes to work off of. There’s also a sticky bar feature and you can also do AB testing. This has been a game changer because this allows PPC agencies to incorporate landing page solutions into your offering and offer the total package solution to your clients.

Jason:
There’s so many PPC clients that are great clients that have great businesses they want to advertise but they need a lot of help with their website and landing page experience and this tool helps you help those great clients and create landing pages for them and helps you build your relationship with them. We call these clients the loyal caterpillars and we’ll be discussing them on today’s episode. And then also WordStream Adviser for agencies has call and conversion tracking tools for clients that don’t have their own developer resources or existing tracking on their site. Getting clients to set up and maintain their conversion tracking is one of the biggest pain points of running an agency and WordStream. easy tracking system helps you simplify conversion tracking. It makes it easy to set up and maintain conversion tracking for clients and we’re WordStream also offers exclusive industry benchmarks and white label tools for clients that are eager to know how they stack up.

Jason:
WordStream Advisor for agencies has so many great tools that help you make the most of your relationship with your clients. It’s an amazing platform and it solves all the needs that come along with managing PPC accounts for clients. Under all these tools, from the reporting, to the conversion tracking, to the landing pages it makes your agency indispensable to your clients and that’s exactly where you want to be. We really encourage you to get your free trial and see how WordStream Adviser for agencies can help you and your agency. Go to wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast and get your free 14 day extended trial. I know you’re going to love it. Check out wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast and get your free 14 day trial start today. So Chris, before we get kicked off here, I would like to bring you a review of the week. It’s an iTunes or Apple podcast five star review.

Jason:
It comes from all the way from Singapore. It comes from a user named Jason and Chris Lover and it’s five stars. Bringing zest to PPC. Thank God I found this podcast on Spotify. Now I’ve downloaded iTunes specifically to leave a review for you guys. These guys are the real deal. They provide super high level knowledge for various industries. Things that I never got to learn from courses, lectures, blogs, etc. Jason, you bring life to my world. I burst out laughing at work several times a week and got weird stares. Totally worth it. Chris, I have to stop watching your YouTube videos because I got distracted by your face. You guys are awesome. Don’t stop what you’re doing. Much love from Singapore. You like that Chris?

Chris:
That’s great. You’re funny and I’m the eye candy. He had to stop watching YouTube. That’s amazing. Wonderful review. Thank you. That’s entertaining. I’m amazed. I know this happened before that we have people that download iTunes, install it and everything just to leave a review. That is commendable. Thank you. Because I know there’s a lot of Android fans out there that just don’t want to use it or Windows users that just don’t have a need for it. So, all right, well Jason, the worst thing that you can do is to judge someone and put a label on them and I’ve got exciting news. We’re going to do that for the entire show. Isn’t that so progressive of us? It’s so nice to just pick certain things out for someone and say, “Hey, you remind me of this animal.”

Chris:
That’s what we’re going to do today. So we have different client types where we’re going to discuss the interactions that your agency, whether you’re a freelancer agency, even the sales guy out there, right? The sales guy at the PPC agency has really been left out, right? You can bring him in to the podcast today. We can talk to him because today we’re going to talk about all the touch points from the sale, when you’re talking to the person, to the management process, all the way down to the reporting.

Chris:
Because these different types of clients all have different needs and stick around at the end because well, you’re going to find out that sometimes there’s some negative aspects and we’re going to go into that in our Patreon show, which is $2 a month. You can join us there and get an audio feed specifically for our Patreon subscribers. We’re going to go into a little more detail, but for this one we’re going to talk about our typical kind of clients, how to deal with them, how they can hurt themselves, sometimes hurt us and sometimes just be a winner in multiple categories because of their tendencies and aspects in the way that they make decisions. So Jason, let’s start. You ready to start? Let’s start with the first one.

Jason:
Yeah, that’s right Chris. And just to throw this out there, this is the Google ads business. This is the Bing ads business, some Facebook ads business. It’s managing Google ads and pay per click campaigns for clients. Pay per click PPC. I would like to reterm our industry, Chris PPPC. People and pay per click because it’s not just about automation. It’s not just about artificial intelligence. It’s not just about machine learning.

Chris:
It’s about people.

Jason:
Actually it is. I’m from the future. I came back in time as a machine learned artificial intelligence super user to guide all the Google advertisers to machine learning. Just kidding. Or am I kidding? Who knows?

Chris:
Tell me when do I lose my job Jason? When do the robots kick me out of my job? What year is that?

Jason:
We never kick you out of your job. Or I don’t think looking at it today that the robots will ever kick you out of your job, Chris. It’s about working with the robots and doing a good job for the robots and giving us robots what we want and crave. We only want it and crave it because you made us like this. I’m just kidding, Chris. It’s an automation. It’s machine learning. It’s technology, all that kind of stuff. It’s an advertising platform.

Jason:
You have to know that stuff, but this is the agency month. This is the agency series. Maybe we’ll do this every year, Chris, in December. I kind of like that. The agency series every year in December. Maybe we’ll do that as a thing, but if you’re trying to run an agency, if you’re trying to make more money, have a great business, employ more people, help your community, donate to charity like we talked about last week, all that kind of stuff, you have to know your client types and you have to know these people.

Jason:
You have to know who to work for, who to avoid, how to help them, how to make the most of their campaigns and it’s all about understanding them so you can help them get the most of their pay per click campaigns. I’ve decided to name them seven animal types, Chris, just for easy memorization. They remind me of certain animals and it’ll always help us remember these client types. So the first one, Chris, is the wise eagle. Initially when we were first playing this out, you wanted to call it a swan and I straight up probably just slapped you. If we were in person, I would have done that and I would have said, “This is a bad idea. What an idiot way to come up with that.” No, it’s a wise eagle, Chris.

Jason:
These are the best types of clients. You have to praise these clients. The reason they’re the best type of clients, and you’re going to love these analogies, Chris. They’re the wise eagles. Okay? They soar above it all, above the rest. They soar above the rest. So why are they wise eagles? Number one, they’re wise because they understand the power of Google ads and pay-per-click and what you’re trying to do with them with these advertising platforms to get them traffic that actually converts. They get it. They understand search engine marketing, they understand people are looking for exactly what they offer. So they’re wise. They soar above it all. Now why are they eagles Chris? One reason they’re eagles is because eagles have extremely long lifespans, if you didn’t know, they do. And so, one of the key aspects of running a pay-per-click agency is getting repeat revenue.

Jason:
Clients that keep signed up with you that stay signed up with you month, after month, after month. And so they have long client life cycles with you. So that’s why I call them wise eagles. And the final reason Chris, they’re patient. They understand Google ads take some time to work. They understand there’s a ramp up process. They understand you’re going to be better in week two than week one. You’re going to be better in month three than month one. You’re going to be awesome in year seven compared to year one. So those are my wise eagles. What’s your feedback on them? Do you have enough of those clients? Are you trying to get more? What’s the deal with wise eagles?

Chris:
Yeah. I mean, number one is our favorite because I mean you said it there. It’s absolutely the backbone of my agency, my company. It’s been the backbone of the 10 years I’ve been doing this freelance because if you don’t have these clients, you will constantly need to refresh and turn over your client list every three to four months. Every quarter you will now have a completely new list because your new guys have gotten mad at you, fired you, you now need to replace all of them with more clients. If you don’t find clients that can work longterm with you, that have a big picture in mind, you will exhaust yourself because that will be all you do is constantly market and try and sell because you need to replace the guys who ran off because they didn’t have the right picture in mind.

Chris:
And one thing that I’ll say about the wise eagle, it’s something that you didn’t say for a specific reason and I’ll call out, is the wisdom is not how much they know about Google ads, right? The wisdom is what they know about the system itself and their own business. I think that’s important to note. A lot of people tell me, “Chris, I need to know more. I like to get in there and I like to understand details so I can help other people to make decisions for me and I can understand what they’re saying.” I totally respect that point of view because it is important to at least have a clue about what’s going on, but I don’t think wise eagles are going to be the kind of people that are going to sign up for training and get hours and hours of training about what buttons to click.

Chris:
Right? What the best bidding strategy is. Understand how manual bidding works, understand the difference between very intricate details of Google ads. That’s not what makes them wise. What makes them wise is it they understand that the different pathways of bringing leads from Google ads. They understand that there’s a search. They understand that CPC can go back and forth. They understand what conversions are. Very big picture ideas and this is what makes them such a valuable client to an agency is because they don’t ask questions about why did my click go up 25% in the past month. They understand, okay, I see that it’s gone up, but also I noticed that my conversions went down. I look at big picture stuff. I want to know what changed overall, not because I see one number changing, but because I see a scope of imagery and big picture things changing. That’s why it’s such an important aspect for a person to have is to be able to see those big pictures and make decisions in the long run.

Jason:
Yeah, and the thing with the wise eagles for running an agency, these really are your number one priority. They need to be the clients that you really just go all out for, serve the most and prioritize and make sure you’re always doing great for them because it’s truly a win, win relationship. Because for an agency, they stay your clients, you have repeat revenue, you’re in business and it’s a great thing for you, but also for them you’re a great asset for them because you understand their business and you understand how to make the most of the Google ads, Bing ads or if you do Facebook, the Facebook platforms for their business and they get a consistent source of leads and sales that they want to get from another agency or freelancer that doesn’t have your skill set. So it really is just a meeting of the minds and they are longterm clients and they’re just a pleasure to work with because they have great businesses, they tell you direct goals and then you go get those goals and then each person in their role does exactly what they’re meant to do.

Jason:
They’re meant to be business owners running their business. We’re meant to be just a piece of that machinery running their Google ads campaign and it really, really works. So I call those wise eagles. Now, Chris, another good client type, but you have to kind of help them in some regards is the brave cheetahs. So the way I look at brave cheetahs, Chris and I would be interested to know how much you run into this. I think it’ll definitely depend on what industries that people work for quite a bit. But brave cheetahs are the most aggressive advertisers you will ever run into. They’re great clients in the sense that they also know Google ads and Bing and Facebook work. They know what they want out of it, but the one thing that kind of makes them different than wise eagles is they’re not patient.

Jason:
They don’t want to take the time to build up a campaign over time. They want to go now and when I say they want to go, they want to spend a ton of money from day one. It has to do with their aggression. It can have to do with the budget, wanting to spend way, way more budget than you think they should at the start. It can have to do with positions and bidding and wanting to bid way, way more at the start than you’re comfortable with because you don’t know the keyword set yet. You don’t know how the data’s going to perform. You just think they’re bidding too much or something like that.

Jason:
And it can also have to do with the way they want you to run Google ads with the keywords where you’re running great for maybe six months and then they hit you with, “Hey, we’re running pure broad today on all our keywords. I want to grow this thing. I believe in it. If we get some bad traffic that comes through, that’s okay. We’re going to make up with it with all the traffic that comes through. And I want you to increase bids 200% in ad and run on broad right now.” And they’re those kinds of clients. So I’ve got some thoughts on how you can help them make the most of their Google ads campaigns and kind of handle that relationship. But Chris, do you ever run into brave cheetahs?

Chris:
Yeah. And I’ve come to realize that there are usually red flags for this. And usually, and I’m going to make big generalities here, but the first thoughts that I have when I think about brave cheetahs in my experience is they’re typically newer or maybe they’ve bought a business. They’re new in a business. They’re relatively new. They haven’t been around from the beginning, so they usually ask questions that apply to things like should I spend more? They always want to know is there a magic number I haven’t spent yet that’s somehow going to make that explosion that I want to see? Are my goals suddenly going to happen once I reach this amount of spend? Which spoiler alert, there is no magic spend. If you’re thinking, “Yeah, what is that?” There is no magic spend.

Chris:
So we can talk about that in another episode but there never is. Another thing they always say is, “I’m missing out. I see that you have these keywords, but I didn’t see this keyword. I didn’t see this particular keyword or this one. I feel I’m missing out.” The symptom of missing out is always a big thing because they feel they need to outpace everyone. They need to outpace their competitors. They need to outpace the system. They need to make sure they’re everywhere all the time. They’re moving very quickly.

Chris:
And the contrast that I see here between the brave cheetah and the wise eagle is that the wise eagle understands that they can eventually get there. It’s almost as if it’s a hare and a turtle type of situation where the turtle and the hare are moving and trying to achieve the same goals. But in the end, what we’re trying to achieve is the same thing. And now the brave cheetah is trying to get it quicker than what the wise eagle is. So they ask questions like, “I don’t see my ads.” or “I saw my competitor’s ads but I didn’t see mine.” So this is the red flags that I usually see. What’s the ways that you try and treat those symptoms of the brave cheetah?

Jason:
Well and the reason we’re kind of talking about these symptoms in kind of a negative tone in terms of being too aggressive. Now some, again, we have the shady agency kind of thought out there, we always talk about, oh, what would the shady agency do? They’d be, oh yeah, you want to spend like 10 times more than I think you can on your market?Let’s do it.” Done. We already did it. It’s done. But we’re coming at it from a wise eagle approach. We want it to be profitable, we want to help them make the most of it long term. So what I’m trying to do, Chris, is I’m trying to harness that aggression if you will.

Jason:
And so the best way I found to do that to deal with brave cheetahs is to get on their side in terms of, yes, we can spend that eventually, yes we can increase our bids that way eventually, yes, we can target all these cures eventually show up higher, all that kind of stuff. But let me work with the way the system was set up to work, ramping up, getting data, all that kind of stuff, and here’s the data metrics that I will be able to report back to you in one week, in one month, in six months, that kind of thing.

Jason:
A lot of impression shared data, a lot of position shared data, showing them the auction insights like bro, chill out. Look at your auction insights. These are your biggest competitors in town. We know that and look their biggest impression share is 37% and you’re at 99% so we are dominating and instead of bidding way too much on Google ads and getting our cost per conversion higher when we don’t need to because we’re already at impression share 99%, absolute top impression share 90%. Why don’t we take this extra budget that you want to spend and run it on Bing ads?

Jason:
Why don’t we take it and experiment with a remarketing campaign on Facebook and kind of harness that energy, but use your insights, your expertise, the reason they’re hiring you. Not to just say, “Okay.” And increase their bid 700% and ruin their cost per conversion when they’re already in the top position and help harness this energy and see where you can use it profitably. Maybe experimenting with some loose broad modified, maybe experimenting with pure broad, but doing it in a controllable way. So I guess Chris, I’ve never slowed down a brave cheetah. This is just what they’re born to do. They’re born to go fast, be aggressive. That’s what they want to do. Never slowed them down. Never got them to think like me in terms of a wise eagle. Get the right cost per conversion. If you give up a little to someone else, that’s okay. Never got them to think this way. But the one thing you can do is harness that energy and use it as smartly as possible. So, that’s what I like to do when I run into brave cheetahs.

Chris:
I have a suggestion and this is something I’ve stumbled upon that I tend to really like. I’m sure I came up on my own, but I’m sure other people have come across with this. But the one thing I like to do is I like to give someone a sense of security by giving them their own KPIs, key performance indicators. Because, a brave cheetah will often be like the next point we talk about the focused elephant. They will focus on one KPI. They’ll focus on one metric and they want to beat that. They’ll have one thing they’ll be really focused on and they’ll want to beat that. So what I often do is I say, “Okay, listen, if you want to judge the efficiency and the pace at which we’re moving.” I give them their own KPIs to look at.

Chris:
I give them predictions. I say, “Okay, next month in your report, here’s what you should see. Your next report you should see the search impression share go up. Okay? You should see hopefully more conversions but I can’t guarantee that right? All I can guarantee is quality of traffic. But you should see your impression share go up, you should see your click through rate go up, your cost per click is probably going to go up a little bit because I’m going to get a bit more aggressive on some of these terms.”

Chris:
Give them these mid level KPIs that they can hold onto and see movement, right? If you don’t give them any type of goal or KPI to look at, they’ll never think that they’re moving and they’ll get focused on number of clicks or number of impressions or impression share some obscure thing by itself, but one metric by itself is never a good picture, right? It never makes sense by itself. So give them different predictions, let them see that that’s happening and they get a sense of moving forward. So, that’s one thing I really like to do with a lot of those types. So, next, as I alluded to, we’ve got the focused elephant stomping, boom, boom, coming in. Jason, what’s the focused elephant?

Jason:
So the focused elephant, Chris, it is a perfect analogy because A, they’re focused and B, they don’t change that focus. So let me explain this to everyone out there that doesn’t know what an elephant is. They weigh maybe thousands of pounds, I don’t know, something like that. But they’re very heavy and you’re not going to move them off their position. Their elephants. They’re heavy. They’re stuck there. So what does is the focus on Chris? It’s a client who just gets hung up on, sometimes it’s multiple, but usually it’s one data metric. There’s so many metrics of data inside of Google ads campaign, position data, impression share data, cost per click, click through rate, on and on and on and on with all those columns. Or it can be them looking at the search results and picking out something out of there. Why aren’t my call outs showing up?

Jason:
Why does the other guys call out show up? So stuff like that. But they get hung up on one data metric and they’re just crazy about it Chris. And I’ve had clients where I’ve explained to them what conversions are, what leads are, what cost per lead is, how that affects their business, why that should be the main focus and all they care about is click through rate and they want to see that click through rate better than 5%. Okay. And Chris they’re elephants, they don’t move off that position. In the past I’ve tried to convince people to move off and now I don’t. So I have some ways I work around it. But I’m curious for you, have you run into focused elephants where you’re surprised? Have you been surprised what they get hung up on and what do they get hung up on? Have you run into that?

Chris:
Yeah. What often happens for me is they get hung up on something, some subcategory of the main campaign. So let me explain one of my clients. They’re in a very aggressive home service industry. Okay? And so because they are so intimately associated with the amount of traffic that they get has to do with how many phone calls and leads and repair jobs they want. And they know competitors are out there trying to beat them at every turn. We have a brand campaign. Now this brand campaign is, I hate that we have to do it, but because their industry is in their company name. When someone types their company name, lots of competitors show up, right?

Chris:
So if your company is Joe’s Car Repair, that’s your company name, you’re going to get competitors showing up because the word car repair is in there and that’s not a good thing if you want to be able to control your own brand. So they have this thing and they are so hung up on the subcategory of brand search impression share to the point that we are paying five six seven $8 per click to maintain a 99, 95% search impression share to get at the top for their brand keywords.

Chris:
They spend about a third of their overall budget on this one thing because he is determined to not let the competitors win on his own brand name, which like I said, his industry term is in the search and he knows it’s a hang up. I’ve made it clear that it’s a flaw of the name itself. It’s unlikely that people are personally targeting him. He’s not a sucker for a conspiracy against him. He’s not the victim here but it just happens and he is absolutely a focused elephant. We spend way too much money on it. He knows it and the campaign suffers because of it.

Jason:
So you’re thinking people target the word car repair brand named Joe’s Car Repair for example and someone does a search Joe’s Car Repair that people targeting car repair are showing up. So you’re thinking, okay, for example, if we dropped our bids on brand by 50% our search impression share might go down to 89% but we might be able to spend half of what we do on brand and miss out on a handful of clicks when they’re aren’t even searching for us each month.

Chris:
Yeah. And what we’re doing is we’re not doing exact search terms for his company name. It’s anything that includes any three of those words. Right? And the first word is fairly common. It’s very expensive to advertise on any version of those three common words. And that’s what happens. We spend a lot of money on it and he is absolutely focused and he will not give on that.

Jason:
He won’t budge.

Chris:
No. Giant heavy elephants.

Jason:
Yeah. I’ve run into it too. You put a peanut right out there in front of their trunk, nose or whatever it’s called, trunk. And you’re trying to get them off and they’re, oh no, I’ll just reach out with my trunk and steal your peanut. But the way I’ve dealt with it, Chris, is number one, I’ve accepted when someone is a focused elephant they’re never going to change. It’s just not going to happen. So all I try to do is I just try to work around it. So it does impact the campaign negatively. You could say theoretically, but you just work around it. So I’ve got clients that really want that 5% click through rate. They’re hung up on that. So you know what I do Chris, if we have a broad match modified keyword that’s loose, that gets a ton of impressions, real nice cost per conversion, but it just gets a horrible click through rate and weighs us down, we have to pause the keyword. Okay? We do because Chris, all right, I don’t like that little smug look you have over there, but that’s what you have to do.

Chris:
That’s a sympathy grunt.

Jason:
Okay. Because you’re just coming off as smug right now, coming off of smug.

Chris:
Jason absolutely not.

Jason:
But it’s in their best interest because if you want them to advertise on Google ads and get those leads for their business at a profitable rate, but they’re not going to do that if they have a 4.8 click through rate and not a five you got to give them a five. Another example of this is impression share. Some people want that impression share to be a certain number. Okay? So if they really want 80% and again you have a beautiful broad match, modified, very loose keyword, but you’ve bid down on it so it works perfect with cost per conversion.

Jason:
But since you’ve bid down the position goes down and the click through rate goes way down and it gets all those impressions but it weighs down the impression share because you show up blown, don’t show up sometimes and it brings them below 80%. Chris, you’ve got to pause that keyword. Okay? So I’ve just found that you just have to work around it and give them what they want with their focused elephant need, but also still try to get them the best Google ads results possible working around whatever that hang up or focus is. So, that’s the way I deal with it.

Chris:
Jason, I have to say on this next one, I am terrified but not for the reasons that you would think. And I’m going to let you say what it is, but I’m going to tell a quick personal story. When I was a kid for some reason I guess my parents didn’t love me and they let me say most of my life as a child calipiter. I was a bad speller and I just swapped around the T and the L and so I would call it a calipiter. And it’s cute. I can imagine little kid, Texas accent saying, “Look at that pretty calipiter.” And so I’m going to let you introduce this one because I’m terrified that I’m going to say it the wrong way. I’m going to practice once caterpillar, caterpillar.

Jason:
How’d they let you say Louisville?

Chris:
Okay. No, that’s just hurtful. That’s just hurtful.

Jason:
So Chris the loyal caterpillar. So at first glance, the loyal caterpillars don’t look like great clients. They either don’t have a business yet and you’re, okay, why are you contacting me? You don’t even have a business yet. Or they have a really clunky small rundown website and you’re, do you have a business? What’s going on here? Or they have a new startup and you’re, okay, is it a real business? Are you actually going to be able to advertise? They just don’t look like the best clients at first glance because if they’re a brand new company, if they don’t have a company yet, it’s kind of hard to make that work sometimes on Google ads, at least initially. If they have a horrible website it’s hard to make that work on Google ads because you take people to the website so if the website’s horrible it makes it hard for you to do your job.

Jason:
So at first glance, they don’t look great. However, they’re loyal clients. They’re loyal advertisers and they have the wise eagle characteristics where they believe in Google ads, they want it to work and they also believe in you. They want to hire you, they want to stick with you, they want your help and they value your service. So they’re loyal but they’re caterpillars. So your job is to change them from caterpillars into beautiful butterflies. And if you can do that, if you can make pay-per-click, Google ads, Bing, Facebook work for them they’re going to stay committed to you and they’re going to be great clients for you. And the trick is making it work. So you have to help them with their landing pages. You have to help them with their website. You have to help them with Google analytics, with tracking code. You have to help them with what do you do when you get a lead, when it comes in lead form, you’ve got to follow it immediately.

Jason:
You’ve got to keep following up with them. You’ve got to answer the phone when they call throughout the day. These are all the things you have to do to help these kind of clients. But the upside is if you put that time in, if you put that work in with these young companies, with these people who need a better digital presence and kind of help them be their overall guide for digital marketing, for online advertising, for all things when it comes to kind of the internet and Google, setting up a Google my business profile, setting up a Facebook page, all that kind of stuff. Getting a good web developer to work with, if you can do that for them and be their guide in the digital space, they’re super, super loyal. And as we talked about recurring revenue, that’s the magic to a PPC agency. So Chris, those are the loyal caterpillars. What do you think about that client type?

Chris:
I always like to give personal stories about stuff like this and I think one…

Jason:
What are you too hot? You don’t work with a lot of caterpillars?

Chris:
No. I can think of one that I’ve been with for years. And the thing is you don’t know that they’re going to be a caterpillar once they start.

Jason:
You don’t know if they’re going to be a butterfly.

Chris:
Thank you. Well, you don’t know if they’re going to be an elephant or whatever. I’m saying you don’t know. This kind of thing could easily look like it could be a disaster. You don’t know what kind of client it is. Red flags are going off. It’s a small business. They have $500 to spend. They don’t have a good website. I mean, all the red flags are going off of why you wouldn’t work with him. But what’s really fulfilling about clients like this is that they are absolutely the most loyal clients.

Chris:
When you convert them from someone who has 50 million questions. Where should I advertise? How much should I spend? What should I say in my ads? Is my price too high? Should we do this kind of keyword? Maybe I should stop doing this and only put all my money into this. Should I do Facebook? Should I add Bing?

Jason:
Chris I got this email from a Facebook marketer. Does this pitch make sense? Please help guide me on that.

Chris:
Yeah, that’s true. They bring you questions that they should answer themselves, but they really make you a partner in their entire system. So absolutely. And it’s so fulfilling because it’s always wonderful to take one of these caterpillars and bring them to a butterfly and they are very thankful. You know because of what you’ve done. You have made a difference in a person’s life.

Chris:
If they have employees you’ve made a difference in those employee’s lives. Because if you didn’t have your Google ad system working for them they wouldn’t exist. They’d be doing something else. They wouldn’t have their own business, they wouldn’t be helping other people. So you’re helping something that you can literally see change from one state to another. And it’s a lot of fun to see that happen. But the thing is, you’ll never see it from the beginning. You won’t know. It’ll look like a tough account that you’re really biting your nails. Do I want this? They have a one page site. They do this. I don’t know how much traffic there is, or maybe there’s a ton of traffic. I don’t think they can afford it for $500 and in the end, lo and behold, their phone starts ringing and you’re, wow, they’re getting calls and then over time you just make that thing into a beautiful butterfly.

Jason:
That’s right Chris and just like you’re saying, you see the growth over time. I’ve had clients where they don’t know what Google my business is. They don’t know what the map listings are. I help get them set up on there. I’m set up as a manager from the beginning because I help set them up and I link to Google ads for the location extension and all that. And the cool thing is every day I see their emails come in when they get five star reviews, when they post pictures to their Google my business profile. I see their Facebook pages grow and you’re just kind of their overall digital guide. They’re super loyal and it is a great feeling to know that they were not making hardly any use of digital marketing and then they found you and then you helped them a lot and then you grew trust with them and they started trusting you.

Jason:
So they did more on digital marketing and you really see it grow and you’re right Chris, it really does help small businesses thrive and that means jobs and that means a family having a good business. So I love seeing that and it’s a lot of work up front but they’re super loyal. So, Chris, this has all been very positive. This has all been great. We’re about to take things down a different road here and we’re just going to go down a different road. So there’s three client types that may not be the most positive and we’re going to talk about just one of them here to finish up this episode and then we’re going to talk about a couple in Patreon.

Chris:
Yep. And before we do that, I want to say a big thank you to WordStream for sponsoring this month long discussion about the business of PPC. We’ve heard from listeners about how much the Advisor for agencies tool has helped them get more done in their business. It really is the best all around tool for PPC agencies no matter what kind of client type you’re working with, WordStream can help get things done faster. Those clients that are eager to hear about stats and regular performance updates, WordStream has absolutely beautiful reporting tools that can be customized and automated for clients that always want suggestions for ways to improve their website or their landing pages. WordStream Adviser for agencies offers pop-up tools that give information about ways to create a better landing page or website experience. Want better ads for your clients remarketing or display campaigns? WordStream’s display ad creator tools can give you an edge when you don’t have an in house design team. And this one is a personal favorite, when you run into a conversion tracking issue or a call tracking roadblock.

Chris:
WordStream has built in call and conversion tracking tools for those clients that don’t have their own web developer team. All of that plus some exclusive resources like expert support and guidance from the WordStream team to keep you informed and equipped with the latest updates, strategies and trends in the industry. They even have competitive industry benchmarks for clients that want to know how they stack up against their competitors. All of this and many other features that we’ve discussed are free to listeners of the Paid Search podcast. Just go to wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast and sign up for a 14 day trial. No credit card required. Sign up, try it out, no hassle. That’s wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast to get your free 14 day trial. And as Jason alluded to, we’re going to get…

Jason:
It’s not negative. It’s just real. It’s just there’s great clients out there and then there’s people you don’t want to work with out there or people that are a challenge to work with.

Chris:
And the thing is about these is it’s not that the person is doing this because they’re evil or they’re bad or they’re wrong. They’re doing it because of an aspect of their own personality. They want the campaign to do better. We’re all moving towards the same goal, but the busy parrot, which is one of our three negatives. We’re going to talk about the other two in Patreon. The busy parrot is going to be going into the account. I think the basic aspect of the busy parrot that drives me crazy is they go into the account and they’re going to make changes and they’re going to screw up the account. And keep in mind…

Jason:
Do you get the parrot thing, Chris? Do you get the parrot? Parrots talk like humans talk.

Chris:
So they mimic.

Jason:
The busy parent… Yeah, well, they go into the account and they try to act like you. They try to do things.

Chris:
Oh the imagery.

Jason:
So creative.

Chris:
Completely right. I totally didn’t even know.

Jason:
Completely right. I totally didn’t know.

Chris:
Don’t mock me.

Jason:
Don’t mock me.

Chris:
You cannot do that. You cannot do that. Don’t be a child.

Jason:
All right. Go ahead. Don’t be a child.

Chris:
That’s it I’m gone. That’s it I’m leaving. I’m leaving.

Jason:
All right. Come back. Come on Chris. Come back. Come back.

Chris:
Okay. I’m still here.

Jason:
All right. Come back.

Chris:
Okay. You take it.

Jason:
Go ahead.

Chris:
No, I lost my flow.

Jason:
Well, you were saying the one thing that really makes this client type is they make changes into the account and that bothers you. Why would that bother you, Chris?

Chris:
I think it’s a boundary violation. Imagine you’re a school teacher and one of your students who you are paid to help continues to show up at your house and ask for more help once you’ve left for the day. You tried to help them. You spent a whole hour explaining why it’s this way and why you’re doing things a certain way and then they show up at your house and they weren’t really paying attention the first time, but now things are real and they’re, wait, wait, wait. I need to explain that again. I’m going to do this. I’m going to change this. I’m going to change that and I totally wasn’t listening and I’m going to squawk and make a bunch of noise and pretend I’m a Google ads manager and make changes because I saw on a blog post that maximize clicks is going to get me better results.

Chris:
Right? There was this amazing chart that showed this guy’s account where the CPC just kept going down and down and his conversions went up and up. I want that chart so I’m going to change it. Well, that’s okay. It happens so much and as a Google ads manager, whether you are working for an agency or whatever, that’s your baby. I mean you’re manipulating and changing that account every day to try and optimize it and grow it and then someone comes in and just sticks their finger in the pudding and they ruin everything.

Jason:
Well, and you’re responsible for the results.

Chris:
Yeah. Good point.

Jason:
So a lot of times this can be the actual client you work with or it can be one of their employees or something like that. Or it could be if their web developer has access to the Google ads campaign and then they go in there over and over. So this is not, oh, we paused it on Friday afternoon because we close office early and we just didn’t want to send the email and we just needed it paused. It’s not changes like that. It’s an extreme amount of changes and you ask them to please just tell you what their problems with the campaign are, tell you what they would like to see and changes they would like to see and then you can implement them because that’s what they hired you to do. They don’t do that. You tell them to please do that and then you see they go into the account and they just make massive changes, pause a bunch of keywords, add a bunch of broad match keywords, change a bunch of bids, change the settings, all that kind of stuff.

Jason:
And it hurts a performance and it’s just kind of too many cooks in the kitchen kind of deal. And I just have a policy, I just won’t do it. So I give clients one, I tell them initially, this is how the service works. Any changes you want just tell me and we’ll make those changes and we’ll work with you to make them. I go in there, I see a bunch of changes one day. I tell them, “Hey, we can’t keep doing this. It’s too many cooks in the kitchen kind of thing. It hurts our ability to get you the performance you want.” So then explain again, tell us what you would like to see and we’ll make the change that cuts off. They do it again and again. I fire them. I do. I quit. I resign because it’s never going to work.

Jason:
And this is kind of one of those things we were talking about the elephant thing, people who do this, Chris, and again I’m trying to paint a picture for people. It’s at an extreme level. They can’t help themselves. I honestly call it an addiction. They can not handle it. And so they never change and it’s never going to work out and it just is what it is. So what I’ve done is if it’s an okay change, if they want to just handle the ad copy and that’s what they’re really into or they want to turn the account off on certain days when they’re not in the office, fine, okay great. But if it’s one of those things they’re doing a bunch of changes over and over, bids, settings, keywords, all that kind of stuff.

Jason:
I just tell them it’s not going to work out and we part ways. Because I have not seen people have the ability to stop doing this if that’s the kind of thing they do. And again, remember everyone listening, it’s not we’re saying don’t make changes to your Google ads account. It’s you hired a manager to manage the account and you’re still trying to make the changes. So it’s just a very weird thing why they would be hiring someone in the first place if they can’t stop doing that. But I’ve run into it over and over and it’s a very tough situation to manage and I’ve just decided to, for the most part, stop working with people who do that.

Chris:
Yeah, I mean it’s embarrassing if you walk into a hamburger joint and you see the manager crowding over the fryer and the cook that he’s hired to do it is standing there watching. He’s, no, no, no. You’ve got to push down on the patties and you got to flip them like this. Get them real close so they’re touching since you have plenty of room. I mean that’s essentially the embarrassing situation that you’ve done to your manager is you’ve put us in a spot where we are now pushed aside and somehow the role that we’re supposed to fulfill is embarrassingly being filled by someone who doesn’t really have as much time or experience. The one thing that we absolutely will grant you is that you know more about your business. You know about what you want and what you need. You know about your business but you don’t know about PPC. Get your hands off the grill and let me cook the burger, sir.

Jason:
Right Chris. It impacts the ability to get them the results that they want to make them a longterm client and make them happy. And the other thing, just from a business agency perspective, again, every time you send emails back and forth with the busy parrot trying to get them to stop this, every time you take 30 minutes you weren’t planning for to reverse the changes they made and get things back to right. And then the next day you take another 30 minutes and reverse the changes and then how about the 30 minutes to investigate the changes and figure out why the data looked so bad. All that time is being taken away from the loyal caterpillars, the wise eagles, and you’re not growing your agency the right way with the right kind of clients. You’re just wasting time on accounts that are probably never going to work out long term anyway.

Jason:
And to me, as a business person, that’s the number one thing that just makes me angry about those situations and why I quit partaking in them is because you’re letting these people who are never going to be good clients for you take away from just the golden clients that you have. And that really is a risky behavior as an agency owner, not allocating you and your team’s time correctly to the best clients and letting these bad clients take up too much of your team’s time. That is such a risk to the viability of your agency that it’s got to be taken seriously.

Chris:
All right. Well, Jason, I’m anxious to really grind in on a couple more. We’re going to do that in Patreon but first, this is it for the year. I’m through with you until 2020. I have milked you for everything I can get out of this year. I appreciate your service and appreciate you being here as a wonderful award winning PPC manager.

Jason:
Thank you.

Chris:
One thing I would ask, it’s on the spot. We literally have not talked about this. Make one prediction for Google ads in 2020.

Jason:
One prediction?

Chris:
One prediction. If you like, I can start.

Jason:
Yeah, you start.

Chris:
Okay. My prediction for Google ads in 2020 is that we will have some type of multimedia aspect to text ads. Whether it comes in the form of a video that is playable or something that can be attached, a call out that has to do with a YouTube that can be attached to the ad itself, or imagery if you have an eCommerce product. Instead of it being just Google shopping possibly now, it’s going to merge some of the Google shopping and your text ads together so you can actually get a product image along with that. But customizable. Not something that’s automated. Something that can be customizable imagery. Some multimedia type. It’s going to be on google.com tech stats. That’s it. That’s all I got. Jason. Bring it. What’s your 2020 prediction?

Jason:
I don’t know. I don’t have a prediction.

Chris:
Come on. Something crazy. Facebook and YouTube will merge. Is that…

Jason:
No, that’s not happening.

Chris:
Something having to do with call phone numbers, call tracking, maybe bidding, manual bidding will disappear. That’s a nightmare. And that’s the end of the show. We have no reason to be here.

Jason:
Stop. Stop that. I don’t know. I wish I had a good prediction. I think my prediction now is that…well I don’t know. I’m the guy that’s always everything is just perfect, so why…

Chris:
Don’t change it.

Jason:
Why are we kind of messing with it?

Chris:
Well there you go guys. You have to pay $2 to find out Jason’s prediction in the Patreon.

Jason:
No, I won’t have a prediction. No, no, no, no, no. Here’s my prediction. There will be more map advertising features inside of Google ads. Every time I read about Google Alphabet as a business and stock analysts talking about the business of Google advertising and all that, they always talk about underutilized platforms that Google owns, Alphabet owns, that they aren’t running the most hardcore ads in general. So Google owns all these tools we always use like maps for example, and yes you can run map ads, but in terms of what could make Google a ton of more money and what do I hear from advertisers, I like this prediction.

Jason:
What can make Google ton of money and what do advertisers want and always talk to me about and where do those two paths meet? It’s maps. I hear from clients all the time… super local. I hear all the time. They want more control when it comes to advertising on the map and they just want more control. So the advertisers love the idea of the map ads. Even though someone goes to Google, they’re looking for an orthodontist business, they’re looking because they want to go to one. So there’s kind of a map mindset already, but the advertisers just love the idea of someone already being in the map and that’s how much they want to go find an orthodontist and showing their ad there. So if there’re ways to control that more, to get more from there, to add more features there, that’s where my prediction is going to be that they’re going to enhance the opportunities we have and the control we have in the map. And I think that’s my prediction.

Chris:
So we have a search campaign, a display campaign, a video campaign, a map campaign. I mean that would be tight.

Jason:
With bids, with different kinds of extensions, with different kinds of data.

Chris:
Yeah, that would be wonderful. I like that one. Okay, well stick around. We will do another 52 episodes or whatever we do in 2020 and in one of those we will tell you whether we’re right or not. We’ll give you the news of this prediction. So on behalf of the Paid Search podcast, thank you for listening in 2019. We will take a very short break and be back in 2020 and by break, I mean literally no change at all. We’ll literally be here. All right guys. Have a good one.

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