A classic agency structure like the re the big ones, you would often have up to, like, 5 levels of outsourcing.
Wait.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
We're talking about you hiring a guy.
Yeah.
And he outsources it to a guy.
Yeah.
Who then goes and finds another guy and then outsources it to that guy who is the 3rd guy now who finds the 4th guy, and then the 4th guy has another guy, and he actually ends up doing the work, but you're paying person number 1.
Yeah.
Woah.
In this episode, we're gonna be talking all about ad agencies.
You learn how to recognize red flags from your agency.
You are paying for an what you're really paying is to have an intern.
Obviously, an intern doesn't have much more knowledge than you.
How much you should be paying for an ad agency? And I know you think $45 is a lot of money.
Trust me.
I live in a third world country.
We cannot buy a Bugatti.
I try.
I went to the dealership I gave them my $45.
They said this is not enough.
So And also what to do if you can't afford an ad agency.
And lastly, you're gonna learn what a healthy relationship with an agency looks like.
After the 1st 12 months, I think they, like, doubled the revenue, and then I think 2 years later, it was 1,500,000 that they made.
My name is Devin Thomas, and I'll be teaming up with Pamela Wagner.
An ex Google Ads employee who's optimized over 3000 Google Ads accounts.
And together, we've helped entrepreneurs all across the world, figure out how to make Google Ads work for their businesses.
So stay tuned because it's gonna be a good episode.
So before we get into this, I should just say this one thing.
Um, myself and Pamela are not doing this just to get your business Obviously, we'd love to have you as client in our business, uh, but it's also important for us, even if you don't do business with us, that you find the right agency for you.
Yeah.
Sometimes it's just not a good fit.
Sometimes you'll work with some people and you'll just get a vibe and it's important for you to pay attention to that vibe, but this whole podcast episode is not gonna be one giant sales pitch.
We literally wanna help you figure out which ones are the good ones, which ones are the bad ones, and um, if you choose not to work with either of us, that's perfectly fine as well.
There's millions of customers on the planet and there's millions of agencies on the planet as well.
Yeah.
And I think I think one thing that's important to mention, Devin, is that we don't work with everybody.
We we we cannot, and we don't want to work with everybody.
And the reason for that is is just because of the way we are, there are certain types of people and companies that we work best with.
So at this point, we don't even know yet if we could be of help to you.
We haven't spoken to you.
We don't know your business.
Right? So, um, this is really purely to show you, Hey, there's a couple of things to look out for.
If you go down that route, because I also get that question oftentimes from people is like, how do I actually choose the right agency? And to kind of like preface that, one thing you have to understand how most agencies got founded is, or a large portion, is that somebody thought they could make a lot of money with an agency by just hiring a team and then outsourcing the work.
Without actually understanding the work him or herself, or ever having done the work.
Right? So they just end up hiring a team, think they know what studios they need, but they cannot really test people for it.
And to not have a team, and they're like, oh, all I need to get is like clients in it.
So they then promise the client stuff that they don't even have an understanding of whether that's possible.
And then he tell the team just to deliver, and the team is like, I don't want to tell my boss and it doesn't work because then it would get kicked out or I don't get the promotion, but I also consult with the client, and then it becomes really stressful on the, on the agency side.
And then you have all these, like, dynamics going on that just add to the mess.
So that kinda like is a preference.
Okay.
That makes a lot of sense.
Now I wanna touch on something that you said where you said, um, they hire a team, um, to do the work.
Can we really just dive down a little bit deeper into that? And so let's say I'm a business owner and I'm starting this whole Google thing.
Adds thing out.
How do I know what is the actual work of an agency and what I'm supposed to be getting? Also, are there different price brackets that I should go to, or is there, like, a generally, a accepted that if you're paying somebody to manage your ads, this is usually what you should be getting in that package.
Yeah.
So I'm I'm gonna see if I can pull up this post now.
Um, I recently saw somebody post in a marketing related group Um, and a person posted actually is like Google display banner ads.
Hi.
I'm searching for a cheap agency, which does Google display or banner ads for us.
We are a kind of like gym company.
And our budget, um, what we imagined a budget to be, this was posted in the language I'm translating.
And our budget that we imagine to pay the agency per month is a €100.
Wow.
You could get some nice Nike sneakers running sneakers for a €100.
So that's that's about it.
That's Yeah.
So if you are first of all, I always tell people in that in in some markets, this is a high number, right? So a justice to your local market I believe now, if I'm talking US, Canada, Europe somewhere, if you cannot afford a budget of about $2000, euros, pounds, whatever, per month to test on ads, then most likely it's not yet the right time for you to start.
Now, at the same time, you'd only $10,000 to start.
Like, I've had this for many people as well that said, Oh, yeah.
We talked to this one agency, and they said, we need at least $10,000 to get started.
Right? So that's not true either.
But you've gotta consider as, you know, we've also, like, discussed in other videos is it, it takes time for you to see what campaigns work, especially if you've never done it before, then you gotta start from scratch.
And you gotta have a little bit of longevity.
And if you constantly sit there and you're worried about your money and you are just scared that you're running out of it and you're wondering if it's gonna come back, then that energy is literally gonna translate into your campaigns.
You're gonna make decisions based out of fear and not based out of actual, like, knowledge and growth mindset.
Right? Definitely.
And what would you say if somebody said, okay.
Well, I don't have the $2000.
So sorry.
€2000 That's so that disqualifies me.
Um, how would you recommend that somebody like that approaches Google Ads? If they if they're still interested in one day working with an agency, but maybe now is not the right time, what would you suggest? What would be an easy path for that person to take? So I would look at myself and be like, okay, am I genuinely interested in marketing? If if I run a business and I've always kinda like had an interest in marketing, I'm like, you know, go take a skill shop course.
Go take a basic, whatever course, right? If you don't have a lot of budget, and give it a try for yourself with whatever budget you want to start off with.
But you gotta approach that test with a certain curiosity.
Right? Do not expect anything and try to understand the numbers behind it.
Right? And then most likely, what I also even advise people who say, I want to do it on my own.
I'm like, and then, hey, guess what? Same list.
Plug now.
Devin has a course, right? That's actually done properly.
And in addition to that, you have some guidance, right? So where it's, if you have an knack for it, if marketing is of interest to you, then absolutely, you could do it yourself.
If it's not of interest to you at all, if you're one of these people that like, look, I love calming.
I love finance.
I love, I don't know, customer service, but marketing's like, ugh, then focus on a couple of other basics first.
Schedule website, right, investing your funnel, you know, build an email list or whatever works for your business.
And only when you have recurring revenue coming in, that's sustaining you.
And when you have a certain profit margin, then, like, build up a little bit of a reserve and then take that money and then hire an agent Yeah.
That makes that makes a lot of sense.
What we'll also do is we'll link to, um, all the resources that we mentioned in this video.
We'll link them, um, in the description of this video as well.
So if you wanna check out Google Skill Shop or you wanna check course or you wanna maybe get in touch with Pamela and have a little bit of a conversation, they'll all be down below in the description of this video.
I think here's the thing, um, from the business owners that I've talked to, Um, when we talk about, you know, you have to earn a certain amount of threshold.
A lot of business owners are saying that the agency should prove themselves before they spend money.
I this is something that I've come across a lot.
In fact, I was speaking to a very bright, um, student of mine who basically runs ads for people, and he said that because he, uh, the business owner basically said they will not pay him a cent until he starts getting conversions and sales for their business.
So in other words, they have an agreed amount, but he only gets that agreed amount if, um, the business owner start seeing results.
If they don't see any results, then they don't feel like they should pay them at Or do you think it's fair for business owners to, uh, approach an agency like that? And, also, if you were an agency now flipping it around, would you accept that offer? Absolutely not, because it's the same as if you go into a shop, you see a couch and you're like, Hey, let me take that home and then see if this couch is actually a couch and actually fits within my house without even having taken measures of it first.
Yeah.
And knowing what kind of caught you like, maybe in a month from now, I'll pay you.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
No.
That's not how it works because first of all, as an agency, you're paying for the basic experience of knowledge that Yeah.
The people have gathered and worked over the years and spend, I mean, by now, probably you and me have have spent those 10000 hours, right? Yeah.
So and if you're gonna go ahead and you're gonna spend those 10000 hours, guess how much they're gonna cost you.
Multiply it by $20 an hour if you wanna keep it very cheap and simple.
Wow.
That's a lot of money.
We have 2 1000 a year.
$200,000.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is what it's gonna cost you to do it on your own if you wanted to do it at a really high level.
Right? Yeah.
And we usually I'm trying to see if we actually ever took on a client that that approaches that way, and I don't think so.
Maybe 1 or 2, where I just, I'll just clearly explain that to them.
Right? Yeah.
And the other aspect is if you If I'm not taking care of your website, and your funnel, and your customer service, any product quality, then I'm not responsible for your cost per conversion.
Yeah.
Because there's so many aspects taken to cost per conversion, like, especially tracking even.
I mean, is like the amount of times that people have approached us, well, like, then we figured out that tracking wasn't even working.
Like, how can it base any kind of, like, profit based remuneration on something that's not even properly tracked? Yeah.
I think a lot of business owners are coming from the perspective of, and, um, they've been burnt.
They they have been burned before.
Um, but I think with everything in life, there's, um, a little bit of a balance Uh, for example, I could tell you that, um, I've bought a couple of cameras and it never worked out, uh, but then also how much did you pay for those cameras? If you are paying $30, $50 for a camera, sorry to say that's kind of a crappy camera, and you're gonna get a cam a crappy image out of that camera.
I think there's another set of business owners that are genuinely scared that they would hire the wrong agency.
So what they do is they put that mechanism in place to protect their money, and they feel like, oh, if you are a good agency, then you should be able to easily get these results, and then you will deserve my money.
Now I see the fear behind this, and I see Pamela's getting ready to talk about this.
Protection mechanism.
Yeah.
Protection mechanism.
Yeah.
I think I think from a business owner, those things are difficult.
So what would you advise me to somebody who's in that position? Uh, maybe they don't wanna be seen as somebody who doesn't wanna pay you, but also they don't wanna get ripped off Well, so that's where it really comes down into conversation that you have with the client to understand.
Why do they actually want to do ads? And I teach this to all my students in university and a little bit in trainings where I tell people people don't come to you for ads.
People come to you for reassurance.
They come to you to build up trust again.
They come to you for guidance, for reliable help, and ideally, you have less worry.
That's what they come to you.
Right? So when you have that conversation with a business owner, that's when you gotta project and lead the conversation around.
And with the way that we approach these conversations, usually that works pretty well because they're like, oh, okay.
They're genuinely trying to understand my business.
And if then someone says in the end and still comes with that kind of like, phrase, we're like, well, and that's exactly why it hasn't worked out so far because you've approached this from a fear based perspective.
And you cannot approach ads from a fear based standpoint, Now, if you're ready to do things differently, and if you truly have an open mind, then we're here to help you.
But there's a role that you have to play as a business owner as well.
And just, I think quite some like to do that as well.
They just hand off ads.
And then think, oh, I don't wanna deal in any way with that.
That's not how it works.
That's not how it works.
You're not gonna have to manage the ads, right? So in our role, inclined sometimes asks us, do do I have to provide copy and ads like, no, no, no, we, we take care of the images, we take care copy everything, right? Your job as a client should ideally only be, unless you have an amazing graphic design on your team or whatever, right, is to show up for the meetings, Yep.
And to incorporate the feedback that we give you on the remainder of the funnel and the website, right? So do your homework on these aspects.
And that's already quite a bonus that I've realized over time only that we're doing because a lot of agencies don't even do that.
They just send you a report, and that's it.
Right.
I think that's something also to look out for a new conversation with an agency, right? Do they just do the work? Or are they genuinely of interest? And, you know, it's drawing here and there are a couple of other snippins.
Insights.
Yes.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
After the break, we'll discuss a few more hidden red flags from ad agencies.
So stick around.
Oh, hi there.
Guess what? There's nothing for sale here.
Absolutely nothing.
Just the free training.
We just call the top 5 Google ads mistakes that cost businesses time, money, and sales.
And why is there nothing for sale here? Because I genuinely don't know if I can even help you.
So head over to the link in the description, try to see what's not working with your campaigns.
If you are maybe making one of these 5 mistakes or all of them, And if you feel like it's a fit at the end, if you feel like you need help, then we're here to support you.
But for now, just a free training, that's all.
And as most of our clients have said, it's 45 minutes but a lifetime of value.
Definitely.
Um, Pamela, if I was to hire a agency, what do you think? So I'm looking at let's say I'm looking at a couple of agencies and, um, I'm looking at prices and I see more or less all of the prices are comparable.
So let's say we're we're taking the price aspect away.
All of them are charging the exact same thing.
So now I've got these 3 agencies in front of me.
How do I know what are the red flags that I should be looking at and how do I know if it's okay to work with a certain type of agency? Um, we've also seen, uh, that, um, on Upwork as well.
This is happening a lot.
This is that people are actually stealing other portfolios and misrepresenting them as, um, their portfolio.
So for example, Pamela's agency gets amazing results.
They work with 5 star clients.
They've worked with Justin Bieber, um, Taylor Swift, all of these wonderful people.
And then I take I haven't worked on ads a day in my life, um, but I'm starting a agency, and I wanna get off on the best food part possible.
So what I do is I steal all of her case studies, and I then say that her results are my results.
What are some of the things that we should be looking out for when we're comparing these 3 agencies? So on the one hand, you go very deep.
You can easily spot a lie when you ask someone to tell a story multiple times.
Because you cannot lie the same way multiple times.
You can only tell the truth multiple times.
Right? So when you have a conversation with someone and you're kind of feeling something's off, and that's the second point, listen to yourself.
How are you feeling? Right? It's like, do you feel like something's off? And even if you can't explain it, sometimes, listen to that.
Right? And I think also look at the conversation.
Like, if, if, let's say, all price is everything is the same, right, what was the kind of conversation you've had? And we never submit any pitch checks or anything, any proposals, because the thing is you don't make a decision based on whether them offering to do ads and the assets and whatever.
Like, there's so many details in Google ads.
It would take me probably three hundred pages to list them all out.
Right? So making a decision based purely on the facts that you have in front of you is not gonna work out.
You have to really listen to yourself and understand who understood me, who was able to articulate my issue, who was able to articulate that or show that they've been able to solve this issue in the past.
Right? Um, sometimes I would also take the example, have they worked with similar industries or companies like mine before, right? So And and that's an agency strategy.
Sometimes there's agencies that purely focus on 1.
Like, I I once coached an agency that focuses only on dentists, and they work great for them.
Wonderful.
Right? Perfect.
If you're dentist by all means, go for an agency that focuses on dentists would probably because probably they're doing something right.
But yeah, it all it all comes down.
Listen to yourself.
Listen to you, doc.
Where did you feel best? Um, and if you feel like you're not in a place to make that decision right now, like, if you feel you're nervous about your business, you are, um, I don't know, afraid or something, then maybe hold off with that decision for a while.
Make sure that the tracking works, you know, if you just having a proper Google Tag Manager on the Linux tracking code in your website can mean a lot because you already can read so much from that data.
So, Just make sure whenever you make a decision, make it from a good place.
Yeah.
I think one of the most important things to me when I'm hiring an individual is I ask myself constantly is this person listening to me because I feel like there are a lot of agencies out there and listen.
I don't hire agencies.
I've got no need to hire an agency and also I'm not an agency owner.
Like, I don't manage ads for people.
I'm just consulting and teaching Google ads, but one thing I I do see a lot is you get a lot of yes men out there.
Um, so I'll give you an example.
You can approach somebody and you can say, can you run search ads Yes.
Can you do display ads and get me a $1 cost per acquisition? Yes.
We can definitely do that.
Can you also do my YouTube ads for me and, uh, shoot the video, edit the video, um, put all the graphics in? And, also, can you get some AI generated stuff to remove the background? Yes.
Yes.
We can.
Yes.
We can.
Can you build a spaceship for me? Yes.
Definitely.
We can build a spaceship for you as well, and we can put it in the background of the video as well.
As soon as I start seeing people that do that where they're not really listening to you, whether you're asking a question and immediately they're jumping to the yes.
I tend to get a little bit scared.
Um, so I guess my question to you is, do you find a lot of um, agencies are just saying yes to people and they're not able to deliver on those promises.
And is that what gets is that what gets most customers in trouble? So what you're mentioning is really a cultural aspect, and I'm saying this just for everybody's information.
To 96 countries, and I've worked with people all over the world.
I know people are almost every country.
So what I'm about to tell you is based on a real life experience and interactions with people.
There's certain cultures that grow up thinking that if I say no, it's gonna reflect badly on me.
Some of these cultures, or most of these cultures are found in Asia, especially Southeast Asia.
So if you're looking to hire someone from there, you gotta have a certain sense of caution that when they say yes, it doesn't mean yes.
It might mean that they're saying yes because they're too embarrassed to say no.
Uh, I see.
Uh, because they think it would reflect badly back on them.
What they don't under stand yet is that them actually being truly honest could get them along much further in the long term.
Right? So what you can do is if you are in a conversation with someone who just keeps saying yes, ask them for specific examples.
Like, really be specific.
And don't just, you know, don't just ask them, hey, you know, what's, like, what's the results you've seen? Oh, you know, the cost per click or cost per conversion blah blah blah.
Okay.
What was the biggest challenge you've had with the client? How did you solve it? Right? Um, what's something unexpected that you run into while working with them? Um, what did you do when you didn't hear back from the client for 2 weeks? I mean, that And that's something that's something that they can't say, yes, to then.
That's something that they actually have to give you some sort of a tangible answer to.
Yeah.
And also, if you work with an agency, you again have this cultural aspect where in some countries, if you have the dynamic where the company is the boss of the agency and the agency access employees.
The employees don't want to say no to anything that the boss says.
Again, do not lose credibility So they will be afraid to, like, call you out on certain things where you might actually be wrong.
And that's one aspect that our clients really appreciate because I literally call them out.
Like, if you tell me to add 20 keywords, it don't make sense.
I'm gonna tell you.
I'm not just gonna add them.
Right? Yeah.
So I think a simple test could be saying something where you know that's obviously wrong and seeing how they react.
Yeah.
That makes a lot of sense.
Now I've seen, um, when you say say asking them something simple and seeing how they react.
It's not asking them something completely off base and seeing how a lot of people react.
Um, we've seen cases where people have gone out, and this is literally most of my core students.
This has been their story.
Devin, I hired a agency.
Agency ruined my ads.
I got a big invoice, a big bill.
Um, my ads have literally gone downhill since I started hiring this agency.
And also, I can't talk to anyone.
I can't get feedback from anyone.
They do send me a report, but I don't feel like there's enough then.
Also, when we talk about the meetings, I don't feel like I'm getting enough aspect um, or enough communications about the actual performance of the ads and what we need to improve on.
It's kind of like a report on numbers whereby they tell me I had 400 clicks, but you send me a report that says I have 400 clicks.
I don't need to have a Zoom call with you to know that I've had 400 clicks on my ad.
So why does this happen? Let me I I think we should start there.
Why do you think that when some agencies take over ad campaign, it actually starts doing worse and worse and worse on the long run.
What are the policies and procedures in place that you feel don't work, um, in normal agencies or in the underperforming agencies.
If we look at the classic agency structure, then you have sales manager who's talking with you, who's selling you to services, and then an account manager, even oftentimes, actually an intern who does the campaign work.
And that's often unsupervised.
So you are paying for an agency, but what you're really paying is to have an intern.
And so, obviously, an intern doesn't have much more knowledge than you, in most cases, unless they were my student, my class at university.
So, like, you gotta understand the structure, right, who actually does your work.
And then also how is that person instructed to do the work? Now, in classic, uh, in a classic agency structure, like the, the big ones, you would often have up to, like, 5 levels of outsourcing.
So you talk with, let's say Wait.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Woah.
Stop the.
Stop the.
Stop the bus.
We're talking about you hiring a guy Yeah.
And he outsources it to a guy.
Yes.
Who then goes and finds another guy and then outsources it to that guy.
So there's a third guy now who finds the 4th guy, and then the 4th guy has another guy, and he actually ends up doing the work, but you're paying person.
Number 1.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Woah.
Um, that's like more for the bigger agencies because the problem now there becomes is that the big agencies have become too big to be a specialist in one area.
Yes.
So in the end of outsourcing certain parts, and then, obviously, at one point, it just loses itself.
Everybody just tries to get it for the cheapest cost possible.
Yeah.
Um, now I think every customer should have the right to have a conversation with the agency every now and then.
So you should demand that.
If you don't get that, just don't work with them.
Yeah.
And if you get a report, like, you can always ask them, or you can even have them if let's say, if you were, like, in the very beginning stages, you could ask them, hey, can you show me a sample report from another client and what what did you conclude as a based on these results? Right? So and that gives you an idea how good are they actually with numbers? Are they just sending you a report just to send your report? We actually currently ever send reports because I don't believe in them because most people, it just lands in their inbox and then nobody ever looks at them.
And I noticed because I've asked clients that demanded reports.
And I was like, what do you actually do with them? And then we're like, well, we just used to get it from the other agency.
I was like, this wasn't my question.
What do you actually do with them? Yeah.
Right? And I'm like, uh, it was just like, you know, kinda like being shown that the work was done.
And I was like, that's what we'll discuss about meetings.
So let's go ahead.
And if you still want reports, You can let me know, but you tell me what metrics you want.
I'll adjust them and customize it, but it wants to be meaningful to you because you can't tell me everybody goes through like a 30 page report every month.
Nobody got time for that.
Right? I I did a 100 page report for, um, a lady once while I was consulting with Google Ads, and I sent it to her within a few, I wanna say, a hour And I know it doesn't take an hour to go through the report, but anyway, she says she knows everything on the report.
Every single thing.
Every single slide, she knows everything.
All of that was, um, not new knowledge to her.
And then I asked, okay, but then why did you hire a consultant in the first place? Like, why would you hire somebody to give you this information if you know this information? And if you know all of this information and all of these things in your ad account has not been sorted out, then do you really know it? So I find that business owners in general, they tend to do things that make them feel good.
Meetings are another side of that coin.
So for example, uh, some people might want the report because the the report feels good, man.
I paid this agency all this work.
Look at the shiny report.
Look at this.
This is what I'm paying for.
You know what I'm saying? But that report is not gonna move you forward in life.
The actual knowledge and the experience of the people running your ads, and it's the insights that they give you.
Those are actually gonna make you go, wow.
Okay.
Fine.
These things I can take action on and we can really expand our revenue that way.
Um, I find that a lot of other people, they are very much into the meetings and very much into the talking about things, but never getting to the stage where they progress beyond that.
So I think is this fair to say that when I'm hiring an agency it's a relationship.
It there has to be give from the agency, um, and there has to be give from me.
And if, uh, agency is outsourcing my relationship with them, it's like dating somebody who's outsourcing you dating them five times over.
Yeah.
And, like, you gotta consider that if I think about 50%, the work is really relationship management.
That's true.
And not account management.
That's true.
Managing feelings of other people.
And I I had this, like, 2 weeks ago.
Well, I had 2 calls, one after the other, both wonderful clients I love in the door.
But every one of them had a freak out moment.
Talk to me about those.
Today, it's not emotional management.
And and, you know, I I handle it, and I let them rant.
And, I mean, all of it was solved.
And, Um, because thank god I have I do have some coaching experience, but you you will have those days as well.
And I think also the agency has to be able to provide sometimes room for that, where they understand where you're coming from as a business owner And sometimes you might just look at the wrong numbers because you're having a freak out, and then your brain doesn't work properly, and you just look at yesterday's data, and you think it's the whole last month.
Right? Um, I mean, it's, you know, another client was like, oh my god, this keyword is like, 11 dollars.
Right? Should we pause it? And I was like, Oh, I mean, for the last 7 days, it was 11 days.
One click.
Right? Didn't even show up much.
Yep.
And I looked at the last 30 days.
It was literally $2 90 on average.
Which is fine.
Yeah.
So I was like, easy.
Jill, we'll leave it in.
If we get 2 more clicks each $11, then we can reconsider it because in this case, but a funnel doesn't make sense.
Right? In some funnels, it might make sense.
But then if you Yes.
It's not.
So, yeah, Like, it's it's okay sometimes as a client to freak out and to to not be perfect.
And, um, I think there's a certain responsibility for the agency to hold space for that.
Yeah.
I also I also find that a lot of people are they're they're out there and they're looking for, uh, a, quote, unquote, perfect agency that's going to take them from 5 figures to 7 figures and do it within 90 days.
What would you say to the people who are looking for those types of agencies whereby, uh, they want that amazing, aggressive, you know, that startup growth.
What would you tell those people that are out there and they're shopping for agencies? Um, what would you tell that person? Mindset mindset.
Mindset.
It takes so much more than just an agency.
I'll give you another example.
You can you can work with a person or with a with an agency that is is great and does a good job.
But if your belief that growing a company is bad, because then people gonna take the money from you, you're never gonna grow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you have had issues with business partners before, which we've encountered numerous times, then you're gonna have a difficulty of trusting unless you have resolved that issue.
Yes.
So it really, really is a argument.
Almost in a, you know, almost like in any relationship, if your info to long run, at one point, there's gonna, uh, go sit and trick us off, you know, where you might think, oh, it can't be that good, or, I always knew there was something wrong or whatever.
Right? But then look at that and see what is actually playing out Is it you just trying to find justification for something you've experienced in the past to prove yourself that you were right? Or is this actually an opportunity for you to be like, you know what? Let me be curious.
Let me look at this and let me give them a fair chance.
Because so far they've actually done a good job.
So and expecting somebody to always perfect does not work.
That's not how life works.
Right? Um, I mean, account managers can have bad days, you know, you could feel stressed.
You could have more of a calls than usual.
Yeah.
So As long as that's not a pattern, take it easy.
Yeah.
I hear what you're saying.
And, um, it's so beautiful because we start off this journey talking about hiring an agency, but we're also talking about your emotional, emotional management.
And I wanna I know I wanna dig into that.
I love that type of stuff because I feel like we make the decisions we make because of our emotions more than we do because of our logical thinking side.
After the break, we'll talk about what a healthy relationship with your ad agency looks like.
But before we do that, I just want to invite you to my brand new Google Ads community called the feedback circle.
Now I am so excited to tell you guys about this because I've been working on this for the past few months, and it's finally here, and I'm super excited.
So inside the feedback circle, you will get weekly coaching calls with me, where you can ask me anything, you will get exclusive training and workshops where you can learn about Google Ads, And on top of that, there is a community, so you can ask a question anytime 247 and somebody is going to give you a comprehensive answer, either it'll be me or member of my team, or maybe even some community members.
And the fund doesn't stop over there because we've got a section dedicated to memes, so we just have one whole section for Google Ads memes.
We've got a section where we roast landing pages.
So if you have a landing page and it isn't converting, you can show it to us, and we can give you some tips and some pointers to help you get back on track.
Not only that, but my guarantee to you is if you join the feedback circle and you don't see better ad results in 90 days, will give you your next month completely free.
So check out my Google Ads community at the link in the description below, and let's get back into the video.
So I want you to talk me through because you it sounds like you're spending a lot of time just talking to clients about their business and about what's happening.
Can you tell me what are the 3 biggest fears that most business owners have? Um, when you're talking to them, And also, can you tell me about some people who have maybe let go of those fears and are experiencing a lot more success? Um, could be some of your agency clients, but could you can we talk a little bit about that? Yeah.
So the 3 biggest fears are I'm not understood as a business owner.
I'm gonna lose money and there's no balance.
And, oh, should I have to shut down my business? Because at the core of every conversation, it's that.
Right? If if I don't grow, if I just say where, um, you know, do I have to shut down my business? Now the trust goes a long way.
So at the core of everything that we do is building up that trust with the client, and that is simply done by walking your talk.
If you say you're gonna do something, do it.
Don't know what promise.
Mean General don't promise anything, and we are very open about that.
We were saying, look there's past results of clients that we can show you.
But if you don't do your work, if you don't do your part of this collaboration, it's not a guarantee that anything is gonna work out here.
Right? So we're like, let's see if this is gonna work out for a trial of, like, 3 months, um, at, obviously, full full investment and everything.
And then we evaluate if this is mutually beneficial for both of us.
So we're very detached from the collaboration, but we still care for the client, right? So, um, one of my favorite examples is a quite a niche e commerce store that was making about 3 M.
Okay, I think, when it came to us, and they were just spending money on ads, they didn't know what was happening, and the agency wasn't responding.
And at that point, they'd spend about, I think, 3 k on ads a month or so.
And so a lot was like, um, we kinda know we need ads, but I also don't really know who to trust because that person itself was a very careful person.
Yeah.
Um, and so we just shown them in the beginning.
Like, look, here's what we're gonna do.
Here's how we're gonna fix this.
Then we did it.
We fixed this set up an account structure and everything.
Yeah.
Um, and that person's dream was actually always to set up an arts in there, which was very different from the online shop.
Business or arts.
You call that not a gallery.
Yeah.
And then after the 1st 12 months, I think they had, like, doubled the revenue and then I think 2 years later, it was 1,500,000 that they made.
Wow.
Wow.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
That's great.
8 9 x return.
So they'd spent for the 1.
5000000.
I think they'd spent about 80, 80 k a year or something of Google Adston.
Wow.
And then in the end, he was actually he opened up a gallery.
So and and with that, and in the beginning, you know, there was a lot of contact because we were like, okay, let's let's build this up, right? Call every week, every 2 weeks.
And then we literally transitioned to sometimes not having a call for 3 months because it it it just worked.
Right? And we, we'd built a distrust, and he knew that I was working well.
We were sending him a customized report in this case, but that was a very, you know, specific numbers he was looking for, but, you know, he kept seeing, okay, it's working.
And we also told him when something isn't working.
So in the beginning, I made this mistake that I often thought, oh, I have to be perfect, and the results have to be perfect every week.
Yeah.
It just can't believe yes.
It doesn't have to be.
That's not what people pay you for.
Um, and we just showed, like, when a month was going down, and it was a little bit of a seasonal business, but we just showed it, like, this month, the results went down because of X Y Z.
Oh, I see.
Yeah.
And then they even invest in building a new website because they've taken on a all our advice.
Right? So it's like they did their homework.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And when you do their homework, you pass the test at the end of the day.
Yep.
Yeah.
Would you say okay.
So I wanna paint a scenario for you.
Okay.
So let's say I spent $10,000 on this agency, and I spent $10,000 on my ads.
My agency has burned through my ads.
I'm having extremely high cost per leads.
I'm thinking about letting this agency go.
Um, what would you advise me to do.
Number 1, to keep my ad costs under control because I still wanna be running ads.
I still wanna, um, have clients coming through the door, but obviously, I I don't have that much money to keep on losing on ads How would you recommend that I approach my Google Ads account? And then how would you recommend that I also handle the transition between letting go of the bad agency and maybe going out there and looking for the good agency? What would I need to do in in what order would I need to do that? So there's a lot of what ifs, I'm gonna paint a specific picture for this example.
Well, let's say your company who's making 7 figures and your ad spend is 10 k per month, He.
Um, in that case, you could go ahead and hire a new agency and keep that absent.
If your revenue is less than 7 figures, then you should reduce the budget first, maybe to 2 to 3 k a month.
So that doesn't completely turn off everything.
You'd still keep it running, but that's enough for you to tell if something is working or not.
Right? And then hire a new agency.
Alright.
Go ahead re rewind this video or go go to, you know, the main video that we were referring to here and look at what we referred in the beginning.
Right, when you're looking out for, for someone new.
And, I mean, you can also, you know, address this with the agency and can see if due date actually give you actionable steps, right, due date, due date rates beyond Google Ads.
So you look into analytics.
You know, what are they doing beyond Google? To help you solve this.
And if you are, if you just newly encountered this problem and you want to be graceful because you might have a good ceiling, you'd be like, okay, I'll give you, like, 2 to 4 a week.
And look for improvements, right, and look for the proactivity of the agency to help you solve this.
If they are not, if they've been completely passive, then obviously there's no reason to stay.
And If you're saying no, I've had enough, it's been going downhill for a while, then it's best to just leave it as it is for now.
Stop paying because obviously you don't wanna throw out any more money, reduce the budget.
And look for somebody new.
But also when you look for somebody new, don't rush because people like, oh, I need somebody tomorrow because my contract ends today.
Right? It's okay.
Like, you've already wasted money.
You're gonna end up wasting money for, like, another 2 to 4 it's not going to make a difference if you are at a certain high revenue level, right? We ought to spend 2 weeks more time to find the right person or agency and then do it properly.
Like this is saying in the start up world, actually is higher, um, higher, slow, fire, fast.
Yeah.
So I like that.
I like that.
I really like that.
Hear your business is.
How many employees you have and everything? Does a lot of it depends here? But Again, this is not about speed here.
Yeah.
I think from listening to you and from this conversation, what I am picking up is the main problem between clients and commute and, um, agencies the main problem between your, um, your clients that wanna have really good outcomes for their businesses, and the agencies that sometimes let them down is communication.
I I feel like strongly after listening to you speak now that it has to be communication because it feels to me like the clients are arriving with the unrealistic picture of what this agency should do for them.
It's kind of like going into a relationship and saying, okay.
Uh, look, we've been dating for a week now.
Clearly, there's no engagement ring.
So clearly, you don't care about.
So, Glenn, it's such a good comparison.
It's and I think the other aspect look out for for here as well, here for whatever.
Uh, well, cannot English as.
Right? So is what's actually the age of your account manager? And I know that's in some places that's odd, something appropriate to ask, but you can, you can guess, like, always plus minus 5.
And the younger generation that's right now on the 30, they grew up with being used to ghosting people texting everywhere, and they have serious issues having proper conversations.
Right? So that is something to look out for, and I see that more than ever as the best relationships are dozed, but you can actually talk about stock And not just, well, somebody, when you don't know the answer, when you say, you know what? I actually don't know this right now, but I'll get back to you in 2 days, or I'll ask someone about this.
Right? So for me, ghosting someone who's not responding is always a huge red flag.
Wow.
That's true.
That's true.
And I think also, and this is it's so weird.
The level of communication that you get from a person is usually already telling you something.
For example, if you're sitting in the interview room, um, I have this all the time with freelancers where I would like to ask them about editing a video for us.
And I'd say, hey, I'm looking for a video editor.
Would you mind just doing a quick call? So number 1, they'd be reluctant to even jump on the call and they'd say something like, oh, you just send me what, uh, you want, and then I'll deliver it for you.
Don't worry.
I'll do a great job.
Now, automatically, this is what the relationship is gonna feel like.
It's gonna be me sending them something and hoping they interpret it correctly.
And I often get this case where I could jump on the call with the person, and this goes back to what Pamela was saying about the younger generation communicating differently, and they just would not turn on their web camera.
Now I honestly don't mind what you look like.
What I do care about is seeing the facial expression of the person I'm talking to and seeing if this is a real human being with empathy for my situation and my video.
Because if you can't have enough empathy for me, the guy who's gonna pay you I know you're not gonna have enough empathy for the person watching the video because they don't owe you anything.
So when I look at things like that, automatically, as a business owner, I know that there's a problem.
And I have hired people that were less suited to to the job, but had more of empathy and more of a communicative personality where they enjoy talking to you.
They enjoy telling you what happened If it's bad news, they'll come to you and they'll say, hey.
It's bad news.
I couldn't get the video done today, but give me 2 more days because we need to do x, y, and zed.
That makes me feel involved.
That makes me feel like this person actually cares enough to come and report problems to me versus having somebody who just kind of floats away.
You don't hear anything from them, but then you're also not getting your results at the end of the day.
So I think as much as we can put the blame on these agencies that outsource and outsource and outsource, and we can put the blame on, um, people who are definitely overpromising and under delivering you also have to ask yourself as a business owner is what I'm asking this agency to do, realistic for this particular agency that I'm hiring.
If you're paying $45 for somebody to manage your ads, You cannot expect to get reports and amazing results because you're just paying $45.
That person's time, I know they live in a in a 3rd world country, and I know you think $45 is a lot of money.
Trust me.
I live in a 3rd world country, we cannot buy a Bugatti.
I tried.
I went to the dealership.
I gave them my $45.
They said this is not enough.
So The question is if you really only wanna be that cheap, let's call it off of what it is.
Yeah.
Do you actually wanna do ads? Like, why do you wanna do something half baked? Yes.
I think also a lot of people are living in this, um, mentality that if they can get away with paying x amount for something, they're gonna make they're gonna do that.
So the problem with that is if I decided that I'm only gonna pay a $100 for a MacBook and no more, I'm probably gonna end up with a stolen MacBook, and I'm probably gonna have to face the consequences of having a stolen MacBook.
And it's the exact same thing when you go with agencies.
If you think that you're gonna get by, if you think that you're gonna grab an agency for a steal of a price, you might just get your whole ad account stolen just because you want it to be cheap.
Yeah.
And it's again, you're not just paying for skills.
You're paying for attitude.
You're paying for characteristics.
You're paying for empathy, right? And those are often immeasurable aspects Yeah.
That's true because experience is at the end of the day, it's what allows us to be good at ads at the end of the day.
If we didn't experience all of those ups and downs, we would not be great at handling Google Ads like we are today.
So I guess in closing, what I want from you, Pam, is If you could just summarize this talk for us and give us our 5 things, uh, that are most important, um, with your relationship with your agency and that are most important to you when it comes to hiring an agency.
So I think it, like, looking at the notes, know your numbers, know your numbers before you even step into the conversation with the agency and make an effort to do that.
Your response.
What sort of what sort of numbers are we talking about? If you give me 5 numbers that I should definitely know.
Love the ads.
Yep.
Then what am I currently getting out of the ads? And that could just be leads.
Sometimes that's real revenue depending whatever you're measuring sometimes just clicks.
Whatever you are.
That's okay.
There's no judgment here.
Um, then cost per lead or cost worse if you're tracking that.
And then also what kind of like percentages your ads spend currently of your marketing, and that's something you might be figuring out through Google Analytics, for example, or other means.
These are 4.
But if you have these 4, you're fine.
Okay.
Cool.
So we got to know your numbers covered.
Yep.
Trust yourself.
Don't make a decision based on numbers or prices because it's not the cheapest is not the best.
Yeah.
Don't make a decision based out of fear.
So make sure you yourself are in a good spot when making that decision.
And let's see.
What's a good 5th one? Prepare some questions.
Yep.
Have a dialogue.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Have a dialogue and see, you know, as you said, watch out, already actually listening to me.
So so my general rule is If I'm on a call with a potential new client, I talk maximum 20%, they talk 80%.
That that's a good rule to have.
A lot of people need to have that rule.
And there's a there's a South African saying shout out to South Africa for winning the World Cup, by the way.
Yeah.
Um, I don't know how that happened, but that was cool.
Anyway, there's a saying, um, in Africans, says.
So what that basically means is buying something cheap is buying something expensive.
Ah, yes.
And you can't expect, uh, to buy champagne with beer money as my ex boss used to say.
Needs to love that say.
You can't expect to buy champagne with beer money.
So I understand that you're a business owner, and I understand that you want these amazing results.
And let's look at it.
All business owners want amazing results.
Yes.
But you also have to understand that there's a cost correlation to the amount of money you're paying and what you're gonna get back in terms of ad performance in terms of experience and in terms of people, uh, who really care about you and what you're trying to achieve in this world.
And, um, I think that's a beautiful place to leave it off Pamela.
Is there anything that you wanna say in closing? Um, because I think this was a really beautiful conversation.
And I think if you apply these principles, I cannot see you failing with, um, finding the right agency for your Google Ads.
I cannot see it because most of us get into the hot water, get into the trouble because we wanna rush the decision.
Find the right person for you.
Take your time nobody's going anywhere.
Your beautiful results are not going anywhere.
In fact, they'll come much faster if you find the right person.
So it's better to take 6 weeks and find the right person than to go through an agency every single week on the way to finding a right person.
Alright.
And, uh, we will see you on the next podcast.
Like I said before, everything that we mentioned in this video, links are down below.
And if you wanna have a conversation with somebody who I think personally, this is my personal opinion.
She is the best person to run your ads because Pamela's basically my Google Ads hero, and I'm I'm even on it just to be doing this podcast with her.
But if you really want the best person to run your Google Ads Just say hi to Pamela.
The link is down below.
Just go.
Just say hi to her and see what she has to say.
She might not be the right person to work with right now but she'll almost always point you in the right direction.
Very well said.
Thank you.
Alright, guys.
We'll see you on the next one.
Peace.
Thank you so much for watching this episode.
Be sure to like and subscribe, and I've got a whole playlist in case you've missed the previous 2 podcast episodes, and I'll put them over here.
I will see you on the next one.
Peace.
I have the absolute best person on the planet to talk to right now.
And I say on the planet because if you look at a background behind her, you will see the sun rising.
So she's a rising star definitely when it comes to everything in life.
Uh, I personally think she's gonna be the next.
This is perfect.
Oh, this is Cancel everything I just said.
We got the wrong person for the show.
Oh my god.
You have to keep? Because I'm Oh my god.
It's amazing.
Got it.
Match.
Okay.
You can't make that dog.
Oh, my gosh.
That's going to the rear.
It's definitely going to the rear.
Wow.
Okay.
Alright.
So, Pam.
How are you today? And, um, give me the I'm pretty still gonna laugh about this when you go to sleep at night.
I am.
I am that type of person.
I was the type of person who, you know, I was doing, uh, um, a YouTube video once, and there was a fly in the room.
And I was talking, and I was liking, okay.
So for keywords, you want it all And the fly came and said right on my nose.
No.
On the interview.
On the interview
