Speakers

📢 Here are the current speakers we have for this event. We will also hear from you – the event is all about taking part.

Is Google Poaching Your Clients?

The phone rings. It’s one of your clients. 

Whenever a client calls you up, you’re never quite sure if it’s going to be good or bad, but… nothing could prepare you for this.

“Hey,” they begin uneasily. ‘ Google called – they said there were a few things we weren’t doing with the account that could improve performance.’

You roll your eyes.

“They mentioned something about optimisation techniques we should be using. They made it sound like we’re missing out on some big opportunities, and, well, we thought we should talk to you about it first.”

Sound familiar?

Jon Darch, founder of Uprated, says that this kind of thing is happening all the time.

“Google calls up our clients and wants to talk to them about how they can ‘help’ with optimisation, even though they know they have an agency – yt completely undermines us,” says Jon. “It makes clients question our expertise because they think, ‘Well, we must listen to someone from Google. And that person from Google is probably not even an account strategist – they’re a salesperson!”

Jon has been lucky in that they haven’t lost any clients to these conniving tactics, but there are plenty of other agencies that most likely have.

“I’ve seen loads of horror stories where clients get called up by Google, and it causes issues,” he says. “It can erode confidence a little bit, and I’m sure there are others that have had poorer experiences than us.”

Whilst Google claims they’re planning on resolving these issues, there is no timeline of when this will happen.

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👉 At PPC Leaders, Jon will be joining us on stage to lead a discussion about this Google problem. This is a chance to vent your frustration about Google’s snakey tactics – and find out new and productive ways of handling this situation.

How to Leverage LinkedIn for Paid Ads

LinkedIn keepIn a world where media platforms increasingly use AI and machine learning to “help” advertisers, sometimes the only route to success, especially for niche products and services, is to ignore their advice altogether.

For example: LinkedIn insists that you need a minimum audience size of 50,000 people for your ad campaign.

But Jennifer Esty, managing director at Sharp Ahead, thinks that’s a load of rubbish.

“Every time we create a LinkedIn campaign and it tells me that I need a minimum audience size of 50,000, I just swipe that notification away and ignore it,” she says. “It’s asinine, frankly, for a niche B2B company.”

According to Jennifer, success on LinkedIn often means ignoring the platform’s so-called ‘best practices’ and doing it your own way.

For example:

• Spotlight vs. Text Ads – “We’ve been noticing a shift towards showing more spotlight ads and fewer text ads; we’re also seeing much higher click through rates on those spotlight ads versus text ads.”
• Mastering LinkedIn’s Ad Library – “They have an ad library where you can get a sneak peek at all your competitors’ ads to see what they’re doing and what ads they’re running.”
• Strategic Placement Management – “If you are doing a lot of advertising on LinkedIn, you definitely should be mindfully managing where your brand placements are.”

But it’s not easy. You have to constantly adapt your content strategy to keep up with the changes, whilst also not breaking the bank when generating leads.

“The last few campaigns that we have done, we’re seeing more like £100-200 CPLs for those downloads,” says Jennifer – referring to white paper campaigns that used to cost £30-40 per lead.

👉 At PPC Leaders, Jennifer will take you through how to really leverage LinkedIn ad campaigns effectively, even when it means going against the grain. Afterall, LinkedIn’s one-size-fits-all advice isn’t exactly the most accurate.