{"id":28201,"date":"2026-08-05T23:57:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T18:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/?p=28201"},"modified":"2026-08-05T23:57:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T18:27:20","slug":"ppcchat-things-i-wish-i-knew-sooner-in-ppc-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/ppcchat-things-i-wish-i-knew-sooner-in-ppc-2\/","title":{"rendered":"PPCChat | Things I Wish I Knew Sooner in PPC | 4th August 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week’s PPCChat focused on the lessons PPC experts wish they had learned earlier, covering client and stakeholder communication, PPC career decisions, account management, and valuable insights gained through experience. Here is the screencap of the discussion hosted by Julie F Bacchini<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Q1: What is something you know now in general about PPC that you wished you knew sooner?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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A good campaign can still fail if the client can’t close the deals.. @Pete_Bowen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are always in some part of a cycle, so even if things are not great, it will not stay that way. @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many versions of a right answer there are. There are so many ways to do things well. @JuliaVyse<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no one right answer. There are sooo many hidden settings — sometimes I’m still finding stuff I didn’t know we could adjust! @revaminkoff<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Classic example of a cycle that repeats is – in-house vs. agency\/consultants. Businesses constantly swing between – why are we paying so much to an agency\/consultant when we could just hire someone? Then is swings to – why are we paying for full time people plus benefits when we could just hire an agency\/consultant for only the work we need? And repeat\u2026@NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish I knew plumbers and electricians would be making 300k\/year, while coders and marketers would be replaced by AI pretty quickly, lol. In all honesty that there is no magic pill or right way of doing things. Then if you find something work with one client, it could fail miserably with the next one. @Ichasse<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, macro economic forces very much impact our work! From how campaigns land and perform to how easy or hard it is to book new work. @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

@revaminkoff<\/a> Just remember if it is hidden, it means they actually don’t want you to use it. Use it while you can, but understand it could disappear down the road. Google uses the answer of only X% were using it (after we hid it) so we turned it off, lol. @Ichasse<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Random Acts of Google (or Meta or Microsoft, etc) can really ruin your week or month too! @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That the site is half the work. @duanebrown<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 bad day\/week\/month doesn’t mean that the whole strategy is a failure, depending on scale. Sample size is a real thing, and you don’t need to completely overhaul the strategy just because you didn’t convert 1 lead out of 3 clicks on a Sunday. @AnthonyMcDaniel<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish I had known it would become the shitshow it is now and started charging WAY more starting 8 years ago. @ynotweb<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statistical analysis matters @williamhboggs<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Q2: What is something you know now about managing PPC accounts that you wished you knew sooner?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Sometimes things will just stop working. And it has nothing to do with the work you have done in that campaign or account up until that point. Organic and paid should really try to work better together too! @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You cannot effectively cover mass geographic areas with an insufficient budget, no matter how badly the client insists that you can or must. Most businesses have a very poor understanding of why anyone actually buys what they sell. @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power of scripts. In my early years I did so many things that could have been handled by well written scripts. You can pull massive data sets, etc\u2026 with one script vs. having to make several reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also it is not always your fault if something is not working. If the site is terrible, SEO is bad, etc\u2026 we get impacted pretty heavily in performance. Also product selection, pricing, etc\u2026 I used to always take it personally if something was not working, but these days I know there is a difference between the work I do and the other pieces of the puzzle. @Ichasse<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creative and landing pages (including conversion tracking) matter more than hard targets @navahhopkins<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Platforms will pick and choose what they emphasize and the stuff they leave out or gloss over might really impact the campaigns you are running. Example of this would be when Google Ads announced lifting the conversion floor for smart bidding. They said it could work with any level of conversions – you no longer needed 50 in a month for smart bidding to work. In reality? The documentation still says the system needs that level (or at least it did). And if you are below this threshold, things do not work the same! @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This might be better suited to something re client communication but I wish I’d realised earlier than I’m managing accounts on behalf of clients, not delivering results on behalf of the platform. @Pete_Bowen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not everyone can make every account work, no matter how amazing you are. Sometimes it is them and not you. @duanebrown<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having a detailed contract is a MUST. And it should have clear terms, including what is not included and how you address scope changes. @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

@NeptuneMoon<\/a> does that statement apply to all platforms equally, or is this mostly targeted at one? I ask in case there are ways we could be more clear @navahhopkins<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two seemingly contradictory concepts: @timmhalloran<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Communicating consistently is seen as transparency. The specialist who communicates changes, or ups and downs to the client while they’re managing an account is seen as a harder workers and\/or more competent than the specialist who doesn’t communicate. Many times, this is irrespective of an account’s performance or the actual work done.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. It’s difficult to not get caught in that “cardinal metrics” loop when you’re communicating performance. Many of us gear our content to the audience in the meeting so we’ll focus on big picture changes and performance across the quarter or year-over-year when you’re talking to a CMO or owner. If you’re discussing with a marketing manager you may go into the leading indicators and explain what the trends your seeing indicate. But because PPC is difficult to comprehend sometimes, you can find yourself over-explaining these indicators when it’s probably better to remove the adverbs from the discussion, focus on top-line metrics, and only discuss tactics if it’s material to understanding your overall strategy. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    You can run the best campaign ever from a front end perspective, with all the platform metrics looking great, but if things aren’t converting to quality on the backend, the client is not going to be happy. @revaminkoff<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    @navahhopkins<\/a> Microsoft does tend to be more clear in its communications. Google is polished but not speaking to PPC pros in their comms as well as they should, I find. I wish they had a blog equivalent of their developers Discord. Meta is awful all the way around, @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On the Enterprise side: there is a very limited understanding of how other channels interact with search volume and results. Client search experts expect miracles, and client search novices don’t believe it’s necessary for closing the last purchase decision. @JuliaVyse<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Funny, because you can be auditing an account and it has all the “worst” practices and the account could be doing amazing. Then an account doing all the things we all see generally as the best practices is struggling. @Ichasse<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It pains me to write this, but sometimes, the account just isn’t a good fit. And that’s ok. @revaminkoff<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Infinite scale is not the goal of every account. And that is ok! In fact, all accounts will hit a wall of diminishing returns at some point. @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    @Ichasse<\/a> that’s also why it’s difficult to convert leads that see it as “all fake”. Explaining why worst vs. best practices seems to fall on deaf ears without a big data study. Sometimes you get lucky and are able to pull the narrative from data that already exists. But when it doesn’t, it can get tricky. @timmhalloran<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Also \u201ceveryone\u201d is not your target audience. EVER. You are LITERALLY PAYING FOR CLICKS. Be a little deliberate in who you are trying to get to do that @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Tracking measurement and data is SOOOOO important. If you don’t have the right foundation, the rest doesn’t matter. @revaminkoff<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Beware an account that has been using bullshit conversion data too. @NeptuneMoon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    @revaminkoff<\/a> agreed. Also why I like to build a month of onboard into contracts. Sometimes 6 weeks to 2 months for bigger builds. I’ve seen clients balk at that because they want to get started right away and my reply always is, “you’ll thank me 4 months from now” (but in a nicer way). @timmhalloran<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There are limitless things that businesses can do internally (outside of our scope) that can drastically impact your campaign’s success without you knowing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n