Advanced onboarding: the secret to next-level client results

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00:00All right, welcome back to the PPC Mastery podcast in this new miniseries called Scaling with Bob. Uh the second episode and um last week in the first episode we dove into Bob's new offer um for his uh his his freelance clients. Uh we dove into the different phases that he is going through with this client. Um yeah, super interesting. If you haven't seen that, definitely go back and and watch it first. Uh and today what we want to do is uh take you behind the scenes of how important it is to ask the right questions before you even start doing the work because Bob I think this is one of the things that is uh for a lot of people is it's sort of unsexy but you have to do it in order to uh give the right output in the end. So today we want to take you guys a little bit behind the scene of behind the scenes of uh how to actually properly uh brief your client and what Bob did to um make sure that all the right questions were answered before he started to do his extensive audit. And then in the next episode we're going to be talking about the structure of the actual audit.

01:12So today, Bob, um, from your perspective, why is it so important to ask the right questions first and what did you do in order to get the answers to those questions with this with this new client of yours? Yeah, I think it's really really important to ask the right questions up front because a lot of Google Ads specialists and a lot of well people in general skip that really important phase and uh immediately dive into the audit uh itself. So uh I think it's really important to to start with um questioning everything uh before you actually open the account and start well dissecting every single component of the uh Google Ads account. And that is because you need to understand uh the business context and you also need to understand the choices that were made uh before you start um well going through certain certain campaigns, certain accounts, certain structures. If you don't have the answer to proper uh to to the business context to choices that were made, stuff that worked, stuff that didn't work in the past, you're going to also shoot yourself in the foot. Uh and that happened to me in the past as well.

02:21Uh and that's when I thought to myself, well, before I actually start doing the audit, I want to have like a choice review session uh or a strategy session. It's up to you how you want to call it. I call it a choice review session nowadays. um first to properly understand what's going on um what needs attention uh what are the current challenges what were challenges in the past uh because that really really helps uh doing the actual audit itself. Yeah. And with this choice review uh uh session, you're actually just you want to uh understand the context of the account and the choices that they have made up until that point so that you know how to audit properly, right? Um yeah. Yeah. So um when you do this session, do you send your client a list of questions beforehand or is it just show up and we're going to go through a list of questions live together?

03:19um what's um it's both. So uh I like to prepare the questions uh up front uh and it's quite an extensive document because the audits I generally do are audits for well uh six seven figures accounts uh where a lot of things are uh are going on where a lot of things need to be audited uh and it's also really custom so it's not a standardized document uh that is being sent over to every single client. it is tailored to the customer itself. Um, so I like to sit for um an hour or two or three uh brainstorm about uh questions that I want to ask within certain categories u and we can go over the categories in a bit and then once it's finished I like to send it over to my clients so they can properly prepare and then we're going through all of the um questions and answers in a certain meet um well generally a online meet through Google meets or whatever.

04:21um to also uh ask follow-up questions. So, I like to also have the answers up front because if you're going to wait for the answers in the session itself, um you're going to run out of time real quick. Because if you want um if you want to do this in a live setting, physical or online, you can easily talk about this for two or 3 hours um due to the extensiveness of the of the questions and you don't want to well basically waste um above your time in order to do that. So, first send over the questions through mail, let them answer every single question on paper and then you basically have an online meet where you can also ask follow-up questions and uh ask for more context, for example. Yeah. And it's so important, right? Because this is how you make a good solid first impression. Um not only with the audit that you present, but by asking those types of questions that we're going to go into in a second. um you really show your client that you take this things that you take it seriously um and that you want to understand their business and it's not like you're just doing an audit and you're trying to win their business and you're just going through a checklist.

05:28Obviously that it's part of it as well, but um there's so much more depth to it this way. Um and yeah, you can really make a solid solid first impression. Um yeah, so just maybe a little bit about the why behind the questions. Um, is there do you have any examples of audits that you did where you saw the difference in output based on whether you initially did a good uh, you know, ask a lot of questions up front, did a choice review or whatever or maybe not even that, but just asking the right questions versus uh, a case where you did not do that and you just start auditing right away. Did you notice a big difference in the actual output? Well, I've been doing this for uh, I think a couple of years now. this structure. Uh but during my uh first couple of years when it just started out, I completely skipped this phase. So I basically got access to the Google Ads account and I needed to do a Google Ads audit and I just started uh plowing through my uh Google Ads audit checklist and basically checking every single um well check that needed to be done in order to cover the full account without knowing any context. Uh but doing it that way, you're going to make a lot of mistakes and during presenting um the audit like that, um customers will usually tell you, well, there's a certain reason why we did it that way.

06:52Or we tried that in the past, but it completely backfired. So what you're trying to suggest, well, um might work based on best practices, but we tried that and it well completely backfired. So, if you're going to present um an audit that you charged well a lot of money for and you're you do not have the context and it's starting to backfire during the presentation then uh well that's not the best place to be in and that happened to me well a couple of years ago and then I started to do it this way and now it well almost never happens again unless um I forgot to well uh to question certain parts of the account um where I didn't have the context for uh but generally speaking since I now have the context I can then also factor that in in auditing the account and then also well uh give the client solid advice and solid recommendations.

07:46Yeah. Because the the I think the thing that you want to prevent at all times with a with an audit especially when you start presenting it is that the client says yeah sure but that is not really our goal or that's not what we're that's not why we ask you to do this audit. And I think that's um definitely a pitfall when when you're junior, when you're just starting out because as you said, you're eager and you want to find all the nitty-gritty stuff and you go like, "Oh, this campaign only has two site links and you need four." Um, and then you sometimes you completely miss the mark of what this business is actually actually after. And then it's so important to ask about the the unit economics, etc., etc. We're in a game of nuances because, well, you're famous of the quote, it depends. Um and that's completely true to auditing accounts as well. So since it always depends on the business itself, you need to answer uh you need to uh question everything and you need to ask for the context behind everything that you're going to check. Um so don't get me wrong, I still use a checklist um the checklist that we have created uh from PPC mastery as well to have a proper um uh overview and flow through my audits uh in order to also not miss stuff but it's not the single thing that I do. Um uh I like to expand on that when I also have the well questions answered and I have the full context. Yeah.

09:12Yeah. But yeah, by the way, you can just uh go to ppcmastery.com/ audit and there that's where you can download this checklist that we have created. It's it's for free now. We used to sell it for €200, but you can grab it for free. Um I think one of the tricky trickier things with uh a a choice review session um could be that clients say uh no, we have already tried that that doesn't work for us. How do you deal with that? because you you also understand like sometimes maybe their execution just wasn't right. Um so I'm curious like when you find something in your in your audit um a certain thing that is missing or uh set up wrongfully and then you tell the client like hey I think we should do this and then they say no we already did that doesn't work for us. How do you navigate that?

10:06Yeah that's a good question. You always need to question everything always. always because I learned it the hard way uh that you cannot trust everything uh your uh clients say and you need to question everything um and dive into the data. So if you um question certain parts of the uh of the of the account, for example, uh campaign structure or advanced stuff like value based bidding transitions or uh bidding on um well uh closed deals instead of uh leads and certain tests failed in the past. Well, just ask them when they uh they did those experiments and then dive into the account itself and try to reverse engineer and also dive deeper into the stuff they did because most of the time well most of the time a lot of times you will see that the execution wasn't right or um uh well certain things happened below well under the hood that the customer wasn't wasn't aware of. uh and most of the time you can then well do the same experiment again but then um the right way. So don't just take things for granted. Uh you need to question the stuff and well let the data speak. Um but obviously you need to um follow through on certain certain answers they give you in order to properly understand what they did, what they didn't do and then well based on the account, the structure, the experiment itself etc. Well, um, form your opinion.

11:37Yeah. All right. So, maybe now we can just go and dive into the types of questions that you ask. Uh, because you you go through a a set of categories. So, maybe before we dive into the actual categories, what are you trying to to to learn through the questions that you ask and this choice review session like on a on a high level about their business, about their Google Ads campaigns, like what is it that you're that you're trying to uncover here? Yeah. So, I think the most important thing um what you want to learn uh when asking the questions up front is what they're trying to achieve um what their goals are and uh how they try to transition that towards actual tactics within the Google Ads account. Um and then from there on you have all sorts of nitty-gritty uh stuff that you can analyze. But it starts with the overarching goals. So what I really really really want to understand properly is um well their business context. So um what are they doing? What are they trying to achieve? Uh what are their growth goals? What are their efficient goals?

12:42Are there any uh is there any seasonality involved within their business? Well, you can also check that for yourself, but it's also easy to to ask that question up front. And then also um uh how do they think the business is doing uh right now? Are they on track of their goals? Uh are they behind on certain growth targets? Are they uh overperforming, underperforming efficiency wise? So you cannot understand um uh the full picture if you do not ask those really critical and crucial questions up front. Uh because the full account will be if they're doing their job correctly uh will be tailored towards well um uh hitting those growth and efficiency goals. Yeah. So that's the first uh first well thing that you want to uncover and that you want to dive deeper deeper in. And most of the times if they have well a solid CFO um and you're talking to the CMO, the marketing manager for example, they can tell you a lot about those things and that really helps with dissecting the tactics and seeing if what they're doing right now is actually contributing towards achieving those goals.

13:54Yeah. Have you seen uh well I want to say compliance it's not really the word but um willingness to to cooperate from for example a CFO or a CMO in these types of uh audits uh to provide the information that you need. Yeah. Because I also need the information. So I'm really stubborn um in that in that phase. I need to know what they're trying to achieve because if I don't know and I don't have the actual numbers um I cannot do my work properly. uh because everything that you're going to to to comment on, everything that you're trying to uh recommend them needs to needs to well get back to what they're trying to achieve. So if you don't have the numbers, you're completely in the dark and you can all you can only uh audit the account based on best practices. And once again, best practices are called best practices because of a certain reason, but it depends once again. um uh and that's the key word uh over here and you need to know the numbers in order to um to give the correct recommendation so to say.

14:57Yeah. So um I think you've defined about eight or nine different categories of questions that you that you ask and want to want to dive into with your client. Can you take us through the list of those uh those those categories and what types of questions you would generally ask within that category? Yeah, sure. So I've got the document on my screen over here. So we can quickly scroll through the document uh touch on the certain categories and also some u some examples of the questions within certain categories. So when we're talking uh overarching categories that I like to touch on. I generally have 10ish categories that I want to zoom into and it really depends on the type of type of customer obviously. Uh generally speaking I like to work with um legen and SAS companies. So I don't have additional categories like uh product feeds uh immersion center um those will be additions to ecom clients uh but that's not my specialization at least not what I like to do the most so to say. So for search and legen um uh sorry for legion and SAS it's a bit more comprehensive. So if you're talking about the categories, um I like to start with performance and business context uh because that's the cornerstone of everything that we're going to dissect and zoom into in the audit um at first and everything uh following up in the audit will be built upon well uh how they're performing, what they're trying to achieve. So that's the cornerstone.

16:30Um then we have conversion tracking uh and also attribution. So this particular client is active in the truffle industry um where they have really really long uh lead to sale windows. Uh and that's definitely a problem. Uh that's also what I found out during the audit itself. Uh because well within Google Ads you have a 90day max cookie window and if the lead to sale uh period is really long uh the click can be too old to get imported to to Google Ads and then you're missing well uh results and your um reporting will be off. If you're trying to use that for bidding purposes that won't work as well. So that's a really important thing that I like to zoom into after performance and business context. Then we're slowly transitioning to um well the Google Ads components itself. So from that point on I like to zoom into uh account structure u overarching strategy and overarching tactics that are being used within uh within the uh the account. Then we zoom into uh the campaigns a little bit more.

17:39So once we've covered campaign structure, um account structure, tactics, I like to zoom in on bidding, uh efficiency, um are they using the right bit strategies? Are they setting the right targets uh in order to hit their growth and efficiency targets? Um geo audience targeting, creatives, blending pages, um and then also data reporting, and also what they're trying to aim for in the future. So those are essentially the core categories that I like to touch on. Uh and then if you zoom into the categories itself, well then you get like a list of different questions that are really tailored to the business in order to help me properly understand what what they're doing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, this is this is super nice, man. And I think for everyone listening also like these these categories and then obviously like if you're working for ecom as you said there's product feed component um you know different things that you're trying to uncover. But I think if you go through these categories and define questions um then you can uh go a long way. But I think a sort of a a danger for Google ad specialists is everybody loves a good list you know a good list or checklist and I'm sure that everyone would be wondering oh Bob can you just send me the questions that you have created uh and which we will we will we will which we will yeah you can you can access them. We'll put it in the in the link below uh in the description.

19:06Um, but that will only take you so far because you have to think about, okay, how can I apply this to my specific industry? Because if you, like you said, this client is in the travel industry with long conversion cycles, you're asking for way different things than if you're in direct to consumer e-commerce with maybe 3day conversion cycles. Yeah, that's 100% correct. So, if you're asking performance questions, they need to be tailored towards the business that you're auditing. So in this particular uh audit I wanted to know um well the basic question uh how has performance been lately. So I just wanted to hear their opinion. So are they happy with the results? Are they hitting their overarching business uh business goals? Uh and you will get a lot of insights if you let people talk uh by by asking uh a question like that. But from there it starts to get really business specific.

20:03So performance questions for this particular truffle client um um well zooms in on stuff like well is there seasonality involved or are there certain macro trends affecting the bookings um what is your target booking volume what is your growth target uh are you currently uh profitable uh looking at your um well lead CPAs and also booking uh cs so to say um uh and and if so well can you tell me a little bit more about about these certain targets that you're trying to hit. Are they different per destination? Are they different per geo targeting because well they are advertising worldwide they're advertising in the USA but also in the rest of world um how are they trying to uh separate those regions what is their um what is the strategy behind uh well making certain choices like that um if you're looking at leads incoming leads so uh well um uh uh requests so to say what is the lead to booking uh rate and Are they happy with that? Are they trying to steer towards a certain percentage that they're aiming for in order to bring in certain quality uh quality leads? Um so you can already see that those questions are really tailored to this specific business. Um they are varants uh from well more generic performance related questions. Uh but they need to be business specific um uh because also in the account you will see that they're tracking those metrics. um that you can also dissect, you can make analysis based on that etc.

21:41Yeah. Do you do you actually because you know when you're doing an audit you do this long this long process of finding things and uncovering everything in the account but do you actually do some something like a a quick pre-check just a first glance at the account so that you can then generate the questions because you can never like some of these things that you just uh said some of these questions that you ask are specific to the case of the client at that point right of course you want to know how's performance now and um uh how are the you know the average booking cycles etc. But then I'm sure you've already seen that it is different for different countries as you just mentioned and then you want to understand that. So I'm sure like yeah can you talk about that? Do you do you do something like a pre-check then creating the questions and then going into the actual audit? Is that what it's like? Yeah, good question. That's exactly the case because if you don't do that uh you you cannot you cannot ask questions and you will run into well questions again if you're trying to do the audit. Um, so what I like to do is to do a sort of pre- audit for myself in order to come up with questions that I have uh so I can well uh ask them in the uh in the in the meeting or up front through mail that we can zoom into because if you don't um you will find well you will find yourself stuck when doing the audit. For example, for this particular client, I had a look at their conversion actions. And uh at first um at first glance I looked at the conversion actions and I saw different categories like um submit lead form uh qualified

23:19leads um uh well closed deals, sales so to say and also micro conversions where they measured the steps inside of the form requests from step one all the way to step three through uh uh well regular web pixels. So it looked like they were um they knew what they were doing. But when I started to dig deeper and started to uh take a closer look at the conversion actions, I came across all sorts of weird naming conver uh conventions like um initially engaged by cutoff. Uh that was for example a conversion name and I was like what the hell does that mean? or um uh a conversion action within the uh well submit lead category uh was called um global quality RQ and I thought that RQ well meant request uh but why was there quality uh in there uh because they also had different uh conversion actions within the qualified leads category. So I already had all sorts of different questions like how is this set up and what are the triggers behind uh these conversion actions. So, in the pre-check, I essentially made a simple table, a list for myself with all of the conversion actions um uh that I just handed over like, hey, um I assume this is what you're doing here and I assume this is what it means, but can you tell me uh can you tell me if that's factually correct? And also, can you tell me the triggers? So during that uh that part of the audit and the choice review session alone um they were

24:56questioning stuff themselves already because well this was set up um two three years ago by somebody else legacy stuff and they didn't they couldn't tell me certain triggers like uh I don't know I have to I have to check yeah we have to check uh that's so interesting man especially when you take over an account maybe I don't know if they're managing in-house now with an agency but um inhouse house. Yeah. Then it, you know, we've seen it so many times. We audit accounts and we work with in-house teams. The way that it is set up is just it goes from one person who's managing it to the next to the next to the next. Um and then I guess a lot of people just don't ask the questions that you're asking now because you are curious and you want to you you need to understand because otherwise it's like yeah how can I make any sense of this and how if I don't understand these conversion actions how are we going to steer on the right on the right metrics and the right the right conversion goals. So it's really crucial to to understand these things so that you can find the insights to present in the audit. Um but yeah because you also need you also need to understand that um in order to well what I like to do is I like to create custom columns based on all of the all of the conversion actions within the account in order to then uh do a proper performance uh audit. Uh and if I don't uh fully understand the concept behind certain conversion actions, I might label certain conversion actions as a qualified lead where it is a well unqualified lead because it's labeled incorrectly. Um so I really need to understand how it's set up in order to also give them the proper analysis um uh

26:35of well certain performance aspects within the account and this is just one tiny um aspect of the uh of the well um questions up front that are really crucial to ask. Yeah. And I think doing it like this makes you a really good partner. So, um, if if you're listening to this and you work inhouse or you own a a company and you work with a freelancer or an agency or someone in your team, um, you want to, um, make sure that they do these types of pre- audits and asking these types of questions because then you you know that they understand your business and then they can give the solid advice because I've heard so many times from people on LinkedIn seen stories where a client jumps on on a sales call with an agency gency for example or freelancer and then on this call they give already the advice like oh yeah I think we need to do this and this I think we need to fix your landing page I think we need to do your ads blah blah blah but you can never give that advice you need to do value based bidding because that's how it's done nowadays and for this client for example they tried that last year and it failed it backfired completely it failed miserably so if I if I didn't um uh ask like hey what did you do before what worked what didn't work. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

27:53Then I maybe would have suggested well uh you need to steer towards actual bookings and look at the value of the bookings and then start optimizing um based on a um well target row in order to maximize the bookings within a certain efficiency target that they tried that and it failed. So now they're back to well uh optimizing towards leads and they want to transition towards qualified leads utilizing a proper target CPA. Um, that's what I understand and that's also what I'm bringing into the audit in order to also tell them like, okay, I get what um, uh, I get what you did. Uh, I understand why you made that transition or try to do that. Uh, but since it didn't work, we're now going to zoom into um, uh, well, how you can set up the account for success when optimizing for qualified leads, for example.

28:46U, just a minor example. Yeah. Yeah. I love that, man. And it's it's so crucial. Uh, by the way, I love how your doggo just stood up behind you. I had no idea she she was there. Um, yeah, she's giving me some company. Yeah, nice one. Um, cool. So, I guess the the most important thing if we if we summarize here, we can go through all the categories, but you can get access to this document. It's in the link below uh or in the description below. Uh then you can just scroll through these these questions and see which types of questions you might want to ask to your clients when you do when you do audits. Uh you can also ask ChatGPT uh to to refine your questions and find gaps in what did I not ask yet. Um you know use it and and uh to enhance your own your own audits or sort of the pre-step to that. Um, but I guess to to summarize it here, it's like this is the the unsexy stuff that really sets you apart from everyone else because the majority of of Google ad specialists, they will just they get a lead, a client, and they start diving into the audit straight away and they bombard the client with all the nitty-gritty Google ad stuff because that's what we love as specialists, but that's not what they are.

30:01Uh, y Oh, yeah. Jargon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, and that's that's that's not what they are after. They want to grow their business. Maybe if you're talking to their Google Ads specialist internally, okay, you can go really really nitty-gritty. Uh but over uh overall, if you're talking to, like you said, CMO, CFO, CEO, then they want to understand that you understand their business and that you can can help them reach their reach their goals, whatever they are, the goals and their their growth targets, their efficiency targets, etc. Um, so that's why this is so this is so crucial. Um, there's no cookie cutter example of you need to only ask these questions because it is important to tailor that to the specific client and vertical. Uh, but use this document for your for your inspiration. Um, any closing thoughts from you, Bob, about this? Any anything that you want to restate, re-emphasize uh about why this is so important?

30:56Um, well uh I think we can go on. um giving giving certain certain examples for 30 60 more minutes but I think people get the deal. I think um uh it's could be interesting to to go through the question questionnaire the question document that we will link in the show notes. Uh I will also expand on the questions and my um my insights and also the client's answers uh within the PPC Hub within the scaling with Bob series. Uh so if you're in there, you can also expect expect some deep dives into that. Uh but yeah, this is just really really important to to get right. Um uh yeah, just don't skip this phase because you might risk backfiring uh well the actual audit when you're presenting that if you don't have the context once again.

31:48Yeah. Cool. So from here guys, uh in the next episode we're going to be talking about the actual audit, the structure of the audit, and then after that, um you know, if there's going to be more episodes, it's going to be about what did Bob find in the audit, uh how did the presentation with the client go, stuff like that. But he's in the middle of the process right now, so we're just sharing things live as as we go. Um for the all the bonus resources, go into description. you can grab our audit templates and this this questionnaire of questions that you can ask up front and then as Bob said in the PPC Hub he's going to create a deep dive into those things so you understand the context behind it as well. So with that said don't forget to like, subscribe, all that stuff and we'll catch you in the next episode of this minieries called Scaling with Bob. All right, that's the end of this episode of the PPC Mastery Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and if you don't want to miss any future episodes, we're going to be back next week. then don't forget to subscribe and share with a friend, family member, or a colleague. Uh because that's the only way we can grow this show. Now, there's two more things I want to share with you. If you want to take your Google Ads game to the next level, the first one is if you want to get advanced Google Ads tips delivered straight into your inbox on Mondays and Fridays, head over to pbcmastery.com/newsletter to subscribe to our newsletter called the PBC Edge. And next to that, if you want to really, really, really take your skills to the next level and become the best Google Ads specialist you can possibly be, then consider joining the PPC Hub, which is our coaching and community platform for experienced Google Ads specialists. You can find everything about it on pbcmastery.com/hub.

33:26And with that said, I'll catch you in next week's episode. Peace.