How to Become the Most Sought-After Digital Marketer

Episode Description

In this episode of PPC Town Hall, three expert digital marketers share tips and advice to always be in-demand in a competitive industry.

You will learn:

• How to build a personal brand in digital marketing
• How to get buy-in from a broader team
• How to overcome imposter syndrome and more.

Episode Takeaways

Building a Personal Brand:

• Establishing a personal brand is crucial for career development in digital marketing. Engaging in communities like PPC chat and actively participating on platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn can help showcase expertise and build credibility.
• Sharing both successes and struggles transparently can resonate with others and enhance your personal brand’s authenticity.

Securing Buy-in:

• Confidence and preparedness are key when presenting to or negotiating with potential clients or stakeholders. Practice articulating your value proposition confidently.
• Setting clear boundaries and expectations upfront can help manage client relationships effectively. Be clear about what you can deliver without over-promising.

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome:

• Recognize that feeling like an imposter is common, especially when facing new challenges or speaking publicly. Acknowledge your expertise and remind yourself of your achievements and capabilities.
• Leverage your community and network for support. Engaging in industry discussions and sharing experiences can provide reassurance and diminish feelings of inadequacy.

Practical Advice for Younger Professionals:

• Speak up and share your ideas. Early career hesitation can hinder opportunities to influence and lead.
• Continuously seek feedback and learning opportunities. Being open to growth and admitting when you don’t know something can lead to more authentic interactions and learning.
• Trust your instincts and experiences, especially in negotiations or client interactions, and use your personal brand as a leverage point in career advancement.

Episode Transcript

Frederick Vallaeys: Hello and welcome to another episode of PPC Town Hall. My name is Fred Vallaeys. I’m co founder and co founder and CEO at Optmyzr. I’m also going to be your host for today’s episode. So this episode is airing or premiering during Women’s Week. So we decided we wanted to bring together some of the most influential women in PPC and digital marketing.

So Some of the folks you’re going to see here today are usually on the top 25 list of PPCers. One of them is not on that list because they don’t just do PPC. They do a whole lot more than that. So they have broader skills. But but we thought it’d be interesting to have a conversation and see how these women have built their own brains and built their careers in PPC.

Now, I’m going to be honest. I’m a white, privileged male, so leading this conversation can be a little bit awkward for me. You know, what do I know about the issues we’re going to discuss today? So my job, my role here today is really to facilitate the discussion, but let it flow where it needs to. And all three of our panelists are just as much the host of today’s episode as I am.

So but I can’t wait to hear how they did it, how they got to where they are today, and some of the hurdles and challenges that they may have faced along the way. Now that said, I hope that this episode is also broadly interesting to everyone just from a PPC career perspective, right? There are differences.

Whether you’re a man, a woman, a person of color all of these things change it, but there are also many things we have in common as humans, right? So let’s not forget about that element as well. So with that, welcome to this episode of PPC Town Hall.

All right. So here are my guests for today. Welcome everyone. All right, we’ll go around the screen and get everyone to introduce themselves a little bit, but Akvile DeFazio. Let’s start with you.

Akvile DeFazio: Thank you for having me. My name is Akvile DeFazio. I’m the president of Akvile and we are a social media advertising agency.

Frederick Vallaeys: And hence you don’t make it on the top 25 PPC list because you do social, but it’s still digital marketing. And all of these things are very interconnected. So I’m very happy to have an excuse to actually bring you onto the show for the first time. Thanks for being so much. All right. Next on the screen.

We have a Navah Hopkins.

Navah Hopkins: Thank you very much for having me. Hi, I’m not the Hopkins president of Navah Hopkins LLC. We help brands unlock the profit and solve business problems, whether it’s SaaS, whether it’s managing ad accounts. I am, I am very grateful to be on the top 25 lists with Fred. But more importantly, I’m very excited to have those conversations about how.

People can take meaningful steps in their career, whether it’s PPC or otherwise regardless of gender. So thank you very much for having me.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, and you’ve certainly made many steps over your illustrious career, so can’t wait to hear a little bit about how you made those decisions. All right, and then we have Anu Adegbola.

Welcome to the show. You’re coming back for the second time, I believe. It’s great to see you again. You have made some career changes since we last spoke, so tell us what you’re up to these days.

Anu Adegbola: Of course, I’m very, very happy to be here and, you know, sharing the stage with like two ladies. And I absolutely very much respect over the years.

And I, I my, yeah, I’m working recently, very much recently, like this year, I joined Marin software as an account director to really be the, like the paid search expert, the paid search lead to help our clients doing. Do page search very well. And I remember speaking about that to like one of the clients I was talking to recently when they were like, Oh, he’s Marine.

Good for us. And I was like, look, I will tell you that it is. I am, I’m someone who’s very much part of the PPC chat, Twitter community, especially, and even on LinkedIn, trying to really talk about all the changes that’s always going on, that’s coming up from Google Microsoft, Facebook and, and, and the likes, and My key thing is just to make sure that they’re doing paid search really well.

And that’s really a passion of mine. And I love, love talking about it and discussing all the different updates and you know, how to use it and test it. Well,

Frederick Vallaeys: yeah. And you know, we somehow seem to keep bringing on competitors Marin this week others last week. They give you permission to be on the show.

Anu Adegbola: Yes, I did. I got the permission just today. It came in like half an hour before they started through. So I was like, yep, we’re good to go. And they’re like, as long as you mention Marin and how Marin is amazing and he’s a great third party tool, you’re good to go. And they are. I obviously

Frederick Vallaeys: have no qualms about bringing on competitors because at the end of the day, this is such a big space.

And. It’s about education. So that’s why we’re here today. Hey, but you know, let’s just kind of go around the table again and talk a little bit more about The the careers that you’ve had the many places you’ve been at. Avila, let’s go back to you tell us a little bit about how you came to be where you are today

Akvile DeFazio: Sure, so I have a an unconventional path, I guess you could say But I feel like most of us come from many different backgrounds in our industry but I went to school for physical therapy and I realized after graduating that it’s not what I wanted to be doing and anytime there are marketing tasks at the clinics I worked at I jumped all over them and I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was very interested to learn more so I took the leap and got an internship that I fought for way back when, when I lived in Seattle at this place called Evo and they’re an outdoor snow ski apparel company.

And I, out of all 30 some applicants, I think I was the only one they said that didn’t have a communications marketing or business degree. And they went with me as a wildcard and I’m so grateful to them because that’s where my career really started. And I was there for several years and then unfortunately the recession hit in 2008.

So my school loans had kicked in at that point and we had to scale back on hours. So I needed to find something else. And some really good friends of people that work there to this day, but I went and moved to a pet insurance company. And helped them from the ground up, and I was their first PPC person, so I did come from a paid search background way back when, but I’ve migrated over to paid social.

So after that I went to a, to Third Door Media, which was a online publication.

Frederick Vallaeys: The people of search engine land. Exactly. And the conference land.

Akvile DeFazio: Yes. Search engine, land marketing, land search marketing expo, MarTech, a lot of different events and publications under their umbrella. So I was there doing organic social paid, social paid search.

That’s learned a lot in that being sort of at the the powerhouse that tells everyone doing SEO and PTC and now having to do it for them.

It was so great. I’ve met so many wonderful people, all of you and many more. And I made lifelong friends and. I just, I loved working. There was such a fun time, but also marketing to marketers was quite the challenge.

So I took it on as a welcome challenge and a lot of fruitful things have come from it.

Frederick Vallaeys: Quick question. Who of us here actually clicks on ads on Google or are we all like,

You click on ads? I do like 50 50.

Navah Hopkins: Sometimes. So if it, there’s two reasons why I’ll click on an ad. One, it, I genuinely just need it and it’s, it’s actually better than what, where the organic listing would be. But the other, and then I, I make a prayer to the marketing gods to, to apologize for clicking on an ad that I have no intention of, of actually engaging with, but to actually see what is the ad creative to the landing page so I can build content of what is good and what is bad.

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s the two reasons to do it. I suppose you put it in a presentation, so now a lot of people see this brand and they still get the exposure for the 5 click that you just cost them. So it’s all good.

Akvile DeFazio: Evens out.

Frederick Vallaeys: Let’s jump into the gender thing here, right? But, I mean, you feel bad about having clicked on that ad? Do you think That’s like, women feel more bad about doing these things than men? I

Navah Hopkins: don’t, I don’t know. So, I’m a fairly apologetic person. It was a real shift to stop saying I’m sorry for everything and shifting to thank you for X, Y, Z.

I I forget who said it to me first. I’ve heard it, several people put this shift out there where, rather than you saying I am sorry, they’re saying, For this. I’m sorry for that. You say thank you for XYZ thing. So I guess what I should be saying is thank you brand for providing the opportunity for us to have an even greater education so that even more people can benefit rather than I’m sorry for costing you money.

But I will say I don’t think it’s a women versus men thing, I think it’s a empathy thing. And how many people are in touch with the empathy of, of what their actions are. But just the confidence that comes from saying thank you instead of I’m sorry, I think is more of the, the growth opportunity there.

Yeah,

Frederick Vallaeys: I really liked that. I’ll try starting. I’ve also been shying away from saying I’m sorry. Because if you believe what you do, you should never have to apologize for it, but just how you position it then. As being thankful. I really like that. Yeah. Anyway, I interrupted you at villa, which

Akvile DeFazio: no, no worries That was a good sidebar question I I do the same thing.

I’m like, I don’t want to click this ad or don’t want to look for the organic results but the last part of it is, about eight or sorry seven and a half years ago I i’ve always kind of had an inkling of I want to work for myself but some things have transpired at that point to where You I just really needed to take that leap.

So I finally had the courage and I asked another industry friend of ours, her name is Pamela Lund, if I could just shadow her for a day because I knew nothing about running my own agency. I had never worked for an agency before, which I kind of wish I did in the past since I was always in house. But she’s like, I’ll do you one better and I’ll teach you everything I know.

And I’ll give you half my clients because I’ve taken on too much. Work myself and I want to start a completely different business. So she’s like, you give me half my time back and I’ll teach you everything and let you run from there. So I’m still thankful to this day for her because I took that leap and here we are seven and a half years later and working with some really cool brands.

And I’ve been working for myself.

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s so generous of Pamela. Question on that. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, right. But. Did she literally just give you half the business or did she kind of

Akvile DeFazio: she still has her You know agency consultancy. But she did give me half of her clients and then you know She did a lot of paid search back then but then I realized that I wanted to do paid social So we’re both separate entities.

We’re doing our own things. But I I helped her out and then she kind of just We split it up to where she would do paid search. I would do paid social. So to this day, we still have like a couple of clients that we team up on for who wants to

Frederick Vallaeys: do And if you get a PPC client, a search client, you’d kind of pass it on to her.

Yes. Got it. Interesting. All right. So Anu, why don’t we go to you next? Tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today at Marine.

Anu Adegbola: Of course. It’s been a, it’s been a long winding road of a journey, to be honest, if, if anyone told me like, yeah, 10 years ago, I’d be working. I’d be like, Oh, I don’t know.

That’s it’s really weird. I thought I’d be the person always in the, in the weeds of, you know, paid tech reports. I love Excel. That’s really what really got me into it. Seriously. Like my first interview with like the likes of Vizium, they like the interview was, I, you know, do you like data analysis? Do you like being Excel?

I was like, Oh my God, do I I I was that geeky kid. So weird when I used to play with my dad’s laptop and putting up, pulling up v lookups and doing tables. You’re so strange. Nu I know. At me. And thank you. No. Yeah, she’s a bit of a nerd, but I

Frederick Vallaeys: so I I can, I can call you on that .

Anu Adegbola: It’s fine. So yeah, that’s, that’s, I started off with like, you know, working in digital agencies, which was really great for, you know, looking at seeing the breadth of the different kind of brands you could work on, the different kind of you know, account types and, you know, B2B, B2C, small, large, all that kind of stuff.

But one thing I really didn’t like, and unfortunately I hear still going on today is like just all the silos, you know, there’s only like, there’s a paid search team that never talked to SEO or never talked to like email marketing or never talked to CRO and never talked to anybody else. And it was always just paid search targets and Roe and all that kind of stuff.

And I was always interested in like business school. How does paid search actually work within the whole ecosystem of the digital marketing? efforts that are being made for a brand. So I moved to in house side and worked with these guys called Premier Farnell, which is how I actually came first in contact with Marin because their third party tool was Marin.

So that’s, that’s when it’s really started. I started really liking the idea of automation and even Also, I went to, I started talking at conferences and came in touch with the, the, the lads from brain labs. So the, the Dan Gilbert and Dan Bottiglieri as well. And you know, they were really into the scripts.

They were giving loads of scripts out for free. Unfortunately, Fred, you, me and you, we didn’t come in contact till quite a bit later because I know. You’re very much into the script world as well and with Optmyzr, but you know, it’s, I really got, really got into automate automation way back then. So we’re talking like in about like, like eight, nine years ago.

And because I’ve, I’ve always also seen myself as a bit of a efficiently lazy person. I like if something can take you an hour to do in sort of the three, four hours that some long reports could do. That’s. Get it done in an hour and get onto the next thing. So I was huge to be a fan of automation straight away.

And I’d always like push all different kinds of automations you know, on my client. And I love the fact that what paid search also allowed me to do is come across a loads of third party tools. You know, the likes of Ken Shu ignition one DC storm way back when SA 360, of course and the like, so it’s, it really gave me the breath and the, the.

amazing journey to then become going in house on with a tech tool. And and I’m really seeing not just the experience of my agency side and in house, but also the experience of being part of the community. I feel being part of the PPC chat communities is my secondary job. It’s like literally just being there, showing up, giving my advice, hearing what’s going on.

And Great to be able to bring that back into the community to help us do things better for paid search advertisers.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, and for the people who don’t know PPC chat, so that happens I believe Wednesdays on Twitter at nine o’clock

Anu Adegbola: Tuesdays Well, my piece is on Wednesday. I’m sure that’s what you were thinking of

Frederick Vallaeys: And then you also recently became the president of the PSA so like you’re not very busy are you

Anu Adegbola: No, not busy at all. Yes. I, it’s, you know, from the beginning of my career, I, I have been one of those people where I, I come from an amazing family of philanthropists, doctors and, and, you know, PhD holders who do amazing things for people.

I’d always been trying to find that. That is, that is in my DNA. I find what do I do? What, what has been part of my job is helping people. And I think the truth is a lot of advertising is really about making my money for somebody else. And so for me, for many years, I used to think I was not really comfortable with that.

And every once in a while, I think, Oh, maybe I’ll leave. Marketing at some point, because I don’t see, really see how I’m helping people. So when I started really doing the podcast and when, you know, started being part of the community and being a mentor for more juniors and seeing, you know, other, especially women, other black females, other people who are like me, who thought the, the, the, the entry to in this industry was so hard.

A light bulb moment went in my head. I was like, okay, maybe I should stick around for this I should definitely stick around for this because this is where my my desire my love to actually Help people and get people doing paycheck better being able to get into the industry a lot getting into interest industry easier and making them not You know, have, how to deal with imposter syndrome.

Everyone has it, you know, that whole, I’m not doing things right. I should be learning this a lot quicker. Oh my God, how come that that other person knows how to do this? And I don’t, these questions that I have, should I be asking them? It might make me look stupid, you know, to be able to debunk all those, like, you know, yeah, it’s not, it’s not okay to ask those questions.

Like, no, it’s really okay. How to be just help people get along in that way. So that’s become a really good. A big passion of mine

Frederick Vallaeys: when google changes things basically every week like we’re all imposters. We’ve never done this before

Julie bikini was on the show not that long ago And she’s been doing ppc for over 20 years and she basically said listen This is like the fourth time that i’m relearning how google ads works because every couple of years. It’s just different and then I looked this up for a speech that I gave but The human body replaces itself every seven years.

After seven years, every cell in your body has basically been replaced by a new one. That’s Google ads, right? Except Google ads replaces itself faster than every seven years. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola: Every few months

Frederick Vallaeys: Google

Anu Adegbola: has replaced itself.

Frederick Vallaeys: Exactly. Navah, do you ever feel like an imposter? And tell us how you got to where you are.

All

Navah Hopkins: the time. All the time I feel like an imposter. I think, I don’t think I’ve ever had a colleague that has ever or a close colleague that has ever not had to walk me off the ledge and remind me that I’m actually competent. And I think it’s because when one is clever, one is able to know what one doesn’t know.

So an abridged history of me, I actually wanted to be a high school English teacher but I pivoted from that because I saw that I would be both poor and ineffective in the current education system. And that just. I, I couldn’t do it. And I had this really impactful conversation with a relative who, who basically said, what are you doing?

You are denying your nature. You’re denying what you are good at. Go into marketing. Like you are, you are good at this. Go, go do it. So I, I ended up. transferring and while I was in college, I got my certification and I started doing some kind of like freelance side work. Got my first gig actually in SEO.

That was probably both the best and worst experience because it taught me that in order to really convey and to, and to, it. be heard, you have to have an authority voice and a professional voice and your friend voice. And if you allow too many to see only the friend voice you, you, you can sometimes not be taken as seriously, but if you own your authority voice that’s, that’s when you can really enact change and you can empower people to, to do well.

So after some time spent in the SEO space, I actually took the money I earned, started a startup trying to go back to education called AngelEd which was meant to help education be as debt free and employable as possible, connecting students to scholar Scholarships and mentors. It ended up failing, but it was a great educational experience and it built a lot of really good connections for me actually now in the university space to help disseminate digital marketing knowledge to help the next generation of, of digital marketers, analysts, so on and so forth.

All the while while I was working on that startup, I was doing freelance work on the PPC side ended up at. In Fred’s tradition of inviting competitors on at WordStream, I spent five years at WordStream. And I fell in love with the idea of SaaS our software as a service. And the reason why I fell in love with it is much like has been discussed there’s a genuine love of helping people.

I, I, I truly, truly love seeing the benefit that a brand can get. But unfortunately it’s not scalable. To have one to one assistance, you’re not going to be able to enact as much good one to one as you could through software. And so what was nice about WordStream is not only was I able to help people and work on individual accounts, spread interesting knowledge but also work on software that could scale really clever strategies.

And so that, that piece of product really stuck with me. I ended up after WordStream going to build the paid arm for Hennessy Digital. We, we ended up managing a book of business of about 1. 5 million ad spend per month. So, I built a kind of entity there. It’s an agency, went, ended up then at Justuno, which is a CRO software, then went to Adzuma, which was the PPC management software.

And I realized after those two software jumps that, you know what? I need to take a break belonging to a brand. And what was actually very fortuitous is that because Adzuma was based in the UK, I had to set up a corporation for myself to be paid cause they, they were not, they were going to have to pay me to 10 and nine contractor.

So. That the decision that I had been weighing and I, Akvila, I like, wish I could give you a hug through this call Akvila gave me a lot of really good advice and a lot of really good encouragement, like, you know what, just, just make that leap like you’re, like, you were meant to do this, like the, you have the brain and the, the, the workflow to do it this way and so after I realized, you know what, I need to take a break. I, I, I’ve made the, the, the call, you know, what we’re going to, we’re going to just focus on my consulting business. And, and what’s nice is that because of the width and breadth of my experience working with the thousands of brands from the word stream side the thought leadership piece speaking, writing, being the ask for the PPC for search engine journal.

I’m about to also write for search engine land Public speaking circuit. I had enough inbound interest that I could just say, I’m going to go off on my own and, and it, it was a fairly easy decision. I could not have done that at the beginning of my career, even though I tried. So it’s, it’s really nice kind of coming full circle and being in a place where I can help the people I really want to help.

I can solve the problems I really want to solve. Taking, again, every moment of sadness pays for a moment of happiness, and I firmly, firmly believe that all the things I get to work on are a direct result of that.

Frederick Vallaeys: Nice. And so I love the whole personal branding thing and how that’s enabled you to get to where you are today, have more control over the decisions that you make.

So let’s jump into that a little bit. So all three of you have amazing personal brains in the industry. Was that a conscious decision to start building that? Absolutely. Yes. Oh, 100%. And I’m sorry, I’m jumping right back in. Oh, no, thank you for letting me jump back in. I got to catch myself. I’m just trying to say I’m sorry. So this is actually really important. And this is something that everyone should have a brand outside of the brand that they work for. Because no matter how good you are, you are replaceable. There is no Nothing outside of you that, that will, that will retain, like you could always be, be pushed aside.

Navah Hopkins: So after a series of interesting working experiences where I would work really, really, really, really bloody hard. And maybe things would work out. Maybe things wouldn’t. From a prag, a pragmatist standpoint, I knew I had to start to come up with my own brand so that I could have leverage to, to push forward things I knew had to happen.

Because it wasn’t just some quiet little kid banging on the door with, with an opinion. This was Navah Hopkins, or before I got married, Navah Fuchs, saying this, this, it needs to happen. There’s outside clout there that, that is, that That if we don’t listen, what are the repercussions of that? And, and I was very aware that as I started to build my own external clout, I not only was able to enact those things, I was able to add more value to the company.

So I was able to command a greater salary. Of course the main motivation was helping people and, and spreading useful information. But there is a certain degree of selfishness. that I think is important that everyone owns and pragmatism that everyone owns when, when thinking about your brand and how you leverage your brand in internal discussions.

Frederick Vallaeys: Exactly. I think having a personal brand has huge benefits, but it’s also a fair amount of additional work and it takes, it’s not easy to get that right. So it is a trade off and I guess that’s why that selfish component is necessary. Otherwise I think people just wouldn’t want to put in the extra work for it. I, I realized. Talk about your personal branding and how. You use it to get new clients

Akvile DeFazio: Similarly to what Navah said my mom said this to me when I was younger She’s like no one’s going to come knocking on your door unless you you know, put yourself out there So I try to take that in many different aspects of my life, especially professionally But when twitter came out I just, I loved it.

Like it took me a little while to figure it out, but once we connected with marketers, it was just like, I was genuinely excited to just share things, but the helpfulness aspect of it is what really does I thrive on sharing, helping that generally makes me happy. Like that’s the, the trade off for me. Like I share something and I get personal fulfillment from it because people have shared with me, my career wouldn’t be where it is if there weren’t other people in our industry that were so helpful.

You know, selfless and sharing different information. There’s plenty of work to go out there. So I love that we’re competitive, but we’re still all very intertwined and very willing to help people reaching out just without anything, you know, don’t expect anything in return necessarily. But for me, I just think Twitter really.

Help things take off. And you do have to be a little bit kind of healthy, selfish as novice put it you know, you do have to say, I’m good at this. I can do this. If I’m accepting clients put it out there. I was so hesitant the first time. It was year two of my business. I lost two of our biggest clients in one week.

One got acquired by a larger company that came back to us six months later. Another one, their CEO resigned and I was not prepared for something like that. And I was trying to learn how to do business development. And that’s where I really decided to lean further into my social network and offline online.

And I very reluctantly just tweeted, Hey, we’re accepting clients. And I felt like a, such a failure at that moment. And everyone’s like, Oh, you just incorporated, like you look, you’re, you’re growing. Congratulations. And I was like, Oh, that is not how I felt, but now I’m not afraid to put that out there anymore, because, you know, Perspectives and your closest group of confidants will know what’s really going on behind the scenes But there’s no shame in telling people what you’re good at what you can do to help others And I think just being a helpful person that’s excited about the industry that we’re in maybe updates No, I work more on the paid social side of things and Facebook has a lot of challenges that come along with it.

And there’s a lot of people complaining about it. So I I’m guilty. I’ve done it once in a while, but I think as long as you’re genuine, you’re helpful and you’re focused on, you know, not just putting out content, that’s going to be interesting and helpful to someone else, but also getting things back from the community.

So I think there’s a really good kind of equal trade going on and using your personal brand. So people know who you are and what you do and how you can help them is very important for the success of you whether you’re working in house at a brand, an agency, or for yourself.

Frederick Vallaeys: And thank you for sharing because that’s very actionable.

I think like, how do you start building this personal brand? Well, it can be as easy as going on Twitter and engaging in PPC chat. I’m chiming in. So PPC chat, the format is basically there’s five to six questions that get asked and everyone gets to weigh in and you can weigh in with, Hey, here’s what I think about performance max campaigns.

And so you start building up that reputation, that credibility, and then that can lead into, like you were saying, a chance to tell people, Hey, I’m taking new clients, please reach out to me. Obviously you’re very engaged with PPC chat. You is that a channel that you use to build your personal brain or how did you go about it?

Anu Adegbola: Absolutely. I mean, yeah, PPC chat definitely really helped to make it almost like an easy Tuesday, Wednesday strategy of like, this is how I’ll, I’ll interact. This is how I’ll show what I know about our industry. I think it is one of the, you know, little positives that came out of the pandemic years.

Like, you know, we were, I was in my house and I I was in front of a screen more times than, than ever now. And so honestly, the PPC chat community dug me out of some of my, yeah, lowest moments of just, yeah, just go on there, you know, and it, it wouldn’t necessarily always be a tweet about. paid search. It was about something that makes people laugh, you know, the way just talking about all the frustration, all the frustrations everybody’s going through.

It’s just, there was a definitely amazing feeling of you are not alone in, in the feelings you’re having about You know, your frustrations about the situation, industry, the clients you could be working on, frustrating clients, you know, wanted to move on, you know, things that you have to do because you need to keep a client.

And there was just so much joy to just get involved with that. And yeah, especially during the pandemic, I also picked up on trying to be more regular, even on LinkedIn. And for me, that was just an opportunity to, to, you know, Not need to job hunt anymore. Not need to be the one searching for what the next great opportunity needs to be.

I saw a direct correlation with more people headhunting me, more people looking out for me, love for to, to participate, to, to partner in something. Once I started leaning into you know, posting more, you know, on LinkedIn, even it was just about sharing some of my difficult moments, you know, and the winds and, you know, the tough times and moving around and you’d always find that, you know, there’ll, there’ll be some things that you think to yourself, Oh, I don’t want to share.

This would be annoying or nobody wants to hear about this. And it will be those posts that get the most interaction, the most engagement, the most. Oh my God, we don’t, can’t believe that you’re doing this, you know, cause sometimes I, and I have moved around a lot because I’ve always had a strong sense of, I’m not going to stay where somewhere I’m not happy, even if it’s only been there for three, I’ve only been there for three months.

And then you have this weird feeling of like, Oh God, I’m not going to post them in a new job. I just have to three months. What would people say? What will people think? And you get so much amazing support from the, get so much amazing support from the community. And I’m like, Oh Jesus, all of these things, it’s just in my head.

Oh, this is weird. It’s

Frederick Vallaeys: weird. It’s weird. In

Anu Adegbola: my head and so I’ve actually now that’s almost even motivated me to even do more of it and to Encourage other people as well who are also having that whole. Oh lord. I want to leave but I don’t know whether I should and You know, it just it just it’s there just some things that it’s a lot of it It’s just in your head and you just need to push it out to realize that so

Frederick Vallaeys: Interject here I said, sorry, let me take the opportunity.

Thank you for letting me interject but I find this really interesting because I think you’re going into the personal voice and the professional voice that Navah brought up earlier in the show And that’s actually something that I personally struggle with. I think I have way more of a professional voice and And so then like for some reason i’ll Digital marketers are on, on Twitter, like that’s the place like nobody else in the world seems to enjoy Twitter anymore.

And then, you know, people come up and are like, well, why aren’t you doing more Instagram? Why aren’t you like making TikTok videos about PPC? Is that something that you have all looked at and talk more about that? How you draw the line? Between that personal and the brand voice because it sounds like you kind of mix both together You do that across platforms as well.

Anu Adegbola: Yeah, I do that together, I mean it’s It’s as an and and you know, akvilla will probably like side with me on this one All the different paid social channels have different ways of working Instagram is not going to work the same way facebook will work. It’s not the same with twitter So you cannot just say oh paid social voice, and I’ll do the same thing across all the different channels that will fail.

So I think it’s definitely very important to realize what works for you. What, you know, how many voices can you materialize? And that, that might sound a bit like personality disorder, but no, I think, you know, I just I, with, with LinkedIn, I know that I can handle just posting, like, let’s say once a day, Monday to Friday because my brain is that it’s a professional network.

That’s how I see it. I, I see some people doing it in different ways and it working very well for them and for me, I look at, I, I, I, I see it in a way that they, they, they probably put in a lot more work, a lot more time into it than I have, and I don’t, and the, the pace at which I’m going, the growth that I’m seeing.

works for me. I’m happy with it. With Twitter, it’s a lot more conversational. It’s a, it’s a lot more like, you know, nuance. You can, you know, have a little bit of fun and play with it. So I’ll do more long posts on LinkedIn, but I can throw in like a random thought. That’s just has just come in my head at 1.

00 PM. My might be about coffee might be about Google, either one. I might post it. It might work. It might not work. And I think what one thing also has to remember people that has to remember is that because one. Post doesn’t work doesn’t mean the next won’t so because you failed one or two posts or it didn’t get really the engagement You get back

Frederick Vallaeys: in your head and you’re like, oh my god, people don’t like what I’m talking.

Anu Adegbola: I don’t my Today you’re like, no, no, no Just just keep going stay with some of them channels. You just need to keep going with it

Frederick Vallaeys: I agree. I mean we should definitely bring this one back to you because You’re a social expert. So what do you think about this?

Akvile DeFazio: I feel like I’ve been struggling the last two years I have a toddler now.

So, you know juggling that with covid and a baby I haven’t done as much as I want to I yearn to but the creativity that tries to Resurface, is not something that’s been really great the last two years, but before that You know, I try to figure out Who the audience is, what I want to convey. So yeah, with Twitter, I use it mostly for marketing.

I’ll throw in a few things that are personally just to add that human component, because I also do want to share certain things with that community and other people that might be my followers. With LinkedIn, yeah, professional as well. But something like Instagram, I do enjoy sharing some work related things, but I know that it’s much more you know, a lot of marketing friends on there from the industry, but also just people that don’t work in the space.

So I try to be. A little respective of like, you know, what would they be interested in as well from my

Frederick Vallaeys: And so you use your profile and you use your personal profile, but you share marketing stuff through it.

Akvile DeFazio: Yes. Because there’s too much to handle too. I try to do just one for advertise, but I’m like, you know, I work remotely.

I’ve been working remotely for 10 years and there’s only so much you can do. And I know I can get creative there, but I’m just limited on bandwidth. So for instance, on Instagram, since it is my personal account and people know what I do, I will share things like, you know, when we used to go more to in person events, like, Hey, I’m here.

This is what we’re doing just to make it exciting for people that are also not in this space. So for instance you know, just moved last weekend. Finally set up my office again, little by little. So I shared the thing like, Oh, you know, you’re like, you know, my office is set up and about to do this really great conversation with some people I respect and learned a ton from.

So that type of stuff is still career related, but it kind of intertwines with personal. So I think it’s best to understand, you know, how do you want to be conveyed to the people that follow you, whether you’re public or private on different channels, or if you’re younger, maybe greener to the industry and What your goal is, what do you want to be known for?

How do you want to evolve your account, your persona per se? But just, you know, try to mix in a little bit of personal. So people know that there is a more human warmth component to you of, you know, if they can approach you about something else, because while we do work most of our week, most of our lives, I think it’s also important to show that.

You know, it’s life is not just work. We should work to live, live to work, whatever you want to do. But at some point it’s not a hundred percent, right? We’re multifaceted beings. So I think it’s okay to put out some personal stuff in between a career oriented posts as well.

Frederick Vallaeys: Thanks for sharing that. All right.

Let’s shift topics here a little bit. And now, but maybe we’ll go back to you, but okay. So now you run a consultancy, you’re having to go out there. I’m sure people are knocking down your door to work with you, but, but at the end, you still have to sell, right? So how do you get buy in in sales situations and throughout your career when you were perhaps presenting to a room full of men how do you get by and how do you get them to, to, to trust you?

And, and I know the personal brand that you built was something that helped you before those people listening today who haven’t quite gotten to that personal brand level. What advice would you give? To be like that trusted experts and getting buy in more easily.

Navah Hopkins: So I’m going to give advice of what.

You should do, and I give advice of what you shouldn’t do. We’re gonna start with what you should do. Be genuine and authentic in what, in what you can reasonably provide. Do not allow anyone to, to pressure you into hard metrics, hard goals that you, you will deliver on. Instead, lean into what you can specifically provide.

So for example one, one client I’ve, I’ve taken on we’re now going into a monthly retainer. They started off on just projects. They wanted hard metrics of what the fixes that we, I was proposing would be able to deliver them. And I flat out refused. I’m like, I, I, I will not promise you something that I cannot.

Guarantee will happen. These are the things I’m expecting to happen. This is why I’m expecting to happen and give data behind why and, and it all worked out. And now they kept asking me, Hey what do you think about this? What do you think about this? I’m like, you know what, if you would like to be on a monthly retainer.

let’s, let’s be on a monthly retainer. Otherwise we’re going to need to make these projects. And they found the advice, they found the value I was able to provide useful that, that they, they ended up going with that retainer. So the, in terms of

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, well, what I’m, what I’m hearing is you, you’re kind of doing the pushback earlier on rather than sort of like going with the flow.

Correct. Because,

Navah Hopkins: and this goes to what you shouldn’t do. Don’t devalue yourself by giving away. Your brilliant mind for free. A lot of times when I was younger I was so insecure in my, in my intelligence that I felt the need to prove it. And I, I would give away everything of value right up front.

And so by the time it came to actually selling and the time it came to actually securing the clients, they didn’t need me because I had already given them everything away for free and, and. I was

Frederick Vallaeys: left nicely. You built the software to make it easy to run it. Yeah,

Navah Hopkins: exactly. Yeah. So and I think that’s actually one of the reasons why I leaned, I leaned so heavily on software is because you’re, you’re able to, build out solutions and even if you solve one thing with a lot of wit for free at the beginning just to kind of whet the appetite, you still can then build those, those really interesting iterative solutions.

So I, I find it easiest to work in that space, but for those that are just getting started, it is okay to give. a tidbit of advice. You do not need to give everything away for free. The other thing that’s very important to own is what kind of tone do you need to bring to the conversation.

There are certain people when I’m speaking to them, I am a very clean cut I lean very much into the fact that I am a well educated college grad I’ve been in the industry 15 years. I will lean into every single award I’ve won. There are other people where I’m far more casual, far more accessible.

I have sold more high value deals on my Star Wars geekery than, than my actual PPC knowledge. Because when you like who you do business with. It’s so much easier to have that conversation, so much easier to grow that relationship. If everything feels like it’s nickel and diming or a fight that it’s, it’s not a healthy relationship and it doesn’t matter if you get one really big month of MRR or one really big month of, of spend, if, if the relationship will be poor, if there will be a lack of trust, if there will always be this question of value, you will hate, you will that work and you will ultimately do bad work and then that will feed your imposter syndrome and then it’ll just be bad.

So find, find folks that you enjoy working with, own your value, do not give everything away for free and, and test the limit of, of how much people are willing to charge. Like I started off when, when I was first doing my pricing at 100 an hour. I now get 250 an hour for just consultative work and people don’t bat an eye at it because they know that they are going to get much more value out of, out of that spend.

So it’s, don’t be afraid to, to test your, your prices and, and look for those friend relationships within your authority voice.

Frederick Vallaeys: I guess we all go about pricing a little bit the same way. Right. When I ran an agency, shortly, briefly in between doing Google and Optmyzr, but it was like, okay, let me charge this much.

Like that’s my comfort limit of what I can ask for. And then people would consistently say yes. And I was like, Oh, maybe I can increase it a little bit. So that’s how you get there. But also ask around in the industry, because if everyone’s saying yes, because you’re underpricing yourself by half, then that’s no good.

Right. Hey, Aguilera, let’s go to you. About getting buy in from clients existing clients, new clients. Like how do you, how have you handled it?

Akvile DeFazio: It’s easier now. I feel like since I have a lot of experience throughout the years, but when I was younger, it was certainly more challenging being green and I feel like I wasn’t very confident in my voice.

I was nervous about public speaking. So I feel like people can pick up the tone in your voice. And if you’re not sounding very confident, it’s much more difficult to get a buy in. So a few years back, I re like, I knew this was a, an issue for myself and I needed to overcome it, especially if I wanted to be successful in business and I wanted to start speaking at conferences.

So I went to Toastmasters and if, you know, if this is an issue for you, Wonderful, wonderful global organization. I didn’t miss a single weekly meeting for a year, and my first speaking engagement was a keynote at the Adobe campus in Salt Lake City, which I never thought I could get to that point, but going to Toastmasters helped me so much in being able to be present when I’m speaking, to use a more confident tone, even if I’m not feeling confident, if I’m having a bad day, and I have to do a presentation, or Do a sales call of a prospective client, but I’ve noticed that same thing, like I’ll test different prices.

And I was so worried about doing that. I’m like. Just say it with confidence, even if I’m not feeling confident, maybe practice before I hop on the call. And I have not had anybody push back. So I, that gave me more confidence for the next call and the next call. And I feel like even if you’re feeling like an imposter, you’re not feeling your best just.

Practicing it out loud and don’t hesitate to try not to stumble. Of course, we all stumble from time to time, but as long as you convey it that way, then that prospect of client will be confident in your skills and be like, okay, you know, she can say that voice or that price. Then she’s worth that most likely.

And as Navah pointed out definitely sense out how that relationship is going to be in set the boundaries, set the, you know, the expectations early on, because there are so many red flags that you can pick up over the years as you do this longer of what a good relationship is and You know sense it out trust your gut because when has anyone ever said oh, I shouldn’t have trusted my gut Right, especially if you’re, you know more intuitive and working with people but I feel like that’s very important to do especially if you are looking to be more forward facing, you know Work up at a company to a more executive position or a vp of some sort Or just working for yourself because that will help set the tone for your business and your success

Frederick Vallaeys: It’s amazing advice and I have to make light of this sadly, but I should have not trusted my gut when my good friend told me five, six years ago that I should have bought Bitcoin.

I was like, no way in the world that this can be right.

Akvile DeFazio: You’re not alone.

Frederick Vallaeys: So yeah, we all have regrets. But in the end, You’re right. I mean, trust your gut because I think there’s regrets of opportunity missed are very different from regrets of having taken on a bad client. Who’s made your life so stressful that you hate your job.

You don’t get time with your kids. I think those are two very different things. So that’s great advice. I don’t know. What about you?

Anu Adegbola: What about me? About

Frederick Vallaeys: pushing back. Right. So full of Man, you got to present to them first time. They don’t believe you maybe like how do you have before you had your personal brain before?

You were who you are today you’re younger you how would you have dealt with that room?

Anu Adegbola: I think I I I definitely have to give credit for that for me to again It’s something that i’ve mentioned like my family. I come from a very overachieving confident family and i’ve always been like, I, I have that running through my veins.

Like if I’m, if I, if I’m in a room, I deserve to be in a room. If, if I’m, if I’m on a stage, I deserve to be on that stage. So, and, and especially like, I mean my first like speaking gig, my first like, was, I was, I was a bit, I had a bit of like stage fright and I just mentioned it and I was like, oh, let’s, yeah, let’s just throw it out there.

Like, look, a bit nervous. My first one. And then I just got into my talk and it had such great feedback. And I was like, well, that’s, that’s not too hard. And even like, in fact, the way I started thinking about it is that if you’re the person brave enough to be the one standing up there and talking, you’ve got something of value to say, you’ve got, you’ve, you’ve done the brave thing.

You’ve done the. The good thing is you know, to start off with. So your audience have every right to listen to you. And so I’ve, I’ve always just made sure that I always come well prepared always come with my confidence and never feel bad about not being able to answer certain questions because you don’t necessarily need to have all the answers to all the questions on the spot.

It’s okay to say. Sorry, that bit that I, you know, you’ve just asked me, I don’t know but this is what I know. And that bit that, you know, that I don’t know, I’ll research it and come back to you. Because everyone’s learning, everyone’s growing, and you won’t always have the answers all the time. So, you know, at, at the end of the day, it’s just about, Making sure that, yeah, you do your preparation, but you don’t get flustered if there’s something that has been asked about that you do not know.

Yeah, and just keeping at it. It’s a very, it’s also very, very much a relentless game. I think how I’ve really stuck in is that even in the good days and bad days, just realizing I just need to get back in there. You know, people, things, things will fail, things will not always go right. But. You only there’s always there’s there’s a 50 50 chance that you could get something if you present yourself There’s a hundred percent chance.

You won’t get it if you don’t show up at all So the biggest thing is to just continue to showing up and try to be better than the last time Wayne gretzky said you miss 100 of the shots. You don’t take absolutely I love the whole preparation thing and being true to your voice, right? So When presentations go badly, whether that’s a presentation on stage or a presentation in front of a bunch of clients, it’s when you’re presenting somebody else’s work and you don’t know the detail, right?

Frederick Vallaeys: And it’s okay to not have all the answers like you said, but you should be the expert. You should really know what you’re talking about because people will call your The bullshit if

Anu Adegbola: absolutely

Frederick Vallaeys: all right. So this has been amazing. I want to have a lightning round here one piece of advice you would give your younger you all

Akvile DeFazio: right. I’ll go first kind of piggybacking off the last question. I wish I had a stronger voice when I was younger I I think a lot and I internalize a lot but it doesn’t and I feel like I just had this Wall up where I wouldn’t externalize it, which I didn’t learn until much later And I finally started speaking up and you know telling people my opinion I used to be afraid of not being liked and i’m getting to the point Like not everyone’s going to like you and that’s okay So I would just tell myself to not be afraid to speak up and to have gone to toastmasters when I was younger

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s great advice who wants to go next?

Navah Hopkins: Oh, you gotta go down now

Anu Adegbola: Yeah My advice like the first thing that came to my mind is Your imposter syndrome voice is wrong. You know, that’s, that’s really like the biggest advice, like, you know, there will be situations, especially there’ll be situations that you feel that, you know, maybe I shouldn’t have done that or that went wrong.

And, you know, and I’m not, I, I shouldn’t speak my mind up here. that voice is wrong. And it’s, oh yeah. And it almost like similar to Akvile speak up. It’s, it’s, it’s better to speak up and, you know, maybe to be corrected than to just not speak up at all. It’s, it’s better to still speak up. You know, cause yeah, your imposter syndrome voice is wrong.

Frederick Vallaeys: And about the imposter syndrome So there’s this whole notion that experts, it’s like this self fulfilling prophecy. Once you’re an expert, you can say almost anything you want and people will believe it because you are the expert. And so I think if you’re that younger person sitting in the room with someone with much more experience, I mean, do realize that often they may not be quite as hands on.

with these very rapidly shifting tool sets and systems. And so their perception on it may not be as accurate as yours. Right. And so there may be a disconnect between what you think and what you hear from the experts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the expert is, is right. And that’s where I think it’s really important.

What you’re saying is don’t necessarily challenge them because challenging someone doesn’t necessarily lead to productive outcome, but help them. Help them see the other side ask about the other side. Maybe they haven’t thought about it and start having that conversation because everybody gets smarter that way

Anu Adegbola: Absolutely.

It’s it’s important that we can discuss and that’s what’s so amazing about the pvc chat community. It’s important That we can discuss what’s working for one person and might not be working for another person and how You know because yeah google brings a lot of strife with all their updates and some people be like Oh, it’s working for me and other people like no, it’s not it’s the worst thing ever and It’s, it’s really great to be part of that, that community that lets you see that, well, it’s not about it’s good or it’s bad.

It’s all about test it to see if it works. And you know, you can test loads of different things and a test will work for one client. It will not work for another client and there’ll be different loads of different caveats you need to put into place to say things work. Cause yeah, we have all these thought leaders on, on, on Twitter who has like, bring this big sentence, bring this big statement.

And I think it’s important that they be like. The caveat though is that, that, that, that, that, and that’s always missed out. And I think, and that’s why sometimes I add to the conversation. Someone will put it’s big sentence. I was like, well, it depends on, it depends. One of our favorite phrases in this industry.

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s what makes Twitter so difficult for PPC because it’s like, well, here’s the answer, and then here’s the 10 caveats to that, but like, I’m right out of characters.

Anu Adegbola: Heartache. Yeah, right? Alright, sorry. Nadia, you give us your amazing tidbit.

Navah Hopkins: I back up all that that’s been said. I guess simply just own your power.

You have power in your questions. You have power in your wit. You have power in your work ethic. You have power in every single choice that you make. And even if something is not quite right and even if you get set back a little bit there is power in overcoming it and having that data point that you have overcome that adversity and you, you own your voice and your, and your power.

There have been several instances in my career where people have tried to shake that. And I think one of the reasons why I appreciate so much this industry is that there are so many opportunities for true teeth in, in technical expertise and then also wit and strategy to, to kind Protect those that are actually good and, and put to the side those that might try to shake confidence of, of the worthy.

So, own your power, own your worth do not allow anyone to make, to make you question that.

Frederick Vallaeys: Great advice from everyone. Well, thank you so much. Viewers, thanks for watching. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you want to get more of PPC Town Hall. I use the subscribe button. You can also subscribe to the email list on our website.

That way you’ll find out when we have new episodes. They roughly happen about twice a month. So thank you to our panelists. Like Vela, Navah. I know that you’ve been fantastic. Thank you for sharing all these wonderful insights and for remaining thought leaders, experts and educators, most of all.

Oh, and let’s get rid of that box. We’re covering on news space. Let’s let’s go to this. No, that doesn’t work. Okay. How about this view? No this is better. We can see everyone. So thanks for for joining us. That little thing that was up at the bottom of the screen, my producers are trying to tell you that I just wrote a book, Unlevel the Playing Field.

Go ahead and check that out on Amazon. But again, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for sharing. Hope to have you again on another episode and have a wonderful day, everyone. Thank

Anu Adegbola: you. Bye.