How to Avoid Ad Mistakes for Agencies and Businesses

Managing digital ad budgets can be a high-stakes game, and in this episode, we uncover the real challenges behind it. From unexpected invoices and ad spend mishaps to the critical role of transparency in agency-client relationships, we break down the risks businesses face when outsourcing marketing. We discuss how blind trust can lead to costly mistakes, the importance of monitoring campaigns closely, and key strategies to ensure your budget is spent wisely. 

Prefer to watch? You can find the video version of this episode here on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/GVOEi28XOVQ

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Transcript

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Alex downstairs at Luna She had someone saffron's manager. And she was supposed to be doing fringe could a month was around spend. they said of late today it was only because we had spotted it on that day. And she only started the day before. Yeah. Scary moment that. if you have no knowledge at all? how can you trust It means I haven't been checking the ads. if she hadn't looked at that. She's got an invoice for massive £700. my biggest nightmare of panic is suddenly thinking, did I put the right ad spend on they're putting a lot of trust into me just doing it. how does the agency not making that mistake. And then secondly, how does the business owner or the brand make sure that isn't happening? how does a client know the agency going to do the job properly. It's not the agency's money. it's the client's money. And it's amazing how many of these. small, brands. I just rely on people from day one, rather than just going out and learning themselves. I think it's the best thing I've ever done. Utter waste of time. And it's really annoying me, He. Welcome to the fight marks, everybody. Hello, James. We have the doctor's back. I'm back. It is progress. Yeah. Way back. Specifically. Specifically the suit and people. It's actually. It's actually spelt. Sue did the one p. V certificate. So you've been to time in South Africa? South Africa? Yes. Continent. The Garden Route, which is all the way along to Port Elizabeth. You can go further. Didn't have time. Big country. The thing that's mad is on the way back to Saint Michael, that plane took off at 10 p.m., had dinner, I fell asleep, looked at the clock, fell asleep at 12. After watching a movie. Woke up 6.5 hours later. Turned on the screen. Looked at the the map still over Africa is just mad, isn't it? Yeah, I think it is. The bit that we drove right at the bottom for Cape Town on the little corner, that right at the bottom and then go slightly north, which obviously we did in one go. But it took us about that was a two hour, then a four hour, whatever. But that stretch, which is my new route on the map, is the entire length of our country. It's not, it's not, it's just it's you just can't you just can't believe it. But. Yeah. Great trip, great country. Cape town's amazing. Really cheap. Really beautiful. Just see any, see the wildlife net? Yeah. You saw all the wildlife at the same time. Pretty much the same time as me. Because every time I go, videos like you got it. No. Attenborough. Spotting lions. Zebras, cheetahs. It's the coolest thing ever. Is that. I think it's the best thing I've ever done. Really? Yeah, I think so. Like, you know, you've been to some cool places. Life that just tops it all off. Not all of positions you've studied. Exactly. I know that. I mean, Michael, you get like, you get reward from that. But actually, like, on the day we saw the Lions on the second day, it starts raining as well. Get messier, your guides then getting annoyed, and it's like, I'm really sorry because I want you to see stuff, don't they? So it's like mission to find the lions and they're all radioing and speaking Afrikaans. You can't hear what they're saying, but basically they're just like, we think it's here. And then during the night they have, the anti poachers are all hanging around and stuff like that. So they, they're watching where all these people are. So they all communicate. So it's like they're I think they're think of that. So we all try can't drive there for sure going through all the the bushes and then suddenly like you just see the like the video, the lion and the lioness walking up. It's just unbelievable. It's so cool. Oh, I'm like, oh God, loads more. So the guy I was talking to in the office earlier, he overheard me talking about Cape Town's Wendy. He got back three weeks ago. Similar trip. He was just, like, amazing. But he was like, He's done five game reserves. Three in Sri Lanka. So he's one of our next rates. One of two Sri Lanka. This is an amazing one. In Sri Lanka. You see leopards and stuff. But he's just like they're just addictive because every day you don't know what you say. Day nine. It's really cool. And then like you know you've got your guides and they're getting out and they're looking at the footprint and the thing trying to see what direction the Cheetahs have gone. It's cool. It's really cool. He's really Afghani. So wild animals, loads of wine, really cheap food. Well, my Monzo came through. Any listeners who haven't been. South Africa is the cheapest place I've ever been to my life. I'm a monzo is just £9.£3, £6. We didn't pay any more than £3 for an Uber. So there's no point walking, just getting anywhere, everywhere. And they're there, you know, like here. Now you have to wait seconds. Like literally you don't. But we wouldn't book until we got outside because you're going to waste their time by walking downstairs. Matt, that's really cool. Appointment gifts for you guys. I got them. All right, so first of all, I've got to I'll go into like, so on. Yes, yes. Okay. Bag a biltong. Nice. Hopefully it's to arrive. Makes you sick when you open it. To start off, we'll know where we know. That's class. Thank you. So the biltong over there is not like the biltong, you know, in here. And it's like you take your teeth out by trying to eat it out of the packet. Yeah. So it's like that stuff is like some pieces you will find are actually still rare for me. Just like melts in your mouth. Nice. So hopefully is arriving as you go. Bagged up two weeks ago, so should be fine. Cheers. Thank you. The other one's not edible, but I thought it was quite cool. What is this, cap? I got me a cap. The feature is good. Yeah. So that's. That's the company that, worked where I was working from over there that looked at that and like. Yeah, and stuff. So it's quite cool. I'll go in and read notes. I can know you guys. You like, mean, get that through to you. Well, I forgot about the biltong, actually, to be fair. I said it's got a lot of nuts. Yeah, the last three weeks in the fridge, once you've opened up, you know, sticking a stick in a Tupperware, so then you can't go back on it. I had a few weeks off because I did a rice, moving away, obviously. You know, I smashed it. 24th. And, so I came off and applying a spacer of stuff to traipse up and back on it now. Yeah. For the next what I'm saying. So I'll be good. Yeah. I won't last three weeks, but. Probably. No, no, I have last two days. So. Yeah. So biltong factories are cool. Well, they call it a factory, but it's basically a shop. So that was like, in the middle of nowhere. How much was there? Psychosis. How much was that? 2 pounds. Nice. I don't know what the round like. 5 to 1. I was about four and a half. 5 to 1. We worked it out everyday. Yeah, 100 round is £4. Oh, not trying to offer. Kind of. Yeah. Nice anyway. Right. So today I, the reason. So I had a, you know, Alex. Why. You know, just slightly like up know. Right. Enough of this nonsense. Right. So Alex downstairs at Luna who was in they have a podcast. I looked around some shit about what you just say a company name. Shops, shops? She like she had. She had someone saffron's manager. And. That's right. And she was supposed to be doing fringe could a month was around spend. Is this the one you can see on the podcast? Correct? Yeah. And they said of late today and it was only because we had spotted it on that day. And she only started the day before. Yeah. So today. Scary moment that. Yeah. But really what how can you trust if you have no knowledge at all? Yeah. I should have been in the hole if she hadn't looked at that. She's got an invoice for massive £700. Yeah. Because they were using what, like a monthly budget for like a no good, no. Well so. Well I don't know. So you have to say you have a lifetime budget where it's more or you updated budget and you will try and spend and usually overspend that budget. So she was spending that like a month or a week or whatever. It must have been what you spend it. I would say out of all the ads that I've set up and all this is my biggest nightmare of panic is suddenly thinking in the night or on a journey or I've done it. This holiday is suddenly thinking, did I put the right ad spend on when? Not especially when you're going in really quickly and you're changing something from 20 to 50 or day on an ad and very, very often as you're doing it, you'll put 20 000 suddenly be 200 because you've what? And it usually comes out with an alarm. You say what alarm? It comes up saying, this doesn't look like your average daily spending. Yellow like a warning. And you go, oh yeah, I've done that. But I wake up so many times or when I log back into an ad account, it won't just be on yesterday, might do the month, but the account you've just been looking at was yesterday. And then you log into next one. Don't look at the day and it says like two grand. You're like, oh my God, it's been two grand in a day. It's yeah, it's pretty scary stuff. But I think it's easy for a, it just so easy for someone not to do it properly or they haven't listened, but how? But if you're, you know, if you take her as an example. And really the question is how do you get around it? How would you get around it? Oh, how do you get around. May not make well, I guess there's two ways to two aspects is how does the agency get around it by not making that mistake. And then secondly, how does the business owner or the brand smell the spots to make sure that isn't happening? I have a knowledge of ads manager. Not until he fires, you know, not a anyway close to yours. I spotted that, yeah, but I know that's. I know an odd account, but how would she spot if you've never seen ads manager? She would and most people don't. So in the ads they're putting a lot of trust into me just doing it. But they've got a doctor. But they have to be able to trust. One of the things is that is that building up the trust, isn't it, to do it? In the agency, it's about having multiple sign offs. So let's do it for an agency perspective then. So how would how would you limit. Yeah. How would you reduce. Sorry. How would you reduce the, the the likelihood of that happening from an age by having an internal sign off. So the client will sign off. The client would sign off that for the image a moderate amount a lot. And they get a preview of the ad. Yeah. But on that you wouldn't you wouldn't. They won't see in ads manager unless they look in to see what the budget is. So you probably finalize that with the emails. I'm, we're spending £20 a day on this ad. But if you put £200 in a day because you got it wrong by accident, you mistake, you put in two zeros, press go. Facebook doesn't show you, a warning sign, any, any ad that I set up for at least four days. I'll look at it every single day to see how it's performing and how it's own, whether it's optimizing, because within three days, you know, if it's optimizing or not. So if the agency set up an ad, puts it in wrung out money and hasn't gone in and seen that it spent £79 the day before, wow, we didn't have £79. It's only £20. It means I haven't been checking the ads. But your question is how does someone how does how does a client know the agency going to do the job properly. Yeah. And let's say, you know, let's say that you said to Michael, hey, Michael, set this up at £20 a day and he sets up a £200. Yeah, I would have, should have been signing off his work. He bit on that, Mr. Beast. Then you've got cheers. Mostly about signing off each other's work or someone in the team doing due diligence, looking on the certain accounts, making sure they're all doing the problem is what you've just said. The Michael is interesting because it's it's not. It's not the agency's money. No, it's the client's money. Yeah. And that's nobody can. Wow. Yeah. You've got to just that's the problem. It's the whole it's what it's the whole communication. The client is also checking your own work for the clients, like every single one of our clients, unless it's ones which are accounts which run smoothly. They've been there longer. There's less movement on that. Daily, every two days. It's all being looked at. Maybe that's. Maybe that's my addictiveness in wanting to make sure all those accounts are all running away. Because if they're all running, you're sitting in a much better place on you. If everything's running nicely, then having accounts with problems. So I want to know, but, there's, there's agencies that we've come across when speaking to new clients that they've used in the past where not just that, but other things, as is common, is not to say that every agency is bad because it's not good agencies, but how do you know you're going to have a good agency? Well, the part that you don't need, you know, we all talk the same talk. Yeah. It's just someone else being too early. You know, it's a good job we caught. And I was just sort of catching over to how she was getting on and achieve. She went back to the agency and said, basically, what on earth have you been doing? Because someone else, we we when we spoke about when we saw her were was around where she send in the traffic and I saw a line and I was going to this is pants like no one was sending it to a landing page. But it all wasn't. It was. So it was awful. Like the imagery was like it was just so bad. Yeah. Now she'd pay the agency a one off fee of how much, you know, I reckon, I reckon a few hundred quid. She didn't say she was. You name it. Tell me down. Says a few hundred quid. Yeah. So it wasn't a lot of money. No. And. Yeah. Which is, but that's as well as that absolute shit. Yeah. That's on top of the output. Yeah. But it's like well but they're also probably not doing a great deal of work or good work for that money. Are they. Is this what I get question with are with the pricing for the answer clinic. You know when you say how much it is, it's like but it's like you want good work done and it takes some time and it's like, well, how much would it be to do that? So, well, that's going to take three hours. So three hours work. But if someone's into charging I you do hear it quite a lot from people. I speak to her a lot. I used to I used to use this lad who did that, you know, all that sort of stuff and say. And it's just like you don't. They're just like them off. But it's just like, you just don't know. That's where, you know, the podcast and stuff. Like the lady I spoke to yesterday saying that we should be listen to the podcast six months, got to a stage now where she tried things on. She said the same thing. She said I wanted to understand how it worked enough to know that when I started speaking to people, I knew everything was right. All go in the right direction. Which has been. So she's been she spent two months listening to a podcast. She built her roots based on that podcast got. So she's actually doing 3.5 hours from from that, which is great. And then just like, like on my own, I've got to run the business on what do you now to take over, but if you don't know what you're doing comes down to what exactly what she said. Because that's what you said to us, what you said to Alex. She said, you said like, get some knowledge of Ruby and she yourself. So when you go to agencies, you usually have a bit. Yeah. I mean what that's because I'm a big believer that we did it with EMA marketing before we used Race and Bird. Yeah, ourself. We got our results. Then he did it. We never had the luxury of having the money to just, you know, apart from maybe using the SEO guys but up in Manchester. But apart from that we've never we've never had the luxury of that. And it's amazing how many of these. You know, these small, firms, brands. I just rely on people just from day one, rather than just going out and doing or learning themselves. Is it is it, you know, is it laziness? Like, Alex is really nice girl I would not a cluster is lazy. But if you've got no no any background at all in that it's take it's going to take some time to learn. Isn't that why we know you know matters like it's hard enough knowing it, let alone starting from up to scratch. Yeah. Which is why you've hired expert, you know, that's why you've got to make sure that that's an expert. No one. No. Just someone who who knows how to do so really hard. Like, I've had clients have an AI who they're small agencies, freelancers that I'm checking the ads that they're doing for a client. So they've sold themselves in on the business, and then I'm basically running the ads for them. You know, that's just weird, but that agency thinks that they're great. I was going to ask about the the thing that I just thought of was with people coming in a lot with the ads, and if you don't have any knowledge of ads and stuff, how much like do you sort of take what they say and also add like your own? It's because people are going to come and say, oh, I want to spend this budget, I want to do this. Does it ever get where you have to sort of like take over and kind of tell them what's the best because they don't know enough? If that makes sense? Yeah. I'm getting yeah. All the time. Well the main, quite the biggest question is how much budget could you should you, can you spend and you can, you can spend 10 to 20 pounds or dollars a day and still get results, but renewable, green renewable green wave renewables is an interesting one because I do source heat pumps. We're starting with 25 pounds a day. Want to test things out, getting a few leads coming in and the metrics are all there. So when you like, when you look at ads manager and you see all the metrics and it's like how that many people are going from the the ad to the landing page, that stacks about right from the landing page, they're doing this it oh, it also worked. But with his cost per leaving it like 30 pounds, spending 25 pounds a day just isn't enough to get to get your ad actually out there. So we just turned up to like 14. Just that little bit more £15 a day changed the game for him. And now, you know he's in the last couple of days. Are they Leeds. Three of them have turned into appointments you know for. For Nestle's heat pump. You know, there's actually, you know, as money in the margins in that. So today I literally said, hey, this has happened. How are they going? They said, great, three appointments can you turn up the Aspen more now. But it's having that. It's it's that hand-holding experience isn't it. Yeah. Because they don't know and it's understanding. So yeah. So your question is yeah. Because most people say that only the sort of the customers are always right, like the client. No, I tell them they're wrong. I do you know what. Very. Yeah. Very rarely do I get anyone who actually claims that they, they go against what you're saying. They kind of have a picture of. They've all done a bit of it in the past, by one guy, say, the other day he was like, he the one of them who never came to the calls. And then eventually he did come onto a call. But this was on the mobile. How can you get chemical? He was a painter and decorator and, you know, he said he said, I just can't get it. And I said, well, do you do this? And he's like, I don't know what you talking about. So I ended up that he was using the phone ads manager. Oh, okay. And I said, I said, I can't, I said, I can't help it. You know, that's why he said, what do you mean? I thought you're an expert. I said, I've never been on I've never even access sales manager on a phone. None. None of us do. We sit on a desktop in our working time and make your ads and look at the metrics and all this stuff. You can't do that on a phone is minimal. So he's spending all this time, effort, money, setting things. And I said, just use your laptop. And this was like me saying that was like the new thing. And we find it with every no way. It's like more and more people just sit on their phones and do things opposed to laptops. But he was like, after you come up top, how I've, I was just like, I can't help. I don't, I don't know how to tell you to run out. Did that go anywhere? No, no, I fought it with that. I had a sneaky, specially lined up. Well, some things you might talk yourself out of. but no. So you don't really get people. You do get the biggest. The biggest thing is. And I was having this actually while I was away is the all the instructions or notifications that matter send to someone who's advertising saying, you should do this. You should do that. You'll get 3% more left on here, 30% more left on that. I get that a lot. Emails or whatsapps going through saying messages sent me this. Should we change? No. Just mean it's either you've you know or said it. I think, oh, this must be wrong. Yeah. Matter are useless for the ones who you've been on a call with. Meta soon realize that the ads don't work or start with a traffic awareness. Then follow up with traffic and and do a conversion. You know, no match for the doctor. No no, no. Well, let's go on to some marketing we've seen this week. Yeah. So we'll start with you because you've been away. Yeah, but I haven't I was trying to catch up. Was an eye on things. I've seen things. Well the thing is I have a thing that annoys me, actually annoys me is I. I see something and I then take a photo or save it on TikTok or Instagram. And then when I come to finding, I don't know where I've, where I've put it, so I can be seeing that all the time. And then when it comes to podcasting, now try to find me out. But now it's no, it's me now. But can I just mention something? Not so much marketing, but the social media algorithm. What got algorithms which are really annoying me at the moment? What? So you are saying these, which I'm going to call them now and you're going to play this out? on social media, these with their drones, old saying different pay, different buildings and stuff. You seen them, have you not seen them? So they, they go to like have you see one. You've got annoyed, watched it and now you're seeing it all know it. They've been around for years but I is now just saying it's not. It's not wasting police time. So these these guys honestly Mark okay. See it's actually really bad. So you'll get these like guys who go to a big manor estate I got oh I just let you know I'm just about to jump from a drone over there. Oh yes. I have seen this. Yeah. There was a girl on a driveway. I didn't know she was famous. No, no. Louise. Assessment. Her name is. She was on The Apprentice. On it. That's it. And it should. I know you need to get off my land. Oh, I the police are involved. Yeah, they're mate. So what's at home? So what's what's the idea of it? So basically the league legally as long as the CIA, which is the Civil Aviation Authority or whatever is apart from being set in place, you can fly anywhere as long as the drone is under 250g. The thing is, you can actually fly drone anywhere you want. So you could you could say these rich people that are obviously annoying, they could literally, on a summer's day, be sitting around this rolling pole and a drone could be allowed to film them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the reality to it. Right. But they do it. They go to these houses or they go to these buildings. Yeah, they go to car dealerships. They do all this stuff. And it's just to antagonize people, to get content, to get content. And then the police are involved. But actually when you see how many people are doing it now, it's honestly, well, because they're getting paid on the views aren't they. Budget talk. Yeah. So as soon as I get the time because people are watching it, the final link is rage by rage by so, so clickbait where they're like, can you win without the rage? But it's just like, it's like basically what Twitter is now. I saw people just putting stuff that I know is going to antagonize people just to get these. So and I think personally that all the social media platforms should just not give these guys any views or any time of day because it's ridiculous, because it's an utter waste of time. Utter waste of time. Yeah. And it's really annoying me, you could say. And now you're in the algorithm. Yeah. Me because they do it knowing they're going to get confirmed that there's this there's a younger lad now, you said obviously seen a little gap in the market for just being like some of those not northern. And I think he's actually he sounds low caught the like war actually type his name's age or something. And he's obviously a young lad as well. So he's got into these like he's got into these estates and they've just got, you know, a load of God, this guy Nike, not me. And he's like, well, no, it's not that. I'm not going to, I'm telling you, I'm going to, but you can't come near me because I'm flying an aircraft and you'll be and all the you're just like, oh, mate, just off you. Yeah, but it's ridiculous. Michael. The social media platforms need to ban them. They need to just them off, not give them any viewer time, not pay them any money and just get rid of them. It's an absolute outrage. So from marketing perspective, they're doing really well for what they're doing to society. Yeah. Kill them. Yeah, I've been waiting to rant. Same videos I used to go, but, until you, until I looked it up, I was like, oh yeah. Like some someone got, like, pushed over or just made nonsense, reply it in like, slow motion and then like, she assaulted me. So honestly, this is on TikTok. So because you've seen that one minute it's on the YouTubes everywhere. Nick. It's honestly so bad they should have no airtime. So bad. Yeah. So bad. Unfortunately, we can't make them have no airtime, can we? Michael, have you seen any jobless behavior? had a couple I showed to John's, but I just thought it was quite good for Marco, who's a perspective. Not for it, but. But just like, because, could be used for it and it's, again, don't put it on the. This is another one where I ran across the writers room to the MacDonalds, one where I said the run across the road, and then you said, no. Do you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I was on the right side of the road this time. But again, this is human. I showed this to Jen's already but I can't. Yeah. This is when you start knitting in this. Like when you can't stop knitting both of these. So if you can do some sort of like when you stop receiving comments or something, it's like someone happily typing in. It's like when you then the comments might stop. Yeah, okay, this is quite novel. Now I have remembered mine. One is to do with my South Africa trip. So even some in South Africa, Heineken is good. Very big. Okay. When you come out at the airport straight away, one whole building and we're talking massive every all their advertising was just Heine. So talking about the branding and how good branding is, just HCN and the rest of it, it's cut off. And that was their branding everywhere, which I thought was quite cool. So, you know, I mean, you know, it's so well you like, you don't even have to put it all with so that was, that was all over the place lol. Brands. We didn't we discussed it and we British Airways are doing a few people have kind of turned out a few people are caught on to that obvious what lazy market analysis of live sort donor. What is isn't it. Yeah. So let's just copy each one briefly. You could put half a week a load of these. If I could only put half of Rupert logo on, I would add misery into schmucks, because normally I'd say just one more thing is just a rickety of building. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. You did? Yeah. I was impressed that they. But guys, it's not funny. I said Rupert Blue and then knowing James again, I know that's right. But yeah. And one more thing I have seen this week is Ryanair went back to that bald guy. Have you seen it. So right now usual guy. Why not? Hey, I ordered a window. See, there's no window there for a Ryanair replied Turkey fly question marks these balls. Hahaha I love it guys. I was like that's actually what they went about. Yeah, brilliant. That is a turkey fly lover. Okay, we're doing turkey day long neck while neck of Iran a few months. Oh go that one only take one. Oh Jesus. It's just unbelievable. One of the episodes. It was covered in a big T bigger. Hahaha. See you guys. They. I Anyway. Right. See you next week guys. Thanks for tuning in to the podcast. Make sure to drop a like and a comment to let us know your thoughts. Also, be sure to follow this page so you never miss a new episode.