Why "Best Practice" Cost My Client 40% of Their Revenue ft Ana Kostic

Anu Adegbola (00:01.176)
Hello and welcome to PPC Live the podcast. I'm your host, Anu, the founder of PPC Live. And if you're used to hearing advice from PPC experts,

Anu Adegbola (00:12.322)
Hello and welcome to PPC Live the podcast. I'm your host, Anu, the founder of PPC Live. And as usual, every week I go speak to a different PPC expert about their biggest f-up but also how they turned things around and made it a triumph. We never leave things on a defeated note. so yeah, this week I have the delight of speaking to Ana Kostic who is a lovely Spanish lady. and yeah, she even does her intro.

herself because the one her f I found online were all in Spanish and I was not going to start trying to butcher what she was saying or even try to get Google translate because you know how that can always be wrong. So yeah we have Ana who has got who has got loads of years of experience over 10 years experience has her own agency now talking about you know a huge issue in terms of like you know taking on a client and you know trying to implement best practices but how best practices is not always what you think best practices.

is or how all best practices will not doesn't really apply. and some some of them are even out of date. So yeah, she shares some really great, great story here, how the relationship with the client, the relationship with her manager and some big lessons as well about how we use the, you know, mistakes that we could you should really avoid in terms of like, you know, account management in 2026, as well as how we implement AI. So yeah, let's go speak to Ana

Anu Adegbola (00:06.508)
Hello Ana, welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Ana Kostic (00:09.57)
Hi. It's really exciting to be here. Very happy.

Anu Adegbola (00:12.876)
I'm so so glad about this. This is the again, and I know we've said this in the last episode: the power of community. But, you know, it was Jill Saskin Gales We we all know that name on this on this show now that was like, hey Anu, Ana, someone you should know. She could write for Searching Jin Land or do some stuff. And I was like, yeah, sure. And then it just so happened that like a few weeks later we met in person at SMX Advanced and met.

Ana Kostic (00:24.866)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (00:37.667)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (00:38.314)
At Performance, you know, MCR in Manchester. And we've had some very great conversations. And yeah, I'm so excited to yeah, show our industry what what Ana's got to offer. And yeah, because you know, full disclosure, I do the whole for my guests, try to get their bio off LinkedIn, and then all of a sudden I realized Ana's bio is in spit in Spanish, and I was like, I'm not gonna trust Google Translate with trying to translate what.

Ana Kostic (01:05.518)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (01:06.88)
Right here it is. So I'm gonna graciously hand it over to Ana for her to introduce herself to our lovely listeners.

Ana Kostic (01:14.138)
Thank you so much. I'm super happy to be here and thanks to Jill for the introduction. And thank you for all the community work and the podcast and the information you put out there because it's super helpful. I've been a longtime lurker, so a big fan. And this is a good note to put myself a task to actually polish my LinkedIn in English, which would be a good reminder now, apparently. So introductions. well my name is Ana Kostic. I'm based in Spain.

Anu Adegbola (01:25.298)
basically

Ana Kostic (01:44.054)
I've been doing PPC for 17 years, mostly in agency work. And I have my own agency. We've been working for the last 12 years here in Spain. We're remote, but we we're based in Spain. And we do digital marketing performance oriented. We do SEO and PPC, but it's all performance oriented, lead any commerce.

Anu Adegbola (01:55.361)
Nice.

Anu Adegbola (02:06.912)
Yeah. Fantastic. That's amazing work. And have you like spoken at any like events? Mm might have people seen you at any like conferences speaking yet?

Ana Kostic (02:16.333)
I have spoken in in Spain. I've I've been in like the major conference here in Spain. It's called PPC Fest, it's a party. and a couple of podcasts and smaller events. but not not outside of Spain yet. We'll see.

Anu Adegbola (02:18.773)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (02:23.906)
Nice love it

Anu Adegbola (02:28.906)
Yeah, yeah.

Yes, we'll work on that. I'm sure we'll people are gonna hear this episode and be like, my god, we need to get a book of that that lady for for something. So let's let's hope that this is just the beginning of a a fantastic like, you know, international tour speaking engagements. Lovely. Well, very, very lovely to have you on here, Ana. But also before we get into our story about a mistake, can you share a fun fact with our audience as well?

Ana Kostic (02:48.693)
Mm.

Ana Kostic (02:56.883)
sure. Well I spent right at the beginning of of building our agency, I spent three and a half years traveling around the world and I had no home base whatsoever. I lived off of a suitcase and a backpack and my laptop. So that happened.

Anu Adegbola (03:11.872)
Wow. Okay. And so what and what was was this all in Spain? In different parts?

Ana Kostic (03:16.725)
No, no, no. This was Europe and North America. And then I was going to go to South America, but then life and family and things happened and I came back. But yeah.

Anu Adegbola (03:24.97)
Yeah. Wow. And so for three years you were pretty much just backpacking. Homeless. No, let's not call it homeless. You were being a you're a digital nomad. That's the term. That's the official term. You were being nomading around the world and you know you're working, building your business. Which one was your favorite spot? Stop to to have on that trip?

Ana Kostic (03:30.487)
Homeless. No. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

Ana Kostic (03:39.895)
Well that's the official term. Yes.

Ana Kostic (03:48.658)
that's a tough one. Cause I like pretty much everywhere is very cool. And I have like different criteria. For example, well, Greece was amazing. Greece was cool because Greece had beautiful nature. The food was amazing. The people were lovely. and then of course, North America and Canada. We went to a couple of several national parks where the nature is absolutely mind blowing. It's

Anu Adegbola (03:53.002)
Okay. Okay. There we go. There we go.

Anu Adegbola (04:12.184)
nice Yeah, huge, huge.

Ana Kostic (04:16.277)
It's like living inside of like a Windows screensaver. It's so pretty.

Anu Adegbola (04:19.83)
wow, wow. That is a that is a good reference. We all know those screensavers that it's just literally like, where is this? I've seen some of those pictures. I'm gone, is this a real place or just some like magical picture that they've just put together? Yeah, yeah. Wow. So amazing. So natur national parks in the US and Greece, especially for the

Ana Kostic (04:27.021)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (04:32.951)
Yeah.

Exactly. So

Anu Adegbola (04:43.51)
Food and I mean I was second Greece. I've been to Athens and you know, it's one of those places where I'm like, Why can't I live here? I wanna live here, you know.

Ana Kostic (04:50.805)
Yeah. We went for two weeks and stayed for three months, so

Anu Adegbola (04:54.932)
wow, there we go. That's a big yeah, the tourist tourist attraction folks like sho you know, the the tourist head of tourism in Greece should should should should have do an interview with you as to what's to love about Greece. You you know all the answers. Yeah. amazing. I love that. Okay. I as much as you know people are thinking like maybe I should go on skyscanner and book a trip. Before you do that, please stick with us to talk again about

Ana Kostic (05:05.901)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (05:10.049)
Everything.

Anu Adegbola (05:23.38)
a mistake that Ana has gone through and you know the the you know these are where the the biggest learnings are as we've known we've had several guests come on and shared so many amazing stories about you know the things to avoid and being very brave and very honest about things that have gone wrong because you know online we all hear all the polished this is going well or this is my advice on what you should be doing but you don't really know where that's coming from. So yeah, we're gonna really get to the crux of where, you know, all the

Amazing advice you'll see Ana share on LinkedIn. You'll you'll get to an insider look as to where that experience comes from from her sharing the story she has for us today. So yeah, Ana, please take it away. What's the F up you'd like to share with us today?

Ana Kostic (06:06.399)
sure. I was I was going to start saying that this was back in the day when I was not just starting out in Paid Media, but I'd been at it for maybe like a year and a half, two years, where you know the platform, you know your craft, you know the best practices, and you get cocky. You're like, I know, look, I know what I'm doing, I know my platform, I know lads, I know meta, like this is this is what's working with my clients. And you get a little bit overconfident sometimes.

Anu Adegbola (06:33.985)
We do.

Ana Kostic (06:34.377)
And life has a funny way of putting you in your place, usually. That's how it goes.

Anu Adegbola (06:37.47)
Yeah, humbling you humbles you v quickly.

Ana Kostic (06:40.853)
Yes. So we got a client and it was the typical situation where you have like the structure was all messy and you had all the keywords like different categories together in one ad group and there was no much sense of the structure and no like category, subcategory product. It was all mixed in there together. It was selling, it was fine, but it was a bit of a mess. And I was like as

A practitioner and as best practices go, you're like, No, well we have to have categories, subcategory, products, top sellers, different revenues, different margins. Like we have to put a s a professional structure into this because that's what we do, right? And it made all the sense in the world. Like, of course.

Anu Adegbola (07:18.006)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Sounds good. What could go wrong? Yeah. Mm. Yeah. We're about to find out. God.

Ana Kostic (07:24.863)
Exactly. Yeah, but so what I did naively is say like okay we'll just stop everything and build a whole new structure and launch it and everything will be fine. Well if anyone has ever done this, they know what happened next, which is traffic and sales dropped like 40% for the first month. So that was that was

Anu Adegbola (07:47.788)
Wow, okay. Yeah, well.

Ana Kostic (07:54.05)
Quick learning curve. Because even back then, it was not like today, it would be much worse, but even back then it's a system that works on data and on learning, and it has like a historical knowledge of how the account works. And even if it's not perfect and not pretty, the system has kind of figured out like the keywords that sell, the ones that don't. And radical restructuring is theoretically good for the practitioner.

Anu Adegbola (07:55.521)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (08:00.607)
Yeah. Well still bad. Yes.

Ana Kostic (08:22.861)
But it's not a good idea for the for the business. And you have to take into account the business side. Like a business cannot afford to lose 40% of their traffic and their sales while your pretty structures is trying to learn like the new data. Like that's not how it goes. It's not ideal.

Anu Adegbola (08:25.558)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (08:36.179)
Learn. Yeah.

No, no, no, it's not. So like you said that it took like a month to figure you said that you had the the the drop in a month. Like you must have seen a little bit of a drop in that first week and were you just thinking, Okay, one week of drop is fine, we'll pick it up. Like, how did that that month go for you to then realize at what point where you're like, my god, that was a wrong decision?

Ana Kostic (09:08.501)
It was a roller coaster. 'cause you can you can excuse like a week or two of of changes. Like that's usually that's the learning phase, that's how it goes. It's it's fine, it will pick up. But even if it picks up and it it did eventually, but it took us like two and a half months. It was not Yeah. It did pick up, but like of course, in the meantime, you have six weeks where sales I mean, they're not zero, but they're less

Anu Adegbola (09:09.697)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:14.806)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:24.94)
Wow. It made it yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:37.686)
Very low.

Ana Kostic (09:37.721)
Than they were before. So there were forecasts. There's there's people depending on that. There's space salespeing on that. There's there's client depending on that. There's there's a whole business structure depending on those forecasts. And like the lesson is you have to be a lot more careful about the business side, not just the platform size. And it it it took a while and it was it was emotionally draining and exhausting, but you also learn to

Anu Adegbola (09:48.832)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:56.566)
Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:04.033)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ana Kostic (10:07.846)
Own your mistakes and you have to also learn responsibility for other people's businesses. Because it's not just data, it's not just KPIs.

Anu Adegbola (10:16.138)
Yeah. So what was that communication like? Like, you know, how often did you have meetings with the clients to report performance? It was a weekly. Okay. So in the first cup, yeah. So did they knew the restructure was about to happen? You proposed it to them and they were like, Yeah, okay, they knew it was about to happen. And they were like, Yep, go ahead. That sounds like a good idea. And then week one, when those

Ana Kostic (10:25.998)
It was weekly at that point. Yeah, we had weekly meetings.

Ana Kostic (10:34.934)
yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:45.046)
Yeah, the stats dropped immediately. What was their reaction?

Ana Kostic (10:49.762)
Well, again, it was like, well, it's it's normal. Like it's normal thing we've just structured things, a lot of things have changed, but our CDRs should be better, our traffic quality should be better, our conversion rate should be better, 'cause like it's keyword ad, landing page aligned, all the things, which is true, but then your C P Cs are higher than they used to be. So you get less less traffic and the solution is well put more money in, but you're not selling as much. So it's

Anu Adegbola (10:53.024)
Week one, okay.

Anu Adegbola (11:03.104)
Yeah. H yes.

Anu Adegbola (11:11.914)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:15.638)
Which yeah.

Ana Kostic (11:19.712)
It's a difficult conversation. And it's not like it's not like it's wrong in terms of tactical knowledge. So you can you can y you have your arguments, but it's it's emotionally challenging. And you have to be patient and wait it out. Like luckily they were all they were a consolidated business. Like they they could they could absorb

Anu Adegbola (11:21.761)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:29.59)
Yeah, yeah, it's

Yeah.

Ana Kostic (11:48.239)
Because they had more channels and it was not their first like year in the business. And we like it evened out and we ended up having good results, but that took six months. So you also have to have a person on the other side who can who is willing to work with with what they have, even if it's not ideal. So but it's tough, it's tough, it's not an easy conversation, and it's like if you're younger and you not as experienced, like I had trouble sleeping, I it was it was not great.

Anu Adegbola (11:56.95)
Yeah.

Understand.

Anu Adegbola (12:05.482)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Anu Adegbola (12:16.476)
no. no. Yeah, yeah. You get like, you know, everybody here who has been who's who's been you know brave enough to let us know like the thing that happened. Yeah, yeah, you're you're the people that care. The people are literally like, yeah, I still remember that thing that happened. And you know, because you care about it, and it's not necessarily that you have like an unhealthy relationship with work, it's just that you care that your client

Ana Kostic (12:40.599)
Nie.

Anu Adegbola (12:43.296)
you know, trust and trusted you with their budget, with their money and, you know, considered you the expert. It's what we ask for. We are there are stories, plenty of stories of like bad client and, you know, agency relationship. And the client is just like, you know, doing like if they're the ones that know best. And if a client goes, No, you know best, we'll leave it in your hands and you get it wrong. It's

Ana Kostic (13:05.166)
It's responsibility.

Anu Adegbola (13:06.41)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So like when you were did you have a manager that you were working with or you were this were you the senior person on it? How was the internal was was that learning curve for you? How was what was the support that you got internally, if any?

Ana Kostic (13:23.734)
No, yes. I had a manager, my boss at the time. I she was amazing. She had so much knowledge. And actually she taught me so many things and she was really supportive. so she she was able she's all she was always willing to like coach you and like guide you in terms of communication. She came to a couple of tense meetings to f to f to soften the blow. And you also learn I learned from her from her how to manage

Anu Adegbola (13:35.17)
Nice.

Anu Adegbola (13:45.419)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (13:51.683)
Tanse conversations. And and she was also great, because she was also like, like this is your responsibility, of course, but I'm the senior manager here. So this is also my responsibility. So it's not just you in front of like the whole thing. We'll figure it out together. And we did. We also like we discounted a part of the fee. So they would stay on a little bit longer until we fixed it. So there were there was like a a situation management from like the whole agency and my boss, which was great.

Anu Adegbola (14:01.053)
Nice, yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:08.223)
Nice.

Anu Adegbola (14:15.105)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (14:20.935)
You don't feel so alone, you feel supported. So

Anu Adegbola (14:24.33)
And you know what? Can we can we even like go into that a little bit more? You've already touched on, you know, the effect of that. But like I do think like one thing I do like my guests to to speak on is that if they were in a team and they had a manager, you know, or if they were the manager, the importance of supporting someone through a mistake or so making sure that

They are not too scared to test stuff because you know, they're like, no, you're not. If you're the kind of person that goes, no, you're not allowed to make any mistakes, kind of thing. People just get a little bit very nervous about things. So can you touch on again, like why it was important that your manager supported you through this when something went wrong?

Ana Kostic (15:07.878)
'cause it you have the feeling that first of all, you're learning. Like you're you're I was in a junior position. I mean it was like two, three years. It was not super junior, but I was not senior either. So it's like you have to learn and you have to have the confidence from the team that you're you can be autonomous. Because if you're not autonomous, you'll never you'll never be able to fly solo and we'll never be able to give you responsibility. So I

Anu Adegbola (15:19.35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:36.202)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (15:37.301)
Some point you have to figure it out. So, and then there's the buffer: how much can you figure out on your own, and how much you can you can be supervised, and also there's the fact that it's not it's the work, it's not you, it's not you who are who who are unable to do the work, it's not that you're not fit for this role, it's the it's the nature of the work, and sometimes.

Anu Adegbola (15:55.947)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:01.954)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (16:03.298)
The work is tricky and you have to test things and sometimes you make mistakes, but we have to have the tools to like what's the next step? What's the plan? How are you going to fix this? Like, what's our proactivity in front of the situation? And for that, you need confidence. Because if you have a structure that says, you did it wrong, it's your fault, we're going to fire you. Like what's like you've you've spent two years training someone and then you're going to rip them off their confidence in like two weeks?

Anu Adegbola (16:10.88)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:16.896)
Yes. Yeah.

Ana Kostic (16:32.088)
Like it's not even productive for the business. Like not like from a personal point of view, I'm I'm super grateful. And also you can also tell when someone because I've now I manage the team, I've managed the team for many years. You can also tell when someone's really like worried about it and it's invested and wants to do better, and they're taking accountability of the situation and people who don't care, like if you don't care, then it's a different conversation. Like if you're not able to own

Anu Adegbola (16:34.954)
No.

Anu Adegbola (16:38.388)
No, I agree. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:52.128)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (16:59.543)
Sharp.

Ana Kostic (17:02.198)
the what's happening, it's a different conversation. But if you care, first the nature of the work is as it is, and then we're all human. Like mistakes happen. Who hasn't changed the budget wrong? Put a zero where it shouldn't go, or or put a URL where it shouldn't go. It's I mean it happens.

Anu Adegbola (17:17.568)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, that is you know, I and I love the fact that you say that that actually it is down to like the business or your manager of a team or the head of department to have, you know, a like like like a mistake solution, like a mistake system of like, okay, something has gone wrong. What are the steps we're gonna take? It don't need it doesn't need to be something that

You, you know, you let everybody know about and you speak about on a daily basis. Cause you don't want to necessarily encourage mistakes. But you want to be like you also want to be the manager that people know that if a mistake happens, I wouldn't just be like, I'm on my own. I'm, you know, I'm you know, blame culture. That's another thing that we used to use phrase that we used to use a lot, like that happens in agency or fortune, unfortunately in the UK. Like it's all about, okay, something's gone wrong to make the client happy. Who should we like?

Blame for it and maybe fire so that we're like, okay, we've sorted out the problem and you can be happy with us going forward. And I'm like, that is not, that is not a good system to happen. As you said, though, it depends on how the the the person who made the mistake is like. If they're they've if they're visibly worried, if they're, you know, if they do to realize that, okay, I made a mistake, they were honest about it, they want to learn from it, they want to change, fair enough. If it's someone that just seems like this, just so like, you know.

Whatever, couldn't care less. And you know, another mistake. Yeah. Yeah. Deal with that in a different way. but yeah, you're people are gonna make mistakes and you need to find a way on how to ensure that you encourage them during those times and not just make them just feel bad, bad about themselves. Yeah. Some very, very fair points that you've made there, Ana. So so looking back as well, in terms of like, you know, the i you know, the account structure, if we were to take

Anu Adegbola (19:12.31)
And you've c you've kind of touched on it. If you're to take those, like think about those first few days before you you you set the started thinking of like, let's put it a restructure together. Are there things that your signs that you missed? What were the specific things you said that you missed in terms of maybe even like what performance was like that if you had paid attention to them better, you wouldn't have that that account structure changed, you would have, you would have stopped in your track. What should people look out for before putting an account structure in place so that you're like, okay.

Look out for those things. That will help you make the decision.

Ana Kostic (19:45.539)
Well, in this case I would say it's more of like I'm telling this so it happened to me, don't let it happen to you. Because there are no clear signs before you're designed to change a structure, because you can only tell afterwards once you've made the change. so it's more of a c cautionary tale. Like don't do it. it's more of my

Anu Adegbola (20:01.152)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:07.232)
Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, yeah.

Ana Kostic (20:14.688)
My way of thinking about it now is think about the business first. It's always the business first. And big changes, even even nowadays, like big budget changes, big structure changes, big creative changes mess up the algorithm. So it's like if you if you're going to do a change, which we have to, at some point we have to update things, like that's how it goes, like plan accordingly and do it.

Anu Adegbola (20:30.521)
Mm. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:37.292)
Sometimes yeah. Yeah.

Ana Kostic (20:44.184)
phase, like phase the changes and do it parallel to the current structure. So it's not you don't disrupt the whole system and you don't disrupt the business. Even if you have to duplicate things and even if it's not ideal to have, you know, like one campaign is cannibalizing another and it's not ideal, well fine. It doesn't matter as long as the business keeps running. It's not, again, it's not Google Ads or Meta the ones that have to

Anu Adegbola (21:02.028)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:06.881)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (21:13.28)
lead on with your strategy. It's the business. So now my priority is always for the business to be stable. And then we'll figure out around the stability of the business how to do the changes.

Anu Adegbola (21:16.108)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:27.284)
Absolutely. So start from ensuring prioritize how we keep the business stable with these changes. Even if even if there's not gonna be immediate growth, at least don't let there be a drop, like a forty percent drop. Stability is better. Stability don't don't because you you know, at the end of the day, the growth will happen and we're trying to change something. And I think that's the thing. A lot of people just think that a change needs to

Ana Kostic (21:41.942)
Exactly.

Anu Adegbola (21:56.535)
needs to mirror growth. There needs to be growth. There needs to be that spike in performance. And actually sometimes the best thing to do is trying to main maintain stability during your major change. And then when everything you've when you figure out what the new structure should look like, then work on what growth should look like. So yeah, that's actually I think a big

Ana Kostic (22:08.135)
yeah.

Ana Kostic (22:15.72)
Exactly. We like it slow and boring. Like that's the that's the pace.

Anu Adegbola (22:21.078)
Yeah. That is that you know what? That is a very different different like like perspective than what everybody else talks about, than what Google talks about. It's not about slow and steady. Everybody's all about where is the growth. If you do this, you can get forty percent growth or you can get thirty you know, this many more conversions. And actually sometimes we just want to keep things stable is is is what's gonna keep you with your client for much longer.

Ana Kostic (22:45.79)
Yeah, actually forty percent growths can happen, but they're w maybe they're like a one-off thing or like two off things in five years. It's not it's not realistic either. If you if you do your job well and we all do our jobs well, like there's it's there's usually no infinite growth. I mean sometimes ca different cases, but business live on

Anu Adegbola (22:52.416)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:05.887)
No, no.

Ana Kostic (23:11.894)
That's how I see it. Business live on stability. You have a period of growth and there are businesses who have money to grow, which is great. But then usually even if you're growing, you're building on top of what's been working. So there's always a nucleus of what held the business together from the beginning. So that's you have to trust that the core is working and you have your sales and

Anu Adegbola (23:28.992)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:37.443)
Absolutely. So let's say somebody who has just done a, you know, you know, they they they've been working like yourself a couple of years in the business and they've just gone in and they they they they felt like superman or superwoman and went like, yeah, we I know what this is what this client needs, a new structure, and they did it. And the performance has dropped and they're a bit nervous and a bit scared now, like what the client is gonna do. What's your advice to them?

Ana Kostic (24:07.096)
Well, honestly, if it's if it's just happened, I would actually go back and reactivate best performance like past best performance. I would go back to those. And I'd split the budget.

Anu Adegbola (24:21.558)
Okay.

Ana Kostic (24:23.49)
And then you have to have an open communication all the time. Like, all the time. Like be honest and upfront with what's happening. Don't hide it. Like hiding the obvious, it's the worst strategy ever because it it will just destroy confidence in the relationship. In my experience, it's a lot better to own the situation, explain it, and then but you have to have an action plan.

Anu Adegbola (24:37.249)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ana Kostic (24:51.02)
Like you can't explain the situation and say, well, this is happening. We'll see what happens. It's like, no, like, what's the action plan? The action plan is okay, we're going to reactivate best performance. We're going to give that 50% of the budget. We'll we'll keep it split 50 50, see what happens. We're going to try and maybe lower CPCs with maybe a different read strategy or whatever, like new creatives in meta. But you have to have an action plan and keep reporting. And if the client is nervous and calls you.

Anu Adegbola (24:54.806)
Yeah. Yeah. No.

Ana Kostic (25:20.686)
three times that week and once you have two meetings and you have other things to do, well, it's part of the job. You have to be available and you have to be able to explain what's happening. So communication and honesty. An action plan.

Anu Adegbola (25:27.734)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And I well like communication, honesty. And I like the fact of like in put that best practice, you know, in the the one that was a best performer from the previous structure, put that back live. Cause I think that's that's an a another thing that's you know, I love to give our listeners. What's the action? What's the thing to do? And we people have said a lot about, yeah, honesty, make sure you're available. But that whole actually, yeah, set something back live that was paused before.

And you then you can even do that and take that to the client of like we saw this, but because this was a best performer, we put that back live. And that it's always good to go back with a solution than a my god, I just have a this this problem and we're still trying to figure something out. If you go with like we saw this problem, we did this, and we'll be figuring it out, you know, as we go on. That's always a better, better conversation to go back to a client with. I definitely feel. Is there now like a process? Is that did that did that that lesson kind of change?

how you now do things in terms of and what is it specifically that you that did change in terms of how you do things?

Ana Kostic (26:40.206)
that changed so many things on so many layers. It's I changed completely how I view the accounts. I changed completely how I approach onboardings and like the first three months of a project. And it actually got me head on to learning how a business works. Like how a business works, what's a cash flow? What's the profit? What's the margin? Like what's a sales process? Like how do you like what

Anu Adegbola (26:47.649)
Mm-hmm.

Anu Adegbola (26:54.753)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:01.334)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:05.963)
Nice.

Ana Kostic (27:09.952)
What what do I have to know about a business that is important for me to be part of their sales team? Because we forget that we are part of a sales team. And a a business needs revenue. And and even before I started restructure now, I asked them like, what's your cash flow? Like what's your what's your buffer? How how much time do you have? How much margins do you have to to maybe lose a 10% of sales? Like what's the plan? And if they if they're like, we're good, we've had a great year.

Anu Adegbola (27:18.146)
Sure. Yeah.

Ana Kostic (27:39.021)
And but we want to have like next year we want to have a bigger growth. So it's like, okay, we'll speed up the changes, we'll take a hit now to be able to build for the next like for the next quarter. Or they're like, no, no, we're like it's really tight. We don't want to disrupt anything. Okay, fine. Then the plan is six months. It's not three. It's not three. It's six months. We'll do it slowly. But you have to have a conversation about the business and what what they can afford. Like what they're what business-wise, what's their plan. So it

Anu Adegbola (27:46.336)
Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:53.878)
Yeah,

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:02.719)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Ana Kostic (28:08.874)
It took I think it took my career like two steps ahead of where I was overall, if I think about it like in retrospect.

Anu Adegbola (28:12.93)
Fantastic. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's a big thing when I've been I've been listening to you for like, you know, the like the over like close to half an hour that I've been chatting here. And I just love that, you know, we you know, several conversations about our account structure have happened in previous episodes, but nobody has really emphasized as you have about how that has led to really those conversations of with the business about you know margins, cash flow, profits.

those kind of things that really then informs. Because I think, you know, for me anyway, when I started Paid Search, it was very much, okay, just work within the platform. But you know, I I know my CPCs need to be low, my CPAs need to be low. I I know I we're always trying to get better conversion rate. And you know, we always talked in the jargon of our acronyms kind of thing. Not necessarily connecting it to a particular business outcome. We were just like, as long as we prove

Ana Kostic (29:02.744)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (29:10.434)
Paid search is doing well. Yay, I can ask for more budget, blah, blah, blah. But actually these kind of things in terms of what you change, when you change it, the tests that you implement. I also think another thing that like and that could really help inform people with

Everything that's going on right now, there's loads of changes. Google coming out with a different change every week, every month. There's a new API that I just wrote about just before this call, you know, and to test things, one can just say that, yeah, we're supposed to get in there and test everything. And actually, there's an also a rule of thought of like, actually, you can't test everything because it's so confusing. But how do you decide what to test? The advice, brilliant advice you've just given us. Talk to the business.

Figure out what their cash flow is. Figure out what their buffers are. Figure out what can go wrong and what can't go wrong. And when things and I I I feel like I these episodes, I the listeners will be like, This is Anu, this is for you. This is not even for us. I'm the one that gets excited with all this information. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's absolutely so fun for me. And it just shows and and I like this. It shows how.

Ana Kostic (29:55.555)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (30:11.278)
Well, that's the best way to do things when it's fun for you.

Anu Adegbola (30:23.286)
Things have changed. Cause that way of just sitting in the pl in your platform, it's a little bit too I because I'm the kind of person of like, you know, with for the business, know what different channels don't stick in your silo. Don't just be like, I look after Google. So I'm only gonna focus as to what is happening in Google and what Google should do. Figure out what's happening in SEO and and you know, the meta ads and the different channels to see how the effects. And that's what knowing what the business is important for the business is all about, isn't it?

Ana Kostic (30:53.206)
Yeah, and it's also super important to talk to the actual salespeople. Like have a conversation with the people who are talking to the clients because they can give you the exact pain points and words that the client is looking for and it's using for you to be able to sell not to sell better, but for them to find you. Because I've had instant instances where a product is called I don't know, I can't think of a name, but like a product is called a sneaker. Like you have a sneaker. Officially this is a sneaker.

Anu Adegbola (30:58.87)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (31:02.967)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (31:23.564)
But then the clients are looking for running shoes. Like this is a basic example. But if I if I don't talk to the salespeople, they I will I would never know that these are running shoes. Not sneakers. You know, like I can't think of a better example. Do you know what I mean?

Anu Adegbola (31:28.768)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (31:35.169)
Yeah, not sneakers. Yeah. No, no, no. But I think it your point, you're you're making your point clear. That's that's that that makes sense. You just you need to understand from the salespeople what's the thing that drives the, you know, the good conversions that actually closes the deal. And you know, and there's some of the terms that you use that, yeah, they drove a lead, but it drove a useless lead. And it came to the customer was someone that did not actually understand.

Ana Kostic (31:51.95)
There you go.

Anu Adegbola (32:02.999)
what it is that they're asking about. And it's literally about making sure you're you're showing for the right version of the term that actually leads to those quality leads that a salesperson can close. Yeah.

Ana Kostic (32:10.614)
Exactly. Exactly. And also like people like the general public will search for this, but this is not what we're selling. We're selling a different thing. And then even you can use well you can use exact phrases that users that we've seen in in call recordings. If you use the exact wording in an ad, it converts so much better because people feel seen. And you have to talk to the sales like you cannot you if you live in your

Anu Adegbola (32:19.937)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:30.496)
Yeah.

A better Yeah.

Ana Kostic (32:40.312)
platform you lose so much information of what's happening. So it's it's always good it's a good idea to talk to

Anu Adegbola (32:42.88)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:47.488)
Definitely. You know something that's very interesting. And sorry, we will get to talking about other people's mistakes. This is gonna be a long episode, but it's a very useful episode. But like I remember speaking to my sister once, who's a lawyer. There's nothing about digital marketing and and search and everything. But at this point, I have known I was I I was in the field for for for several years now. And she's like, I know I'm looking for this thing. What should I search so that I make sure? And I'm like, I can't teach you.

How to search. We are actually interested to see what you will search, you know, for what you think. What's your default thought of what you should search for this thing that you're looking for? You know, and that's what you do naturally should be the thing that informs what we what a business that is trying to sell you the thing you're looking for, what they should be bidding on, you know. So that's actually the way it works. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Ana Kostic (33:38.358)
Yeah, it's it's the other way around, always.

Anu Adegbola (33:43.341)
You know what? Yes, we've gone to the stage where you've given us so much about that story. Thank you so much, Ana. but no, we're not gonna we're not gonna cut it short and and not talk about other mistakes that you've made. but yeah, we'll leave that story behind. I I usually end with what's one big point? But honestly, I think the biggest point there is know your business better, know the business of of of so that it really informs how you implement tests when you implement tests. So.

Let's go into, you know, you've got your agency, you know, it sounds like every things are going well, meaning that you've unboarded clients, gotten some accounts that's have come from other agencies, or maybe from other other, other like maybe the in-house team, they're now doing you're now doing it for them. What are some of your like biggest mistakes that you think that, my god, you can't believe that's still happening in 2026? Or maybe something that happens so often that you're like,

How the heck is this happening so often? And you pick it up straight away.

Ana Kostic (34:42.722)
There are several. We have like the the base, like the classic ones. This is like the they've always been there, which is tracking, doing weird things, and people not knowing what they're tracking and tracking twice or three times. Like it's a mess. No one, no one checked the tracking in five years. Like that's that's a standard one. Then there's the no one checked the search terms. And and yeah, like no negatives and like

Anu Adegbola (34:50.443)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (34:56.608)
Yes. gosh.

Anu Adegbola (35:10.608)
wow.

Ana Kostic (35:11.63)
Cross keywords everywhere. That also happens a lot, which it shouldn't. Like it's 2026, but it still happens. and there's there's more subtle ones. And there's usually like not redistributing budget in terms of like business priorities. Usually budget goes where conversions are, but nobody asks.

Anu Adegbola (35:13.408)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Anu Adegbola (35:22.476)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (35:32.972)
Right.

Anu Adegbola (35:37.346)
Mm.

Ana Kostic (35:39.201)
If those are the right conversions, what's the quality? If like what's what are the margins if it's if it's e-commerce? So it's like you have the number, but there's no conversation. Again, there's no conversation after that. So so the budget is not reflecting the business goals. That's a trickier one. And then you have again, like I've seen, I've seen like in the last six months, I've seen search like search campaigns were were.

Anu Adegbola (35:45.482)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:52.385)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (35:57.312)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Ana Kostic (36:08.012)
Like display and search are still like together mesh like I've seen that recently, which is which is I don't know. I don't know how like I don't even know how you set that up.

Anu Adegbola (36:16.19)
You missed that. How you still leave that? Every every every expert will tell you to make sure that those are two separate things. And that is an issue that I saw happening in 2008. And I saw that. And we learned the lesson back then. Make sure you separate the default settings of the display being turned on. Make sure you look out for that. So how that is still happening in 2026? Baffling. Wow.

Ana Kostic (36:21.27)
Ana Kostic (36:40.696)
So at four months ago.

Anu Adegbola (36:45.794)
Lord. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, there is. And how about AI? Looking about all the AI capabilities. even things like AI Max, performance Max. Do you where are what are some approaches that you've seen that you've gone, guys, that's not how that's not how you approach that. That's that's a mistake and how you're you're doing that.

Ana Kostic (36:48.216)
So there's there's always things like those.

Ana Kostic (37:11.768)
We're talking about in-platform AI, right? Or like exp okay. so I would say that I understand because there's a lot of confusion and in in in terms of like there's a lot of information out there that it's it's put out there like if you want to be in AI overviews or AI mode or if you want to be seen, you have to use

Anu Adegbola (37:14.432)
Yeah, yeah, good. Goods, yeah.

Ana Kostic (37:36.993)
AI Max, B Max, or Roadmap, or whatever, which which is fine. It's true. Like this is this is these are the rules. Okay, great. Like, but let's see how we can work with those rules and not apply them blindly just because I'm in a rush to be on AI, which it which is good to test. But then it's okay, what are our best practices? Like, take two steps back. What are the best practices if it were any other campaign?

Anu Adegbola (37:54.359)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (38:05.248)
Or any other strategy, you have to have your guardrails, you have to have your texts, you have to have your, in this case, your AI brief, your negatives, your URLs that you don't want to be placed with upon. So it's it's not you don't rush into it. Apply the criteria for everything else first. Like understand what you're doing, understand what the new rules are.

Anu Adegbola (38:06.786)
Hm.

Yes.

Anu Adegbola (38:23.842)
Mm-hmm.

Ana Kostic (38:33.996)
And then test it, but test it with like 10% of your budget, not like 40% of your budget. Let's do it again, slowly, boring, steadily.

Anu Adegbola (38:38.294)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (38:44.032)
Yes, yes, is the way for the biggest learnings. It's better to be stable and to be steady going than for you to jump into something and there's a big drop. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this is also like, you know, a new new question that I started asking like in the past like few weeks, few months. Like, you know, there are loads of you know warnings against how we use AI, but is there a favorite

Ana Kostic (38:55.629)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (39:10.878)
AI capability that you use that you're like, yeah, this works for me. And yeah, you'd advise people to use this AI tool in Google Ads.

Ana Kostic (39:20.098)
I'd say performance max is really good. I mean it's taken a while, but now it actually but now it's it works. It I mean you have again, you have to have a structure. You have to have you have to be coherent in in in your asset groups, in your campaigns, in your targets. But it works and it delivers. So I wouldn't also I wouldn't be afraid of I'm not a a

Anu Adegbola (39:25.441)
Yeah. Yes, it's taken a while. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (39:32.887)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (39:41.344)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ana Kostic (39:49.901)
control purist and I understand that you have to let go of certain level of control but we're also we're also in uncertain times and we can't expect to be we can't expect to show up in AI or LLMs or in the new way of what of people searching with a strict structure because that's not how it works. So if you have to have a flexible structure you have to embrace certain level of

Anu Adegbola (39:51.754)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (39:59.594)
Hmm.

Anu Adegbola (40:09.75)
Hm, yeah, yeah.

Ana Kostic (40:18.944)
And uncertainty and you have to get let go of certain level of control. I'm not saying that you should let the system learn on your own dime. You have to be cautious. But now performance max is working with the with the with the right setup. I would totally go for it. Even for leads, is working if you're able to give the data back to feed the data back into the system and work it properly. It works. And I would say that for certain types of campaigns and

Anu Adegbola (40:28.235)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (40:40.352)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ana Kostic (40:48.598)
And in businesses, the image creation inside Google Ads is gotten a lot better. Like, yeah, we we can do seasonal ads, seasonal creatives with like the same image. We have the one image with the product or the service. And then you can do it like Christmassy or springy, or like make it seasonal with the same exact creative, so you don't have to put extra work on the design team.

Anu Adegbola (41:00.738)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (41:08.512)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ana Kostic (41:15.155)
And they can they can actually work with new creatives, not the same thing redesigned. For those kind of things, it's it's actually pretty good.

Anu Adegbola (41:19.446)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (41:23.434)
Wow. Fantastic. Yeah. Those are some things that people should look into. Like, yeah, like you know, I think s some people have been posting about hearing from their own, you know, little nook that people still think P P max is is a black box and you're like, No, it's not. Chan with all the channel reporting and the different controls that you have now and information you can put in. Yeah, if you're just doing the whole yeah.

PMAX is a black box, I feel that can be a bit of like a lazy excuse that you're giving yourself to not even try it. and yeah, go back to those things that didn't work, let's say six months ago or nine months ago, try it again because P Max has changed a lot. Yeah.

Ana Kostic (41:56.054)
And

Ana Kostic (42:03.936)
lot and I think that in certain businesses like certain verticals you are going to end up like getting like being behind because like the competitors are probably starting to use it and you're again you're using you're losing flexibility so you might lose impressions and you might lose share of the market

Anu Adegbola (42:13.058)
Mm, mm.

Anu Adegbola (42:18.646)
Yeah.

Ana Kostic (42:31.574)
If you're not willing to retest certain things.

Anu Adegbola (42:33.984)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Go back to those testing boards. Go back to those things that didn't work before. Try them again. Try them again. Ana, this has been such a great chat. You know, the beginning of the episodes, I just I'm I'm I'm not like, okay, let's see what's gonna happen. Like, you know, never know. And it just ended up being such a brilliant conversation that, you know, you you saw that I had a lot of passion in there, especially when we're talking about the business angle. I think that's a big takeaway that people really, really should have. so thanks for that.

So yeah, one last question before we we we give you your time back. yeah, what if your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Ana Kostic (43:14.956)
The first movie that came to mind was Big with Tom Hanks.

Anu Adegbola (43:18.506)
Yes. Love that movie.

Ana Kostic (43:20.462)
Because I was really young when I started. So I was young and I was like getting into this whole world of like clicks and and tracking and real-time data and conversions and testing out like texts and seeing how people reacted to that. That it felt a lot more like a game and like, let's see what's happening here. And it was it was so fun until one day it actually became like a career, which was like, okay, so now we do this.

Anu Adegbola (43:32.844)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (43:37.376)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (43:42.4)
Yeah, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (43:47.554)
Serious. Yeah. serious now. Love it. Yeah. Yeah. big, big Tom Hanks. Love, love that movie. I too my brain was like, I know exactly which one's just talking about. that's fantastic. Well, where can people find you if they wanna hear about, you know, some of the your musings and the things that you're planning for for your future?

Ana Kostic (43:50.56)
Okay. So yeah.

Ana Kostic (44:12.03)
Sure. Mostly LinkedIn. It's in Spanish. I will update it. Promise. But mostly LinkedIn, Ana Kostic in LinkedIn, Anacoustic, Google Ads, PPC. I'll probably pop up.

Anu Adegbola (44:25.066)
Yeah, absolutely. We'll share the links of you know, all of that on the in in our show notes so that people can directly get to that. And also, since PPC Live is all about events, and I know you, you know, we saw you've seen each other at a couple this year already. Do you have any plans for any any other events before the end of the year? Or when next year?

Ana Kostic (44:28.366)
Great.

Ana Kostic (44:42.74)
I do. I have several. I I I would I would need to check my calendar, but there's there's Adworld in Italy.

Anu Adegbola (44:46.358)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (44:52.982)
Yes, yes in Italy. Yeah, Gian Paulo. Yes, that's a great one for those in Bologna.

Ana Kostic (44:56.682)
Yeah, and there's there's our yeah, exactly. And then there's our PPC fest here in Spain. It's at the end of October.

Anu Adegbola (45:02.964)
Nice. Yeah.

Ana Kostic (45:06.806)
And I feel like I'm forgetting something. But those two for sure. And then you have your PPC lives. You have

Anu Adegbola (45:10.54)
Those are two. And th those two are both October ones. Yeah. PPC Live is happening next week. We'll get all the permit for that. Yeah, guys, go to PPC.live. There's still some tickets left. And yeah, the last week, for those who do lastminute.com, you you the price will go up a little bit because it's always better if we get the ticket sales early as possible. So I try to get

encourage people to to to buy tickets as early as possible by just keeping on increasing the price. I'm like, try to get the the tickets as cheap as possible, right? Anyway. yeah, we'll talk more about that later. But yeah, thank you so much. And I really appreciate you sharing your story and giving so many fantastic advice for our listeners that I'm sure they'll find very useful. but yeah, for now, thanks so much for that and I'm sure we'll catch up again soon.

Ana Kostic (45:59.864)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was so fun.

Anu Adegbola (46:02.623)
my pleasure - that's amazing bye.

Anu Adegbola (00:01.08)
Thank you so much, Ana, for sharing that very honest and transparent experience. And yeah, remember, business objectives, business goals, you know, what the revenue is going to be, what communicating with the sales team is really one of the most important, if not the most important thing in terms of how what will actually affect what you should do, what you should test, you know, what you should implement in terms of, you know, your paid search strategy and how it runs.

So, yeah, for the full information and the full transcript of that fantastic show, and not just the show notes, please go to podcast.pc.live to get all the details of that talk. So, yeah, about PPC Live events. yeah, we are as we are listening to this on Wednesday around 5 30. We are at Liverpool Street right now having a fantastic event with our speakers Scott Carruthers, Harriet Fitzgerald, Charlotte Osborne, and Veric Veronica.

Holler, who are talking about, you know, AI and how it's the future, how the future really pretty much is here in terms of implementing Claude into your into your system, DSA, you know, DSA going away, what you really need to be considering with the fact that it's going to be, you know, like migrated into AI Max. and yeah, just different, you know, points of view about programmatic and and the ways that we're working in 2026 and how we should be working in 2027. yeah.

Sorry you've missed it, but put October 20, October 22nd in your calendar. You're the first one to get the save the date for our next day. So yeah, if you if you missed it, I'm sorry. If you didn't, I'm so glad you're able to join us. And but either way, join us in October 22nd for our last event of 2026, which I know will be another fantastic gathering. so yeah, and before I leave you, I'm I'm delighted to share that I am taking on curtain clients.

so go to themarketinganu.com for that or go to ppc.live as well for for tickets as well as to get to the link for for coaching. yeah, and it's just to speak about to to help you with building your confidence to get that promotion, to get that pay rise, to go for that job that you're not sure they're qualified for. Let's have a chat. Yeah, when you get on the marketingannu.com site, yeah, look for the you know, book a one-to-one yeah, discovery call with me, which will be 15 minutes free of charge.

Anu Adegbola (02:20.94)
to discuss what your specific needs are. So yeah, I hope you've enjoyed the show this week and I look forward to bringing more PPC eff ups and triumphs next week. Thank you. Bye.