Scaling Success: Balancing Growth and Client Retention in PPC

Hey, hi everyone. Now, welcome to your show E-Coffee with the Experts. This is your host, Ranmay here. Today, we have Sam, who is the head of PPC at OCPR with us. Hey, Sam, how is it going?

Hey, Ranmay. Nice to meet you.

Pleasure is all mine, Sam. Thank you so much for taking our time for the podcast. Sam, to kick things off, tell us a little bit about your current role as head of PPC at OCPR. And before you do that, talk us through your journey in terms of about your background, how did you land up here in the digital marketing space, and also a bit about OCPR, what do you guys do, what do you guys specialize in, and then we take it from there.

Yeah, great stuff. Ocpr is a full-service digital marketing agency. We’re based in Sheffield in the UK. We have multiple different facets. So I head up the PPC side and paid social, but we also do SEO, social media, marketing, email marketing, and various other services, including graphic design, videos, etc. In terms of my day-to-day role as head of PPC, I’m responsible for managing projects at a very top level, managing a number of executives that we have working here. But I also like to get really deep into projects, understanding them, make sure we’ve got a high level of client retention and satisfaction. We as a business, operate as directors and heads of department, being very front-facing with clients. As part of my day-to-day role, it’s speaking to clients, whether that’s through video chat, meeting them in person or emails, et cetera. To give you a little bit of perspective of where I’ve come from, from a young age, I was brought up on computers. My dad I’m a graphic designer. My mom’s in accounting, and they’re both very career-driven people. From a young age, I was surrounded by computers. I remember at 15, 16 discussing careers with my parents.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go It’s a psychology, IT, marketing, et cetera. Essentially, back then, even as Google was what it was in 2012, I just did a simple Google search of area of IT is growing, and it said, You need to be looking into digital marketing. Then I went from working a job in a fast food restaurant after I left Six Form. I joined a small agency in Chesterfield. I started learning PPC as a little bit of a side quest there because it wasn’t something they did. Self-taught for a couple of years. Then I jumped straight into a digital marketing manager’s role. I jumped around, so I spent a year or two at various different businesses, so I get a good understanding of what’s going on in business, how business operates. Then in around 2017, ’28, I moved to a larger FCA agency that also specialized in people in South Yorkshire, where I then basically upskilled myself from a PPC executive all the way up to being a PPC team leader managing four or five people. And then after two or three years being a team leader, I was ready to make the steps of holding my own department and having that more senior role.

So that picture is where we are today. And I’ve been at OCPR now for around between 12 and 18 months, and the PPC Department has just gone from from strength to strength in that time.

I’m sure, and there must be challenges of leading a PPC team. So close some light in terms of what are your biggest challenges of leading the PPC team at OCPR and how rewarding it has been?

Yeah. In the day-to-day challenges are just ensuring, really. We’ve got to ensure that clients have a high level of satisfaction. I see it. If you have any negative challenges, it’s just challenges that are exciting. How can we grow the department bigger whilst keeping that same level of client retention, client satisfaction, attention to detail with clients. That’s so important. It ties in with making sure that we have the right people, the right staff in place to carry that out and making sure that they feel like they have the flexibility and they’re not overcapacitated to taking on those projects so that we have staff who are very happy. They work on some really exciting projects. They don’t feel overwhelmed. And ultimately, that pays back in terms of what the output is in terms of how clients feel when you speak to them, and I speak to them regularly about how they feel about how our account managers and myself are handling their projects. Our biggest challenge is basically we’re a growing agency, and with growth, there can be come pain points, but that’s always going to happen with growth. For me, it’s making sure when these pain points come up, we implement clever processes in the department to make sure that we can carry the business forward sustainably.

Absolutely. Looking back at your expertise here, is there a specific rule that stands out as a turning point in your career trajectory, Sam?

I think I would say that at 1928, I basically pushed for a role as a digital marketer manager at a small business in Chesterfield. When I did that, I went from 0-100 really quickly. I went from finishing an apprenticeship and having a limited amount of experience on maybe four or five projects that I’d worked on, really small localized projects, to then having global industrial client that was my mainstay. I’m the digital Marketing Manager. I’m responsible for managing the social media, the PPC, the SEO, the day-in, day-out lead funnel of the business from a digital perspective. It was like, Yikes. What have I done? I got suddenly hit. Once I got in there, I was really buzzing to get going. But then I got hit by this wave of imposter syndrome, where basically you feel like you’ve bitten off a little bit more than you can chew. But actually, I feel like that actually empowers people. It’s a good thing to have a little bit of imposter syndrome because it makes you sit there, reflect, and identify any holes in your knowledge that you have. If you do feel like you have imposter syndrome, it’s really important that you then go and fill those knowledge gaps.

I did that in my own time, started plugging these gaps, learning at my own time, watching YouTube videos, reading blogs, listening to podcasts, et cetera, all that. Then I basically came to the epiphany that after working in a few businesses after that, that I might have jumped too quickly and I needed to nail down a specialism in a particular role. Instead of working on digital marketing and scratching the surface on a little bit of social media and a little bit of email, et cetera. It was more a case of which area of digital marketing. You’ve worked in all of it, you have the bits you like and the bits you don’t like. Which bit do you actually want to specialize in? I found that I really loved the paid ads. I love getting involved with the data, getting ingratiated in all the facts and figures, speaking to clients. Seeing the results coming in is rewarding, but it’s part of the fact you put that work in place and then you get the reward from it is very fulfilling to me. That enabled me then to… If I hadn’t have had that initial thought of imposter syndrome, I might have bounced around between job to job, staying as a top-level digital marketing exec and not actually nailing down a specialism to be a thought leader in paper click advertising, really.

So that to me is the role that stands out, really. But obviously, shout out to the agency in Chesterfield that did kickstart me with my career with the apprenticeship as well, because if I hadn’t have done that and I’d have stayed working at the fast food restaurant, it would have been a comfortable, easy life. But it’s got limited growth potential behind it. Now, I’m in a role where there’s a lot of growth potential and every day is different, challenging and rewarding as well.

I’m talking to multiple businesses, understanding their vision, brand statement, what problem they are trying to solve and all that stuff has its own motivation to get up and go to those meetings and work for those clients, make the numbers look like what you can with those PPC skill sets that you have and then breaking the numbers for them as well. And your client, again, if their business flourishes, they are again paying to their employees, so you are making them keep the lights open. So that has its own charm, right?

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. There’s an enormous sense of satisfaction from anything digital. If a client isn’t doing too well, and then you can swing the corner and play the hero a little bit and turn the corner and help them turn the business around. Or maybe it’s clients that we’ve worked with where we’ve seen exponential growth, taking some clients where we’ve taken them from brand inception, making very small amounts of revenue to be in making six-figure turnovers each month. They’re the things that are really rewarding because we’re very hands-on with clients. We speak to them day in, day out. We see that we’re an extension of their digital marketing department, essentially. Whereas some agencies are quite hands-off and just take it off. Client’s hands, we’re directly getting feedback on a daily basis about what we are doing, especially in people seeing other forms of the digital marketing, is actually driving the business. From project to project, that keeps us really motivated. I’d say being in the industry 12 years, at this point in my career, I’ve never been more motivated. I love coming into this office 4:00, 5:00 in the morning doing. It makes the long hours really worth it and really rewarding.

You go home with a smile on your face at the end of the day and everyone being happy on all sides, the client being really satisfied, everyone in internally being really satisfied, and then coming back from work. There’s not a lot of people out there in employment that can sit there and say, Do I come back home from work? Or drive to work with a smile on your face That’s got a lot of sense of satisfaction with it as well.

Absolutely. Nothing beats that, right?

No, not at all. At the end of the day, it’s happiness and being happy with in your career, for me, is one of the biggest things. If you feel stuck and you’re just stuck grinding the same thing day in, day out, you spend most of your time day in, day out at work, around 60, 70% of your life is spent in the workplace. To keep yourself mentally sharp and happy, you need to be able to work in a workplace that you’re comfortable with and that you’re happy with, ultimately. Our CPR is an astounding in a really fantastic culture with some really bright, funny, very personable people in this office. I’m sure.

And then talking about the details of PPC, it looks very daunting from the outside, right? A lot of clients would have a lot of misconceptions around it. What are some of the common or bigger misconceptions that you encounter while discussing PPC with your prospective clients?

Yeah, there’s some really critical ones that come a lot in conversations. One of the big ones for me is PPC guarantees, instant sales and leads. That’s one of the big ones. There’s a conversation had where a lot of businesses and agencies will say, I see it as a long-term approach, PPC, you’ll get sales off the ground straight away. Whilst PPC can ultimately drive quick leads dependent on factors involving the website, the product or service, the competition, how the funnel for that, whether there’s a consideration phase for that product or service, and the user experience are all things that are taken into account because ultimately, as I regularly tell clients, the PPC ads, whether it’s a Google ad or an ad on Meta or LinkedIn, et cetera, they will drive people to your website. But if you don’t have that website user experience and content set up properly, that will only drive relevant people to the website. It’s then website’s job to convert those people into a sale or a lead there and having everything as an omnichannel approach behind it to make sure that all the funnels are in place to capture those leads and sales backed up by having PPC campaigns that are backed up with email marketing, for instance.

That’s a really big growing area that I think a lot of businesses don’t particularly know or are aware of the stats around that. On average, businesses should be seeing around 20 to 25% of their revenue coming from email marketing every month. I think a lot of people overlookemail marketing as a great channel, and PPC compliments email marketing really well, as so does SEO, too. It has to work together collaboratively. There’s also some really specific PPC-related misconceptions. For For example, on Google, having the highest budget and bidding the highest. I know now Google is more around smart bidding than it is around manual bidding. But it’s not always the highest bidder that when he’s at top position for search and shopping ads, it’s more about the ad quality, the relevancy, and the overall quality score behind the ad, then it is about how much someone’s willing to pay for a cost per click nowadays. For us as an agency, Are we making sure that we’re driving adverts to relevant landing pages and product pages? Are we writing really good strong ad copy with high ad rank scores? It’s all about that because ultimately Usually, companies could spend thousands on Google, but it doesn’t automatically mean that you’re going to appear top of search just because you’re willing to put several hundreds of pounds a day behind a particular campaign or keyword.

There’s a lot around to be said around businesses with PPC being the management side of it. A lot of businesses are always asked the question, why do I need PPC management? Why do I need somebody? Isn’t it just a case that I can set this up and get it running and then that’s it. But nobody actually considers the fact that where are you going to get your growth opportunities from? Who’s going to monitor your insights? Who’s going to be A/B testing your ads and landing pages? Who’s going to ensure you get a consistent performance behind the ads? Because you could have a really good month to start and set it up. It only takes a little bit of fluctuation in the market, some new competition, or just a change in trends. And suddenly, you could be spending thousands and not even know that you’re just burning that cash, basically. So they’re just some of the ones that spring to mind at the minute. But there are lots more behind it. And it’s an industry where there’s so many misconceptions. And through different methods, we try to educate our clients as we go on, building their knowledge as well as upskilling our own into understanding PPC more because a lot of them, it’s their first taste of what you PPC.

Talking about educating clients, how do you ensure that they have realistic expectations? Because a lot of clients, they feel that if it’s bringing them money, they start ranking, the phones start playing in all that stuff. How make sure that the expectations are realistic and they also not entirely, but understand the complications that is involved in running PPC a bit.

When we initially first speak to a client, we set out the expectations from the beginning. We tried to dole some of the various messages that we mentioned there that are pushed around PPC, however that’s the seeing the immediate growth from day one. We have seen clients that have seen a growth from day one, but it isn’t always the case. We try to lay out a roadmap of how people see it’s going to add value over time, how we’re going to work with them collaboratively and set up a long-term relationship rather than just something that’s set up and run straight away and left. I’ve witnessed it in past roles as well, where a lot of clients speak to other agencies and they’re basically oversold on what the potentials with modeling, forecast, charts, and graph sharing where they should be for the best. But ultimately, until you actually get started, if you’ve created a Google Ads account, for instance, for the first time, there are no guarantees and forecasts and models that can show how that business is going to work compared to your competitor or someone else that’s worked in that space. You’re building it ground up, and especially with newer businesses or ones that are doing PPC for the this time.

It’s about setting the best practice in place so that the results are getting improved over time rather than just expecting to get crazy high results from the first few days of the campaign running. I think what I found is that with transparent Agency and open communication, good levels of reporting that’s easy to understand, even a regular email or a WhatsApp chat to a client or a quick call just to update them. This calms the storm with them a little bit. They know that you’re the expert. That’s why they’ve employed you to come in and do the job. Ultimately, they trust what you’re saying. It’s all about keeping that trust between the agency and the client so that they know if you say, I’m working on it, we’re going to see growth over several months instead of just straight away. They know they believe that’s what’s going to happen.

Absolutely. Then talking about you are heading the show for PPC at OCPR, right? Team building is crucial getting those PPC specialists, again, there’s a task in itself, right? How do you ensure that you’re building a high-performing PPC team? What are the key qualities that you look at while hiring PPC specialists?

Lazam, we’re a growing agency. We’re going from strength to strength. Every week we’re onboarding new project. We’ve made several new hires recently, and we’re looking at making several more in the next few I think as an agency, we’ve set the standard that we don’t settle for second best. We ultimately look for specialists of a set level where we’re at or above right now. It’s more than just the I don’t know that it ticks the right boxes in terms of somebody could have really good core skills across multiple different platforms. But if they come in and they don’t have really good interpersonal skills, communication skills, or they have any flags where you look at their development over time and have they not progressed or pushed on like they could have done if they just sat in a position? What are they trying to achieve? Because we’re looking for people who want to come here and ultimately develop and grow their PPC experience or one of the other roles that we may have. And in a growing agency, we want people who are going to upskill themselves and cement themselves as specialists because it can’t just be it on us, the heads of department or just the core account managers.

Everybody needs to collaboratively work together to deliver that upskilling that then gets passed on to clients. And in a growing agency, we want people who are going to start, be very flexible, going to go the extra mile. I’ve said many times in interviews, if you’re the person that comes in at 9:01 in the morning and at 4:59, you’re getting your coat on, ready to leave, then maybe this isn’t the right place for you. And that’s as much as about me being honest as possible. But that sounds really serious, but we’re actually really not. We are professionals and we’re really good at what we do, but we also love to have fun as well. We’re really sociable, proactive in maintaining those relationships, but also maintaining relationships amongst the staff as well. We’ll do regular socials with our staff. We’ll take them out. Staff feel really rewarded. Anyone who Who joins us? Well, across the board, sees how welcomed they are, how our onboarding is, how great the company culture is. They’re all things that just should be, for any business, should be just the standard. But we want to take that to the next level. We want people to actively love coming into this office, whether that’s investing in state-of-the-art equipment, arranging regular socials and catch-ups with our team members.

And ultimately, like I mentioned before, Previously, a lot of our staff now love coming into the office. There’s very limited remote working that goes off at OCPR, which I feel after the pandemic, and now we’re moving away from that, is actually better because we can collaborate easier. There’s not the friction of working between WhatsApp and Slack chats. It’s more about I’m sat next to the social media manager, the office manager, the graphic designer. I can pick up projects and get things done with a lot less friction than if I was working remotely. Having all these people love coming into work is really important. But it’s not just about people who are really advanced in their career and they are specialists as well. We’ve also been doing a work with universities. We’ve offered some work shadowing opportunities out. Eventually, as we grow even further, we’ll then start branching out into possibly hiring apprentices. Because I believe that people who are apprentices, just as my background has come from there, sometimes people who’ve been in agencies for a long time, they’ll have picked up bad habits or there’s a saying that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Sometimes it’s easier to train and mold somebody new over a process of 12, 18 months than it is to take someone who’s been in one agency two or three years and done things a certain way and isn’t flexible to change. So that, to me, is where we are right now. And some of the main things that we look for, we want all our staff to come in, we’ve got a really relaxed environment because ultimately, if staff are feeling relaxed, rewarded, valued, all these things that go into keeping staff happy, ultimately, we’re going to get the best results out of it for our clients because their quality of work is going to shine through that. That’s really important to us that we keep our staff happy and then clients get the best out of our staff because of that.

Absolutely, Sam. This has been a real good conversation, Sam. Once again, thank you so much for taking our time to do this with us. But before we let you go, for our audiences, if they want to reach out to you, how and where do they do that?

Yeah, so you can reach out to me. I’m a head of PPC on Sam Critch, though, on LinkedIn. But as a business, you can send us an email to info@ocpr.co.uk, our website, www.ocpr.co.uk I also hold a free consultation for PPC 20 Minutes. It’s called Cup of Tea PPC, and you can find the calendar link on my LinkedIn to book in any questions you have about PPC. Happy to answer them free of charge 20 Minutes consultation.

Lovely, Sam. Thank you so much, man. This was a great conversation. Cheers.

No problem, Ranmay. Thanks for having me.