Consulting Spotlight

Michael Bernzweig (00:02.39)
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of consulting success? Tired of sifting through endless noise to find actionable insights that actually move the needle?

Welcome to Consulting Spotlight, your weekly deep dive into the transformative world of professional consulting. Your host is Michael Bernzweig, who in 1998 launched Software Oasis as one of the first platforms enabling businesses to download, license, and deploy software instantly across their networks with a single click. Today, Software Oasis has evolved into one of the leading communities where businesses find top consultants across the USA and Canada.

Each week, Michael sits down with industry titans, innovative leaders, and game-changing executives to bring you exclusive insights you won't find anywhere else. From emerging methodologies to market trends, Consulting Spotlight delivers the strategic intelligence you need to accelerate your consulting career and stay ahead of the curve.

Join our growing community of consulting professionals and decision-makers. Subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform and visit softwareoasis.com/subscribe to get our bi-weekly newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

Get ready for weekly data, trends, analysis, interviews, and insights that will propel your consulting career forward.
Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter https://softwareoasis.com/subscribe/ to stay updated with more insights from technology leaders and transformation experts.

I'd like to welcome everyone to this week's edition of the Consulting Spotlight. My name is Michael Bernzweig, your host, and I'm also the founder of Software Oasis. This week, we're actually joined by Ameet Khabra. She's the founder of HopSkip Media, and she's joining us live on today's episode. So with that, Ameet, welcome to the podcast.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (00:31.315)
Thank you so much for having me, Michael.

Michael Bernzweig (00:33.386)
Yeah, no, very exciting. And I know we had a chance to connect earlier, but for our audience, I know some people that are listening may or may not be familiar with either yourself or HopSkip Media. So I was hoping maybe we could start by sharing a little bit of your journey getting to where you are and a little bit about HopSkip Media and what you do out there.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (00:59.261)
Yeah, so I've been in the industry for almost, actually not even almost, over 16 years now, just this past September. I kind of keep on forgetting. It's been like long enough where you can forget how long you've been in the industry for. I started when I was 19. It was just this random class that I was in that talked about digital marketing and I wrote down Google Ads and analytics in my notebook for whatever odd reason.

Michael Bernzweig (01:08.77)
Wow Yeah

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (01:25.117)
I think it had to do with the fact that they had certification programs at that. I mean, they still do to a certain degree. And I think that was kind of the, the draw was, I can do this test and make it look like I know what I'm doing type of deal. And at that same time, I had started running an events planning company. So I took what I learned in that class, tried to apply it in real life and did that for about two years, three years, something along those lines. And.

Michael Bernzweig (01:51.555)
Sure.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (01:52.859)
Afterwards, I realized that I was really good at ads, but I kind of hated event planning. So I closed up the company and then I moved from British Columbia to Alberta, which is like next province over. And just kind of started working in ads. Somebody sent me a message and said, hey, you've got the certification, you've got the skillset that we're looking for. And at that time, that was literally the only skillset that people really needed because it was still a relatively, I mean, it's still a relatively new career, but it was, mean, Brad's banking new at that point, right?

Michael Bernzweig (02:19.201)
Right.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (02:22.665)
So nobody really knew what to look for. They just needed someone who kind of understood it to a certain degree. And I said, okay, let's try it out. This was like my first big girl account. that quickly morphed into 35 accounts, which then morphed into 68 accounts that I was managing by myself, about $4.3 million from like me barely spending like $5,000 a year to 4.3 million was quite the learning curve.

Michael Bernzweig (02:39.436)
Wow.

Michael Bernzweig (02:47.489)
Yeah, a little bit of a jump, yeah?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (02:50.701)
Yeah, it was really cool. It was a really great experience. I got to like meet like the inside of Google and kind of understand how that it worked at that time. They flew me out to Silicon Valley a couple times. It was a great time. And then eventually it was, you know, one of those moments where I had felt like I was not progressing anymore in my in like my career at that job. So I decided to leave and left for an agency. And that's when I started freelancing a little bit more and

eventually somehow that snowballed into an agency. Just one client at a time, basically. I just kind of was able to create a name for myself by just giving information about ads to people, because at that time, nobody knew what the heck I did for a living. Like everybody, even my family to this day, keeps on saying that I just work for Google and I've just left it at that, because I'm like, too tired to explain this to everyone.

Michael Bernzweig (03:42.783)
Yeah. And it was so abstract, right? At that time.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (03:46.217)
Yeah, it makes sense in their head. I'm like, you know what, who am I to like, kind of correct them and confuse them even further? So I'm like, if this makes them happy, then I'm just going to kind of let them continue with it. So yeah, so it was just word of mouth. And then naturally I needed help. So I hired someone to help me and then I needed more help. And it just kind of kept on going. wasn't, it wasn't a concerted plan on my end. feel like I always knew that I was going to end up running a business at one point or another, but

it definitely wasn't running an agency was definitely not on my bingo card at all.

Michael Bernzweig (04:19.373)
Obviously it sounds like it just kind of happened.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (04:22.267)
It really did. just kind of like, thankfully I, yeah, thankfully I was able to talk about ads in a way that people could understand. So that made them trust me. And then naturally that made them want to give me their account. And then it just kind of kept on progressing. And then naturally, because I mean, not to be cocky, but I am relatively good at my job. So it just kind of helped, further that long.

Michael Bernzweig (04:40.811)
And that's the bottom line. mean, I think, you know, at the end of the day, you know, running paid ads through Google is really like navigating a Jumbo jet and something where you really need to understand every nuance and all of that, because, you know, in the early days, you know, a lot of things were very manual, but now...

many things are not only very automated, but just because of that can just as easily, know, it's almost as if you're fighting against an algorithm on the other end and you really need to stay a step ahead of it because at the end of the day, any funnel that's working today may not be working tonight or tomorrow.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (05:26.046)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Bernzweig (05:33.649)
So it's really, it's a 24-7 type of thing where you really need to be manning the controls.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (05:41.321)
Yeah, yeah, I remember back in the day, I used to scream a lot about it around my Google Ads is not a set and forget it type of platform. And at that time, it definitely was not. is like if at that time, it definitely was not at this point, it's like absolutely critical to never take your eyes off of the account. Because I feel like the feedback loop or the timeline for

Michael Bernzweig (06:03.073)
and

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (06:05.583)
new updates keeps on getting shorter and shorter. Back in the day, we'd have a big update come up and then we'd have like a good couple of months to figure it out and kind of continue with our work and stuff like that. Now it's a big update happens, we get very little information, then we have to go figure it out and then we have another big update that comes up maybe a week or two later and then it's just...

Michael Bernzweig (06:23.795)
Yeah. And, you know, at the end of the day, you're the expert for all of your clients and, they're relying on your expertise to be up to date. And, you know, if things change so quickly as they do in this industry and tech and all of that, you need to be constantly educating yourself and your team. to that end, how do you stay ahead of all the changes in tech?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (06:53.141)
gosh, a lot of reading, a lot of conversations with colleagues and hoping that they can kind of help close that gap. The one thing that I really truly do love about my career is the community. The PPC community is unreal cool. Like you go onto LinkedIn or you go onto Twitter or sorry, X, yeah, X, and just simply just try to find PPC people and more often than not, you'll find someone who's willing to help you.

And I think that's just literally because we want to progress the industry further. We want to make this job a little bit easier for everybody else so we can make it easier for ourselves as well. So kind of selfish, but yeah. So it's just, that's where we kind of go in and kind of get that information. And then usually a lot of it is my own reading. And then I kind of just tell the team what's going on and what the implications are on my end. And then we'll have conversations about that even further.

Michael Bernzweig (07:26.463)
Yeah, I think, and I think it's so important in any industry having community.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (07:48.679)
and then see what the move forward plan needs to look like. Sometimes it's just monitoring and just being aware of the update. So yeah, every update, it doesn't have a one size fits all kind of solution. It's always very dependent on what kind of update it was.

Michael Bernzweig (08:03.125)
Now, just out of curiosity, just taking a little step back because we're located just outside of Boston. So I've been to the facility from Google here in the Boston area. And I'll tell you, it is impressive. as a 20-some-odd-year-old kid for a first job out of school or what have you, can't think of a better place to be.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (08:18.397)
Mm-hmm.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (08:31.037)
Yeah, seriously.

Michael Bernzweig (08:31.681)
Having been at the Google facility in California in the early years, what was it like back then?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (08:39.671)
my God. was a lot of fun. had a lot of it kind of naturally all the buildings that were not supposed to be in are very secure and they won't let us in. But the buildings in themselves were just absolutely unreal. The catering was so cool. I remember just sitting there just like looking at all of this like random stuff that they had put together for us. The hotel that they put us in was really great. Like everything was like top line, everything. So it was honestly every single time was a phenomenal trip.

Michael Bernzweig (08:48.683)
right?

Michael Bernzweig (09:04.685)
Top notch, yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (09:09.489)
I know in college they say that the freshman weight gain there, I'm sure the same thing at Google. I you don't have to go too far from your desk to find something to eat for.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (09:15.154)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (09:19.035)
No, you really don't. They invested a lot of money into all of the infrastructure there and that was really, really cool at the time. don't know if it's still the same thing. It's been years since they've stopped all those programs where they're like, let's bring the advertisers out and let's do this and let's do all of this great stuff. And now we're kind of like people that they don't care about anymore, which is kind of sad, but...

Michael Bernzweig (09:28.297)
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know nowadays, but obviously in the early days.

Michael Bernzweig (09:41.26)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (09:42.833)
Yeah, it was just really cool just to sit there and I'm like, yeah, I could totally see how somebody could gain about 15 pounds working here very, very easily. It's just the food is good. so like it's right in front of you at all times. Like how could you not go by and just pick something up?

Michael Bernzweig (09:49.005)
you

Michael Bernzweig (09:56.62)
Yeah, and everything else in the early days that you needed, know, whether it was daycare or dry cleaning or whatever it is, you know, it's all right there for you. Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (10:02.449)
Mm-hmm. They had pods for sleeping if you needed a nap. Like, that was the coolest thing to me. I was like, this would be amazing at any job place.

Michael Bernzweig (10:11.369)
Now, as far as the team there over at within your agency, is everyone like, like if I were a client, would I have a specific individual working on my team or is it more of a distributed type of account management where multiple individuals are helping out with individual accounts or how do you, how do you divide things up?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (10:40.809)
It's a little bit of a hybrid. So we have a junior analyst who does the execution. They're usually the ones who are kind of developing the strategy and stuff like that. But then we also have a senior analyst who oversees it all. So he'll double check the strategy, make sure that it's actually one that's sound and that will actually bring some kind of results as well. He'll take a look over the accounts and just make sure that they're running the way that they should be. And then he'll do some prelim checks just to make sure that there aren't any errors that we haven't seen.

and then I do another check on top of that. So there's multiple people in the accounts. Yeah, I like to have many eyes on one thing just to make sure that we don't have mistakes.

Michael Bernzweig (11:13.205)
lot of eyes on every account.

Michael Bernzweig (11:20.415)
Now, I guess on the flip side of it, when a client first starts with the agency, what does that onboarding flow look like? What are you trying to assure in every execution that you're bringing onboard or every client?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (11:42.129)
Yeah. So the process typically takes about two to three weeks, depending on like client input and how quickly they're getting back to us and stuff like that. typically it's, whether it depends on whether or not you came in with a new account or if you have an account that has historical data. if you have an account that has historical data, then we're going right in and fixing everything up. the first thing is an audit that we'll basically just end up doing internally. And then we'll go in and just be like, these are the points that we need to fix.

Michael Bernzweig (11:59.138)
Right?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (12:12.417)
And then usually it comes with a plan. Sometimes we don't want to make all the changes all at once because, you know, naturally there's going to be a lot of big swings that happen with that. So then it's more or less of just going, okay, well, what's the most important thing that we have to get fixed? And then what's secondary and what's third, essentially. If it's a new account, then it's more so of just kind of building that trust with that client. So spending a lot of time with them, just talking about where we are, what the progress looks like, learning more about their business.

Michael Bernzweig (12:20.343)
Right.

Michael Bernzweig (12:37.495)
Mm-hmm.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (12:39.913)
So that way we can write better ad copy, we can do a little bit more better research. And then at the end of it, our hope is that obviously we're able to get results almost immediately. That's always kind of the name of the game, at least for me. But sometimes with some businesses, it takes a couple of weeks, sometimes it takes a couple of months. And then really just helping with that expectation of being like, okay, this is how this is going. We're turning it on. It doesn't mean that all of a sudden there's gonna be a fountain of leads. We have to figure out a couple of things before we get there.

Michael Bernzweig (12:59.725)
Yeah.

in

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (13:08.445)
So that's usually kind of the, with a new client, it's really just making sure that we're setting the expectation correctly. And then we're also making sure that they're aware of what we're doing at all times. So one thing that I've noticed with like the agencies that I'm not a big fan of is that they'll usually just kind of keep you out of the loop. It's almost like a black box type of service nature where you're just like giving them money and you don't know what's happening. I don't want that. I hated that.

So for me, it's very, very much important that we make sure that our clients stay on communication and then also the education part of it as well is that sometimes clients don't know what we do for a living, very much like my family, like I said earlier. So it's more or less just really breaking it down for them so they get to a place where they're comfortable. Because at the end of the day, they may not be with us forever, and that's just the reality of business.

Michael Bernzweig (13:39.297)
So communication is huge.

Michael Bernzweig (13:48.608)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (14:00.797)
But I want to make sure that if they were to walk into a different relationship, that they walk in much stronger than they did when they walked into a relationship with us. Yeah, I definitely want to leave things better than how I found them.

Michael Bernzweig (14:08.045)
Sure, and obviously, yeah, and there's so much detail to what you're doing. So when you're working with a new client, there typical places where they're at when they first meet you in terms of the reason that they're reaching out to you? they typically?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (14:15.709)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Bernzweig (14:34.163)
starting from scratch, are they typically in a scenario where they're not happy with their current provider, or are there some other typical scenarios that you see?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (14:46.055)
Yeah, I would say like, obviously at the start of my career, most of them were newer accounts and that's because a lot of people didn't know about ads. Now, as my career has evolved and so has the company, we've noticed that the clients that we end up getting are people who are already advertising and they're just simply not happy with either the internal efforts that they're doing or the agency that they're working with. And that kind of comes back down to that communication loop, especially with the agencies. It's a big complaint that we've always kind of gotten or like,

Michael Bernzweig (14:53.58)
Yep.

Michael Bernzweig (15:06.701)
Mm-hmm.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (15:14.889)
I guess question is like, do we or how are we going to be sure that you're not going to forget about us? It's like some kind of line in that thinking where it's just like, you know, we work with this agency, they don't really give us very much updates, they don't really talk to us a lot. It feels like we just pay a bill and they've forgotten about us in a sense. And so for them, that's usually kind of the big scare where they're like, is this going to be another agency where we do this? And the answer is a flat out no.

Michael Bernzweig (15:22.668)
Right.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (15:43.911)
really at this point, like I deliberately hired a director of client retention, which was the smartest and honestly, probably the most annoying thing that I've done to myself. Because he's kind of the client advocate. He goes in and he advocates for the client. He comes in and he just goes, you know what, guys, we're not doing enough. you know, there was this thing that we were supposed to do. You guys haven't done it. Why haven't we? Like, he really does push us quite a bit. And like our client retention rates show.

Michael Bernzweig (15:54.391)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (15:58.413)
You

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (16:11.793)
that it's effective, right? Like when a client comes, they don't leave. Like we don't have clients that leave or one of our longest standing clients is about to hit eight years in about a month or two. we're just a great place to be. That's just honestly the truth, but like it's because I've put in these checks and balances to make sure that we don't become an agency that does not care about that client. Like the way that I was able to develop my career in the first place was to be so entrenched in that business.

Michael Bernzweig (16:16.567)
Right.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (16:41.395)
that it felt like it was mine. And I almost acted like it was mine. So when I saw numbers that are down, I was calling the CEO before they could even call me, right? Like it was those random things. And that's how we kind of just stay proactive in our accounts as well, is just making sure that we just do that.

Michael Bernzweig (16:41.665)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (16:49.013)
Yeah, and you want to be ahead of the curve, obviously, is what it sounds like.

Michael Bernzweig (16:56.917)
Interesting. So aside from Google, are there other platforms that sometimes a client may already be on or you might suggest to a client depending upon the type of product or service that they're marketing?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (16:58.217)
Mm-hmm.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (17:13.351)
Yeah, so our core competency is in Google Ads, but we do a lot of meta ads as well. But we do have a couple of clients who do other platforms as well. So I think we're currently on Quora, TikTok, and LinkedIn with a couple other clients. But the two core are Google and Meta. And then if we see that it's a better fit somewhere else and the client has the ad spend to justify going to a different platform, then we will suggest it.

Michael Bernzweig (17:18.817)
Okay.

Michael Bernzweig (17:39.077)
I like it, I like it. And are there certain industries or types of clients that your agency seems to either attract or do the best with in terms of where you're adding the most value or you really feel most aligned with?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (17:58.953)
Yeah, I feel like if you asked me this question like a year ago, the answer would have been completely different. Um, cause my core competency is in lead generation. I love figuring out what somebody needs to know before they submit a contact form. Um, how can I get this plumber more calls? Like it's just like a nice little puzzle that I've always tried to figure out. And it's always just been really, really fun for me. Um, but we did hire senior strategist about six, seven, possibly more than that. Um, months ago.

Michael Bernzweig (18:07.949)
Mm-hmm.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (18:28.369)
and he's got a really great e-commerce background as well. So now at this point, it's just a mix of everything because we know that we can handle it all. But if we're asking my preferences, it's always going to be lead generation. It's just going to have a special place in my heart.

Michael Bernzweig (18:28.417)
Right?

Michael Bernzweig (18:43.499)
Sure, sure, no, and that makes a lot of sense. And are clients in different spaces in terms of, you know, do you see clients that are promoting mostly services versus mostly products or is it across the board?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (19:00.489)
It's kind of across the board with e-comm. It's a lot more product-based. Maybe we've got a toy company. We work in furniture as well. Knife actually is a really cool one as well. So like it just kind of ranges in terms of like if we're talking about specific industries. Lead generation very much the same, but what we've noticed, or at least from our portfolio, it's mainly real estate or home services that we tend to work with.

Michael Bernzweig (19:04.62)
Right?

Michael Bernzweig (19:10.604)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (19:18.892)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (19:28.87)
So home developers, HVAC or plumbing type of companies, those guys do, we do really, really good work for those kind of businesses as well.

Michael Bernzweig (19:37.71)
And as far as obviously driving the traffic and getting the right cost and all of that, that's important. But do you jump into the equation in terms of the other end of it of helping clients with their landing pages and things like that? Or do you advise them on strategies? Or what do you see there on the flip side of it to make sure they're?

getting the kind of conversions that they're hoping for.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (20:10.075)
Yeah, so right now we don't offer like landing pages services. It's something that I've been thinking a lot more about because I'm like, this makes sense as a service offering for us. But what we actually end up doing is we'll take that, we'll give the client feedback on the landing page. Yeah, this is this section of your website isn't really all that great. Here are the reasons. Yeah, so then we'll kind of help them and kind of get them to work on the page so we can get to a level where we're comfortable or much more happier with the page, I guess.

Michael Bernzweig (20:19.189)
Sure.

Michael Bernzweig (20:28.737)
Yeah, like best practices and things like that. bet you.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (20:40.66)
But sometimes everyone's hands are a little bit tied, so sometimes we just have to deal with or work with what we have. But we're pretty lucky now, I would say, maybe not so much a couple of years ago, but we're definitely luckier now that we have clients who have a developer or they're pretty savvy themselves that they can kind of go ahead and do it.

Michael Bernzweig (20:58.559)
Yeah, and it's amazing how a lot of the platforms themselves have evolved to the point where a lot of the challenges with just implementing best practices were things that had to be done manually. And now a lot of these platforms have a lot of that just baked into the foundational core functionality.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (21:24.924)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, definitely.

Michael Bernzweig (21:26.775)
Yeah, so that's great. Now you mentioned meta as well. And I know it's hard to generalize, but are there certain types of solutions that you find like out of the gate if you're speaking with a client that you're like, no, you're definitely going to do way better with a meta campaign versus a Google campaign versus some other platform or?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (21:31.369)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Bernzweig (21:56.034)
Or is it hard to generalize?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (21:58.921)
I think industry-wise is really kind of the best tell. E-commerce does really, really great on Meta because it's a physical product. People need to see it or kind of understand what it looks like and that kind of stuff. Where on Google, it's much more intent-based. So you'll naturally see more searches that are more like, how do I do these things? And then you can kind of swoop in and...

Michael Bernzweig (22:03.255)
Mm-hmm.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (22:25.233)
be able to answer that question, which is why for plumbing companies and stuff like that, works really, really well. Like, how do I unclog my pipe? Well, you can call a plumber or you could do this, right? Like, you have that option. You're not going to find that on Meta. People aren't searching for... I mean, they are searching to a certain degree, but they're not actively searching how to unclog a pipeline or a pipe or whatever. So they're probably looking at like jeans or shoes or something that they saw another influencer wear. So that's where we kind of...

Michael Bernzweig (22:33.858)
Right.

Michael Bernzweig (22:48.886)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (22:53.223)
when we're doing the split set, something that we take a lot of consideration into is, is this more of a B2C product or is this like something that could be B2B? Where do we see that? What platform works better for that? And then we kind of go further down with our research from there.

Michael Bernzweig (23:02.998)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (23:10.507)
Now, if you were to bullet point a few of the common mistakes that you see clients making, maybe if they're trying to run ads on their own or from other spaces that they might be working with other agencies, what are the biggest mistakes that you see? What do you see over and over again that just drives you crazy?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (23:36.489)
Oh gosh, I could probably talk about this for like 40 hours.

Michael Bernzweig (23:40.077)
I so, I thought so. That's why I didn't ask you at the beginning.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (23:44.937)
I know it's hard. My top, I'll condense it down to top two. And I think both can be applied to Google and Meta. The first is like a set it and forget it philosophy. I absolutely hate it. I don't believe you should be setting and then forgetting hundreds if not thousands upon thousands of dollars to just do the work that it's supposed to do or you've assumed it to do. Platforms like

Michael Bernzweig (23:51.178)
Okay.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (24:13.033)
Madam actually, no, I wouldn't even say matter is good at like, so well, that's it. Then I sit there and I think about it. And sometimes these companies are spending like 500, 600, maybe even $1,000 a day. And you're like, you want me to leave this here and do nothing? Like, that's a lot of money. Even if it was only $30 a day, it's still a lot of money to be just like, okay, yeah, we're just gonna leave it here.

Michael Bernzweig (24:15.509)
It's real money, you know? I think that's the...

Michael Bernzweig (24:27.447)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (24:35.765)
so that's probably going to be my first one is that if you're doing ads and you want to run them yourself, you need to really commit to checking them at least 15 minutes a day, just to make sure that nothing's gone off the rails. I would never launch a campaign on a Friday. That's just like a me thing. And I feel like it's probably industry wide. It's just because Saturday and Sundays, the user behavior changes. But also if something goes down and you're not in the office during that timeframe and you're enjoying your weekend, you've just burned through.

Michael Bernzweig (24:44.055)
Yep.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (25:05.107)
who knows how much money for what. So I love Mondays to start, because then it gives me the five days just to watch the campaign in my regular cadence. And that way when I do leave for the weekend, I feel much more secure about it. And then the other part is conversion tracking. This is like still, this has been a problem, honestly, like my entire career and it hasn't actually gotten much better, which is kind of a little upsetting to me, just because like,

Michael Bernzweig (25:13.036)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (25:34.053)
If we're spending money, we should know how it's working for us. I want to know how much money it's bringing back in. Like if we're an e-commerce brand and I'm not tracking how many purchases I'm getting off of my Google ads account, then how do we know if Google ads is effective? And I don't really want to use like, well, revenue is up.

Michael Bernzweig (25:49.526)
It's not like the old days where, you know, you're in billboards or TV ads and you couldn't track conversions. It was, yeah, it's available.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (25:55.217)
Yeah. And now we finally have that data. I want it.

Yeah, why would I want to go back into like what I honestly feel like archaic old in time traditional advertising, which still has its place in the world, but like we can't track it. We can try with vanity URLs and, and, like forwarding numbers and stuff like that, but that still doesn't give us a very clear picture, right? Like that could have been me using that vanity URL could have been me sending it to somebody and you'll never be able to tell that that happened.

And like, those are those things where I'm like, okay, well, I don't know if this is really like the best use. mean, I shouldn't say anything bad about traditional, but like, I just don't think it's the best tracking method. I'd rather just be able to follow that person everywhere and then be able to kind of make that conclusion on my own of where they came from, what they did, how they did it.

Michael Bernzweig (26:43.949)
Sure.

Michael Bernzweig (26:49.889)
Yeah, and it's, I'll be honest with you, it is a little scary, the volume of tracking that is possible in today's.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (26:58.799)
It is, I know. For a consumer, can totally see it. I mean, I am a consumer myself, but like, I work on the other end of it and I see the value in it. And it's just, it sucks because now we're going almost backwards with all of the privacy laws and stuff like that, which are necessary 100%.

Michael Bernzweig (27:07.187)
Absolutely.

Michael Bernzweig (27:15.219)
Yeah, but I think it's also important, you know, to give consumers, you know, control over their data. But I think it's also the type of thing where a lot of consumers may not even understand, you know, what it is that they're enabling or disabling.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (27:22.216)
Mm-hmm.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (27:34.799)
No, and I think that's where think government's kind of messed up a little bit is that I feel like all the tech products that we have probably should have been free. If they're collecting information on us, then we shouldn't be paying them for it. Like that's the flipped logic that doesn't make any sense to me. like, I feel like if we did give the, or if we received these products for free or something along those lines or paid for our data,

we wouldn't have the privacy laws going as hard as and as aggressive as they are right now because everybody would have a better understanding of what they were doing. So yeah, so I yeah, that's a flip tended on something else that I'm just going to stop myself on by. I just feel like.

Michael Bernzweig (28:13.069)
That's okay. No, no, that's fine. And I guess, you know, for individual tools and things like that, do you have some favorite conversion tracking tools that you really are very, very excited about?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (28:32.969)
For conversion tracking, I used the Google Tag Manager that they've given us. I think that's a great tool. I've used it for almost a decade, if not longer possibly now. And it's one that I've loved because it's just so, I mean, it's not easy. If you know JavaScript, then it's kind of easy. But it's a really great way to just be able to control your tracking without having to give the power to someone else really at this point. Like you get to...

Michael Bernzweig (28:36.96)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (28:43.692)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (28:51.5)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (29:01.059)
you own that track, like all that tracking essentially and you're, if something breaks, you'll be able to fix it versus waiting around for someone else to go in and do it.

Michael Bernzweig (29:07.529)
Yeah, waiting for a developer to jump in and adjust code and all kinds of crazy stuff.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (29:11.973)
Yeah. And I mean, obviously at that point, like if you aren't tech savvy, then you would need to like a developer, but then at the very least you own it all. It's all yours. You can take it to another agency, whatever, like whatever you want to do. so I'm a really big fan of GTM.

Michael Bernzweig (29:22.827)
Yep. Yeah. And you know, at end of the day, Tag Manager is not all that crazy hard to implement, but

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (29:30.171)
Yeah, it's relatively simple and there's so many great educators out there on GTM as well, like especially on the YouTube side. So like even practicing on your own website, which is something that I did when I was first getting started with GTM was I just practice on my website. just put a bunch of random CTAs everywhere and I was like, okay, let's see which ones I can track and which ones I can't, right? And that helped. And now because they have like a debugging tool, you're able to see what's working, what isn't much more clearly than we ever have been.

Michael Bernzweig (29:35.266)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (29:47.37)
Thank

Michael Bernzweig (29:58.102)
Yeah. And you know, nowadays, I mean, between Google search console and Google analytics and, and all of that and tag manager, I mean, you really have a complete suite right, right within the Google ecosystem.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (30:11.465)
Mm hmm. It's great. mean, admittedly, we're giving them all the information at this point. So then we want to talk about Google in itself. That's a completely different conversation. But I think for just simplicity, I think the Google products, especially on analytics and GTM are sufficient. If you're looking for something deeper than obviously going outside of those platforms is going to require funds as well as just a little bit more know how. So yeah, so it kind of just depends.

Michael Bernzweig (30:37.225)
Yeah, and I would say that, you know, the early days, Google was all alone. They didn't have any competition. you know, really, think as the whole space has matured, think competition has actually been beneficial. think we've seen a lot of

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (30:47.208)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Bernzweig (31:00.589)
A lot of exciting advances in the whole Google ecosystem and responsiveness to clients and consumers and all of that. So I think that's good at the end of the day. And you've probably seen that same journey.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (31:13.713)
Yeah, I think so. It's made them build a better product, but it's also kind of made them make some really interesting moves. So then at that point, I just go, I wonder if they would still do this if they didn't have competition. And I mean, there's no way for us to ever know about this now, but it's just like a fun little mental exercise for yourself, right?

Michael Bernzweig (31:26.317)
Yeah. Yeah, there's no, no way to know. So no, that's exciting. And I think a lot of, um, lot of different, uh, clients that are, you know, exploring, know, whether they're, you know, SAS organizations or, know, home service contractors, local, you know, organizations that are doing local SEO or.

local paid ads, you know, it's all, it's one component of the whole marketing mix and just figuring out how everything works together and fits together and how to run different campaigns. Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (32:09.811)
And I think that's another tip too, right? Is that ads should not be the only thing that you're doing in your marketing mix. And there's been a lot of businesses that we've even worked with that like their success of like their company hinges on their ads and that's an incredibly scary place to be. So like really focusing on your organic before you move into paid is something that I would suggest for a lot of businesses just cause like we don't know if we're gonna have Google ads forever.

We don't know if Google is going to be existent in like a year or two. Like those are things that we just don't have guarantees on. Now what happens, right? Like if you've only relied on ads. So yeah, that's also something to think about is just like your actual marketing mix and what's actually in that.

Michael Bernzweig (32:50.413)
Yeah, and you've had a, you have a really long history and unique perspective from where you sit, you know, as you've grown your agency and, you know, with the range of clients that you're working with, and I'm sure many long-term clients that have been with you for years, but other, some things that you see coming, you know, as we're, you know, just early in 2025 within pay-per-click.

that particularly excite you or things that you think are on the horizon that you think are going to change the trajectory of where paper click is heading.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (33:29.679)
Yeah, I don't know if it's excitement. I think it's more or less of fear really at this point because I don't know exactly what's happening. Before I used to be able to see them pretty clearly. Like Google would make a new update, I'd be able to see what the plan was, what the game plan was. And now it's just they've gotten a lot more strategic about everything and a little bit more vague in their explanations. So now we're kind of having to read between the lines on a lot of stuff.

Michael Bernzweig (33:34.091)
Okay, you know, that's fair. It's the opposite, right?

Michael Bernzweig (33:53.056)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (33:57.575)
I'm really excited just to see how AI plays out, especially in the platforms. They've been heavily relying on them for years now. Even before AI was a buzzword, right? Like we just called it machine learning. Like that was just, it was a different word that we were using, but it's essentially kind of the same thing. So I'm just really interested in seeing how they build those models out a little bit more. It almost feels like they're all in like this race to like the end, but I don't know what the end looks like.

Michael Bernzweig (34:22.325)
Yeah. And just my sense from the outside in, I you know, I think is it almost a false sense of security for businesses in terms of, you know, some of these campaigns, like even with some of the programmatic options and some of the AI options and things like that, almost a false sense of security, you know, being too reliant on some of the tech versus, you know, really

having that deep focus on a very hardcore team that's really managing the day to day.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (35:02.183)
Yeah, and I think when we get into talks about Performance Max, which is essentially just a big black box of we don't really know, it becomes a little bit interesting because then we're sitting there going, OK, so we have to just trust the process and we just need to put in the inputs and just kind of back off from there. And I think that's kind of a little bit terrifying because it's just like, I don't think.

Michael Bernzweig (35:08.343)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (35:27.431)
And I'm not saying this because I do this for a living. I don't think ads should ever be something that's automated. I don't believe a machine should be running your campaigns. There's just too much context that it doesn't understand that humans do. And we've seen that in performance max. We've seen that just in general with even like broad match and stuff like that, like how they're, they're, they're matching up certain queries with certain keywords that we're bidding on. Like sometimes it makes no absolute sense and that's a machine doing that.

Michael Bernzweig (35:38.54)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (35:57.291)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (35:57.977)
It's not a human going, yes, approved. Yes, approved. It's a machine making that decision in like a millisecond. And it's already showing us how it's failing on that front. I would not trust a whole machine to do everything. So when they push performance max and eventually search max, which is a newer format that's going to be coming out relatively soon, I think it gets a little scary. Cause I'm like, okay, so at what point, how do we, it's more or less of just figuring out how do we figure out how to put these inputs in and control the system as much as we possibly can.

Michael Bernzweig (36:00.855)
Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (36:27.409)
within random little loopholes that we've created to be able to maintain that control. So the conversation that's been happening in the industry is like, well, is there a need for us eventually at some point? They're going to probably try this. Let's just face it, they're a business. They're naturally going to want to cut out the middle person, right? But at that point, what happens? Do we have a need for a human to be in the ad account? My argument is yes, every single time.

Michael Bernzweig (36:55.831)
Yeah, and it's it's

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (36:56.177)
And again, it goes back to that context. If PMAX starts spending like thousands of dollars and it's not doing anything for you, it's not going to turn itself off. It doesn't know to, but I do. I know that something's off when I check your account every single day. Right? So then there's that whole bit, those pieces in there where I sit there and I'm like every person that's argued that we don't have a career in five years is actually incredibly incorrect in my, from my perspective. I don't think you can cut out humans.

Michael Bernzweig (37:04.109)
You're right.

Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (37:22.593)
Yeah. And I'd agree with you. I mean, I think, you know, one of the challenges and I think, I think, you know, the team over at, Meta has, has really figured this out is, know, I think this next generation of advertisers, you know, may not be as sophisticated as some of the earlier generations because they don't need to be.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (37:25.729)
that easily.

Michael Bernzweig (37:47.394)
You know, it's, it's, I almost want to equate it to, know, in the early days, you know, if you were launching a website, everything was done in code. You know, there was, there was no, you know, Stripe, there was no, no, no platform like Shopify, you know, if you, if you were launching a website, you, you, launched it in code, you wrote everything and you went through a whole KYC process to get your payment methods approved and same thing.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (38:02.416)
Mm-hmm.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (38:15.399)
Dreamweaver was like my favorite thing in the entire world at one point. Like I used to just sit there and try to figure out how to code just based off of that. Cause I had that dual view where you could do code on one side and you could see what has happened to go on the other. I loved it. Absolutely loved it.

Michael Bernzweig (38:25.589)
Yeah. Yeah. And today, I mean, I think even advertising and I think Google, Google may be a little bit behind the eight ball on this. think, you know, the team over at Metta has really been ahead of making their solution much more streamlined, you know, for a new advertiser in terms of, you know, yeah, just

tell us what you're trying to do and we'll figure out how to get it done. Whereas I think the Google campaigns are still like driving that jumbo jet where you have so many micro controls and for somebody that really knows what they're doing, yes, you can get every last ounce of efficiency out of it, but for somebody that doesn't, it can be devastating.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (39:15.113)
Yeah, I kind of liken meta ads to like an iPhone because like iPhones are for like, for users who don't want a lot, like they want the bells and whistles, but they don't necessarily understand how to use that tech, right? So iPhones really, really user friendly, whereas androids are maybe a little bit more complex. I mean, at the end of the day, they're all phones, right? But when they first had come out, like,

Michael Bernzweig (39:32.598)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (39:38.027)
Yeah, and I will give it to you.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (39:40.793)
iPhone was definitely the user friendly phone and then Android was a little bit more complex. And that's kind of the difference between Meta and Google. Meta is a little bit more user friendly or it was, and Google has always had too many knobs to kind of go and push and pull and turn.

Michael Bernzweig (39:55.788)
Yeah. And I will throw this out. I don't know if you've played with the ad interface that Google has implemented for YouTube. But since they're dealing with a much, much less sophisticated audience, a lot of creators, they've really streamlined the interface to the point where there's so little capability.

that maybe they've gone too far to the other extreme, but I think they've kind of adjusted the interface for the audience. And I think they understand the challenges and they're watching on both ends of it to get the right balance. So it's interesting. And are you speaking to a guy who the first ad I ever ran was a penny a click. So a little bit of perspective there. There are no.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (40:49.319)
The good old days. Yeah, I wish we could go back to that so badly.

Michael Bernzweig (40:50.061)
ads for a penny a click. So, well, I really appreciate it. I mean, I think this has been a great deep dive, you know, really focusing on a lot of the core tech. If you were to leave our audience with a couple of bullet points as to some actionable tips that they can take today, you know, with their Google ad campaigns to, you know, tweak out a little more performance or understand if they're

in over their head and they really need to reach out to to a pro. What would you say to our audience?

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (41:26.793)
So I've got quite a few things. First and foremost, if you're running a Google Ads account and you do not have conversion tracking set up, do not run a Google Ads account. You're throwing money into a black bottomless pit. It is not worth it. If that means, like, and I do understand that sometimes people don't have the know-how to do the conversion tracking and maybe hiring someone is a little outside of the budget, but then delay your ads.

for a month or two or however long you need, I want to make sure that you start your ads at the best possible footing and you will not be able to start with the best possible footing if you do not have conversion tracking set up. The other part is negative keywords. This is one of the other random little knobs that you have to kind of turn in Google Ads and negative keywords are essentially me telling you what words I do not want to show up for. So free adult rated type of words.

cheap, those kind of things. I don't want to show up for those. I'm not cheap. I'm not free. We're going to put those in a negative keyword and tell Google never show up, show, never show me for a term that has free, cheap, or any other word that I do not want in there. They also have something called auto applied recommendations inside of the Google Ads platform that will be like, you know what? We've noticed that like you,

Michael Bernzweig (42:43.277)
Mm-hmm.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (42:50.089)
keep on showing up for these key terms or something like that, like outside of what you've already chosen, maybe you should add them into your ad account. And a lot of users will sit there and be like, wow, like, yeah, Google's telling me to do this. This means that they are telling me to do it because they can make me more money with this. No, Google is a business. It's not a charity. It's my favorite saying to say about them because it's so true.

Michael Bernzweig (43:05.558)
Right.

Yeah.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (43:13.033)
Because I feel like a lot of people seem to think that because Google in itself is free to use that like everything else is just like they're just giving us information. They're not. They're trying to find ways to make us pay them more. So these auto applied recommendations are basically that. Sometimes they are good, but you really have to take your time and go through all of them and really sit there and be like, does this make sense for my business? Do not auto apply everything. You will regret it. I can guarantee that.

Michael Bernzweig (43:41.876)
I love it.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (43:41.961)
And then the last one I'm going to leave with is something called optimization score. So Google will tell you to do a bunch of things in your ad account and then give you an Opti score. The Opti score is a diagnostic tool. It does nothing to your ad account. You could have 0 % in your ad account will not change in performance. You could have 100 % and it still won't change in performance. Again, it's just another tool for them to kind of control what to do and how to tell you what the best practices are when

In reality, there's something different. So yeah, I think the general theme is don't trust everything Google's telling you to do. If an ad rep calls you, again, grain of salt it, really sit there, think about why they're telling you to do it. And then if it actually makes sense for you to do that. Cause yeah, at the end of the day, I'm just a little sick and tired of watching business owners like dump thousands of dollars into Google ads by making these, what I feel like are tiny mistakes admittedly much larger for a business owner who doesn't know.

how to do this because these are tiny little things that are in my mind, tiny little things that you can do to mitigate a lot of wasted ad spend.

Michael Bernzweig (44:48.065)
Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. Well, anyways, I really appreciate you taking the deep dive with us today. Once again, Ameet Kabra over at Hopskip Media and we'll leave a link in the show notes for anybody that would like to reach out to you or your team to take a one-on-one dive into some of the options and their specific scenario. So appreciate that. And for anybody that is

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (44:55.485)
Of course.

Michael Bernzweig (45:17.609)
not familiar in addition to consulting spotlight. We also have two other podcasts. We have career spotlight and we have the Software spotlight. So be sure to check those out. And if you want to keep up to date with everything going on over here at Software Oasis, head over to Software Oasis.com backslash subscribe and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

So once again, Ameet Khabra, thank you so much for joining us today.

Ameet Khabra (She/Her) (45:50.035)
Thank you so much for having me, Michael.