Split testing, tracking and not taking things too personally: an interview with Charlie Couch

We caught up with Charlie Couch; data-enthusiast, home improvements extraordinaire, and co-owner and founder of creative agency, Tandem, to get her thoughts and advice on all things PPC…

Charlie, you've spent more than a decade optimising paid search strategies. In your experience, where do most people go wrong? What are the most common mistakes you come across, or areas that people could improve on?

Relying on broad match keywords, without introducing enough negative keywords, is a common theme that crops up. It just means you’re likely to be paying for clicks that aren’t relevant enough to your business. The problem is, often this won’t be visible to the client unless they visit the search query report, but you could be wasting 30 or 40% of your click spend on useless traffic, so addressing this should be a priority to bring your CPA down drastically.

I’d also say a lack of tracking holds people back. If you can track as much as possible – from forms, to phone calls or key pages you’re aiming to direct people towards – then you can learn what’s working and what’s not from the data. That information is invaluable.

Obviously you work across a range of digital marketing channels. How do you feel paid search, in particular Google Search Ads, fit in with a wider strategy? What sets it apart?

One of the best things about PPC is that you can apply the learnings from it to other areas, harvesting the most successful headings and messaging for other digital channels.

The agility of PPC is another reason it’s such a useful tool. The ability to turn it on or off instantly, as well as constantly experiment, gives it the edge, in certain situations, over other channels that take longer to reap the benefits, such as SEO.

There’s no doubting your love of paid search! Do you have any particular favourite features or tools when it comes to PPC? 

I love experiments. Split testing different settings is the best way to learn what methods are most effective, and take action based on these findings.

In my opinion, not enough people take advantage of this.

As someone who has gone from working at digital agencies to running her own agency, what's been the biggest challenge? 

There’s definitely an added pressure to owning an agency. When you’re employed by someone else, however hard you work and however much you care, there’s a buffer. When it’s your agency, the buck stops with you. But it’s also a positive; you want your own agency to be the best it possibly can be, and while you may feel any possible negatives more closely, the positives mean more as well.

The flexibility is a bonus too; being able to work your own hours means you can take advantage of the times you’re most productive, as well as balance work around family life.

What do you feel the most common issues are that clients have with agencies and what can agencies do to make the relationship smoother? Likewise, how can clients help agencies get the best results from their campaigns? 

I think communication is often the biggest stumbling block. With agencies, it’s quite common to resort to email as the main method of communication, over phone calls or face-to-face meetings. Often the work is being done, but if this isn’t communicated to the client, doubts can start to form. By communicating more regularly and updating them on what you’re doing, and more crucially, why, I think clients would have more confidence in their agencies.

Likewise, I think there’s a responsibility on clients to make sure they are keeping their agency abreast of any changes their end too. Company news, updates to a website, or even offline marketing can have an impact on the stats, so it’s important your agency are aware of this when they’re looking at your analytics.

And finally, what do you wish you'd known earlier in your career? This could be a tool you wish you'd been aware of earlier, a skill you wish you'd know about sooner, or just a life lesson that would have helped you handle a situation differently. 

Try not to take things too personally. It’s hard, but at the end of the day, clients do sometimes leave. It happens to everyone, so it’s important not to take it to heart too much. Have confidence in your skills – it’s easy to doubt yourself but if you know what you’re doing and you’ve proven your results, then take confidence from that.

Tandem are a fully integrated creative agency based in the stunning studios on the Hylands Estate, Chelmsford, Essex