Today I had a friend reach out to me and when I say a friend, I mean somebody just like you listening to the podcast, bettering their skills, someone who's a subscriber on my YouTube channel and who has looked at my medium articles and trying to better their PPC buying skills. And he had a great question. He was like, how do I get business, how do I get better, how can I learn PPC? And what's crazy is I actually thought he knew PPC, I actually thought he knew PPCs and social. So because I talked to him before and I was like, that's kind of strange, that's a strange thing. So I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, are you certified? And he was like, yes, I'm certified, I have the, I think it was search and it was one other one. Like Google ads search and something else. And I was like, okay, it's better than nothing. But those are, you know, those are vocabulary tests, right? That's literally, I think somebody at high school or even not junior high, but definitely somebody at the high school level, geometry level, algebra level could probably understand that kind, not understand what made a CTR is, but could, I could take them through it that where they could understand it and test well on Google ads. Like, that's not an issue. Why do you think there's so many younger people, college kids trying to get in on the hustle, right? Like Montel Gordon, like he started me was at university, right? That is a lot of high school students doing buys on the side that work for their parents, work for neighbors, work for people at church, et cetera. So now those are younger people trying to get in the industry. Awesome. And I thank them. I think that's great. I encourage them to get blueprint certified though. That's the, that is what separates the little kids from the adults. And it goes really to separate the amateurs versus the professionals. We're going to talk more on this. So going back to my buddy, he said, no, you know, I'm not, whatever, I'm certified, but I kind of don't know how to buy. And I started drilling. I was like, wait a minute, what's kind of? He just doesn't know how to buy. He's never bought before. So we took the test, okay, he took the test. He just doesn't know how to buy. And the first thing I said is stop, stop pitching for business, because he was trying to pitch for business. I stopped that. Don't do it. Why? Because you don't, you don't know what you're doing. You know, PPC, pay-per-click, paid search and social requires mentorship. There's no way to do this job just by watching YouTube videos. There are certain tasks you could do on YouTube through YouTube videos, change your oil, even fix some plumbing issues around the house. I've actually done that through YouTube. I've actually fixed a lot of things around my mom's house just by watching YouTube videos. That's not a hard thing to do. But I'm not running a business or have helping maintaining a client's bottom line, and they're looking at me to save their business. I'm not learning that on YouTube. Now there are certain things I look for on YouTube to elevate my skills like my channel. Like the other day I added an ad to cart remarketing, how to do those. I expanded my meta year one video. I also do a lot, I actually have some great conversion based videos, how to elaborate and learn more about conversions, how to test conversions, all that stuff. But I'm not teaching 101 like this is a click-through rate, and I don't think he was at that level to be honest. He's definitely about that. He's in the platform. But wait a minute. Take a step back for a minute, AI is doing most of these buys, if you've bought in the last 30 days you've seen what I've seen, and it's very become very automated. So you could kind of do that. Now is it going to be the best buy? Not really. But the level of skill required from a buyer now is learning it's far beyond headlines and this stuff. Like yeah, you should know your headlines, you should know this, but you've got to be able to make like any page recommendations. Do you know how to connect to Google Merchant Center? Do you know how attribution works? What's your average attribution by client? Do you know how many days? Do you know how many hits it takes to hit them? There's so many different things. Have you tested your purchase conversions? Or your add to cards, registering a bunch of conversion value, which is messing up your total overall conversion value when you look on the dashboard. Is that happening? There's a whole bunch of things that you need to know and really know how they're connected to the platform before you create a campaign. Like yeah, you need to create a campaign, but you really should not be running ads, learning on the fly of somebody else's time, of a client, of a small business. Note that is I really think my friends, that's borderline taking advantage of somebody and that's what's good. That's what's ruining PPC, paid search and social buying. We need to make sure there's qualified people in these platforms, period. And how do you, so he kind of went back and forth on this and he had a great question. I was like, what do I do? Then what are you suggesting? I said, I told him, I suggested him, I go look, you need, first of all, join my WhatsApp. We have questions on there, but that's more advanced, right? But I think it's a good place to start to better off your skills and that's free. Anybody with a link can join. That's not an issue. And you can just join through my link tree and click and join and as long as you have WhatsApp, you can ask questions all day, I'm in there all day, I contribute and I make sure I've read most of the questions, at least for now. I think it's about roughly 20 people in there. So, and not all of them are active, but still, I mean, as we get, you know, it's been doubling every couple of the, I'd say over the last weeks. So, who knows how big that may have to do a school or something. So, SKOOL, which is done from Alex Hermosey, I think does that, I think I forget. But going back to my friend, I was like, well, my guy, you need to, you need to white label or get hired part time at a agency and learn how to buy and you need to learn, like you need mentorship. You know, don't learn on YouTube, don't learn on YouTube, yeah, I mean, it's great to learn on there if you want the vocabulary, right, you really want to learn, but what are you going to get yelled at by a client? You know, Mike Tyson said it best. He was like, you know, everybody has a great game plan until they're hit in the face with a punch and then the game plan goes away, you're just surviving, right? And I can tell you, my friends, I've been in situations where I've been not only hit in the face, beaten down and come back and saved to the client, right? Because you know, we kind of, you know, either they, what was somebody else and I had, then I had to jump in and say them and they got frustrated and we had to regroup and regroup and regroup and regroup with the reps and career on a strategy and come back and win. And you've got to know how to talk, you've got to know how to, you know, to know how to fix a cash failing campaign. I tell you, man, if you've received no mentorship and you think you could just walk in there and start running campaigns, that's not how this works, my friends. Do you know how conversion value works? Do you know how enhanced conversions work? Do you know how to connect, like I said at Google Emergency Center? Do you know how to think, have you testified to your conversions and GTM and GA, debug tool? Do you know how to work Google Analytics? Do you know how to do some basic drill downs to find the average path of conversion for your conversion flows? You've got to know how to do this stuff. That's the basics and never mind if you have disk connects, you know, you're having disconnects from the path of conversion due to iOS 14 drop off, right? And you're just having conversions, you have to kind of attribute those back, work with a client and say, okay, I think it happened on this day, I don't know. You know, it's a hard job now. You've got to really know what you're doing, my friends, and that's what I'm saying. Whether you're a Google Ads buyer or you're a Med Ads buyer, that's why I love Medabloo Friends. And I'm not paid by them. I've never been paid by Med. I've never been paid by anybody, my friends. This is my belief. This is just from what I've seen because that's vocabulary and that's it's not easy. It's moderately too difficult for a lot of people, but it really put, make sure you understand what to do in certain situations. My boss, when I was at my other agency, no one was certified. I made sure I was, I ended up being second in command. I made sure everyone below me, even the account people were certified because you know what happens when the shit hits the fan and your system buyers out, come here account person, you're going to learn how to buy today. So you have, you know, that goes for all agency people. I hope there's an account people listening, you above all people should be certified. Or, you know, you're the, you're the last mind of defense and, and, and, and an account. If the buyer is missing for a week and he's on vacation or she's on vacation, step right up and learn my friends and go, you ready to survive? It's like, it only makes you a better buyer. I was, I was doing a reporting when I was an account person. I was making recommendations when I was again, an account person because I actually had the basic certification. That was back then, the digital marketer one, but I knew enough. Then when I became in buying, I made sure I had damn how that both had a planning and buying. I've been having it ever since long story short, you know, I had the experience. And I had the certifications and that made sure I didn't have a posture syndrome that made sure that was able to go in front of these hard, difficult clients, these small business owners who are angry and calm them down, bring them in, sue them, say, hey, this is our path. This is our path to optimization. This is our path to scaling. This is it right here. It's it's shocking how many people think they could learn on the fly. And that's what my friends, that's what's goddess in this predicament, PPC. That's why so many clients right now are either try to do buys on their own, right, which is okay. I respect that. But they're learning it because they say, oh, well, you know, the most of buyers I encountered, they're dipshits. They don't know what they're doing. I might as well just try on my own. Hey, if I was a buyer, if I was an owner and I saw some of the buyers I've seen, I'd be the same, I'd be like, shit, I can do better job than this guy. Why not? Should save myself, you know, $1,000 a month retainer, $2,000, $3,000 a month retainer. And that's, you know, that should be, that's what separates my friends, amateurs versus professionals. Are you an amateur or you're professional? Are you an amateur training to be a professional? That's not a professional, a professional is already trained, a professional is mentored, a professional is strong enough to be on their own, strong enough to handle probably about 90% of the issues that go down in that account. Now there are some things like where I've even been asking that, that's because I'm just decent, where they've asked me some conversion pro, like some, how come the data later is not pushing, how come the prices aren't pushing their data later? I don't know. Ask your dev guy. But you know, that's because I've been, I'm so decent where they actually think I'm, I actually even know even that much. So you know, it's, it's really making sure that you are a consummate professional and you're smooth. And you, you, like I said, you have confidence and you're able to, to, to live a long-term, short-term profitable vision for these accounts and make recommendations on the way for creative, for landing pages, all this stuff, again, I want you to ask yourself in PPC and the realm of paid search of social, are you an amateur or you a professional and you really need to take a hard look at yourself. And I, that was my advice for him, I, you know, join my WhatsApp group, talk to me directly. And I had him join my WhatsApp group, but my next, I also advice was get mentored. I can't do it. I already have staff. I already have accounts. I'm, I'm just a busy guy. I can't free up time to mentor a whole, you know, a whole group of people individual one and I'm talking one-on-one mentorship, but you've got to get some kind of mentorship, right? And that's how you learn. Guys, there's so many people trying to learn this job on YouTube and, and, and it's fine. I mean, my YouTube channel is directed for this, but if you notice it's, it's for like the hardest stuff. It's really more informative. It's mostly mostly for more advanced stuff. I'm not going there saying, here's like, here's what a click-through rate is. I'm not sure going in there saying, okay, so this is, you know, this is how you pull reporting. It's like, no, you got to be able to pull reporting and get insights to, you know, you can't go to that level. I mean, if you notice a lot of my, most of my videos that a Delvan met a blueprint met a blueprint means you have a basic understanding of Facebook and advanced ability to understand strategy and lead a client and not have imposter syndrome. And I'm telling you, my friends, that goes, and that covers Google, that covers Google's law. I know you're like, well, wait a minute. Why is Facebook in Google? I don't have two different things. Yes, they are. I actually make, I make sure it's such a hard test, and Google's are so easy and you get cheated on them. I make sure anybody I know is met a blueprint certified, that's just the way it goes. It's such a good way to inspire confidence. It really is. And I know a lot of buyers hate it, I say this in other videos. That platform, that Google Ads platform, slowly turning into like a mini Facebook Ads buyer platform. It really is. That's it. Go look at demand, demand, demand, demand interfaces. They're doing carousels. You know, I never thought that YouTube shorts as vertical video, my friends, you know, it's not. I don't know. I don't know. Bot traffic, don't even get me started. Well, you know, meta has bot traffic too, right? Once I was having done a meta campaign, not had any spam, can it fill up your messenger box? But going back to my friend, that's what I told him. So I'm going to tell you, first of all, are you an amateur or a professional? You got to be a professional. If you're pitching clients and trying to win clients, you have to be a professional. I would be so angry if I was a client and I found out you were my third or second or third client ever to run a Google campaign. That's ridiculous. That's out of control. You should be able to go in there and just slam people and just be like, "Here's your vision. Here's your audit. Here's your vision. Here's where I think you need to go. Here's how you scale. Here's, you know, all this stuff. I actually do audits where I provide that for free and it's like, "Wait a minute, Joseph, why do you do audits? I do them for batting practice. I do that for additional exposure into the platform." So my friends, I think that's a good place to stop and again, I'm going to ask this to you. This is going to be a common theme. I have two themes this year. Meta, year one, I think it's good to understand you passed meta blueprint. What do you do now? Are you an amateur or are you professional? It better be the latter. If you're an amateur, you need to go study meta blueprint. I'm sorry. I'm going to just push that on people all day long. And I know it sucks. People are like, "Oh, that's a Google thing. Yeah, it is." But it's hard. It's good. It's good vocabulary test. It makes you understand what's going on in these platforms. It's a hard test. That's good. Because what you're going to do in Google is me way beyond that, I promise you. So anyways, my friends, I hope you're all well. And I thank you for listening. Watch the YouTube videos and join my WhatsApp channel. And links are on my link tree on my YouTube channel. So thank you so much. And I look forward hearing from you.
