Aashna Makin’s experience with when best practices are counterproductive

In episode 326 from PPC Live Live the Podcast I sat down with Aashna Makin, a senior paid advertisement specialist with more than eight years of experience, who has managed campaigns worth more than $ 2 million a month in a wide range of industries.

She takes us through the story about how a best practice she has submitted led to poor results and how looking back should be more care when adding unnecessary negatives.

An expensive keyword error

Aashna remembers one of her earliest career -misms: excluding the keyword “Meet Up” of a customer’s dating events campaign. The impact was immediately and serious – Leads fell sharply and the performance refueled. Fortunately, her success manager of the customer saw the problem quickly. Instead of bending off the debt, Aashna had owned, corrected the error by removing the negative keyword and restoring the campaign. The experience became a turning point in how she approached PPC.

Lessons learned from errors

The most important lesson? Best practices are not always the best. Aashna realized that blindly follow the standards of the industry without understanding the unique context of the customer, can do more harm than good. Now she takes extra time to understand the industries in which she works, so that her strategy matches customer goals and customer behavior. She also emphasizes the importance of possessing errors – direct managers or customers, instead of hiding errors, building trust and speeding up recovery.

Common pitfalls in PPC accounts

Aashna looks beyond her own experience and points to common mistakes she sees about bills, such as non-over-aging destination pages, outdated promotions and translation of automation. Although checklists, processes and automated tools can be useful, she warns against giving total control of platforms, especially when it comes to advertising and campaign structures. Real value, she believes, comes from careful monitoring, structured tests and, above all, that takes care of the campaigns that you manage as if the budget were yours.

Why talking about mistakes is important

Disadvently about industry as a whole, Aashna emphasizes why talking about mistakes matters. PPC specialists often struggle in silence with similar challenges and open conversations help the entire community grow. For her, mistakes are only harmful when they are hidden; When they are shared, they become lessons for everyone.

An airy end

To complete things in a lighter tone, Anu asks what Aashna would call the film of her PPC career. Her answer? “Answer the universe.” Because in PPC, she says, always answers to customers, to platforms and to unexpected challenges en route.