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Got rejected from a job
Hi, I recently had a job interview for an e-commerce client. I had to do a case study these were the objectives: bring down CPA, increase AOV and scale the account by 400% (in revenue).
The account is 3 years old. I got acces and they were running the following:
– Branded
– DSA
– some search campaigns (exact & phrase only)
– Dynamic display
– 3 PMax campaigns
– Standard shoppingIn the past they’ve had over 40+ search campaigns.
My recommendations were based mostly on increasing efficiency, restructuring and to bring down CPA before scaling. Also they were smart bidding on CPA (sign-up). I said to switch to value-based bidding instead (they had good results in the past).
I didn’t explicitly go into how to scale 400%. Because in my eyes you first grow, then optimise, then grow again and optimise again. When they asked about this, I said that in order to scale you need to bring extra people into the top/mid funnel that might not yet be ready to buy, and this will impact CPA/ROAS. That could include more generic search campaigns, YT, Display, etc. More budget for Pmax.
Since they’ve been growing quickly and CPA was climbing rapidly. I chose to optimise first.
I got rejected because I couldn’t find the “magic button”.
Is this a bullet dodged?
In my eyes it’s growth = increase in CPA > optimise bring down CPA > grow again = increase in CPA. Bit like a yin/yang relationship.
If anyone has any insights please let me know. I’m talking to them again to get more feedback on this next week.
Edit: my recommendations included advise from takesomerisk, solutions 8, etc.
Ie. Run Pmax as a smart shopping campaign, take out the final URL. Etc. -
1 Reply
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Yeah, there is no “magic button”. Probably a good thing that this didn’t pan out, some employers ask for unachievable results.
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Regardless of whether your plan is sound or not, any client that asks you to grow their business by 400% is an idiot, and any media buyer that promises their clients to grow their business by a defined percentage number is a liar.
You just dodged a bullet as you rightly guessed.
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Sounds like they were just looking for ideas. Waste of time
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If there was a magic button, they wouldn’t need to hire a ppc expert. Sounds like they were hoping you’d provide them with a free campaign plan without them ever having to pay you.
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They are asking for a free campaign plan. Usually don’t get baited as you might give too much information. Past projects can be your track record. This client is just an idiot that ppc is just a one button revenue 400% growth. With too much kpis to focus you’ve dodged a bullet!
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Sounds like you dodged a bullet. However if the primary focus of the case were to scale the account 400% in revenue it’s good to reflect about whether you focused too much on profitability in your presentation.
Although I agree with you in your optimise -> scale approach, it’s not always the right way to go as businesses can have other objectives than a high ROAS.Let’s say the company has a strong bottom line and money to invest, with Christmas and January sales coming up they want to push out competitors and grow their brand.
In that case scaling the account by 400% would mean finding a way to massively increase the budget, maybe they are budget constrained?
Anyways just giving my thought on it but likely you are right and dodged a bullet 🙂
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I would have some serious questions about this. Bullet dodged. You thoughts are pretty sound. I’d guess you are not far away from being hired somewhere soon.
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Sounds like they want to scale first but your presentation was focused on efficiency instead. You can scale aggressively and optimize at the same time but you’d need a script to manage that much work and get the desired results.
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