Great video Austin. For the one specific client example I shared - we are 7 days into creating a whole different Google Ad account and starting fresh with max clicks to move into conversions once we have that data. The account is doing well and yesterday brought in 4 leads in one day from Google Ads which we had not had in a while. If you have an agency it is crucial during this timeframe you are SUPER communicative with your clients. They will easily freak out and think "Ah Tammy is losing her edge I need to get someone else.". The grass is NOT greener in this regard. Luckily I have great relationships with my clients and I don't shy away from the tough conversations. If you have a service based business clients you have to first maintain great communication. You go to them - don't wait for them to come to you and ask what is happening. TELL them what is happening. Also, we are focusing now on getting all websites stronger organically, that has always been a focus but now we are super on it. Also, growing the customer's lists and leveraging that through email marketing. Working on our offers by making them better and getting people to take action. Also reviews - luckily for MOST of my clients we are in the top 3 pack for our main keywords - the ones that aren't we have them on the job of getting more reviews and they are even incentiivizing their employees when they bring in reviews. The clients I had that we were not doing Facebook ads for we are doing that now even if its just retargeting website traffic which is another thing you must be doing is retargeting. The final thing is we are learning microsoft ads (duck duck go) where I didn't spend much time in the past but because we have no choice but to diversify our reach we are now on this as well. Also, I made a recent decision, for the time being I am not bringing any clients into my practice that want Google Ads whereas their average customer value is more than $2500. It's just become too stressful.

@Val Hurst Just the stress of it that is all. I am moving more toward clients I can create simple facebook ad funnels for.

Austin thank you for your response. I did neglect to say in my question that I was not considering covid years. That was a fluke and we can't use that timeframe when making data driven decisions. The problem is this is a business that needs leads. This is a handyman business that has literally had to let people go because they do not have enough work. The other thing is I am expected to perform and when I don't I lose that client. This is a client however that has been with my practice for more than 10 years. He is not going to just drop me and go to another agency that is circling around like sharks and making promises like 2 of my other "uneducated" clients that did. I have also made a decision I will not be bringing anymore Google Ad glients into my practice, it's just too volatile and I am exhausted by it. I did in fact start up a seperate max clicks campaign and after 2 days online it brought 2 conversions which the other account hadn't brought that many conversions in 1 day in a while. Could that be a fluke? Perhaps. I just have to keep trying things. Worst case scenario I can turn the old account back on. We are also about to start up advertising on Microsoft as Duck Duck Go has become a popular search engine in the United States. We are doing a Facebook campaign to retarget traffic and of course really leverageing our email list that is over 7,000 existing customers. So we are doing everything we can. This is a REAL problem for micro businesses. Google Adwords need to get a punch in the gut so they will come back down to earth.

Yes I would like advice on something that no one is talking about, which is conversion slow down. Everyone is saying it is because the economy has slowed but that is not it and the reason why I know that is because organic leads are surpassing my Google Ad leads and that never used to be the case. I believe the target CPA is raising because of the extreme increase in Google Ads CPC. So even though I raise my target CPA the account never seems to function as well as it did and these are accounts that are 3 and 4 years old - they have produced hundreds of conversions. This is also happening across various industries - not just home service businesses. Something is definitely going on and I refuse to believe it's just happening to my accounts. I am seriously considering starting these accounts over and doing maximize clicks or manual. I really need to get some guidance on this.

@Austin LeClear Yes I am totally aware. My clients are service-based. It seems that the conversion costs is getting much higher and if you have a set target CPA and it may be too low the campaign can take a dump. I have tried raising it but it still struggles. This is slowly happening within each and every one of my accounts. Here's the thing - I am LESS shocked about this and MORE shocked about the fact that NO ONE is talking about this or at least that I have seen. I know I am not the only one this is happening to. I am seriously considering starting new campaigns and just starting fresh and let them run on manual CPA. After raising the target CPA the accounts are still struggling and not even spending the whole budget. Another crazy thing is the "google reps" have never been more agressive. I get multiple calls a day. I am starting to move away from bringing clients into my practice that do Google ads.