076: Mentorship, Metrics, and Mastering PPC: Insights from Sophie Fell

Danny Gavin Host

00:05

Hello everyone, I’m Danny Gavin, founder of Optage, Marketing Professor, and the host of the Digital Marketing Mentor.

Today, we have a very special guest, Sophie Fell, who’s the director of paid media for Two Trees PPC. Two Trees PPC is a California-based online advertising agency specializing in increasing profit and revenue through expertly crafted PPC streaming TV ads and paid social campaigns. Sophie brings nearly a decade of experience in PPC streaming TV ads and paid social campaigns. Sophie brings nearly a decade of experience in PPC and social media ads, managing impressive budgets exceeding $200 million. Her expertise spans various businesses, from small solo ventures to internationally renowned brands like LinkedIn, Juicy Couture, Fila, and National Trust. In addition to being a very hands-on director of paid media, Sophie has authored two books and dozens of blogs on the subject. She’s also recently spoken at Brighton SEO, and today, we will talk about mentorship and the world of PPC. How are you? 

Sophie Fell Guest

01:14

I’m good. I’m so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. 

Danny Gavin Host

01:17

Me too, and it was a happen-stance to meet you on LinkedIn, and I’m so glad we could do that. I bought your book, and I’m like, now I must have Sophie on the show. You bought the book, I did. 

Sophie Fell Guest

01:28

Oh, I love that, thank you. 

Danny Gavin Host

01:30

Yeah, we had to have Sophie on the pod, so we’re so glad you’re here. 

Sophie Fell Guest

01:33

Oh, thank you so much. I can’t believe you bought the book. Yeah, of course. 

Danny Gavin Host

01:44

It’s difficult. So, typically, we start the conversation with where you went to school and what you studied. But I know, Sophie, you didn’t get a degree. Let’s talk about that. Why didn’t you go to university? And then, obviously, let’s talk about how you got into marketing. 

Sophie Fell Guest

02:00

I have a bit of a funny story about why I didn’t go to uni. So I have planned to do it since I was seven. That was a part of my path, and I fell pregnant. So I have an 11-year-old now. This is so long ago. So, I got pregnant instead of going to university. That’s always what I say. That was my path, meaning I used that time to get into marketing. You know, after maternity leave, I started a sales job, and then I started working at a startup company, and they said, hey, you’re the youngest person here; you can work Facebook, right? And I was like, sure, I can work Facebook. And that was it. That was the moment. So now it’s been like you said, nearly a decade in marketing. And yeah, it all started with just doing some Facebook posts almost 10 years ago. 

Danny Gavin Host

02:52

Wow. And that’s so inspiring because I run a digital fundamentals course. We have a special cohort just for women, and like you are like the poster child, where, like you have a kid, you may not know everything, but like you’re willing to like to say, hey, I’m going to jump in and do it, and both those things you know were sort of like the rocket pad or the launch pad to get where you’re at today. So I love that. That’s like, I could have paid you to say that, but I didn’t; you just said it, which is so cool, yeah, it’s funny. 

Sophie Fell Guest

03:20

Um, I get asked often, like, what do you know? What’s your degree, or what did you go to college or uni for? But I didn’t do it; I just put in the time for marketing instead. So, and it worked out for me, it worked out, so it’s great. 

Danny Gavin Host

03:35

So, I know you did a digital marketing strategy certification course at a university. I would love to get your experience or perspective on formalized marketing education versus YouTube and just doing it. 

Sophie Fell Guest

03:46

With every super formalized one I’ve done, I have always found it very broad, which is great, and I think that’s what it’s for, right, not necessarily the deep dive or the day-to-day how-to, but more the theory. So I think it’s good to have. I don’t think it’s the be-all and end-all. Honestly, I think having that foundation knowledge is always super helpful, those fundamentals and the theory behind it. I think that makes you better at the day-to-day. But in terms of kind of, you know, whether it’s going into the platforms or adding a negative keyword or bidding strategies and things like that, user-created ones, like things on Udemy and YouTube, those tutorials, stuff like that are usually your best bet. So, I would say fundamentals and structure training are important. But YouTube and Reddit are more helpful regarding the day-to-day. 

Danny Gavin Host

04:38

And following people like you. 

Sophie Fell Guest

04:41

I was going to say, but you’re reading my book. 

Danny Gavin Host

04:45

When you look back at that initial job where you worked at Facebook, any specific early events that happened, you may have paved your path to this full-time and, you know, created a career out of it. 

Sophie Fell Guest

04:59

Do you know what? Very early on, I fell in love with the analytics side of it. I think it’s one thing to craft great posts and all that kind of thing, but we managed to grow the following. I think it was 6,000 to 50,000 in about four or five months. That was my first big achievement. I, you know, exceeded what we thought we’d ever achieve. It was just a small startup with a few of us in a barn in the middle of nowhere, so that was great for me. Seeing the analytics and those audience insights were the things that clicked. And then, like I said, that was it from there. That was, you know, doing some posts on Facebook, and then that was it—just absolutely fell in love with digital marketing. 

Danny Gavin Host

05:38

So, Sophie, how would you define a mentor? 

Sophie Fell Guest

05:40

Sometimes, when we talk about mentoring in general, we tend to think of it as this person that’s up here kind of talking down to you, you know, and that support. But I think a two-way collaboration is always really helpful. So I think someone that can empathize with you may have been where you are before, or maybe it’s even a peer, I think, somewhere where there’s that trust, confidence, and mutual respect, I believe are the key things to making mentoring work. So I think it’s, you know, a mentor can be anyone, right? It can be your family, it can be your friends. So, I don’t think it necessarily has to be that structured—someone who’s, you know, years ahead of you in their career. I think sometimes a mentor can be, again, a trusted friend or a trusted sounding board. 

Danny Gavin Host

06:29

So, let’s talk about some of your most influential mentors. You mentioned Kevin Ashley, who I believe was one of your first bosses. Let’s talk about him. 

Sophie Fell Guest

06:42

He was. Oh, Kevin, I love him. I did this role where I was doing Facebook ads, moved into Google ads, Google Analytics, and digital marketing in general. That was my first role. I made it to the marketing manager, then left and went in-house as a marketing manager. That was an extraordinary leap. Looking back at it now, I’m like, I don’t know how I got that job; I don’t know how I got away with it. And Kevin was my boss there. He was the COO. 

07:02

Sometimes, you just meet someone, and you click right. There’s a 40-year age gap between us, maybe 30. Oh, Kevin, if you’re watching this, maybe it’s 30 years. I’m so sorry, but we just clicked, and he was someone that I could be very honest with about what I was struggling with, both in my work and, you know, even outside of work. He was someone with whom we had shared goals across our department. So we naturally collaborated on those things, and he was someone with whom you could have a very open and honest discussion. 

07:36

That was when I first learned, and I was 22 or 23 when I learned you can have a boss who respects you. It doesn’t have to be this again: hierarchical. I’m not sure how you say that word now. There doesn’t have to be a hierarchy between the two of you. Again, you can have that mutual respect and balance and figure out your pros and cons and how you work together. Having that sort of relationship changed a lot of things for me. Again, my expectations of a mentor, a boss, you know, set the standard very high and, yeah, someone that you can truly collaborate with, and yeah, he’s someone. So that was seven years ago now that I had that job, and we still speak all the time about any issues I have or any, you know, just chatting about life, and we still catch up about life and work. So, yeah, he was my big transformation in many ways. 

Danny Gavin Host

08:36

Meeting Kevin, yeah, so tell me about that discussion. One day, you walk into his office and say, hey, I want to become a freelancer. How did that conversation go? 

Sophie Fell Guest

08:44

So he knew that I was freelancing on the side. He was aware again; he was very aware of what was happening in my life. So it wasn’t. I don’t think he was shocked. He was disappointed that I was leaving but felt he had seen another opportunity. It was like, okay, this chapter’s closing, but what else can we do? So I continued working with him freelance for a little while afterward, and he was like my first client. We worked together for another year and another 18 months after that, and then once every few months, I’d go in and give him a hand with his brand and stuff. He took it well, and he was a former freelancer, too. So he gave me ideas on day rates and how I could put myself out there, and he gave me referrals and things like that. So, although I dreaded the initial conversation again, it worked out well in the end. 

Danny Gavin Host

9:38

So, turning the tables, who do you mentor in your current position? 

Sophie Fell Guest

09:41

So I have Samuel, who is our media buyer, so he’s who I mentor day to day. Every day, he gets to put up with me. Then, I have two other mentees I volunteer with outside of work: Hannah and Meg. They’re both young women in marketing, and I love speaking to them. It’s the highlight of my day. So, there are three mentees right now. 

Danny Gavin Host

10:03

Yeah, that’s awesome. Some people don’t even have one, so that’s great. 

Sophie Fell Guest

10:06

I’m hoarding them all, yeah. 

Danny Gavin Host

10:09

So what are your keys to mentoring success? And it might be different between Samuel and the ladies, but what are your keys to being a good mentor and mentoring them? 

Sophie Fell Guest

10:19

For me, I always try and start with their goals. Usually, when someone’s seeking out mentorship, particularly someone that you don’t work with, there’s something right, there’s something they’re not ready for, or they are prepared for, but it’s not happening, or there’s just always one or two things that they want to kind of work through. So I think for me, it’s identifying why do you think you need help, you know what is that, that missing link for you, and then kind of plotting out their goals and their path, where they would like to be, what this new thing is that they want to do maybe they’re not quite ready yet and then identifying the steps to get there. So what your goal is and what you are trying to achieve is the main thing, and it’s how I normally get to the root cause of whatever is going on. I try my best to foster that collaborative, mutual relationship again. 

11:15

So I will be very honest too. You know, I messed this up, or this happened, or this is what’s going on for me too, because, again, you must be on the same level. You know you’re not. I don’t want to be put on a pedestal, right? I want us to have those transparent, honest, open conversations again. So those are the two main things: identifying their goals and what they’re trying to achieve, but ultimately creating, you know, a friendship so they feel that they can be honest. 

Danny Gavin Host

11:49

Let’s talk about your book. What sparked your interest in writing a book about PPC? 

Sophie Fell Guest

11:53

It came about because I’ve written so many blogs that I was like, I could turn this into a book. And that is how it all began. So it was literally. I had a massive Google Drive folder full of everything I’d spoken about Google Ads for the last however many years, four or five years consistently writing about this, and I can turn this into a book. So that was honestly it. Let’s shape, mold, update, and see if we can create a book. 

Danny Gavin Host

12:27

Love it. So, even though this is not a podcast about content marketing, it shows you that if you’ve got content, you repurpose it, and this is a perfect example. 

Sophie Fell Guest

12:35

Yeah, absolutely. 

Danny Gavin Host

12:38

So, for those who haven’t read it, what are some key takeaways, or what can they see if they read it? 

Sophie Fell Guest

12:42

It’s for a broad audience, so people new to PPC may be experts in digital marketing but want to take a bit of a deeper dive into what’s possible and what you can do. A lot of small business owners have bought it and read it, which is great. It’s nice to hear their feedback, too. You know someone that wears all the hats in their organization to Google ads in particular so accessible that it feels easy to do, but there are so many tips, tricks, you know, best practices, worst practices, even if you need to follow to make it work. So that’s the overall aim: to hand the power back to whoever is reading the book, to have confidence in what they’re creating, and to be able to manage and optimize effectively. So those are the main takeaways: how to manage your account in the best possible way and how to create ideally the best performing campaigns for you and your brand. 

Danny Gavin Host

13:41

That’s awesome. You sparked an idea or a thought. When you speak to a client, and they’re still determining what they want to do and like, PPC is good for you. Like, ah, I tried it already. It didn’t work. 

Sophie Fell Guest

13:52

Yes, yeah, I still have that conversation so often. In fact, our biggest case study was because I begged a CMO to let me do Google Ads for them. We were already doing their meta ads and things on TikTok and LinkedIn, and they were like, no, we’ve run Google Search for years, it just doesn’t work for us, like we know it doesn’t work for us, and we generated millions for them from Google Search. 

Danny Gavin Host

14:20

It worked, it worked. 

Sophie Fell Guest

14:21

But that’s the thing. Even today, in 2024 and 2025, people have so many misconceptions. They still don’t trust Google Search, and it’s the job of people like me to convince them and show them that it works. 

Danny Gavin Host

14:34

Moving into a career in PPC. What skills are most important to develop when building a career in PPC? What skills are most important to create for someone starting a career or without PPC experience? 

Sophie Fell Guest

14:42

It’s one thing to be able to manage the UI and physically create campaigns and things like that. That’s one thing, right? But the analysis and number sides of it are so important and get overlooked so much. Right, like data-driven decision-making, it shouldn’t be a buzzword. We should always make decisions based on data, and that optimization piece gets overlooked often. And natural love for the data and seeing nice green graphs everywhere helps. Realistically, anyone can learn the UI. How many UIs have you experienced? What’s 10 years, 20 years? You know a lot. We’re learning all the time, right, how to navigate. So, that side of things and the campaign creation, Google has got that down right. That’s, that’s easy. But, the data analysis bit is such a huge part of making campaigns successful, both in the short term and the long term, that it’s a critical piece that separates beginners from people taking it seriously. 

Danny Gavin Host

15:49

In your experience. Is that something you can learn, or do you have to have a natural knack for it? Because it is? You know, it’s hard always to put out a rule book or a guidebook. Hey, in order to optimize, you have to do this or this right. It’s difficult because sometimes you have to look at it, and you know with the experience it tells you right what needs to be done. What’s your thought on that? 

Sophie Fell Guest

16:10

It’s a learned skill that you can have with time. It comes with time and experience. You or I can look at an account and look at one metric and go, cool, I know what’s happened. Like I know what’s going on, I can understand this. There are so many metrics to consider, and then you also have to have your own personal memory bank for the importance of this metric on this account. So it can be learned. The most crucial thing is experiencing your changes’ impact on the metrics and explaining how the changes you’ve made impact those metrics, too. That experience takes you far. 

Danny Gavin Host

16:52

A previous guest, Corey Henke, recently posted, and I know he speaks about this in general. Still, I also know how important it is for a media buyer to learn multiple platforms and understand the whole funnel. On the other hand, we know some people are like specialists when it comes to Google Ads and know precisely. They don’t talk about anything else. How important is gaining experience across different media and advertising platforms like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and TikTok? 

Sophie Fell Guest

17:20

I’m going with the typical answer, which is that it depends. 

Danny Gavin Host

17:23

It’s okay. Because it does, that’s important because it means that both are true, but tell us why. 

Sophie Fell Guest

17:29

Yeah, absolutely, it depends, right? If you’re like a T-shaped marketer, you don’t need to know absolutely everything, right? You need to understand how it all works, what audiences are available, and things like that. But you’re also concentrating on, you know, SEO, websites, brand, and all these other things over here, pr. Both are right. 

17:47

Again, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to become so, for example, I’m the director of paid media, so I need to know what they all do, right? But if I were the director of PPC, I would need to know about Google and Microsoft and what they all do. But if I were the director of PPC, I would need to know Google and Microsoft, Yahoo and Naver, and all those, all those, too. It depends on what you want to do and where you see your future career. Don’t you know, you don’t have to become a specialist, yet you know, becoming a T-shaped marketer is brilliant. You can do all the things you know. 

18:17

Yeah, it depends on your ambitions and goals and what your clients or, you know, if you’re at an agency or the brand you work for, what they want, too. Suppose they only want you to do LinkedIn ads, and that’s the only thing that has ever worked for them. In that case, there’s no point in knowing the ins and outs of Google if you’re not going to use it, you know, so yeah, it just does depend on where you are in your career, where you want to be in the future and, I guess, again, the requirements of the businesses you’re working for. 

Danny Gavin Host

18:48

So you mentioned a T-shaped marketer. That’s a phrase that I use often. I realized that’s not a phrase we’ve explained.

Sophie Fell Guest

18:55

And I realize I don’t know what it is. 

Danny Gavin Host

18:57

But it’s called a T-shaped marketer because many marketers are at the top of the T right. They understand every part of marketing, whether it’s SEO or like you said, brand PR. But most people find love in one or two areas. There, that’s where they go deep. So, for example, if I love SEO, I will learn about technical SEO, content, and link-building. There’s that pressure in marketing that I have to be an expert at everything.  The answer is no, you don’t because most are T-shaped, where it’s good to have a foundation in everything, but practically, you’ll be an expert in one or two areas where you’ll get deep into it.

Sophie Fell Guest

19:38

That was a great explanation! Anyone who was listening, that was perfect!

Danny Gavin Host

19:42

Thanks, Sophie. So how do you handle the pressure of managing large PPC budgets, and what advice would you give to someone new to managing significant spend? And before I let you answer, it is interesting for people who don’t know. But it’s like, in order to manage a large budget, you, like, someone’s going to say, have you managed one before? So, how do you get that first one? And it seems overwhelming. I’d love to talk about that. 

Sophie Fell Guest

20:04

So I always give everyone I’ve worked with the same advice. When they’re leaping from maybe 5,000 a month or 1,000 a month, even to 100,000 a month, or 20,000 a month, whatever that leap looks like. The fundamentals are still the same, and I tell them to ignore the budget. Right, because I think it’s so easy to get sucked into the budget and budget-related metrics, and you can really focus on that. But the core fundamentals are still the same, right? You still want a good CTR and a good conversion rate. So that’s always the advice I’ve given over the years. It feels overwhelming, but the fundamental concepts are the same. You should manage it in the same way. If anything, managing a lower budget is harder. It’s much harder, requires more work, and requires more optimization than large budgets. So I would try to. Just ignore the budgets where possible and stick to those fundamentals you know well. 

Danny Gavin Host

21:06

And what about convincing someone that, like I know, PPC and the fact that I’m going to manage a budget that’s five, you know, six times more than I’m used to? How do they sell themselves on that? 

Sophie Fell Guest

21:17

Again, we’re talking about this more in paid media and PPC at the moment, which is a really good thing. If you can make an account work with a minuscule budget, that is much more impressive than having been given a million a year and figuring that out. People in the community and the wider community are starting to realize that a bit more, too. 

21:42

It’s easy if you’ve got conversion tracking set up and hundreds of you’ve got hundreds or thousands of dollars every month. That’s, you know. It’s easy, not simple. You’re not, you know, guaranteed to get results, but that’s easy to do because Google does the hard work for you. If you manage consistently small budgets and have those case studies where you’ve generated ROAS, you’ve generated a return; I think that can go a long way in convincing or reassuring someone that you know what you’re doing because you have to have that attention to detail. You have to be so much those small budgets. So, if anything, it takes more skill to manage smaller budgets.

Danny Gavin Host

22:24

Moving up the funnel a bit. Why do many brands fail with their top-of-funnel paid search campaigns? And what is the common misconception about these campaigns? 

Sophie Fell Guest

22:33

I have been harping on about this a lot in 2024. So, I’m excited to have the opportunity to talk about it again. One of the main things we’ve seen again over the last five to 10 years is that because we’ve always been so fixated and we always use last-click attribution, top-of-funnel, and middle-of-funnel campaigns, it looks like they won’t work right. They will always appear not to work. You know, a lot of brands haven’t got cross-channel measurement right yet, and I think you could have a massive TV campaign running, and then your bottom-of-funnel Google ads are going to look great. 

23:12

But any time I’ve tried doing this, in my experience, it has been hard to justify the ROI and the return on creating top and middle-funnel ads. 

23:23

So it doesn’t work, so we shy away from it now. 

23:31

And where we get it wrong is that we still focus on those lower-funnel actions. So we use top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel search to drive conversions, and then very quickly, it doesn’t work, right? We see that it doesn’t work. That misconception and that concentrating on the wrong metric and not concentrating on, you know, viewability and engagement metric has made us suffer. Whereas we never have a problem with this on Meta or any other platform, right? If we create a brand awareness campaign, we look at awareness metrics, and on Google Ads and PPC, we don’t carry that across. So, that is the biggest misconception: Google Ads work for the top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel. By redefining the metrics and KPIs we want for success, we can quickly show that you can drive those objectives through Google Ads. 

Danny Gavin Host

24:29

This might be getting into the weeds a bit, but at the end of the day, let’s say you have three campaigns, top, middle, bottom, and top and middle, from a conversion perspective, that aren’t doing great, right? But all the other metrics are really good engagement, and we’re optimizing what’s actually driving people to the site. We’re getting conversions at the bottom. Do we say it’s just the cost of doing business? Or do we have to look at the whole account and say we need a positive ROI, or if not, do we have a problem? So how do you look at that? 

Sophie Fell Guest

25:00

I look at it as wherever this data is available, whether through, you know, campaign manager or whatever it is. Trying to demonstrate the impact of the top-of-the-funnel and middle-funnel campaigns on the lower-funnel campaigns is the biggest thing to do, right? So if we can successfully show the data and say, look, we got two clicks or two views on this, this assisted this conversion all the way down here. We can match together an ROI for top-of-funnel and mid-funnel. Ultimately, when I’ve been in agencies and agencies now, that’s what businesses are looking for. So, there is some work we can do in terms of the full funnel attribution and what the attribution model looks like. When we can do that, we show that top-of-funnel and mid-funnel campaigns successfully drive those objectives. 

Danny Gavin Host

25:57

Yeah, that’s great, thank you. What are some of the red flags when managing Google ad accounts? 

Sophie Fell Guest

26:02

We’ll start with the main one, which is, and this is always the first place I look is the click-through rate. That’s always the first place. So again, in 2024,. The latest data was saying on Google that we’re looking at four to 6%. It used to be 3%. It’s increasing over time, with performance max and everything else coming in, and there’s all sorts on. 

26:27

So, I normally start there because that’s such an indicative metric of so many things. If the click-through rate is reasonable, then I can start looking in other places. If the click-through rate’s bad, that’s normally the root of the problem, right? So we’re looking at how closely themed the keywords, the ad copy, the landing pages are, how great the landing page experience is, all those sorts of things, and I think that metric is so crucial to success on Google Ads. A low click-through rate is always the first place I look if I’m auditing an account. So, it’s the first red flag. The second red flag would be I always check campaign settings next because the amount of times I have seen the default settings apply to location and language and thousands of or if not hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted by targeting all languages when our ad copy is in English or targeting absolutely everyone in an area or people interested in an area that maybe don’t live there. So those are the second red flags: default campaign settings and those that don’t auto-optimize and show your best-performing ads more often. Those three things are so easy to fix as well. There are so many big red flags if those are wrong, but luckily, they are very easy fixes, and you will see the analytics change overnight once those changes are made. 

27:55

The third one comes down to conversion tracking. Obviously, if you don’t have any conversion tracking, that’s a red flag, but we’ll move past that. But the best practices for conversion tracking have evolved so much in the last two, three, or five years. What was great in a setup a few years ago now no longer works right or isn’t the best practice anymore. So when I’m looking at conversion tracking, I want to see regular conversions coming through, and it’s all working perfectly. Still, I want to see those primary conversion sets and some secondary conversion sets. Those are the main things I’m really expecting to see. Multiple conversion types and ideally some conversion values, if we have them, but then those primary and secondary ones that are at the campaign level, too. Those are the three biggest red flags for Google Ads accounts. 

Danny Gavin Host

28:52

How do you feel about having multiple primary conversions? 

Sophie Fell Guest

28:55

It’s okay to have multiple primary conversions. I’m okay with that. I don’t hate that. If you know you have YouTube subscriptions as your primary conversion, and you’re also trying to generate leads, you may encounter some issues there. But I find multiple primary conversions fine.

Danny Gavin Host

29:13

Yeah, or page views, right? That could be a better primary conversion. 

Sophie Fell Guest

29:17

Yeah, not that either, no. 

Danny Gavin Host

29:20

Any opinion on going straight away to automated bidding or starting off with manual? Where do you stand on the matter right now? 

Sophie Fell Guest

29:27

Oh God, this is controversial. 

Danny Gavin Host

29:29

I know. 

Sophie Fell Guest

29:29

You’ll get me in a ton of trouble on the internet. So, I will always start with maximized clicks before fully automated conversion or conversion value tracking. It’s out of habit, honestly, and it’s something that’s always worked for me. That is where I tend to go. I am not a fan of manual CPC bidding or manual CPC caps. I don’t think personally. In my experience, you don’t need them anymore. With how far bidding and the algorithms have come along in years, you only need them if there’s a legitimate reason. So, I’m all aboard with automated bidding, for sure. 

Danny Gavin Host

30:13

That’s a very healthy middle ground. That’s manual CPC, not auto, but max clicks. I like that. That’s safe. 

Sophie Fell Guest

30:22

It’s safe. Again, it’s worked for me. I know you know other people will go one way or the other, but that’s yeah. I’m a little bit on the fence with this one. 

Danny Gavin Host

30:31

Love it.  With AI coming down the line and AI overviews, is there any fear that the industry we’re in right now will not be here in a couple of years? 

Sophie Fell Guest

30:41

It’s tricky. I think it will be here. I think our day-to-day jobs will look slightly different. As marketers and people in paid media and PPC, we need to start focusing on the data. I can see our roles evolving from that, like, you know, manual input piece to almost again, like that black box, like how Performance Max kind of started a couple of years ago. We’ll manual inputs are limited. I think. We’ll see PPC and SEO align a lot more. I can imagine ad content coming just from the website from now on, you know, from now on in the future. So, I hope to see PPC and SEO teams work much more closely together on that in the future. 

Danny Gavin Host

31:31

I love that. I haven’t thought about that, but I am willing to. I’m going to expound because I’m excited we’re saying that where ads will come from is the content on the site itself—so having good content on the website is not just about showing up in organic Googe, but o feeding the paid sill. I love that. I haven’t thought about that, so thank you for giving me that idea. 

Sophie Fell Guest

31:57

That’s just, yeah. 

Danny Gavin Host

31:58

I like it. 

Sophie Fell Guest

31:59

That’s what I’m thinking. That’s what I’m thinking. It’s what I think because I can imagine, you know, completely original ads for absolutely everyone, right, hyper-personalized, but again, with your website content being the basis of all of that. I don’t know if that will happen, but that’s what I’d like to see at some point. And yeah, it will be more about steering the data right, inputting the right data, getting the right first-party data, third-party data, and whatever we need to steer those results. So I think our jobs as we know it today will change. I’m hoping they will be relevant in the next decade. In 2030 years, they may be. There’ll always be something, but I can see that evolution coming. 

Danny Gavin Host

32:43

All right, it’s time for our lightning round. You’re a little bit of a traveler. I would love to know the top three places you visited. 

Sophie Fell Guest

32:50

So, my favorite place has been Bali. I just loved it. I went there for a yoga retreat. It’s very hippie, quite a few years ago, but I went for three days. I traveled for three days, and I would. I’ve just always wanted to go back. So that was my number one. Hong Kong was my second choice, as I was in a completely different environment. I just absolutely loved it. I just loved the culture and the environment. Um, I spent about a week there and would love to return. And my third one. So, I’m British. So anywhere in Europe, I’m always, you know, generally quite happy. Anywhere warm in Europe. So, in Spain, Portugal, and places like that, I’m pretty. I feel pretty at home there. Those are my top three. 

Danny Gavin Host

33:37

And related to travel. What brought you to California? 

Sophie Fell Guest

33:40

So okay, this is awkward. So I’m not actually in California, so the company is, but I’m in the UK. 

Danny Gavin Host

33:48

Okay, what’s someone from the UK doing in California? 

Sophie Fell Guest

33:52

My boss is from the UK and lives in California, so I’m not. I’m in the UK, but I just work remotely with them. 

Danny Gavin Host

34:02

So I love it. No, no, no, that makes a lot of sense. No, I’m very “pro” remote, and it’s lovely to see that California is three or four hours behind New York. So it’s cool that they’re willing to work with some of the UK. It’s awesome. 

Sophie Fell Guest

34:15

Yeah, we have. We have a nice crossover. We have four hours in the morning when we cross over, which is why it’s so dark here right now, and we’ve got fireworks going on. 

Danny Gavin Host

34:25

Is there any difficulty with the pound-dollar type of conversion? From a PPC perspective. I don’t know. 

Sophie Fell Guest

34:32

All our clients are based in California, so that’s pretty straightforward. We don’t have the DST issue that we have in Europe. You know where you have to tack. On the other hand, it’s 3.5% and 2.5% respectively. You guys don’t have that out there, so that’s also nice. It’s excellent for clients, too, to not have to pay that. Other than that, nothing so far, but I’m touching wood. 

Danny Gavin Host

34:55

Sophie, what’s your next big project? 

Sophie Fell Guest

34:57

Oh goodness. We hope to expand Two Trees into the UK market, which is exciting. So what we’ve done the last few months is planning, plotting, scheming towards. So our owner, Mike, is from the UK, and his whole family is here, and he has his fiance in California, and they’d quite like to, you know, come back and forth and stuff. So, I think that our big focus for 2025, honestly, is expansion. Yeah, that’s the main thing we’re working on right now, which is exciting. 

Danny Gavin Host

35:31

So, where can listeners learn more about you and your business? 

Sophie Fell Guest

35:33

So they can come to twotreesppccom to learn more about us. You will probably find me on LinkedIn, Sophie Fell. Then I have links to the following: You know, everywhere else that you need to find me, but LinkedIn’s the principal place where you’ll find me talking about paid media and other nonsense. 

Danny Gavin Host

35:49

So, definitely come over and say hi, and check out Sophie’s book, The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to PPC. Remember that one as well. Yeah, I have to plug the book too. 

Sophie Fell Guest

35:59

Totally. 

Danny Gavin Host

35:59

Well, Sophie. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Digital Marketing Mentor, and thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Digital Marketing Mentor. We’ll speak with you next time. Thank you for listening to the Digital Marketing Mentor podcast. Be sure to check us out online at thedmmentorcom and on Instagram, and remember to subscribe to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts for more marketing mentor magic. See you next time. 

 

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