Heidi Sturrock, a paid search consultant with 24 years in the industry, joined me on a recent episode of PPC Live The Podcast. In this episode, we discuss a broad match misstep that turned into a surprising advantage, along with Heidi’s experience rolling out AI Max across more than 50 accounts.
The broad match mistake — and its unexpected upside
Early in her career, Heidi set up a competitor conquest campaign for a big-spending B2B SaaS client using broad match — but didn’t add any negative keywords — and launched it on a Friday with a substantial daily budget. Over the weekend, the client’s call center was inundated with frustrated calls from the competitor’s customers asking for refunds and technical support.
When Heidi phoned the client to take responsibility, his reaction surprised her: he saw it as a strategic opening. He quickly trained his sales team to treat the calls as soft sales conversations, offering customers willing to switch a 50% discount on their first month. The campaign was then split into two: one focused on unhappy competitor customers, and another aimed at broader competitor prospecting, which allowed for tighter control over spend and user intent.
Key takeaways: Avoid Friday launches and align stakeholders
Two main lessons came out of this experience. First, don’t launch major campaigns or make big budget changes on a Friday — the algorithm needs close oversight during its learning phase, and issues can snowball unnoticed over a weekend. Second, ensure all critical stakeholders are present in client meetings. Having both the founder and the head of sales involved meant everyone knew exactly who to contact when things…