When it comes to working with your client, do you see yourself as a leader? You should! Your clients want to know that you have things under control and that when things go south, as they do in Facebook land, you have everything under control. They are confident in you, in your abilities, and know that they are in great hands with you running their ads.

Even if things may not be performing as they have previously, especially with all these iOS changes, we’ve been going through a bit of a rough spot at the moment. Many ad managers have, but there’s still a lot of campaigns that are getting great results and are profitable. So we’re giving shout outs and encouragement to all our Elite Ad Managers and Inner Circle Ad Managers who are still crushing it, even in these crazy times.

It is still possible to get results. However, a lot of us go through a rocky season, and even if it’s not iOS, things can still be rocky. It’s when things are rocky that you really shine. When things are easy, when everything’s profitable, the cost per lead is nice and low, the cost per acquisition is going nicely, and you’re hitting all the KPI’s. Sweet! Everybody’s happy. You probably don’t even need to talk to your client very often because everything’s working; they’re happy. But I hundred percent recommend that you always still regularly speak to your clients.

Keep that relationship building up when things are going good so that you’ve got that relationship you’ve been building on when things have a bit of a downward turn. Now, when things take a bit of a downward turn, it’s how you act in those times that will speak volumes to your client. If things aren’t performing as well, if those tried and tested audiences just aren’t converting anymore, or the ads which have been proven aren’t converting anymore. Where are you going to go? What are you going to look at? Who were you going to point the finger at? That’s not what a leader is going to do, right?

This is where you’re going to shine by looking at the data and reporting back to your client about what’s going on. Explaining here are the bottlenecks and owning it that if the ads are not converting, you are talking to your client about that. You can say, “Look, we’ve got these proven audiences that have worked in the past. We’ve got these proven ads that have worked in the past. We’re doing all the same things. However, we’re just not getting the same results.”

Now, what do you do then? You could just be scratching your head or you could just throw it off in the air. You could just be throwing it back to them, but this is where you should explain this is what I would recommend that we do. You have other strategies that, through all your expertise, you can say why we’re doing all these things. We’re also going to be testing and rolling out X,Y,Z, providing them with other options, assuring them that we are still on top of it while all this is going on, which appears to be out of our control.

You’re going to be implementing some other proven strategies, best tactics to move forward, to keep going with this. So rather than pointing the finger to say they need to do this and that it’s their problem, look at the data, acknowledge what the data is telling you, and make those decisions. Communicate with your client what’s going on, and communicate the strategies you are taking to overcome this or work through it.

That’s going to show your leadership and instill confidence, rather than just pointing the finger, blaming other people, throwing people under the bus, which you know, we’re not a fan of here, and just making excuses. So shine as a leader when in the good times, as well as when things get rough.

Now, quite often, your client might have a business coach who may come to them with these other ideas and strategies. For example, if ads aren’t going well, your client might talk to their coach and say, “Oh, we’re getting $10 cost per leads.” Your client’s business coach may say they should do some lead formats, do this, or do that. All these other things, which chances are, they have not looked at the data. They’re just saying things that they’ve heard, but they may not be applicable and relevant to your client.

That’s where you need to stand up, show your leadership, and talk to your client. I know this can be very difficult, and they could be putting a high priority on their business coach and their advice. That’s fine, and that’s going to happen. They’re paying for them. So chances are, they will trust them, but they’re also paying you. And therefore, they need to trust you as well.

They might come back with some of this advice that you have tested before, tried it recently, and it hasn’t worked. It could also be, for example, if they were to say, you need to do some lead generation ads, then you could say, “Well, we have done that previously and this is what we have typically found with lead formats. But if you would like us to test it, we can allocate some of the budget to this. I really do feel that this strategy X, Y, Z is the best way to go considering what we’ve seen from our peers and other ad accounts.”

Communication is vital for you to help establish your relationship, maintain a great relationship with your client, and show them your leadership abilities in running their Facebook ads. That allows you to earn the respect of your clients.

So often, I talk to ad managers who will have a client who just doesn’t seem to listen to what they’re talking to. These ad managers who have experience, they’re in Ads Manager every day, working with multiple clients, they’re seeing and knowing what’s going on, but their client will say, “Well, this is what I want to do. This is what I want my ad manager to do.” At the end of the day, it is their money. All you can do is say, “Look, this is what I would recommend with this situation, and from my experience, what we’re seeing in other ad accounts, and what’s going on with the platform at the moment, I think this is our best decision here. We can test what you’re suggesting over here and see if that works. I’m a hundred percent happy to test that, but the stages are what we’re looking at doing.” Your client may come back and go, “No, no. I don’t want to do that. I want to do this.” Then you would just say, “Okay, fine. I do think that this is the preferred strategy, but we’ll try this. How about we give this a go for a week, get the data through, see what that tells us. Yes?” So that you’ve said, this is where we should be, but we’ll try this.

It’s about taking your ego out of it. I know it can hurt, right? If your client comes back and says, this is what I want to do, and they just don’t listen to you, that can hurt your ego. But remember, we’re there to serve. We want to help our clients get the best results. So if that may mean trying their strategy fine, we can try that unless it’s something that really doesn’t work.

For example, if they say, “Let’s just do a traffic campaign.” They want conversions, people to opt-in for their webinar and then purchase. Typically, I don’t see that working, so I wouldn’t be terribly supportive of that one.

If it’s something that’s really not a good idea or if they provide you with ad copy that is bad news and you are very likely to get your ad account shut down if you were to use this, I’d caution them strongly. But otherwise, chances are, you could test what they’ve suggested if it works great. If it doesn’t, then we’re back to square one, and they go, “Okay, you do your thing then.”

If this is a persistent thing for you, where you keep getting overridden by your client, they’re not listening to you, and things just keep on not working, then I would suggest that you probably part ways with your client. After repeated attempts and not listening to you, continuing and insisting, and they still do it their way and work against you, that’s not a good fit. You want to work with clients who are a great fit with you, who you get on with, who listen to and respect you.

So I would very amicably suggest that I’ve done everything that we can here, and I just don’t think this is working out for us. I could introduce them to a couple of other ad managers if you know any that you want to introduce them to. If not, just give your 30 days notice per our contract, we’ll finish up, we’ll still run your ads as we have been, nothing’s going to change there. We’re going to do our absolute best to get things in order and ready for your next ad person because life’s too short to be working with these clients that are not bringing you joy. And it’s actually a mindset of scarcity that still holds on to these less than ideal clients.

So bless and release, and then you will make way for your ideal clients to come along. But through all of it, establish your leadership, help your clients be confident in your decisions, run their ads, and continue to serve them.