Chloe Varnfield, a digital marketing expert at Atelier Studios with nearly eight years in PPC, joined me to share the mistakes that shaped her career — and the lessons every marketer should take away.
If Google skips the settings it’s up to you
Chloe’s first story focuses on Google’s account-level default assets setting — a feature so well-hidden that many marketers don’t even know it exists until a client sends a screenshot asking why their title looks completely wrong. The setting, buried behind a three-dot menu, changes automatically, which means Google can automatically generate and serve headlines advertisers have never written or approved. The takeaway: always check your account level settings, and treat every Google update as a possible default that you’ll need to turn off.
Why never make changes on Friday
A client asked Chloe to narrow down their campaign’s targeting mid-call. He made the switch quickly – and accidentally excluded the UK entirely while targeting only the regions he wanted. Campaigns stopped delivering. It took three days of head-scratching before he researched the entire campaign and found the culprit. The lesson he now swears by: never make important changes on Friday, and if something stops working, go straight to a full audit rather than waiting for the algorithm to “fix itself.”
The time he listened to Google’s lawyer – and stopped working properly for two months
Chloe’s most expensive story covers the most successful campaign in years. A Google representative recommended changing the bid strategy from Increase Conversion to Increase Conversion Rate. He made a change – and performance deteriorated. For small to medium-sized businesses that are already struggling to achieve the conversion rate required for smart bids to be effective, changing your bidding strategy is a difficult decision that shouldn’t be made right away. It took two months to recover, with the pressure to sell big for next season. You got it right – but the lesson remained: don’t let the agent’s enthusiasm or insistence override your judgement. Stick to big decisions. Trust your gut.
Account errors still occur in 2026
When researching inherited accounts, Chloe always sees three common problems: broken or missing conversion tracking (sometimes still from Universal Analytics), broad matching used for brand campaigns – making it difficult to know if results are really driven by non-brand keywords – and accounts with illegal keywords. These are not minor plot issues. They directly distort the performance data and waste the budget.
Honestly, customer relations, not aspiring
In all three of her stories, Chloe’s client relationships survived because she was so open – explaining what went wrong, what she was doing to fix it, and what the next step was if it didn’t work. Her advice to anyone in the midst of a crisis: breathe, be kind to yourself, stay calm, and remember that no one is dead. The ability to solve problems under pressure is what builds expertise – and solving something difficult is often your proudest professional moment.
It’s an AI mistake that too many marketers make
On AI, Chloe is clear: using it to generate ad copy or suggestions without reviewing or editing the output is lazy and obvious. AI should make you faster, not replace your judgment. Always put your own voice and review back to whatever it produces.
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