May 28, 2025 • 37 mins
What if the biggest threats to your marketing success aren’t your competitors — but your own habits?
In this episode of Over The Bull, host Ken Carroll breaks down the Four Horsemen of Marketing: Panic, Ego, Indecision, and Tech Obsession. These aren’t just abstract concepts — they’re the real-world behaviors that quietly derail campaigns, exhaust budgets, and leave business owners wondering why “nothing seems to work.”
From impulsive ad buys to overcomplicated tech stacks, Ken shares the signs to watch for and how to steer clear. Whether you’re launching your first campaign or managing a seasoned brand, this episode will help you rethink how you approach creative, strategy, and decision-making.
If you’re ready to identify what’s really holding your marketing back — this one’s for you.
Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut
through marketing noise.
Here's your host, Ken Carroll.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
The Four Horsemen on this episode of Over the Bull.
You know, the Four Horsemen havealways been known with doom and
gloom.
you know, or the bad guys.
You know, if you go back to the80s, you know, back in the days
of Ric Flair and pro wrestling,you know, there was a group that
called themselves the FourHorsemen.
And obviously, you know, in theBook of Revelation, we have the
(00:34):
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
And, you know, they represent,obviously, you know, something
you don't want to encounter.
And what I've identifiedrecently are Four Horsemen of...
marketing, basically.
What's unusual about this isthat it's pretty consistent.
(00:55):
And what I mean by that arebusinesses typically make these
mistakes, and it doesn't matterif they're startups or
30-year-old businesses orwhatever.
It seems like that a lot ofbusinesses just get into these
habits of making these mistakes.
Now, When I go through this, ifyou recognize that you're
(01:15):
probably doing one or more ofthese, this is not a blame game.
This is not a, you know, hey,you know, you should be doing
this and not that.
The idea is that we learn fromeach other.
And if you can learn from mewhat I'm seeing in other
businesses, and if you'refalling into the same traps, and
then you can pull yourself outof it and then avoid one or more
(01:39):
of these four horsemen, then Ithink what you're going to be
able to do is be much moresuccessful at what you do.
And of course, each one of thesedoes have a challenge.
So with that, let's jump rightin to the four horsemen.
Okay, the horseman number one isthe we need leads now.
(02:01):
The single most indicator thatthere is an issue is when a
business becomes reactive ratherthan proactive in their
marketing.
You know, sometimes it's in abad situation.
They spend a lot of money, theychase the wrong things, they
bought into the wrongadvertisements, and they've
(02:21):
blown through thousands andthousands of dollars and have
garnered no results from it.
Now, usually when they dosomething like this, it's also
cultivated by sales decreasing.
So if you're a business andtraditionally you're doing very
well in your business, you maythink that'll never dry up.
And so you don't proactivelymarket and you wait until you
(02:45):
see things starting to go down.
And then you start to think,maybe I need to do something.
So then you start, you know,reaching out.
And now you've got this elephantin a relatively short period of
time because marketing isextremely complicated.
And there are all kinds oflittle fine tunings and nuances
(03:07):
and everything that you've gotto do in order to make them
work.
And so by waiting and thentrying to react and hire someone
to try to build those ads, it'sjust a recipe for disaster.
And normally that reactionaryprocess doesn't end very well.
Normally you just spend a lot ofmoney and you end up thinking
(03:29):
things like, well, Google Adsdoes not work.
Now, that's not the case.
Google Ads can be a verypowerful tool.
Now, obviously, within the rightcontext of the right business,
but it's one single tool.
And when you look at somethinglike this, oftentimes people do
(03:50):
look at things like Google Adsor paid advertising or No one
should ever think SEO isreactionary and should be quick.
Search engine optimization isfar from being quick.
It's definitely slow momentumover a period of time.
So if anyone's telling yousomething quickly with SEO,
obviously there's somethingwrong there.
(04:13):
But in looking at some datawe've been running for the last,
I don't know, we've been runningthis data for about two months
now with a certain group.
And what it shows is somethingthat I've always called the
snowball effect is really moreprevalent today than it's ever
been.
Now, what I mean by that isthese campaigns, they have a
(04:37):
very strategic application ofsocial media, local SEO, paid
advertising, and a few othercomponents.
Now, If we looked at it strictlyfrom a paid ad perspective, this
group, if you will, aregarnering somewhere between, I
(04:59):
don't know, 175 to 200, youknow, about 300 leads basically
a month.
But if you looked at the paidads, you would see that that was
maybe a quarter of the overallleads.
Now, If we track the phone callsand we track all the lead
sources and look at howeverything's playing together,
(05:20):
we're seeing that it's reallysymbiotic.
And all of those things areharmonizing together.
And what they're doing isgenerating a large influx of
phone calls.
And so by tracking it andlooking at it, we can see that
this methodology is working.
Now, here's the challenge withit.
(05:42):
The challenge is it's no singleone thing.
It's a little bit of doingeverything but strategically.
Now, when I say everything, Idon't mean go out and spend a
fortune on social and spend afortune on paid ads, a fortune
on SEO, and a fortune on theseother things.
As a matter of fact, when itcomes to us, we find that having
(06:04):
too many cooks often messesthings up.
Now, so what we do is we manageit, but we use each one of these
outlets in a very specific wayfor specific businesses.
It doesn't work for every singlebusiness.
So how does this tie back in tobeing reactionary?
(06:25):
Well, I can tell you, forexample, in one of the cases in
building this clientele up,changing the messaging slightly
really made a huge difference,especially when we went back and
we looked at the competitionwithin their service area.
Now, I can also tell you thatthis particular series of
(06:50):
businesses are in differentgeographical locations, but they
offer the same service.
Now, what's interesting aboutthat is that we're not running
this same process the same wayfor any of those businesses.
Now, that seems unusual, right?
Because you think if we got onedown, we could rubber stamp it
(07:12):
for each location.
However, that's not the case.
Now, we'll start with abaseline.
And after we start with thatbaseline, we start looking at
what are the competitors in thatarea doing as far as their price
point?
What are their call to actions?
How long have they been inbusiness?
What do they do that's slightlyunique?
(07:34):
And then what we do is we startto mold a campaign gradually
based on the data that comes inand based upon what we're seeing
in that particular geographicarea.
It's not just turning on adsbecause we service electricians
or plumbers or roofers orwhatever may have you.
That's a mistake.
(07:56):
You can't just do that.
What you have to do is actuallydig a lot deeper.
So if you're reacting.
Typically, you just want to spinthose things up, get them out
there as quick as you can, tryto drum up some sales.
And if you're expecting thatfrom anyone in marketing, you're
really setting yourself up to bedisappointed and probably be
(08:18):
frustrated in your marketingperson.
And so the idea is to understandthat it is a process.
It's a process of growth.
And what I do is often tellclients that it's a process of
building your ATM machine.
And what I mean by that is youcan't just throw together a
bunch of parts.
You have to figure out therhythm that works in your
(08:39):
business.
Now, what's also interestingabout that is once you build it
out, then you'll also adjust itover a period of time as well.
And so as you're working throughit, the wrong mentality is to
go, okay, I need to do this.
I need to hire somebody.
I need more sales.
(09:01):
I'm desperate, and I want tothrow money at it and see what
happens.
You're setting yourself up to betaken advantage of, and you're
also setting yourself up, as Imentioned, for disappointment,
regardless of the quality of theperson that's working on your
project.
There is no magic recipe.
You can't rub on a lamp and getit.
And so the idea is to be able toput a budget aside, set goals,
(09:26):
and then start working towardthose goals and understanding.
And you know your campaign ismoving in the right direction if
you're constantly learning.
If you're not learning anything,then you're spinning your tires.
So that's the first horseman.
Waiting and reacting will killyour business forever.
And really, it'll just take thewind out of your sails.
(09:49):
So let's move on to the secondhorseman.
And this one may be a littlemore sensitive for some of you
guys.
But this is the process ofmaking decisions based on ego.
Now, when we hear the word ego,a lot of us go, well, it's a
negative word.
But basically, it's personalpreference, you know, versus
(10:10):
what the audience, what yourcustomers want to see.
Now, if the brand that you'reworking on, like for example, if
you would say, I wouldn't clickon that or my spouse said it
looked off, it didn't look likeit made a lot of sense.
You know, if you're getting thiskind of internal feedback, this
(10:33):
internal feedback typically isbased on personal preference.
Now, the one thing that I'veoften told clients many times
is, you know, give them achoice.
And I'll say, okay, choicenumber one, you get the ugliest
site on the planet, your wifehates it, your kids hate it,
your employees hate it,everybody hates it, but it sells
(10:54):
really good.
Or you get a really pretty sitethat everybody loves.
Your wife loves it, your kidslove it, everybody loves it, but
it doesn't sell anything.
Now, the question is, which onewould you choose?
Now, of course...
everybody's going to react andsay, well, I want to sell more
product.
Now, actually, that's not true.
(11:15):
I've had a couple people,they'll actually stop and think
about that for a second becausethey try to think how they could
do both.
But when you're presented withthe idea of choosing one or the
other, oftentimes, you know,choosing what's best to sell,
this is what we do.
We're in business to make money.
We're not in business to– pacifywhat our personal preference is
(11:39):
or the personal preference ofthe people that we love.
We're out to generate businessand serve a group of people.
And so if you come back and youfind yourself in a loop where
you're giving your designerdeveloper feedback based upon
certain messaging or certainimagery or certain headings, And
(12:02):
you're not basing that basedupon real data.
You're setting that project upto not succeed.
Because what you feel is notalways what your customers feel.
Now, when it comes to designers,here's the thing.
A lot of designers and a lot ofmarketers, what they do is they
(12:23):
try to please the client.
So please you as the owner of abusiness.
Now, this is good and a mistakeat the same time because
oftentimes you cannot serve twomasters.
Oftentimes you have to make thetough decision of going, okay, I
know this will sell better, butI know the client wants this
(12:44):
look.
I know the client likes thesecolors, but I know their
customers like this other set ofcolors.
And so in order to keep theclient, a lot of times they will
compromise the difference.
And in making those compromises,a lot of times it sacrifices the
success of that business.
(13:06):
And so being able to pullyourself out of the creative
process and really the ultimatemeasuring stick is which one is
more effective at achieving thegoal of serving customers.
And if you can get to thatpoint, then you're going to be
much more successful.
(13:27):
However, you will have thisthing where you may feel pulled
in, where certain things justaren't as appealing.
Now, here's where it gets alittle bit tricky.
There are a lot of designers andmarketers out there who really
don't know what they're doing.
Now, It's not nice to say.
(13:48):
It's not the best thing in theworld to say.
But part of what I do is I lookat other agencies and
everything.
I'm actually paid to investigatethem.
And when you get into a lot ofthese situations, you find out
that the designers are doingnothing more than pulling
templates.
And the marketing people arejust buying third-party services
(14:10):
and not really doing any realwork.
They just kind of put it onautopilot and start collecting a
check.
So the idea is, you know, ifyour sense is going off and
you're going, well, maybesomething's wrong here or this
doesn't look right or it doesn'tlook balanced, it could entirely
(14:30):
be possible.
And you could entirely bepicking up on something that you
know is intuitively wrong.
And that is you've hired a groupor a person that really isn't a
professional and really doesn'thave the experience in order to
do things correctly.
It could also be your egogetting in the way where you
(14:51):
personally don't like something.
Now, there's a tough decisionthere because which one is it?
Now, sometimes you can tell bydoing things like A-B testing.
So basically you say, well,let's say, for example, it is a
message.
Let's run message A and runmessage B.
(15:13):
Or I think this.
I want to test this designversus that design and see which
one performs better.
We often find with our agencythat empirical data really gets
away from the subjectiveargument.
So, for example, if we feelsomething should be a certain
(15:35):
way, we'll talk to our clientand we'll say, well, we really
think this is the case, butlet's go ahead and run two
parallel tests.
campaigns.
One where we're testing onething and one where we're
testing another thing.
And oftentimes you don't want tomake a lot of differences
between the two.
(15:55):
You kind of want to make sureyou're directly testing
something certain.
And then once you do that, Thenyou can look at the data.
You can find out which one isattracting more your customers.
And more importantly, which onesare converting people visiting
your website into payingcustomers.
(16:16):
And then what you could do islook at the data.
Now, when it comes to that, it'sreally good because on our end,
we really don't care if...
We win or lose on that.
Ultimately, our main goal is tohelp the business grow.
And so the designer oftentimes,speaking of ego, my goodness,
(16:39):
designers have incredible egos,and they're usually pretty
sensitive too.
Back when I started doing designwork, it was way back in the
1900s.
Sorry, I'm being a little bitfacetious here.
But it was back in– I started asearly as like 1986 when I was
(17:00):
first exposed to Max.
And then– I was a freehandillustrator and did a bunch of
other things and was heavilyinvolved in an annual catalog.
And anyway, that's whencomputers started taking off
more and more.
But during that time, luckily, Iwas around some really talented
creatives and also around aproofing team and a bunch of
(17:24):
other people.
So you quickly learn to havetough skin and you quickly learn
that you don't know everything.
You know, if you're a designerwho's been designing a while.
However, if you're new to it, alot of times the designer ego
may conflict with your ego.
And then you've got a real messthere.
(17:46):
The other thing you want toavoid when it comes to if it's
client or marketing ego, be realcareful because a lot of times
people will start using bigwords.
Or they'll start saying thingsthat, you know, things they've
done or something in order totry to justify their position.
And if you start seeing themtrying to, you know,
intellectually stronghold theconversation, usually a great
(18:11):
test is to do A-B testing.
And then look who wins.
And that way, no matter whowins, you win because it's your
business that's doing it.
So, oh, and I'll share thisstory with you too.
Speaking of back when I was afreehand illustrator, we were
doing educational books.
(18:31):
And the owner of the company,she loved coloring things
digitally.
So what we would do is we would–Typically, we would draw
traditionally early on before wegot a hold of tablets and things
like that.
And we would freehand illustrateand then we would scan them.
And then we would run themthrough a product called Adobe
Streamline back in the day,which would convert them to
(18:54):
where you could click and colorin shirts and, you know, hair
and faces and things like that.
And she found herself, you know,where she loved to color and she
was really bad at it.
I mean, really, really, reallybad at it.
I mean, you know, the colorswouldn't, you know, they
wouldn't be complimentary.
There would be all kinds ofissues.
(19:17):
But she felt that she was.
And she knew that we thought shewasn't, but she didn't care.
Now, that was her company, andshe could do whatever she wanted
to with it.
However, she heard her productthrough that.
Now, in your case, you couldhurt yourselves.
You could go completely sidewaysby making a poor decision.
(19:37):
So again, remember the big takehome is, yep, honey, I love you.
I thank the world of you.
But we really got to do what'sbest for the customer and what's
going to sell the most productthe one that's going to gain the
most trust, the message that'sgoing to resonate the most with
the client.
And then what you could do isstart to break through by doing
(20:02):
those A-B tests.
And again, that's just a reallynice way to do it.
But you're going to have todistance yourself emotionally
from the product and distanceyour personal taste from it.
And believe it or not, that's areally, really big deal in
marketing.
And I can't tell you how manyprivate conversations I've had
with real quality designers.
(20:23):
And it's like, boy, they reallyjust destroyed this logo or this
concept.
And it's not going the way thatit should.
And we know it's going to hurtthe product.
And a lot of times they staysilent.
No joke.
Now, with us, we typically willsay something to the client.
Sometimes we'll try tostrategically work in the design
(20:44):
changes and things like that.
But all in all, we're reallyblessed with good clients, and
ultimately they just want tosucceed.
And most of them do a prettygood job pulling themselves away
from it.
So now let's look at the thirdhorseman.
This kind of ties into thesecond horseman a little bit.
(21:05):
So they may be riding side byside here.
But that is the let's get morefeedback.
Now, this is a tough one.
Because what happens is peoplewill start bringing in multiple
decision makers.
And then you get these unclearroles of who does what.
(21:26):
And then you get thesenever-ending revisions.
Now, there's a power game inthis.
And it's a big one.
Because what happens is that alot of times when you're dealing
with certain people who aremaking money as contractors or
employees from your company,They want to be tied in to this
(21:49):
decision-making process.
And so what they'll typically dois they'll kind of bring
themselves in.
And if they sense that they'relosing a little bit of control,
a lot of times you'll see theseguys kind of give this weird
vibe about just how they shouldtake control and they know more,
(22:13):
when in reality...
They don't know what they'retalking about.
And I have seen this, especiallylike with coaches, like
especially small businesscoaching, like putting together
businesses.
It's really common when you havethose people for the owner of a
business to tie in that personinto the design and marketing
(22:35):
conversation.
And, man, they completely gum itup.
I've never seen that wheresomeone who is like setting up a
business says, and looking atcertain KPIs and things like
that who've come in andcontributed positively to a
marketing strategy, but theyhave derailed the train.
(22:55):
A lot of times we have to kindof slow down and reset.
And once in a blue moon, we runinto problems where it's kind of
hard to work with the client andbe able to turn the corner.
And sometimes, you know, settingthose boundaries is difficult.
The other thing is, you know,you bring your assistant in,
(23:16):
your secretary in, you know,your key sales guy in.
You know, if you bring in thewrong mix and you start having
this committee style selectionprocess.
Now, this really does happenlike with nonprofits.
And it really happens also withlarger businesses where they
start bringing in everyone inbecause they want to have like
(23:39):
this, you know, team structure.
kind of like healing session,bringing everybody together to
contribute in the design.
Absolutely, it just slows theprocess down, makes it more
expensive, and usually makes apoorer product at the same time.
So this could be, like I said,your secretary.
(24:02):
It could be your coach that'shelping you out with business.
It could be your spouse, yourrelatives.
It could be anyone.
Getting that more feedbackdoesn't contribute.
And again, if you go back to A-Btesting, and then ultimately,
(24:22):
you know, I guess if you reallywant to say it, it kind of comes
down to, do you trust the personthat you hired?
You know, I know a little bitabout, you know, carpentry and
things like that, but, you know,I'm not a professional.
You know, I know a little bitabout plumbing, but not a lot.
I'm not a professional.
(24:42):
You know, I turn that over.
You know, I would never go tothe guy who's doing the plumbing
and then suggest that they dosomething the way I would want
that done.
Design is one of those weirdplaces where people think it's
subjective.
And in reality, it's notsubjective.
There's a lot of, like, reallytechnical and aesthetic and
(25:04):
emotional things Andreinforcement.
There's a lot of factors that gointo design that really makes it
where it's not reallycommittee-friendly.
And if certain people don't havethose skill sets, just trying to
stop and explain why you'rethinking the way you're thinking
(25:25):
and what you're trying to do canjust really bog down the
process.
So part of this may also be theidea that you need to make sure
you hire people that you trustin order to make those
decisions.
And of course, the fallback isA-B testing.
You know, if you think this andwe think that, then let's do
(25:48):
that.
And then you can start to buildtrust in your designer.
And then, of course, just likethe last horseman, the problem
is there are a lot of designersand marketing people that
absolutely don't know whatthey're doing.
But the committee usually don'thelp with that.
The committee just usually addsanother layer of complexity on
(26:08):
top of something that's alreadykind of messed up.
And so...
Remember that indecision is adecision.
It's just a slow one that'sgoing to cost you a lot more
money.
So streamline your feedback.
Trust the people you hire andassign one single authority for
(26:30):
approvals.
And you also got to get thisrapport.
So let's talk about rapport fora little bit.
This is always tough.
You hire somebody.
And then that new person youbring on, you start talking with
them, and that person wants toplease you and make you think
that they know what they'redoing and build trust.
And so they're trying to getthat trust factor and that
(26:53):
rapport built with you, and sothey don't want to conflict with
you that much.
Once you get to be a certainage, you just kind of let that
go out the window, I guess.
But one thing that I do is I tryto get it as open and honest as
I can as quick as I can.
I talk in my regular language.
I treat people as they're justanother person.
(27:17):
And then when you do that, thenoftentimes what it does is open
the dialogue up where there canbe more meaningful conversation.
And so I guess in ways, onething you could do also is think
about the people that you'reworking with and then say, can I
talk to this person?
Can I be honest with thisperson?
(27:37):
Can I let them know things thatmay make...
me personally more vulnerable ordo I feel like they're going to
take advantage of that orthey're going to try to do other
things.
And those are tough decisions.
And so I think maybe that alsoplays into this equation.
But indecision– And getting thatmore feedback is a killer for
(28:02):
businesses.
And it can absolutely blow yourbudget out of the water when it
comes to time and hours.
And if your designer marketingperson is not charging you for
it or trying to get it done anddealing with all those extra
layers, if they're good, you'regoing to end up losing them.
And you don't want to do that.
Okay, so the fourth horseman,and my goodness, this horseman
(28:27):
is absolutely riding harder andfaster than any other of these
horsemen today.
And that is the tack obsession.
My goodness, I have never seenit so bad in my life.
It seems like every day, youknow, we're getting emails or
(28:47):
calls from our clients ordifferent situations where
somebody has cold called aclient or a client has stumbled
onto a product or somebody hassaid something at a trade show
about this latest and greatesttech.
And this tech is supposed toabsolutely just be the next big
thing.
(29:08):
Now, with the advent ofartificial intelligence, this is
going into hyperspeed.
It's like everyone is claimingthat, you know, they can cold
email people, SMS people, writethe right messaging, create
content for nothing.
You name it.
I mean, they're saying they'vegot the product.
(29:29):
Now, I can tell you with 100%accuracy that Of that 100%, this
is weird.
All right, the 100% accuracy, Ican tell you that 99% of those
don't work.
Okay, it's like a movie quotesomewhere.
But basically what I'm sayingis, is that I test them out.
(29:49):
Like I've had it where one of myclients, he ran across this
person and they'll say, okay,we're going to guarantee you
this number of leads.
And we know we can do that permonth for this price per lead.
And that's just it.
We've watched that.
I'm telling you, there are somany little things going on in
(30:12):
the language, so many thingsgoing on.
These never work out the waythey're supposed to.
They're scams.
Now, the other side is, isthere's a lot of good tech out
there, but it's tech you don'tneed to be messing with.
I mean, there may be, you know,great ERP, CRMs, technology
(30:35):
tools, whatever the case may be,and they could be great tech and
they do work for a lot ofpeople.
But here's the thing.
They could also be a hugedistraction for your business.
You see, the more overhead, themore complexity you add to your
business, the And the lessstreamlined it becomes, the more
frustrating it becomes for yourteam.
(30:58):
But then it also adds overheadto everything, and it can also
bleed down into poor customerservice.
So the idea is, yeah, you know,keep your eye out for tech.
But some of this tech isincredibly bloated, and it's not
a good fit, and you really don'thave any business messing with
it anyway.
Now, that's tough.
I know it's a tough way to putit, but it's true.
(31:21):
You know, you really don't wantto be playing around and then
having people do all this kindof tech.
I've known several people whobought into this because, you
know, if you look at emotionaltriggers, one of them is fear of
missing out.
FOMO, right?
Fear of missing out.
UNKNOWN (31:41):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (31:41):
So the idea is that these people are telling you
that their product will sell andhelp you grow your business.
And if you're in the middle oftrying to develop a serious
campaign and then you hear thatthere's this product out there
that may be working for all yourcompetitors and you're worried
that maybe this is going to bemore cost effective and help you
(32:02):
grow and you should buy into it,boy, they're going to hook you.
And when they hook you, they'regoing to take you for whatever
they can take you for.
They already know about how longyou're going to stay with them
before you get tired of them andleave them.
But they're not worried aboutthat.
They're probably used to a highturnover and they probably
already have their out anyway.
(32:22):
And the real sad truth is, to alot of these programs is they
know you're not really going tolook hard at how well it's
optimizing your business, howwell it's contributing to the
sales cycle.
I mean, if we go back tomarketing, I can't tell you how
many people that I have workedwith and they have no idea how
(32:44):
how well their marketing isworking for them.
They have no idea what's goingon.
They just keep buying and pilingon marketing and piling on
marketing, and they have thisreally bloated marketing, and
they're making sales, but theyhave no idea that 60% to 70% of
that marketing could beeliminated.
Well, it's the same thing whenit comes to this tech.
(33:06):
If it's bloated, if it's notserving a purpose, if it's not
filling a hole that you'veidentified that needs to be
filled, then maybe you shouldn'tbe doing it in the first place.
It can be an overalldistraction.
So these are truly, as I'msitting here thinking about it,
four real horsemen thatbusinesses have to deal with.
(33:29):
You know, As I'm concluding withthis, you know, I can see the
people bounce around in my head,the ones that have struggled
with these.
And I can tell you our mostsuccessful clients are the ones
that are somewhat detached fromthe creative.
It's like they know we do it andthey know we do it very well.
(33:52):
And so they trust us to knockthose things out.
And when they trust us to dothat, and then we combine that
with us managing the marketingand us managing the design and
the creative and putting ittogether and then giving reports
and showing analytically howit's working, those are our most
successful clients.
(34:16):
Just to put this out there, too,our business, we don't work with
third parties.
Like we don't want someone, wedon't want a client bringing in
someone that, you know, claimsto be an SEO expert or claims to
be this or that and, you know,can be a sounding board.
(34:37):
We typically don't like that andwe're resistant to it.
And it's primarily for onereason.
They may know or may not know,most time it's not know, but
they may know what they'retalking about, but they have no
clue how what they know fitsinto the bigger picture.
And they may not understand thatthere's some give and take that
(35:00):
has to happen to make thatsnowball effect when you put
together an entire package.
You know, there may be aspectsof social that don't need to be
addressed frequently.
with certain businesses, atleast not at this time.
And for them to argue theprocess or the methodology or
whatever, and then they go back,and then they would start
(35:22):
talking to the client, it justmakes a mess.
It just makes a mess.
And that's why we do everything.
We do everything fromvideography all the way down,
and our customers are the mostsuccessful.
So my advice to you as we wrapup, kill these horsemen.
Kill them.
Kill them as quick as you can.
Work on it.
Ask questions and do that A-Btesting.
(35:45):
Hire people you can trust andthen lean on them to do their
job.
And always learn.
Always learn.
What did you learn in the lasttime period?
And are you buying stuff thatreally is not helping you
anyway?
All right, guys.
Thank you so much for listeningto Over the Bull this episode.
A couple of notes.
(36:06):
I do apologize for not postinglast week.
We have been incredibly busy.
And I just see the gas pedal.
getting faster and faster andnot slower and slower.
And I just didn't make it inwith that week, you know,
leading up to Memorial Day.
(36:28):
So I apologize.
I'll work harder at making sureI get these planned and done.
But a lot of times thesepodcasts, frankly, are just from
the result of what I run intoduring the week and things that
I think could help you as abusiness without, you know,
obviously betraying the clientsthat we're working with.
So until next we meet, thank youso much for attending.
(36:50):
I hope this does help you out.
And take care of yourself outthere.
And don't respond to those spamemails.
And if they come in, block them.
Don't entertain them.
Don't write them back.
That's one of the best things Icould tell you to do.
Until next time.
SPEAKER_00 (37:08):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bowl, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut
through marketing noise.
Here's your host, Ken Carroll.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
The Four Horsemen on this episode of Over the Bull.
You know, the Four Horsemen havealways been known with doom and
gloom.
you know, or the bad guys.
You know, if you go back to the80s, you know, back in the days
of Ric Flair and pro wrestling,you know, there was a group that
called themselves the FourHorsemen.
And obviously, you know, in theBook of Revelation, we have the
(00:34):
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
And, you know, they represent,obviously, you know, something
you don't want to encounter.
And what I've identifiedrecently are Four Horsemen of...
marketing, basically.
What's unusual about this isthat it's pretty consistent.
(00:55):
And what I mean by that arebusinesses typically make these
mistakes, and it doesn't matterif they're startups or
30-year-old businesses orwhatever.
It seems like that a lot ofbusinesses just get into these
habits of making these mistakes.
Now, When I go through this, ifyou recognize that you're
(01:15):
probably doing one or more ofthese, this is not a blame game.
This is not a, you know, hey,you know, you should be doing
this and not that.
The idea is that we learn fromeach other.
And if you can learn from mewhat I'm seeing in other
businesses, and if you'refalling into the same traps, and
then you can pull yourself outof it and then avoid one or more
(01:39):
of these four horsemen, then Ithink what you're going to be
able to do is be much moresuccessful at what you do.
And of course, each one of thesedoes have a challenge.
So with that, let's jump rightin to the four horsemen.
Okay, the horseman number one isthe we need leads now.
(02:01):
The single most indicator thatthere is an issue is when a
business becomes reactive ratherthan proactive in their
marketing.
You know, sometimes it's in abad situation.
They spend a lot of money, theychase the wrong things, they
bought into the wrongadvertisements, and they've
(02:21):
blown through thousands andthousands of dollars and have
garnered no results from it.
Now, usually when they dosomething like this, it's also
cultivated by sales decreasing.
So if you're a business andtraditionally you're doing very
well in your business, you maythink that'll never dry up.
And so you don't proactivelymarket and you wait until you
(02:45):
see things starting to go down.
And then you start to think,maybe I need to do something.
So then you start, you know,reaching out.
And now you've got this elephantin a relatively short period of
time because marketing isextremely complicated.
And there are all kinds oflittle fine tunings and nuances
(03:07):
and everything that you've gotto do in order to make them
work.
And so by waiting and thentrying to react and hire someone
to try to build those ads, it'sjust a recipe for disaster.
And normally that reactionaryprocess doesn't end very well.
Normally you just spend a lot ofmoney and you end up thinking
(03:29):
things like, well, Google Adsdoes not work.
Now, that's not the case.
Google Ads can be a verypowerful tool.
Now, obviously, within the rightcontext of the right business,
but it's one single tool.
And when you look at somethinglike this, oftentimes people do
(03:50):
look at things like Google Adsor paid advertising or No one
should ever think SEO isreactionary and should be quick.
Search engine optimization isfar from being quick.
It's definitely slow momentumover a period of time.
So if anyone's telling yousomething quickly with SEO,
obviously there's somethingwrong there.
(04:13):
But in looking at some datawe've been running for the last,
I don't know, we've been runningthis data for about two months
now with a certain group.
And what it shows is somethingthat I've always called the
snowball effect is really moreprevalent today than it's ever
been.
Now, what I mean by that isthese campaigns, they have a
(04:37):
very strategic application ofsocial media, local SEO, paid
advertising, and a few othercomponents.
Now, If we looked at it strictlyfrom a paid ad perspective, this
group, if you will, aregarnering somewhere between, I
(04:59):
don't know, 175 to 200, youknow, about 300 leads basically
a month.
But if you looked at the paidads, you would see that that was
maybe a quarter of the overallleads.
Now, If we track the phone callsand we track all the lead
sources and look at howeverything's playing together,
(05:20):
we're seeing that it's reallysymbiotic.
And all of those things areharmonizing together.
And what they're doing isgenerating a large influx of
phone calls.
And so by tracking it andlooking at it, we can see that
this methodology is working.
Now, here's the challenge withit.
(05:42):
The challenge is it's no singleone thing.
It's a little bit of doingeverything but strategically.
Now, when I say everything, Idon't mean go out and spend a
fortune on social and spend afortune on paid ads, a fortune
on SEO, and a fortune on theseother things.
As a matter of fact, when itcomes to us, we find that having
(06:04):
too many cooks often messesthings up.
Now, so what we do is we manageit, but we use each one of these
outlets in a very specific wayfor specific businesses.
It doesn't work for every singlebusiness.
So how does this tie back in tobeing reactionary?
(06:25):
Well, I can tell you, forexample, in one of the cases in
building this clientele up,changing the messaging slightly
really made a huge difference,especially when we went back and
we looked at the competitionwithin their service area.
Now, I can also tell you thatthis particular series of
(06:50):
businesses are in differentgeographical locations, but they
offer the same service.
Now, what's interesting aboutthat is that we're not running
this same process the same wayfor any of those businesses.
Now, that seems unusual, right?
Because you think if we got onedown, we could rubber stamp it
(07:12):
for each location.
However, that's not the case.
Now, we'll start with abaseline.
And after we start with thatbaseline, we start looking at
what are the competitors in thatarea doing as far as their price
point?
What are their call to actions?
How long have they been inbusiness?
What do they do that's slightlyunique?
(07:34):
And then what we do is we startto mold a campaign gradually
based on the data that comes inand based upon what we're seeing
in that particular geographicarea.
It's not just turning on adsbecause we service electricians
or plumbers or roofers orwhatever may have you.
That's a mistake.
(07:56):
You can't just do that.
What you have to do is actuallydig a lot deeper.
So if you're reacting.
Typically, you just want to spinthose things up, get them out
there as quick as you can, tryto drum up some sales.
And if you're expecting thatfrom anyone in marketing, you're
really setting yourself up to bedisappointed and probably be
(08:18):
frustrated in your marketingperson.
And so the idea is to understandthat it is a process.
It's a process of growth.
And what I do is often tellclients that it's a process of
building your ATM machine.
And what I mean by that is youcan't just throw together a
bunch of parts.
You have to figure out therhythm that works in your
(08:39):
business.
Now, what's also interestingabout that is once you build it
out, then you'll also adjust itover a period of time as well.
And so as you're working throughit, the wrong mentality is to
go, okay, I need to do this.
I need to hire somebody.
I need more sales.
(09:01):
I'm desperate, and I want tothrow money at it and see what
happens.
You're setting yourself up to betaken advantage of, and you're
also setting yourself up, as Imentioned, for disappointment,
regardless of the quality of theperson that's working on your
project.
There is no magic recipe.
You can't rub on a lamp and getit.
And so the idea is to be able toput a budget aside, set goals,
(09:26):
and then start working towardthose goals and understanding.
And you know your campaign ismoving in the right direction if
you're constantly learning.
If you're not learning anything,then you're spinning your tires.
So that's the first horseman.
Waiting and reacting will killyour business forever.
And really, it'll just take thewind out of your sails.
(09:49):
So let's move on to the secondhorseman.
And this one may be a littlemore sensitive for some of you
guys.
But this is the process ofmaking decisions based on ego.
Now, when we hear the word ego,a lot of us go, well, it's a
negative word.
But basically, it's personalpreference, you know, versus
(10:10):
what the audience, what yourcustomers want to see.
Now, if the brand that you'reworking on, like for example, if
you would say, I wouldn't clickon that or my spouse said it
looked off, it didn't look likeit made a lot of sense.
You know, if you're getting thiskind of internal feedback, this
(10:33):
internal feedback typically isbased on personal preference.
Now, the one thing that I'veoften told clients many times
is, you know, give them achoice.
And I'll say, okay, choicenumber one, you get the ugliest
site on the planet, your wifehates it, your kids hate it,
your employees hate it,everybody hates it, but it sells
(10:54):
really good.
Or you get a really pretty sitethat everybody loves.
Your wife loves it, your kidslove it, everybody loves it, but
it doesn't sell anything.
Now, the question is, which onewould you choose?
Now, of course...
everybody's going to react andsay, well, I want to sell more
product.
Now, actually, that's not true.
(11:15):
I've had a couple people,they'll actually stop and think
about that for a second becausethey try to think how they could
do both.
But when you're presented withthe idea of choosing one or the
other, oftentimes, you know,choosing what's best to sell,
this is what we do.
We're in business to make money.
We're not in business to– pacifywhat our personal preference is
(11:39):
or the personal preference ofthe people that we love.
We're out to generate businessand serve a group of people.
And so if you come back and youfind yourself in a loop where
you're giving your designerdeveloper feedback based upon
certain messaging or certainimagery or certain headings, And
(12:02):
you're not basing that basedupon real data.
You're setting that project upto not succeed.
Because what you feel is notalways what your customers feel.
Now, when it comes to designers,here's the thing.
A lot of designers and a lot ofmarketers, what they do is they
(12:23):
try to please the client.
So please you as the owner of abusiness.
Now, this is good and a mistakeat the same time because
oftentimes you cannot serve twomasters.
Oftentimes you have to make thetough decision of going, okay, I
know this will sell better, butI know the client wants this
(12:44):
look.
I know the client likes thesecolors, but I know their
customers like this other set ofcolors.
And so in order to keep theclient, a lot of times they will
compromise the difference.
And in making those compromises,a lot of times it sacrifices the
success of that business.
(13:06):
And so being able to pullyourself out of the creative
process and really the ultimatemeasuring stick is which one is
more effective at achieving thegoal of serving customers.
And if you can get to thatpoint, then you're going to be
much more successful.
(13:27):
However, you will have thisthing where you may feel pulled
in, where certain things justaren't as appealing.
Now, here's where it gets alittle bit tricky.
There are a lot of designers andmarketers out there who really
don't know what they're doing.
Now, It's not nice to say.
(13:48):
It's not the best thing in theworld to say.
But part of what I do is I lookat other agencies and
everything.
I'm actually paid to investigatethem.
And when you get into a lot ofthese situations, you find out
that the designers are doingnothing more than pulling
templates.
And the marketing people arejust buying third-party services
(14:10):
and not really doing any realwork.
They just kind of put it onautopilot and start collecting a
check.
So the idea is, you know, ifyour sense is going off and
you're going, well, maybesomething's wrong here or this
doesn't look right or it doesn'tlook balanced, it could entirely
(14:30):
be possible.
And you could entirely bepicking up on something that you
know is intuitively wrong.
And that is you've hired a groupor a person that really isn't a
professional and really doesn'thave the experience in order to
do things correctly.
It could also be your egogetting in the way where you
(14:51):
personally don't like something.
Now, there's a tough decisionthere because which one is it?
Now, sometimes you can tell bydoing things like A-B testing.
So basically you say, well,let's say, for example, it is a
message.
Let's run message A and runmessage B.
(15:13):
Or I think this.
I want to test this designversus that design and see which
one performs better.
We often find with our agencythat empirical data really gets
away from the subjectiveargument.
So, for example, if we feelsomething should be a certain
(15:35):
way, we'll talk to our clientand we'll say, well, we really
think this is the case, butlet's go ahead and run two
parallel tests.
campaigns.
One where we're testing onething and one where we're
testing another thing.
And oftentimes you don't want tomake a lot of differences
between the two.
(15:55):
You kind of want to make sureyou're directly testing
something certain.
And then once you do that, Thenyou can look at the data.
You can find out which one isattracting more your customers.
And more importantly, which onesare converting people visiting
your website into payingcustomers.
(16:16):
And then what you could do islook at the data.
Now, when it comes to that, it'sreally good because on our end,
we really don't care if...
We win or lose on that.
Ultimately, our main goal is tohelp the business grow.
And so the designer oftentimes,speaking of ego, my goodness,
(16:39):
designers have incredible egos,and they're usually pretty
sensitive too.
Back when I started doing designwork, it was way back in the
1900s.
Sorry, I'm being a little bitfacetious here.
But it was back in– I started asearly as like 1986 when I was
(17:00):
first exposed to Max.
And then– I was a freehandillustrator and did a bunch of
other things and was heavilyinvolved in an annual catalog.
And anyway, that's whencomputers started taking off
more and more.
But during that time, luckily, Iwas around some really talented
creatives and also around aproofing team and a bunch of
(17:24):
other people.
So you quickly learn to havetough skin and you quickly learn
that you don't know everything.
You know, if you're a designerwho's been designing a while.
However, if you're new to it, alot of times the designer ego
may conflict with your ego.
And then you've got a real messthere.
(17:46):
The other thing you want toavoid when it comes to if it's
client or marketing ego, be realcareful because a lot of times
people will start using bigwords.
Or they'll start saying thingsthat, you know, things they've
done or something in order totry to justify their position.
And if you start seeing themtrying to, you know,
intellectually stronghold theconversation, usually a great
(18:11):
test is to do A-B testing.
And then look who wins.
And that way, no matter whowins, you win because it's your
business that's doing it.
So, oh, and I'll share thisstory with you too.
Speaking of back when I was afreehand illustrator, we were
doing educational books.
(18:31):
And the owner of the company,she loved coloring things
digitally.
So what we would do is we would–Typically, we would draw
traditionally early on before wegot a hold of tablets and things
like that.
And we would freehand illustrateand then we would scan them.
And then we would run themthrough a product called Adobe
Streamline back in the day,which would convert them to
(18:54):
where you could click and colorin shirts and, you know, hair
and faces and things like that.
And she found herself, you know,where she loved to color and she
was really bad at it.
I mean, really, really, reallybad at it.
I mean, you know, the colorswouldn't, you know, they
wouldn't be complimentary.
There would be all kinds ofissues.
(19:17):
But she felt that she was.
And she knew that we thought shewasn't, but she didn't care.
Now, that was her company, andshe could do whatever she wanted
to with it.
However, she heard her productthrough that.
Now, in your case, you couldhurt yourselves.
You could go completely sidewaysby making a poor decision.
(19:37):
So again, remember the big takehome is, yep, honey, I love you.
I thank the world of you.
But we really got to do what'sbest for the customer and what's
going to sell the most productthe one that's going to gain the
most trust, the message that'sgoing to resonate the most with
the client.
And then what you could do isstart to break through by doing
(20:02):
those A-B tests.
And again, that's just a reallynice way to do it.
But you're going to have todistance yourself emotionally
from the product and distanceyour personal taste from it.
And believe it or not, that's areally, really big deal in
marketing.
And I can't tell you how manyprivate conversations I've had
with real quality designers.
(20:23):
And it's like, boy, they reallyjust destroyed this logo or this
concept.
And it's not going the way thatit should.
And we know it's going to hurtthe product.
And a lot of times they staysilent.
No joke.
Now, with us, we typically willsay something to the client.
Sometimes we'll try tostrategically work in the design
(20:44):
changes and things like that.
But all in all, we're reallyblessed with good clients, and
ultimately they just want tosucceed.
And most of them do a prettygood job pulling themselves away
from it.
So now let's look at the thirdhorseman.
This kind of ties into thesecond horseman a little bit.
(21:05):
So they may be riding side byside here.
But that is the let's get morefeedback.
Now, this is a tough one.
Because what happens is peoplewill start bringing in multiple
decision makers.
And then you get these unclearroles of who does what.
(21:26):
And then you get thesenever-ending revisions.
Now, there's a power game inthis.
And it's a big one.
Because what happens is that alot of times when you're dealing
with certain people who aremaking money as contractors or
employees from your company,They want to be tied in to this
(21:49):
decision-making process.
And so what they'll typically dois they'll kind of bring
themselves in.
And if they sense that they'relosing a little bit of control,
a lot of times you'll see theseguys kind of give this weird
vibe about just how they shouldtake control and they know more,
(22:13):
when in reality...
They don't know what they'retalking about.
And I have seen this, especiallylike with coaches, like
especially small businesscoaching, like putting together
businesses.
It's really common when you havethose people for the owner of a
business to tie in that personinto the design and marketing
(22:35):
conversation.
And, man, they completely gum itup.
I've never seen that wheresomeone who is like setting up a
business says, and looking atcertain KPIs and things like
that who've come in andcontributed positively to a
marketing strategy, but theyhave derailed the train.
(22:55):
A lot of times we have to kindof slow down and reset.
And once in a blue moon, we runinto problems where it's kind of
hard to work with the client andbe able to turn the corner.
And sometimes, you know, settingthose boundaries is difficult.
The other thing is, you know,you bring your assistant in,
(23:16):
your secretary in, you know,your key sales guy in.
You know, if you bring in thewrong mix and you start having
this committee style selectionprocess.
Now, this really does happenlike with nonprofits.
And it really happens also withlarger businesses where they
start bringing in everyone inbecause they want to have like
(23:39):
this, you know, team structure.
kind of like healing session,bringing everybody together to
contribute in the design.
Absolutely, it just slows theprocess down, makes it more
expensive, and usually makes apoorer product at the same time.
So this could be, like I said,your secretary.
(24:02):
It could be your coach that'shelping you out with business.
It could be your spouse, yourrelatives.
It could be anyone.
Getting that more feedbackdoesn't contribute.
And again, if you go back to A-Btesting, and then ultimately,
(24:22):
you know, I guess if you reallywant to say it, it kind of comes
down to, do you trust the personthat you hired?
You know, I know a little bitabout, you know, carpentry and
things like that, but, you know,I'm not a professional.
You know, I know a little bitabout plumbing, but not a lot.
I'm not a professional.
(24:42):
You know, I turn that over.
You know, I would never go tothe guy who's doing the plumbing
and then suggest that they dosomething the way I would want
that done.
Design is one of those weirdplaces where people think it's
subjective.
And in reality, it's notsubjective.
There's a lot of, like, reallytechnical and aesthetic and
(25:04):
emotional things Andreinforcement.
There's a lot of factors that gointo design that really makes it
where it's not reallycommittee-friendly.
And if certain people don't havethose skill sets, just trying to
stop and explain why you'rethinking the way you're thinking
(25:25):
and what you're trying to do canjust really bog down the
process.
So part of this may also be theidea that you need to make sure
you hire people that you trustin order to make those
decisions.
And of course, the fallback isA-B testing.
You know, if you think this andwe think that, then let's do
(25:48):
that.
And then you can start to buildtrust in your designer.
And then, of course, just likethe last horseman, the problem
is there are a lot of designersand marketing people that
absolutely don't know whatthey're doing.
But the committee usually don'thelp with that.
The committee just usually addsanother layer of complexity on
(26:08):
top of something that's alreadykind of messed up.
And so...
Remember that indecision is adecision.
It's just a slow one that'sgoing to cost you a lot more
money.
So streamline your feedback.
Trust the people you hire andassign one single authority for
(26:30):
approvals.
And you also got to get thisrapport.
So let's talk about rapport fora little bit.
This is always tough.
You hire somebody.
And then that new person youbring on, you start talking with
them, and that person wants toplease you and make you think
that they know what they'redoing and build trust.
And so they're trying to getthat trust factor and that
(26:53):
rapport built with you, and sothey don't want to conflict with
you that much.
Once you get to be a certainage, you just kind of let that
go out the window, I guess.
But one thing that I do is I tryto get it as open and honest as
I can as quick as I can.
I talk in my regular language.
I treat people as they're justanother person.
(27:17):
And then when you do that, thenoftentimes what it does is open
the dialogue up where there canbe more meaningful conversation.
And so I guess in ways, onething you could do also is think
about the people that you'reworking with and then say, can I
talk to this person?
Can I be honest with thisperson?
(27:37):
Can I let them know things thatmay make...
me personally more vulnerable ordo I feel like they're going to
take advantage of that orthey're going to try to do other
things.
And those are tough decisions.
And so I think maybe that alsoplays into this equation.
But indecision– And getting thatmore feedback is a killer for
(28:02):
businesses.
And it can absolutely blow yourbudget out of the water when it
comes to time and hours.
And if your designer marketingperson is not charging you for
it or trying to get it done anddealing with all those extra
layers, if they're good, you'regoing to end up losing them.
And you don't want to do that.
Okay, so the fourth horseman,and my goodness, this horseman
(28:27):
is absolutely riding harder andfaster than any other of these
horsemen today.
And that is the tack obsession.
My goodness, I have never seenit so bad in my life.
It seems like every day, youknow, we're getting emails or
(28:47):
calls from our clients ordifferent situations where
somebody has cold called aclient or a client has stumbled
onto a product or somebody hassaid something at a trade show
about this latest and greatesttech.
And this tech is supposed toabsolutely just be the next big
thing.
(29:08):
Now, with the advent ofartificial intelligence, this is
going into hyperspeed.
It's like everyone is claimingthat, you know, they can cold
email people, SMS people, writethe right messaging, create
content for nothing.
You name it.
I mean, they're saying they'vegot the product.
(29:29):
Now, I can tell you with 100%accuracy that Of that 100%, this
is weird.
All right, the 100% accuracy, Ican tell you that 99% of those
don't work.
Okay, it's like a movie quotesomewhere.
But basically what I'm sayingis, is that I test them out.
(29:49):
Like I've had it where one of myclients, he ran across this
person and they'll say, okay,we're going to guarantee you
this number of leads.
And we know we can do that permonth for this price per lead.
And that's just it.
We've watched that.
I'm telling you, there are somany little things going on in
(30:12):
the language, so many thingsgoing on.
These never work out the waythey're supposed to.
They're scams.
Now, the other side is, isthere's a lot of good tech out
there, but it's tech you don'tneed to be messing with.
I mean, there may be, you know,great ERP, CRMs, technology
(30:35):
tools, whatever the case may be,and they could be great tech and
they do work for a lot ofpeople.
But here's the thing.
They could also be a hugedistraction for your business.
You see, the more overhead, themore complexity you add to your
business, the And the lessstreamlined it becomes, the more
frustrating it becomes for yourteam.
(30:58):
But then it also adds overheadto everything, and it can also
bleed down into poor customerservice.
So the idea is, yeah, you know,keep your eye out for tech.
But some of this tech isincredibly bloated, and it's not
a good fit, and you really don'thave any business messing with
it anyway.
Now, that's tough.
I know it's a tough way to putit, but it's true.
(31:21):
You know, you really don't wantto be playing around and then
having people do all this kindof tech.
I've known several people whobought into this because, you
know, if you look at emotionaltriggers, one of them is fear of
missing out.
FOMO, right?
Fear of missing out.
UNKNOWN (31:41):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (31:41):
So the idea is that these people are telling you
that their product will sell andhelp you grow your business.
And if you're in the middle oftrying to develop a serious
campaign and then you hear thatthere's this product out there
that may be working for all yourcompetitors and you're worried
that maybe this is going to bemore cost effective and help you
(32:02):
grow and you should buy into it,boy, they're going to hook you.
And when they hook you, they'regoing to take you for whatever
they can take you for.
They already know about how longyou're going to stay with them
before you get tired of them andleave them.
But they're not worried aboutthat.
They're probably used to a highturnover and they probably
already have their out anyway.
(32:22):
And the real sad truth is, to alot of these programs is they
know you're not really going tolook hard at how well it's
optimizing your business, howwell it's contributing to the
sales cycle.
I mean, if we go back tomarketing, I can't tell you how
many people that I have workedwith and they have no idea how
(32:44):
how well their marketing isworking for them.
They have no idea what's goingon.
They just keep buying and pilingon marketing and piling on
marketing, and they have thisreally bloated marketing, and
they're making sales, but theyhave no idea that 60% to 70% of
that marketing could beeliminated.
Well, it's the same thing whenit comes to this tech.
(33:06):
If it's bloated, if it's notserving a purpose, if it's not
filling a hole that you'veidentified that needs to be
filled, then maybe you shouldn'tbe doing it in the first place.
It can be an overalldistraction.
So these are truly, as I'msitting here thinking about it,
four real horsemen thatbusinesses have to deal with.
(33:29):
You know, As I'm concluding withthis, you know, I can see the
people bounce around in my head,the ones that have struggled
with these.
And I can tell you our mostsuccessful clients are the ones
that are somewhat detached fromthe creative.
It's like they know we do it andthey know we do it very well.
(33:52):
And so they trust us to knockthose things out.
And when they trust us to dothat, and then we combine that
with us managing the marketingand us managing the design and
the creative and putting ittogether and then giving reports
and showing analytically howit's working, those are our most
successful clients.
(34:16):
Just to put this out there, too,our business, we don't work with
third parties.
Like we don't want someone, wedon't want a client bringing in
someone that, you know, claimsto be an SEO expert or claims to
be this or that and, you know,can be a sounding board.
(34:37):
We typically don't like that andwe're resistant to it.
And it's primarily for onereason.
They may know or may not know,most time it's not know, but
they may know what they'retalking about, but they have no
clue how what they know fitsinto the bigger picture.
And they may not understand thatthere's some give and take that
(35:00):
has to happen to make thatsnowball effect when you put
together an entire package.
You know, there may be aspectsof social that don't need to be
addressed frequently.
with certain businesses, atleast not at this time.
And for them to argue theprocess or the methodology or
whatever, and then they go back,and then they would start
(35:22):
talking to the client, it justmakes a mess.
It just makes a mess.
And that's why we do everything.
We do everything fromvideography all the way down,
and our customers are the mostsuccessful.
So my advice to you as we wrapup, kill these horsemen.
Kill them.
Kill them as quick as you can.
Work on it.
Ask questions and do that A-Btesting.
(35:45):
Hire people you can trust andthen lean on them to do their
job.
And always learn.
Always learn.
What did you learn in the lasttime period?
And are you buying stuff thatreally is not helping you
anyway?
All right, guys.
Thank you so much for listeningto Over the Bull this episode.
A couple of notes.
(36:06):
I do apologize for not postinglast week.
We have been incredibly busy.
And I just see the gas pedal.
getting faster and faster andnot slower and slower.
And I just didn't make it inwith that week, you know,
leading up to Memorial Day.
(36:28):
So I apologize.
I'll work harder at making sureI get these planned and done.
But a lot of times thesepodcasts, frankly, are just from
the result of what I run intoduring the week and things that
I think could help you as abusiness without, you know,
obviously betraying the clientsthat we're working with.
So until next we meet, thank youso much for attending.
(36:50):
I hope this does help you out.
And take care of yourself outthere.
And don't respond to those spamemails.
And if they come in, block them.
Don't entertain them.
Don't write them back.
That's one of the best things Icould tell you to do.
Until next time.
SPEAKER_00 (37:08):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bowl, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
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