July 23, 2025 • 48 mins
In this deep-dive episode of Over the Bull, we tackle two emerging threats in digital marketing that may be quietly undermining your brand:
1. Landing Page Pitfalls
Are you driving ad traffic to low-quality pages? Optimized landing pages now convert at up to 55%, while average rates sit at 2–5%—a staggering gap between real strategy and wasted ad dollars. Companies using 40+ tailored pages generate 500% more leads than those relying on fewer than ten.
Sources:
• Analytify – How Landing Pages Affect Ad Conversion Rate (2025):
https://analytify.io/how-landing-pages-affect-ad-conversion-rate/
• SalesGenie – 14 Essential Landing Page Statistics for 2025
https://www.salesgenie.com/blog/landing-page-statistics/
⸻
2. Brand Blur from DIY Tools
Tempted by tools like Canva? You’re not alone—but overuse can dilute your distinct voice. “Thousands of businesses using the same fonts, layouts, and color palettes” risk fading into “a sea of sameness.” In fact, using these platforms for real brand identity can be like “trying to build a high-rise with Legos.”
Sources:
• LinkedIn – The Canva Conundrum: Brand Sameness in the Age of Templates
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/blah-blanding-grindstonecollaboration-ppkrf
• EnvisionaryDesign – Canva Isn’t a Brand Tool. It’s a Delay Button.
https://envisionarydesign.com/canva-logo-design-brand-damage/
Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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):
Welcome back to Over the Bull.
The artificial intelligencetrain is coming.
Are you ready for it?
Many of you are not.
So this episode, we're going tobe talking about a lot of
subjects, not least of which isa client that we had to let go
last week.
(00:30):
And, you know, sometimes youjust have to do it.
You know, if you see peoplemaking a bad move and you can
make money off of it, you know,ethics has to take the front
seat.
And sometimes we just have tomake decisions that are ethical
decisions rather than those thatare necessarily financial.
(00:51):
Now, here's something I want toshare with you.
So A lot of you, I understand,are using practices that feel
good to you.
And you probably are getting alot of stories and you're
probably juggling a lot ofthings is where I'm going with
this.
So what I want to do is I wantto start off with something this
(01:13):
week called a normalcy bias.
Now, if we pull up thedefinition of a normalcy bias
here, It's also known as anormality bias.
It's a cognitive bias thatcauses people to underestimate
the likelihood or impact of apotential disaster or crisis,
meaning that it's kind of likeit's always been that way.
(01:35):
It's always going to be thisway.
And because you get caught inthis kind of normalcy situation,
you don't see the train that'scoming to you because you just
simply don't believe it's goingto hit you.
And this is a known effect.
And what I'm going to argue isthat many businesses on the
(01:56):
Internet today or that aremarketing on the Internet today,
you know, everything fromelectricians to e-commerce to
whatever, I'm going to arguethat a lot of them are going
through a normalcy bias.
And the idea is that if youcan't get out of that, then
you're going to be caught up insomething that you may not be
(02:18):
able to pull out of.
Now, the problem is that oncetried and true ideas, you know,
20 years ago, I think it's 20,maybe a little bit longer now,
you know, the yellow pages was abig deal.
You know, the bigger the ad youwould get, the more color you
would splash on.
And it meant a lot of businessback in today.
(02:40):
Well, where are those yellowpages today?
And what are the yellow pages oftoday that are going to go away
that people trusted before?
just a few years ago.
Because if you look at theinternet, it moves at such a
speed right now that things arechanging with incredible
complexity and with unimaginablespeed.
(03:04):
And so as we go through this andwe start thinking about these
concepts, we want to startthinking about things you may be
clinging on to that youshouldn't be clinging on to.
Now, that was a situation withwhat we had to do last week.
And anyway, so as we moveforward, one of those things,
(03:26):
obviously, that I've beentalking about for some time,
which will transition us intothe first article that I want to
pull some quotes from.
And by the way, let's get the...
the laundry taken out here realquick.
And that is these articles thatI will be using are not our
articles.
I don't claim to have writtenthese articles.
I just think they're fantastic.
(03:47):
And what they're doing is givingyou confidence in what I'm
telling you, that what I'msaying has a strong likelihood
that it's coming and comingquick.
And if you rest on your normalcybias that the things you've done
are always going to work, then Ithink you're in trouble.
(04:09):
If you're trusting certainconcepts, I think you're in
trouble.
And that's why I talk about thisidea of landing pages.
So, as you know, one practicethat I've talked about quite a
bit lately, because I see somany people doing this, where
these Google ad agencies,basically, what they're doing is
(04:32):
they are building these littlemicrosites.
So the idea is if your businessis called Acme Business, they'll
spin up another site calledacmebusinessservices.com or
whatever.
So it's not your main website.
And then they build these ads.
And then what they do is theysend the traffic from those ads
(04:55):
to that offshoot website.
Now, just like some otherpractices that are going the way
of the dinosaur, this is goingthe way of the dinosaur.
Now, it's not landing pages.
It's not building somethingcustom for Google Ads in
general.
It's the strategy of buildingthese little island websites
(05:19):
that have no credibility, andall that traffic is being sent
to those low-credible websites,and you're not getting the full
benefit of what you're spendingmoney to do.
Now, This is the crux of why wehad to let go of a client last
week.
They can't let go of it.
They don't want to go throughthe growing pains and what
(05:42):
they're doing feels so good andthey just want to stick with it.
And you know what?
I understand where they'recoming from as a business.
But when you see, you know,short-term gain for long-term
failure, it just really bothersme.
So we had to step away.
We could have made the exactsame amount of money as an
(06:04):
agency doing a fraction of thework, and it just didn't make
sense.
It didn't feel ethical.
So we had to kind of pull theplug.
It was amicable, and it was agood conversation, but obviously
not in a sandbox we would wantto play in because I like going
to bed at night.
So let's look at this idea oflanding pages.
(06:26):
So idea number one, obviously,was Google Ads to them building
a page and then doing it.
Now, one of the things thatthese guys do, and I can't quite
figure out what statistic orwhat number they're trying to
manipulate, but a lot of timesin your Google Business account,
they're going to put a link tothat kind of scrape low-ranking
(06:48):
website in your Google Businessprofile too, which is a huge
mistake.
Okay, in a world where theinternet is all about
credibility, and authority, andyou're going to create confusion
by introducing that littlemicrosite into the mix, even if
it's converting great right now,you really, really need to start
(07:12):
thinking about the big picturehere.
And yes, it's going to bepainful.
100% it's going to be painful.
But that system is not going tomake it in a world of
credibility.
Now, Let's talk about landingpages in general.
So first, what is a landingpage, right?
Well, it's a page where peopleland on.
(07:33):
I know it sounds a little bitbasic there, but that's exactly
what it is.
Typically, these are highlyoptimized pages to meet a
certain goal, and you run ads tothose pages.
Now, that's perfectlyacceptable.
Matter of fact, I want to giveyou some quotes to show you it's
more than acceptable.
(07:54):
So part of the situation lastweek was like a classic bait and
switch.
And it was where this idea ofusing this Google Ads practice
and then bundling it in withcreating highly optimized
landing pages in the right waywas being intermixed.
(08:15):
And it created some clientconfusion because you can make a
great argument And it's reallynot debatable that these landing
pages can be incrediblybeneficial and they can do a lot
for you.
But if they're using the wrongcontext, they can't.
And so this bait and switch ofjustifying landing pages versus
(08:38):
building out these little microsubsites that do nothing other
than feel good for the day,That's huge, and that's really a
whole separate issue that we'retalking about here.
So landing pages are good in theright way.
Landing pages are bad in thewrong way.
(08:59):
And so what I'm going to do istalk to you about how to do it
the right way, but let's talkabout a quote or two here first.
So if we look at this, whatwe're going to do is we're going
to look at a– This website iscalled Analytify.
Tell me that's not hard topronounce.
(09:20):
But it's how landing pagesaffect ad conversion rates.
So this is a really interestingquote.
Businesses with optimizedlanding pages see conversion
rates of up to 55% compared tothe average conversion rate of
2% to 5%.
Now, Keep in mind, okay, let'sbreak this down a little bit
(09:44):
because, you know, we haveprobably some new listeners.
We want to break down someterminology.
So landing pages, optimized,basically means you really try
to get the language, the image,the flow of the page.
You try to get all the thingsright on that page to where
basically it's optimized toperform that, get that action
(10:05):
when someone visits that page.
That's what optimized is.
Okay.
you know, load times and allthose things can play into it.
But, you know, if you run acrosssomebody and they're
hyper-focused on load times,then that's all they're going to
talk about.
It's normal because that's justwhat those people know.
But optimized landing pages aregood.
(10:26):
And conversion rates.
So what is a conversion rate?
Conversion rates are meaningfulactions.
Okay, when you're runningsomething like Google Ads, you
want to...
optimize them for meaningfulactions, not rudimentary actions
like clicking on a button.
(10:46):
If it doesn't have true meaningin what matters to your
business, optimizing Google'smachine learning to optimize for
that action would be a mistakebecause that's really not what
your ultimate conversion is.
(11:07):
And I often see people who justreally just smother their, if
that's even a word, smother, butbasically chalk up a bunch of
conversions that are meaninglessin their Google ads or you know,
in matter or wherever they'rerunning their ads.
And they're meaningless actions.
And what they're doing isteaching machine learning to
(11:29):
optimize for all those actions,which some of them are really
meaningless.
They were just kind of paddingthe stats.
And so when we look atconversion rates, just think
meaningful actions.
And then you see the averageconversion rate.
So the idea is how often dopeople make that action?
(11:49):
And the article, it says, youknow, with the proper page, it
can be up to 55% compared to theaverage conversion rate of only
two to 5%.
So basically the moreconversions you get at a lower
cost per conversion is good.
And so it's not the cost perclick, guys.
(12:11):
I mean, that is an indicator,right?
But it's not the goal.
And so the idea is if you'respending a dollar a click, but
it costs 1,000 clicks to makeone conversion, then that
conversion or phone call costsyou$1,000.
And so the idea is you want tolook at what the cost per
(12:33):
conversion is, and you can alsolook at the cost per click, but
don't let the conversation stopthere.
And as I mentioned last week, ifconversions are not part of your
discussion with your– paid adsguy, then you need to have a
serious discussion on why that'snot the case.
(12:54):
I can't think of one reason youwould run Google Ads without
setting up conversions in ameaningful way.
Yeah, there's nothing coming tomind.
Maybe when I go off the show,maybe I'll think of some reason,
but I very seriously doubt it.
So what this is saying is, yeah,you should optimize your landing
pages.
(13:15):
100% optimize those landingpages.
But they need to fit into thescheme of your overall
credibility.
You see, the idea is, and Ishared this analogy prior to,
but people now, they're usingartificial intelligence like
ChatGPT to quickly go from aquestion to making a purchase.
(13:39):
And if your credibility is notwhere it should be, then these
AI models are not going to referto your business.
And if you create confusion byhaving a bunch of microsites
pointing here and there, thenthat's also creating confusion.
You see, the problem is clarity.
The problem is clean.
(14:00):
And that's what you want to doas much as you can.
So build those landing pages onyour main website.
Build them in places where it'sgoing to contribute to the
overall plan.
And don't waste all thecredibility and traffic and
everything that's going to go tothese little dinky microsites
that feel good for the day.
(14:20):
Don't be susceptible to thisthing.
cognitive normalcy bias that'sgoing to likely bite you if you
keep running down the road.
So the other thing is, is don'tfall for a bait and switch,
okay?
Don't let your Google Ads guytell you that building a whole
(14:42):
separate website with a lowdomain authority is the same as
an optimized landing page.
And that they are both landingpages, meaning it's a place that
people land on, right?
They're not constructed in thesame way.
So it's like taking a hammer andsaying a hammer's a great tool,
(15:02):
but not when you're banging onglass, you see.
So you want to be careful aboutthat.
And this article is a greatpoint in that landing pages are
very, very important.
But what else does this sayabout a landing page?
So what happens?
When someone goes to, let'sassume that you've got your
Google Ads campaign set up, andyou send them to a landing page,
(15:26):
you have to meet the demand ofwhat that person wants.
And so your price has to bethere.
You have to be able to do thingsthat show the benefit of using
you versus someone else.
And you should never stop at theprice.
I mean, that's probably the mostcommon mistake.
I met a guy years ago.
(15:47):
He's a pretty smart businessguy, and one thing he said is
there's always going to besomebody willing to sell
something for less money to goout of business quicker than you
do.
And so the idea is to build avalue proposition.
And so part of the idea ofoptimizing Google Ads is to also
optimize everything from themoment that they see your ad to
(16:11):
what they read on the ad to thepage they go to to the message
they see, the price they see,and everything that they see,
make sure all that'scompetitive, and then optimize
that for conversion actions.
And the most minor things canmake the biggest difference when
it comes to that.
So what's the missing element?
(16:31):
Time is the missing element.
And time is making adjustments,changing things around, having
real discussions and not justmasking the idea that, you know,
you're getting so much traffic,which goes back to another
strategy that I typically seewith these these paid ad guys.
And that's them putting thoselittle low ranking pages in
(16:55):
their Google business profile oftheir clients, because, again,
as far as I know, they're justtrying to stack the numbers to
make themselves look good.
I could be way wrong about that,but I've been digging and trying
to figure out exactly why in theworld they're doing it.
But to me, it's kind of like,you know, the old quarterbacks
in the 80s, you know, throw inthe flats and let's get our
(17:17):
numbers up.
Okay, so let's move on to alittle company called Sales
Genie.
Of course, I'm being a littlebit facetious.
14 essential landing pagestatistics from 2025.
So check this out.
Businesses with more than 40landing pages, that's a lot of
landing pages, generate over500% more leads compared to
(17:43):
those with fewer than 10 landingpages.
Now, if you're in a smallbusiness, you probably couldn't
even think about 40 landingpages if you're offering a
professional service.
But you could definitely breakthings out.
You can subcategorize things.
such as different styles ofservices if you're a plumber.
(18:07):
Break those out because it'slike this.
If I'm looking for someone torepair a sink and I have to weed
through hot water heaters andall this other stuff, it takes
time for me to do it.
And I may get tired.
I may just get frustrated andleave.
Well, if I had a highlyoptimized page for repairs and
an easy call to action to getthat leaky sink fixed ASAP, then
(18:31):
I may be more likely to use thatservice.
And so the idea is basically youdo want to optimize landing
pages for each service, but thenhere's kind of the catch, right?
You also have to build outdifferent ad campaigns for those
specific needs.
So there's a term you may not beaware of.
(18:54):
It's called a SCAG, S-K-A-G,single keyword ad group.
And what that strategy is, isyou focus an ad group on very
specific keyword or very tightlyknitted keywords in some cases,
and you send them to a veryspecific landing page.
(19:14):
And so that's a pretty good ideaof how those things work in
conjunction.
But if you think that someone'sgoing to start you up Google ads
and then tomorrow the rain'sgoing to fall and the floods are
going to be great and all that,um, It's not going to get you
over the goal long term becauseyou should be massaging that
content and looking at it.
(19:36):
And be prepared for the ripplesin the lake, meaning that it's
not always going to go smooth.
A lot of times you have to fightthrough things.
And every location, everybusiness is different.
I know you've heard that, butit's true.
You can market the exact samething in two different locations
and have two different resultsusing the same methodology.
(20:00):
So working through it takestime.
And, you know, it's more thantwo or three weeks.
If you go back and listen to thelast podcast, you'll see
credible resources saying ittakes time, you know.
And so let's move on here.
So the idea, what's our lessonlearned?
(20:21):
Our lesson learned is, one, thatif you're not careful, bait and
switch can be used to justifyanything, you know.
You take one sentence out of theBible, you can make it say
anything.
But within context, it's alittle bit different.
The problem with onlinemarketing today is that it's all
about pulling the one sentenceout that makes somebody sound
(20:45):
better than they are.
And unfortunately, with howcomplicated the language has
become, that it's easier thanever to do those things.
And as an owner of a business...
You just want the phone to ring,right?
You just want good things tohappen with the money you're
spending, grow your business,and go home and not worry about
(21:07):
the phone calls.
Well, the idea is that's whatevery business wants.
The question is, are you willingto put in the effort, and are
you working with the rightpeople that have your business
as their top priority and notthe idea of trying to defend
what they're doing or defendingtheir own income, which is a
challenge.
(21:27):
It's kind of a conflict ofinterest.
So bait and switch is one ofthose.
The other lesson is landing pageis good.
Little microsites that have poorauthority are bad.
Okay.
Now, they have always worked.
Traditionally, that has been astrategy that does work.
(21:48):
But it's going away becausecredibility is important.
All right.
Done rambling.
Let's move on.
So the next thing is...
I want to jump way, way intoleft field here.
So we're going to go frommarketing to design concepts.
And, you know, one of the bigkind of do-it-yourself design
(22:10):
platforms out there is somethingcalled Canva.
And, you know, it's really kindof a neat platform.
And it does have a place in theworld, in my opinion.
But The question is, is when doyou use it?
When do you not use it?
Should I use it?
And I'm even seeing like peoplethat are claiming to be
(22:33):
professionals that are using itin ways where they probably
shouldn't be using it.
Now, I've touched on this issuewith clip art and these kind of
let me design it myself and savemyself some money kind of
strategies.
And the idea is, should you bedoing that?
And what's the harm in doingthat?
(22:54):
And what are you doing when youchoose these things?
So for my analogy, I've alwaysused it because there are some
brilliant tools.
I mean, Adobe Creative Suite'sbeen a staple forever.
I started off on an earlyversion of Photoshop and those
tools, and luckily I was able topick it up a little bit as I go.
(23:16):
It's a fairly complicated tool.
And it takes a lot of time.
I remember going to Vegas to getmy Adobe certifications back
when, gosh, 2009, 2010.
And I was literally sitting inthere with a contractor for
NASA.
And she was afraid to take theexam.
(23:37):
you know, for her certificationbecause she was worried that
NASA would find out if shedidn't pass.
So that gives you an idea howcomplicated these tools are.
Now, if you compare that withsomething like Canva, you can
jump in, get an account, pick atemplate, and go with it.
From my standpoint, I go it'skind of like using very basic
(24:00):
tools.
And so as a professional, I havequestion marks.
I'm not saying that it's good,bad, or indifferent.
I lean toward it's showing thatyou're not that serious about
your craft if this is what youdo.
And you're more concerned aboutwhipping things out to make more
money quicker with lessoverhead.
(24:22):
But I could be wrong.
I could be 100% wrong on that.
That's just my opinion.
So let's talk about LinkedInwith Grindstone collaboration.
And here is the title of thearticle, The Canva Conundrum.
how blending is diluting brandidentity.
So here's the quote.
(24:42):
When thousands of businesses usethe same fonts, layouts, and
color palettes, branding startsto blur into a sea of sameness.
You see, let's talk about thisjust a little bit.
Let's go back and let's thinkabout how a business owner
probably sees this.
(25:03):
Pretty template.
my logo goes on the template, Iadd my copy, I put in my
pictures, and it's branded.
Absolutely wrong answer.
When you're developing a brand,it's everything has to be
consistent.
And so, you know, if yourbusiness is using linear frames,
(25:26):
which are just Think about apicture and the container of it,
and you're using linearrectangular frames, and you pick
a template that circles, andit's got maybe some big borders
around those circles, and itjust looks nice, and then you
throw your logo on it.
Well, you're creating some brandcontinuity issues when you do
(25:48):
that because it's everything.
It's the tone of your business.
It's the colors that you use.
It's the positioning of certainelements.
It's the kind of ways that youuse those elements.
It's not just as simple asplopping a logo onto a layout.
Now, if your face is turningred, don't worry about it
because this happens a lot,okay?
(26:09):
And you're not the only personto do that.
And as a matter of fact, ifthere are well-meaning designers
who are doing it and not tryingto cut corners, they're doing
it.
So you would see where it goes.
Now, the question is, is,Another problem with humankind
is what we call the herdmentality.
Well, if it works for them, it'sgot to work for me, right?
(26:32):
I mean, how many do-it-yourselfwebsite builders are making tons
of money because people say,well, hundreds of thousands of
people use them, so it must beokay.
I should use it too.
That's the herd mentality.
However, the herd, a lot oftimes when it comes to the
Internet, is absolutely notwhere you want to live.
(26:53):
And so when you're looking atthis kind of, you know, this
thing, it's tough because youyou're probably thinking, I want
to save money and it looks good.
And there are people that Itrust that are using it.
But here's the thing.
If you look at some of thepeople on our team and they go
(27:14):
to different locations, they canpoint out a can of a piece
usually pretty well is the waythey tell me.
And the reason being is it allstill kind of has the same thing
to it, so to speak.
And so they can pull it out.
Just like, for example, ifyou're driving down the road and
you see a billboard and it's anartificial intelligence-driven
(27:36):
image, your mind's starting topick up on that, isn't it?
You're starting to clue in thatthat's not a real image.
Even though it looks reallygood, you know something's not
quite right.
You see...
Christopher Hitchens, I used tolisten to a lot of theological
debates, and one thing thatHitchens would say is that we're
(27:56):
pattern-seeking mammals.
Now, he was an atheist, a veryentertaining atheist, by the
way.
I enjoyed listening to hisdebates, although I didn't agree
with him theologically orphilosophically.
But there's something about thehuman condition where we do look
at that, where we look into theclouds and we see An elephant or
(28:16):
a bird, we're making sense ofour surroundings and there's
something there that we do.
And so when you're looking atsome of these other things,
you're starting to see that thehuman mind is starting to
discern, right?
And so anyway, as we movethrough this, there's this idea
(28:36):
that the more that this stuffdoes, the more being unique and
staying true to your brand to afault is going to help you stand
out, right?
and do less of this blending.
But for a designer who's tryingto make a buck, it's much easier
to jump into Canva, pick atemplate, throw some stuff on
it, and call it job well doneand mark it up significantly.
(28:58):
You see the difference there.
Let's talk about this other onefrom Envisionary Design.
Canva isn't a brand tool.
It's a delay button.
That's an interesting subject.
So the quote is, Canva, when itcomes to brand identity, using
(29:19):
Canva to design your logo islike trying to build a high-rise
with Legos.
Oh my gosh, is that not everresonating with me right now.
I mean, it's insane how much Ijust resonated.
So the idea is when you takethese tools, it's like you're
trying to build something thatreally shouldn't be used for.
(29:43):
And you're really reachingoutside the scope, you know.
So if we go back to, like,Jurassic Park, and I forget the
guy's– the guy quote, you know,he's talking about the
dinosaurs.
And he goes, something like youask if you could do it, but you
never really thought if youshould do it.
Something like– he justparaphrased sloppily, but you
(30:04):
kind of get the point.
It's like just because you cando it, should you do it?
Because I still run intobusinesses today that have used
clip art for logos.
You're going to have trademarkissues, all kinds of issues with
that stuff.
So you want to be carefulbecause it's easy.
Also, I found a lot of thesefreelance websites that do logos
(30:26):
real cheap and things like that.
You can kind of backwards looksome of that stuff up.
I ran a test on several of thesejust to see what they would come
up with.
And so I was throwing out thisconcept for a logo.
And I could backtrack it to clipart that was just modified.
Because the idea is you thinkabout it, if you're paying
(30:46):
someone$100 to compete to createa logo, and it's a contest, and
they're only getting$100 or$200or$300, think about how much
time they could realisticallyput into that to still make
money in the end.
It doesn't make a lot of senseat a certain point, right?
Okay, so here's where we arewith design.
(31:09):
You know, this idea that AI isgoing to take over the world or
that you can use these tools anddo things yourself, build your
own website, do your own designwork, save money because you're
a lot smarter than those crazypeople who are paying
professionals to do it.
There's a reason they're payingthe professionals to do it, and
(31:32):
there's a reason they're notusing do-it-yourselfers and
perhaps tools like Canva.
And that's what these articlesare coming out and saying is
that they do have a place, butit's not there.
And so the question is, is wheredo you use it?
How do you use it?
What kind of filler pieces canyou use it for like
(31:52):
realistically?
And should you even use it inyour business?
And what I think is going on,just like I'm seeing this with
the Google Ads thing and justlike I'm seeing it with the
creative stuff, is I'm seeingthis mishmash of not
understanding it, trying to cutcorners, and thinking that
(32:14):
somehow that's going to work asgood as developing a real plan
with real goals.
Now, that's simply not true.
That's fantasy.
And if you think you're smarterthan the next guy because you're
bypassing that by having acollege kid do something or or
whatever it may be, you'rehurting yourself in the end.
(32:37):
And the deal is, is that brandtone, gosh, websites, content,
social media, frequency to doit, advertising, fine-tuning it.
doing the right things andunderstanding it, it's like
you're building an ATM machineis the way I put it.
(32:59):
And it doesn't happen overnight.
And if it was as easy as goingand throwing a bunch of
disjointed tools together andgrabbing a bunch of things and
putting it on the internet orwhatever, then everyone would do
that.
You see, they're preying, in alot of these cases, I'm not
saying any specific brand, but alot of times they're preying on
(33:20):
your your psyche.
What they're doing is saying,hey, you're smarter than this.
You don't want to spend moremoney, so why do it?
Use these tools, use theseprocesses, and come along with
it.
So when you look at the GoogleAds guy, he has a model that
(33:41):
works, and he has a model peopletrust.
And to shift gears on thatmodel, and then have to
understand that search engineoptimization is coming back in a
real way.
Now, not your dad's searchengine optimization, and I'm 52,
so you can see here I'm pokingat myself a little bit because
(34:04):
I've had to change as itchanged.
It's not the SEO of 2009, 2010.
It's a whole new world of searchengine optimization with a whole
new series of tools Differentthings you look at, such as
GAIO, Google ArtificialIntelligence Overview, or some
(34:25):
call it AIO.
Now we're not playing bingo.
You know, there was a farmer.
Okay, I digress.
But it's not that.
But what it is is looking atthese metrics that are
meaningful and then putting itall together in a way that's
going to build you a successfulplan.
And that takes time.
(34:46):
It's not something you gluetogether or put together with
duct tape.
I'm from the South.
We love our duct tape, butthat's not what we're talking
about here.
Okay, so those are the articlesI wanted to touch base on today.
We'll put the links to thosearticles in the footnote of the
show notes.
And what I want to do now ismove on to the client that we
(35:11):
had to part paths with lastweek.
Now, What's really interestingis our first podcast, it was a
client we had to fire.
Now, in that case, it was, wegot to let you go.
You know, we can't.
In this case, it was softer.
It was like, hey, I see whereyou're going.
I understand why you're doingit.
(35:32):
But, you know, we can't play inthat sandbox because it's
against our philosophy.
And we're just going to becollecting a paycheck to hurt
your business long term.
And I don't feel that that wouldbe ethical for our organization
to do that.
And so we had the conversation.
And so basically what happenedis they use a Google Ads guy out
(35:55):
of Canada, I think, and he hassome success.
Now, he had success with them.
I can also tell you that otherpeople that swim in the same
waters with the same product arehave had a miserable experience
with the same guy.
And so the idea that, you know,this guy spends gold is strictly
(36:18):
in the mind of this one client.
Well, they signed up with usthrough one of our partners, and
we started working on theirproject, but their Google Ads
wasn't going as quick as theywanted it to.
And they started to get nervous.
And they started to feel thatpull back to the previous guy.
(36:42):
And they also knew we were doinga lot of good things.
But they also had that tickingin the back of their head that,
boy, those leads felt reallygood and the growing pains
aren't feeling that great.
And when they talked to him, hewould give them arguments that
were half-truths.
They weren't legitimate incontext.
(37:03):
You remember our Bible analogy.
And so what happened was theywanted to go to him for that one
thing, and they wanted to keepus for all the other things that
we're doing because they said wedo wonderful work, our
creative's really good, theyliked everything that we were
doing, our SEO work, our socialmedia work, our content
(37:26):
marketing work, all that stuffwas really positive for them,
and our infrastructure.
That one thing they didn't wantto do.
Well, It came where I wasdebating if I wanted to
compromise or not.
But then I saw like a slide, youknow, where, yeah, but he's also
got to go to our Google businessprofile.
(37:47):
And yeah, he's going to be doingsome stuff in there.
And yeah, he's got to do that.
So I felt like I was basicallygiving up way too much ground
and not able to help the client.
And so at that point, I said,you know, I've just got to opt
out.
And one of the questions theyasked me was, well, I know also
(38:09):
he's been saying thingstechnically that are 100%
incorrect.
And one of the things that hehad told them, which is so crazy
when you think about this, butone of the things that he had
told them was, I'm sorry, I lostmy train of thought there for a
second.
It was about Google business.
So this is a Google ads guy whosays he's a specialist in Google
(38:32):
ads.
And then he does this littlezoom or go to webinar or
something like that.
And he pulls all thesefranchisees in and he's like
talking about the great trickthat he's come up with.
Now, keep in mind, trickingsearch engines is a bad word.
(38:53):
It may feel good for the day,but not long term.
And what he said to do was putthe keyword that you're
targeting in the name area ofthe Google business profile
section.
So let's get this out of the wayreal quick.
Google frowns upon that.
Google really, really frownsupon that.
(39:14):
And it was one of the strategiesthat he had said for them to do.
And he acted like he struckgold.
Like, man, this one thing isjust going to push you over the
top and and all this otherstuff.
So when he got access back toit, I knew the same old game was
going to start being played.
Well, maybe not this oneanymore.
(39:36):
But what's really funny iseverybody was there, but now
he's in strict denial thatthat's what he said.
However, it's recorded.
And so the idea is to see thosekind of practices going into a
campaign and then knowing thatThey could have their account go
through a re-verificationprocess, maybe even a suspension
(39:58):
process, which is not very fun.
And then being caught in the mixof that, to me, that also just
simply wasn't worth it, which iswhy we kind of had to draw the
line and say, hey, good luck.
But at the same time, I couldfully understand where they're
at.
Now, we were very clear when wefirst started out that this is
(40:19):
something we've got to relearnbecause You know, he had parts
of that already in his kind ofcanned system that's not really
the way you should do things.
And so we were very clear aboutthat, but they just got anxious.
And I don't blame them, and Itold them that.
You know, it's like it's okay.
(40:39):
You know, I get where you'recoming from.
I don't agree with why you'redoing it, but I also understand
why you're doing it, right?
So anyway, the lesson that youhave there, and it's a very
valuable lesson, is, you know,the deer that gets hits, the one
that sits in the middle of theroad, right?
It's not the deer that makes adecision.
(40:59):
It's the one that stands there.
And the idea is that, you know,they staggered.
And they were about a quarter,maybe a little bit further
across the street.
Now, they didn't have some oftheir stuff.
They just started a new divisionalso.
And so they didn't quite havethat figured out.
(41:21):
But the idea is that we wereworking with them to try to
figure that out.
But they were already, you know,almost there.
But it's like they hesitated.
And now they're back to the oldgames.
Right.
So we're back to the normalcybias.
Right.
We're back to the idea that,man, that felt good.
It's going to be all right.
We got to go back.
We got to go back.
(41:42):
And they're going to, I fear forthem long term.
But again, when it feels like ahe said, she said, those kind of
things do pop up.
By the way, as a side note,there are certain things that
we've learned not to do as anagency.
(42:04):
And one of those is tocollaborate with people that are
not partners with us.
And the reason that we do thatis because a lot of times you
find yourself kind of caught inthis mix of education and this
muddiness.
And also, it can become afinger-pointing situation, you
know, just this constantstruggle to try to move the
(42:27):
needle.
And so if you run into amarketing agency that is a
little bit resistant topartnering up with people on a
whim— There may be good reasonfor that.
So just a side note, a lot oftimes it's not just because they
think they're a certain thingand the other people are not.
It's mainly because you have toomany cooks.
(42:49):
You don't really know what'sgoing on.
Then you've got to collaborate.
Then you've got to see ifthey're following best
practices.
And then you've got to see ifthey're holding up their end.
And that's why, as our agency, aboutique agency business, In
Asheville, you know, we do alarge gamut, invest heavily into
certifications and equipment tobe able to handle a diverse
(43:13):
amount of needs and build customplans for people and be able to
fully execute it.
Because a lot of times the noisein trying to coordinate isn't
worth it.
And so for our standpoint, itjust feels better to be able to
do it that way.
We have a lot more success withit.
So patience is one of thosethings, guys.
(43:37):
You know, as business ownersand, you know, you're watching
cash flow and stuff like thatand you're used to hanging on to
something that's working oryou're happy with the guy that's
doing it and the language isconfusing and you're being
reassured that what's going onis going to be okay, you need to
be careful about that.
You know, I had an analogy here.
(44:00):
And it's one I'm sure you'veheard of.
I'm going to turn my head so thespeaker may get a little bit
funky here.
But it says, if the only toolyou have is a hammer, you tend
to see every problem as a nail.
And so when you go through thisand you start looking at what's
going on in the world of theweb, a lot of people are so
(44:21):
hyper-focused within a niche, orniche, however you want to say
that, that They kind of seeeverything as that nail.
And so if they're hyper-focusedon artificial intelligence and
they're building blog articleswithout any human intervention
and then saying, hey, great,look at all these articles that
(44:45):
I built.
And then they start building amodel and selling that more and
more.
There comes a point, regardlessof what the signal is, they're
going to push that.
And they're going to keeppushing it because it's a means
of what they do.
It's their hammer.
So, if working through designsquickly by pulling templates is
their hammer, they're going topush the hammer.
(45:07):
If it's running Google Ads in animproper way, it's the hammer,
you see, and they're going tohammer it and hammer it and do
whatever they can to justifythat.
It doesn't matter if they'rebanging it against glass, wood,
nails, the ground, whatever.
They're going to push that.
So, you kind of want to becareful about making sure that
the people you work with do havea good grasp.
(45:29):
And sometimes when peoplecollaborate on things, it's kind
of like they're all feeding offthe same thing.
And sometimes I think it's not agood sign when you see these
different companiescollaborating in certain ways.
I very seldom have actually seenthat pulled off really
successfully.
I've seen it where it gets sofuzzy that you really don't know
(45:51):
if it's working or not, but yousee so many people telling you
it's great that you really don'tknow what to do.
Again, I could be way wrong onthat.
Okay, so let's recap on somethings that you need to be
doing.
Number one, of course, never,never, ever answer cold emails.
Okay, I've said this time andtime again.
(46:12):
Cold emails, when it comes tomarketing and design, say one
thing about the person thatsends those emails.
They don't know how to markettheir own company ethically.
And if they don't, how are theygoing to market your company
ethically?
It's a big deal.
And here's the other thing, too.
When you do respond to it,you're actually contributing to
(46:34):
the problem.
And that is you're tellingspammers that when they send
unsolicited emails to your emailaddress and you respond to it,
you're saying that works.
And so it's one of my things Irecommend all the time.
Block them.
You only have so much time in aday.
You only have so many hours inyour life.
(46:54):
Don't waste it on things thatare just going to be a
distraction.
Don't fall for the salespitches.
And so I think that's the bigone I want to leave you on
today.
All right.
Well, guys, thank you so muchfor tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
I hope that this does help youout.
I hope that it gives you foodfor thought.
And I hope that it helps youmove the needle for your
(47:15):
business and gives you insightin ways that help you understand
that This web is changing.
This Internet is changing.
You know, moving from eighttracks to digital downloads and
skipping cassettes and CDs is, Ithink, what we're in the middle
of getting ready to see in amajor way.
(47:35):
And that's going to rock a lotof boats.
And, you know, stay true andmake sure you're following best
practices.
And you know what?
If you have somebodyrecommending something, ask them
to show you.
If it's the best practice or notthe best practice, ask a ton of
questions.
We always enjoy that.
Okay, I'm done rambling for thispodcast episode.
(47:57):
Until we meet again, this is Kenwith Over the Bull, talking to
you from the Integris Designheadquarters out of Asheville,
North Carolina.
SPEAKER_00 (48:06):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, 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):
Welcome back to Over the Bull.
The artificial intelligencetrain is coming.
Are you ready for it?
Many of you are not.
So this episode, we're going tobe talking about a lot of
subjects, not least of which isa client that we had to let go
last week.
(00:30):
And, you know, sometimes youjust have to do it.
You know, if you see peoplemaking a bad move and you can
make money off of it, you know,ethics has to take the front
seat.
And sometimes we just have tomake decisions that are ethical
decisions rather than those thatare necessarily financial.
(00:51):
Now, here's something I want toshare with you.
So A lot of you, I understand,are using practices that feel
good to you.
And you probably are getting alot of stories and you're
probably juggling a lot ofthings is where I'm going with
this.
So what I want to do is I wantto start off with something this
(01:13):
week called a normalcy bias.
Now, if we pull up thedefinition of a normalcy bias
here, It's also known as anormality bias.
It's a cognitive bias thatcauses people to underestimate
the likelihood or impact of apotential disaster or crisis,
meaning that it's kind of likeit's always been that way.
(01:35):
It's always going to be thisway.
And because you get caught inthis kind of normalcy situation,
you don't see the train that'scoming to you because you just
simply don't believe it's goingto hit you.
And this is a known effect.
And what I'm going to argue isthat many businesses on the
(01:56):
Internet today or that aremarketing on the Internet today,
you know, everything fromelectricians to e-commerce to
whatever, I'm going to arguethat a lot of them are going
through a normalcy bias.
And the idea is that if youcan't get out of that, then
you're going to be caught up insomething that you may not be
(02:18):
able to pull out of.
Now, the problem is that oncetried and true ideas, you know,
20 years ago, I think it's 20,maybe a little bit longer now,
you know, the yellow pages was abig deal.
You know, the bigger the ad youwould get, the more color you
would splash on.
And it meant a lot of businessback in today.
(02:40):
Well, where are those yellowpages today?
And what are the yellow pages oftoday that are going to go away
that people trusted before?
just a few years ago.
Because if you look at theinternet, it moves at such a
speed right now that things arechanging with incredible
complexity and with unimaginablespeed.
(03:04):
And so as we go through this andwe start thinking about these
concepts, we want to startthinking about things you may be
clinging on to that youshouldn't be clinging on to.
Now, that was a situation withwhat we had to do last week.
And anyway, so as we moveforward, one of those things,
(03:26):
obviously, that I've beentalking about for some time,
which will transition us intothe first article that I want to
pull some quotes from.
And by the way, let's get the...
the laundry taken out here realquick.
And that is these articles thatI will be using are not our
articles.
I don't claim to have writtenthese articles.
I just think they're fantastic.
(03:47):
And what they're doing is givingyou confidence in what I'm
telling you, that what I'msaying has a strong likelihood
that it's coming and comingquick.
And if you rest on your normalcybias that the things you've done
are always going to work, then Ithink you're in trouble.
(04:09):
If you're trusting certainconcepts, I think you're in
trouble.
And that's why I talk about thisidea of landing pages.
So, as you know, one practicethat I've talked about quite a
bit lately, because I see somany people doing this, where
these Google ad agencies,basically, what they're doing is
(04:32):
they are building these littlemicrosites.
So the idea is if your businessis called Acme Business, they'll
spin up another site calledacmebusinessservices.com or
whatever.
So it's not your main website.
And then they build these ads.
And then what they do is theysend the traffic from those ads
(04:55):
to that offshoot website.
Now, just like some otherpractices that are going the way
of the dinosaur, this is goingthe way of the dinosaur.
Now, it's not landing pages.
It's not building somethingcustom for Google Ads in
general.
It's the strategy of buildingthese little island websites
(05:19):
that have no credibility, andall that traffic is being sent
to those low-credible websites,and you're not getting the full
benefit of what you're spendingmoney to do.
Now, This is the crux of why wehad to let go of a client last
week.
They can't let go of it.
They don't want to go throughthe growing pains and what
(05:42):
they're doing feels so good andthey just want to stick with it.
And you know what?
I understand where they'recoming from as a business.
But when you see, you know,short-term gain for long-term
failure, it just really bothersme.
So we had to step away.
We could have made the exactsame amount of money as an
(06:04):
agency doing a fraction of thework, and it just didn't make
sense.
It didn't feel ethical.
So we had to kind of pull theplug.
It was amicable, and it was agood conversation, but obviously
not in a sandbox we would wantto play in because I like going
to bed at night.
So let's look at this idea oflanding pages.
(06:26):
So idea number one, obviously,was Google Ads to them building
a page and then doing it.
Now, one of the things thatthese guys do, and I can't quite
figure out what statistic orwhat number they're trying to
manipulate, but a lot of timesin your Google Business account,
they're going to put a link tothat kind of scrape low-ranking
(06:48):
website in your Google Businessprofile too, which is a huge
mistake.
Okay, in a world where theinternet is all about
credibility, and authority, andyou're going to create confusion
by introducing that littlemicrosite into the mix, even if
it's converting great right now,you really, really need to start
(07:12):
thinking about the big picturehere.
And yes, it's going to bepainful.
100% it's going to be painful.
But that system is not going tomake it in a world of
credibility.
Now, Let's talk about landingpages in general.
So first, what is a landingpage, right?
Well, it's a page where peopleland on.
(07:33):
I know it sounds a little bitbasic there, but that's exactly
what it is.
Typically, these are highlyoptimized pages to meet a
certain goal, and you run ads tothose pages.
Now, that's perfectlyacceptable.
Matter of fact, I want to giveyou some quotes to show you it's
more than acceptable.
(07:54):
So part of the situation lastweek was like a classic bait and
switch.
And it was where this idea ofusing this Google Ads practice
and then bundling it in withcreating highly optimized
landing pages in the right waywas being intermixed.
(08:15):
And it created some clientconfusion because you can make a
great argument And it's reallynot debatable that these landing
pages can be incrediblybeneficial and they can do a lot
for you.
But if they're using the wrongcontext, they can't.
And so this bait and switch ofjustifying landing pages versus
(08:38):
building out these little microsubsites that do nothing other
than feel good for the day,That's huge, and that's really a
whole separate issue that we'retalking about here.
So landing pages are good in theright way.
Landing pages are bad in thewrong way.
(08:59):
And so what I'm going to do istalk to you about how to do it
the right way, but let's talkabout a quote or two here first.
So if we look at this, whatwe're going to do is we're going
to look at a– This website iscalled Analytify.
Tell me that's not hard topronounce.
(09:20):
But it's how landing pagesaffect ad conversion rates.
So this is a really interestingquote.
Businesses with optimizedlanding pages see conversion
rates of up to 55% compared tothe average conversion rate of
2% to 5%.
Now, Keep in mind, okay, let'sbreak this down a little bit
(09:44):
because, you know, we haveprobably some new listeners.
We want to break down someterminology.
So landing pages, optimized,basically means you really try
to get the language, the image,the flow of the page.
You try to get all the thingsright on that page to where
basically it's optimized toperform that, get that action
(10:05):
when someone visits that page.
That's what optimized is.
Okay.
you know, load times and allthose things can play into it.
But, you know, if you run acrosssomebody and they're
hyper-focused on load times,then that's all they're going to
talk about.
It's normal because that's justwhat those people know.
But optimized landing pages aregood.
(10:26):
And conversion rates.
So what is a conversion rate?
Conversion rates are meaningfulactions.
Okay, when you're runningsomething like Google Ads, you
want to...
optimize them for meaningfulactions, not rudimentary actions
like clicking on a button.
(10:46):
If it doesn't have true meaningin what matters to your
business, optimizing Google'smachine learning to optimize for
that action would be a mistakebecause that's really not what
your ultimate conversion is.
(11:07):
And I often see people who justreally just smother their, if
that's even a word, smother, butbasically chalk up a bunch of
conversions that are meaninglessin their Google ads or you know,
in matter or wherever they'rerunning their ads.
And they're meaningless actions.
And what they're doing isteaching machine learning to
(11:29):
optimize for all those actions,which some of them are really
meaningless.
They were just kind of paddingthe stats.
And so when we look atconversion rates, just think
meaningful actions.
And then you see the averageconversion rate.
So the idea is how often dopeople make that action?
(11:49):
And the article, it says, youknow, with the proper page, it
can be up to 55% compared to theaverage conversion rate of only
two to 5%.
So basically the moreconversions you get at a lower
cost per conversion is good.
And so it's not the cost perclick, guys.
(12:11):
I mean, that is an indicator,right?
But it's not the goal.
And so the idea is if you'respending a dollar a click, but
it costs 1,000 clicks to makeone conversion, then that
conversion or phone call costsyou$1,000.
And so the idea is you want tolook at what the cost per
(12:33):
conversion is, and you can alsolook at the cost per click, but
don't let the conversation stopthere.
And as I mentioned last week, ifconversions are not part of your
discussion with your– paid adsguy, then you need to have a
serious discussion on why that'snot the case.
(12:54):
I can't think of one reason youwould run Google Ads without
setting up conversions in ameaningful way.
Yeah, there's nothing coming tomind.
Maybe when I go off the show,maybe I'll think of some reason,
but I very seriously doubt it.
So what this is saying is, yeah,you should optimize your landing
pages.
(13:15):
100% optimize those landingpages.
But they need to fit into thescheme of your overall
credibility.
You see, the idea is, and Ishared this analogy prior to,
but people now, they're usingartificial intelligence like
ChatGPT to quickly go from aquestion to making a purchase.
(13:39):
And if your credibility is notwhere it should be, then these
AI models are not going to referto your business.
And if you create confusion byhaving a bunch of microsites
pointing here and there, thenthat's also creating confusion.
You see, the problem is clarity.
The problem is clean.
(14:00):
And that's what you want to doas much as you can.
So build those landing pages onyour main website.
Build them in places where it'sgoing to contribute to the
overall plan.
And don't waste all thecredibility and traffic and
everything that's going to go tothese little dinky microsites
that feel good for the day.
(14:20):
Don't be susceptible to thisthing.
cognitive normalcy bias that'sgoing to likely bite you if you
keep running down the road.
So the other thing is, is don'tfall for a bait and switch,
okay?
Don't let your Google Ads guytell you that building a whole
(14:42):
separate website with a lowdomain authority is the same as
an optimized landing page.
And that they are both landingpages, meaning it's a place that
people land on, right?
They're not constructed in thesame way.
So it's like taking a hammer andsaying a hammer's a great tool,
(15:02):
but not when you're banging onglass, you see.
So you want to be careful aboutthat.
And this article is a greatpoint in that landing pages are
very, very important.
But what else does this sayabout a landing page?
So what happens?
When someone goes to, let'sassume that you've got your
Google Ads campaign set up, andyou send them to a landing page,
(15:26):
you have to meet the demand ofwhat that person wants.
And so your price has to bethere.
You have to be able to do thingsthat show the benefit of using
you versus someone else.
And you should never stop at theprice.
I mean, that's probably the mostcommon mistake.
I met a guy years ago.
(15:47):
He's a pretty smart businessguy, and one thing he said is
there's always going to besomebody willing to sell
something for less money to goout of business quicker than you
do.
And so the idea is to build avalue proposition.
And so part of the idea ofoptimizing Google Ads is to also
optimize everything from themoment that they see your ad to
(16:11):
what they read on the ad to thepage they go to to the message
they see, the price they see,and everything that they see,
make sure all that'scompetitive, and then optimize
that for conversion actions.
And the most minor things canmake the biggest difference when
it comes to that.
So what's the missing element?
(16:31):
Time is the missing element.
And time is making adjustments,changing things around, having
real discussions and not justmasking the idea that, you know,
you're getting so much traffic,which goes back to another
strategy that I typically seewith these these paid ad guys.
And that's them putting thoselittle low ranking pages in
(16:55):
their Google business profile oftheir clients, because, again,
as far as I know, they're justtrying to stack the numbers to
make themselves look good.
I could be way wrong about that,but I've been digging and trying
to figure out exactly why in theworld they're doing it.
But to me, it's kind of like,you know, the old quarterbacks
in the 80s, you know, throw inthe flats and let's get our
(17:17):
numbers up.
Okay, so let's move on to alittle company called Sales
Genie.
Of course, I'm being a littlebit facetious.
14 essential landing pagestatistics from 2025.
So check this out.
Businesses with more than 40landing pages, that's a lot of
landing pages, generate over500% more leads compared to
(17:43):
those with fewer than 10 landingpages.
Now, if you're in a smallbusiness, you probably couldn't
even think about 40 landingpages if you're offering a
professional service.
But you could definitely breakthings out.
You can subcategorize things.
such as different styles ofservices if you're a plumber.
(18:07):
Break those out because it'slike this.
If I'm looking for someone torepair a sink and I have to weed
through hot water heaters andall this other stuff, it takes
time for me to do it.
And I may get tired.
I may just get frustrated andleave.
Well, if I had a highlyoptimized page for repairs and
an easy call to action to getthat leaky sink fixed ASAP, then
(18:31):
I may be more likely to use thatservice.
And so the idea is basically youdo want to optimize landing
pages for each service, but thenhere's kind of the catch, right?
You also have to build outdifferent ad campaigns for those
specific needs.
So there's a term you may not beaware of.
(18:54):
It's called a SCAG, S-K-A-G,single keyword ad group.
And what that strategy is, isyou focus an ad group on very
specific keyword or very tightlyknitted keywords in some cases,
and you send them to a veryspecific landing page.
(19:14):
And so that's a pretty good ideaof how those things work in
conjunction.
But if you think that someone'sgoing to start you up Google ads
and then tomorrow the rain'sgoing to fall and the floods are
going to be great and all that,um, It's not going to get you
over the goal long term becauseyou should be massaging that
content and looking at it.
(19:36):
And be prepared for the ripplesin the lake, meaning that it's
not always going to go smooth.
A lot of times you have to fightthrough things.
And every location, everybusiness is different.
I know you've heard that, butit's true.
You can market the exact samething in two different locations
and have two different resultsusing the same methodology.
(20:00):
So working through it takestime.
And, you know, it's more thantwo or three weeks.
If you go back and listen to thelast podcast, you'll see
credible resources saying ittakes time, you know.
And so let's move on here.
So the idea, what's our lessonlearned?
(20:21):
Our lesson learned is, one, thatif you're not careful, bait and
switch can be used to justifyanything, you know.
You take one sentence out of theBible, you can make it say
anything.
But within context, it's alittle bit different.
The problem with onlinemarketing today is that it's all
about pulling the one sentenceout that makes somebody sound
(20:45):
better than they are.
And unfortunately, with howcomplicated the language has
become, that it's easier thanever to do those things.
And as an owner of a business...
You just want the phone to ring,right?
You just want good things tohappen with the money you're
spending, grow your business,and go home and not worry about
(21:07):
the phone calls.
Well, the idea is that's whatevery business wants.
The question is, are you willingto put in the effort, and are
you working with the rightpeople that have your business
as their top priority and notthe idea of trying to defend
what they're doing or defendingtheir own income, which is a
challenge.
(21:27):
It's kind of a conflict ofinterest.
So bait and switch is one ofthose.
The other lesson is landing pageis good.
Little microsites that have poorauthority are bad.
Okay.
Now, they have always worked.
Traditionally, that has been astrategy that does work.
(21:48):
But it's going away becausecredibility is important.
All right.
Done rambling.
Let's move on.
So the next thing is...
I want to jump way, way intoleft field here.
So we're going to go frommarketing to design concepts.
And, you know, one of the bigkind of do-it-yourself design
(22:10):
platforms out there is somethingcalled Canva.
And, you know, it's really kindof a neat platform.
And it does have a place in theworld, in my opinion.
But The question is, is when doyou use it?
When do you not use it?
Should I use it?
And I'm even seeing like peoplethat are claiming to be
(22:33):
professionals that are using itin ways where they probably
shouldn't be using it.
Now, I've touched on this issuewith clip art and these kind of
let me design it myself and savemyself some money kind of
strategies.
And the idea is, should you bedoing that?
And what's the harm in doingthat?
(22:54):
And what are you doing when youchoose these things?
So for my analogy, I've alwaysused it because there are some
brilliant tools.
I mean, Adobe Creative Suite'sbeen a staple forever.
I started off on an earlyversion of Photoshop and those
tools, and luckily I was able topick it up a little bit as I go.
(23:16):
It's a fairly complicated tool.
And it takes a lot of time.
I remember going to Vegas to getmy Adobe certifications back
when, gosh, 2009, 2010.
And I was literally sitting inthere with a contractor for
NASA.
And she was afraid to take theexam.
(23:37):
you know, for her certificationbecause she was worried that
NASA would find out if shedidn't pass.
So that gives you an idea howcomplicated these tools are.
Now, if you compare that withsomething like Canva, you can
jump in, get an account, pick atemplate, and go with it.
From my standpoint, I go it'skind of like using very basic
(24:00):
tools.
And so as a professional, I havequestion marks.
I'm not saying that it's good,bad, or indifferent.
I lean toward it's showing thatyou're not that serious about
your craft if this is what youdo.
And you're more concerned aboutwhipping things out to make more
money quicker with lessoverhead.
(24:22):
But I could be wrong.
I could be 100% wrong on that.
That's just my opinion.
So let's talk about LinkedInwith Grindstone collaboration.
And here is the title of thearticle, The Canva Conundrum.
how blending is diluting brandidentity.
So here's the quote.
(24:42):
When thousands of businesses usethe same fonts, layouts, and
color palettes, branding startsto blur into a sea of sameness.
You see, let's talk about thisjust a little bit.
Let's go back and let's thinkabout how a business owner
probably sees this.
(25:03):
Pretty template.
my logo goes on the template, Iadd my copy, I put in my
pictures, and it's branded.
Absolutely wrong answer.
When you're developing a brand,it's everything has to be
consistent.
And so, you know, if yourbusiness is using linear frames,
(25:26):
which are just Think about apicture and the container of it,
and you're using linearrectangular frames, and you pick
a template that circles, andit's got maybe some big borders
around those circles, and itjust looks nice, and then you
throw your logo on it.
Well, you're creating some brandcontinuity issues when you do
(25:48):
that because it's everything.
It's the tone of your business.
It's the colors that you use.
It's the positioning of certainelements.
It's the kind of ways that youuse those elements.
It's not just as simple asplopping a logo onto a layout.
Now, if your face is turningred, don't worry about it
because this happens a lot,okay?
(26:09):
And you're not the only personto do that.
And as a matter of fact, ifthere are well-meaning designers
who are doing it and not tryingto cut corners, they're doing
it.
So you would see where it goes.
Now, the question is, is,Another problem with humankind
is what we call the herdmentality.
Well, if it works for them, it'sgot to work for me, right?
(26:32):
I mean, how many do-it-yourselfwebsite builders are making tons
of money because people say,well, hundreds of thousands of
people use them, so it must beokay.
I should use it too.
That's the herd mentality.
However, the herd, a lot oftimes when it comes to the
Internet, is absolutely notwhere you want to live.
(26:53):
And so when you're looking atthis kind of, you know, this
thing, it's tough because youyou're probably thinking, I want
to save money and it looks good.
And there are people that Itrust that are using it.
But here's the thing.
If you look at some of thepeople on our team and they go
(27:14):
to different locations, they canpoint out a can of a piece
usually pretty well is the waythey tell me.
And the reason being is it allstill kind of has the same thing
to it, so to speak.
And so they can pull it out.
Just like, for example, ifyou're driving down the road and
you see a billboard and it's anartificial intelligence-driven
(27:36):
image, your mind's starting topick up on that, isn't it?
You're starting to clue in thatthat's not a real image.
Even though it looks reallygood, you know something's not
quite right.
You see...
Christopher Hitchens, I used tolisten to a lot of theological
debates, and one thing thatHitchens would say is that we're
(27:56):
pattern-seeking mammals.
Now, he was an atheist, a veryentertaining atheist, by the
way.
I enjoyed listening to hisdebates, although I didn't agree
with him theologically orphilosophically.
But there's something about thehuman condition where we do look
at that, where we look into theclouds and we see An elephant or
(28:16):
a bird, we're making sense ofour surroundings and there's
something there that we do.
And so when you're looking atsome of these other things,
you're starting to see that thehuman mind is starting to
discern, right?
And so anyway, as we movethrough this, there's this idea
(28:36):
that the more that this stuffdoes, the more being unique and
staying true to your brand to afault is going to help you stand
out, right?
and do less of this blending.
But for a designer who's tryingto make a buck, it's much easier
to jump into Canva, pick atemplate, throw some stuff on
it, and call it job well doneand mark it up significantly.
(28:58):
You see the difference there.
Let's talk about this other onefrom Envisionary Design.
Canva isn't a brand tool.
It's a delay button.
That's an interesting subject.
So the quote is, Canva, when itcomes to brand identity, using
(29:19):
Canva to design your logo islike trying to build a high-rise
with Legos.
Oh my gosh, is that not everresonating with me right now.
I mean, it's insane how much Ijust resonated.
So the idea is when you takethese tools, it's like you're
trying to build something thatreally shouldn't be used for.
(29:43):
And you're really reachingoutside the scope, you know.
So if we go back to, like,Jurassic Park, and I forget the
guy's– the guy quote, you know,he's talking about the
dinosaurs.
And he goes, something like youask if you could do it, but you
never really thought if youshould do it.
Something like– he justparaphrased sloppily, but you
(30:04):
kind of get the point.
It's like just because you cando it, should you do it?
Because I still run intobusinesses today that have used
clip art for logos.
You're going to have trademarkissues, all kinds of issues with
that stuff.
So you want to be carefulbecause it's easy.
Also, I found a lot of thesefreelance websites that do logos
(30:26):
real cheap and things like that.
You can kind of backwards looksome of that stuff up.
I ran a test on several of thesejust to see what they would come
up with.
And so I was throwing out thisconcept for a logo.
And I could backtrack it to clipart that was just modified.
Because the idea is you thinkabout it, if you're paying
(30:46):
someone$100 to compete to createa logo, and it's a contest, and
they're only getting$100 or$200or$300, think about how much
time they could realisticallyput into that to still make
money in the end.
It doesn't make a lot of senseat a certain point, right?
Okay, so here's where we arewith design.
(31:09):
You know, this idea that AI isgoing to take over the world or
that you can use these tools anddo things yourself, build your
own website, do your own designwork, save money because you're
a lot smarter than those crazypeople who are paying
professionals to do it.
There's a reason they're payingthe professionals to do it, and
(31:32):
there's a reason they're notusing do-it-yourselfers and
perhaps tools like Canva.
And that's what these articlesare coming out and saying is
that they do have a place, butit's not there.
And so the question is, is wheredo you use it?
How do you use it?
What kind of filler pieces canyou use it for like
(31:52):
realistically?
And should you even use it inyour business?
And what I think is going on,just like I'm seeing this with
the Google Ads thing and justlike I'm seeing it with the
creative stuff, is I'm seeingthis mishmash of not
understanding it, trying to cutcorners, and thinking that
(32:14):
somehow that's going to work asgood as developing a real plan
with real goals.
Now, that's simply not true.
That's fantasy.
And if you think you're smarterthan the next guy because you're
bypassing that by having acollege kid do something or or
whatever it may be, you'rehurting yourself in the end.
(32:37):
And the deal is, is that brandtone, gosh, websites, content,
social media, frequency to doit, advertising, fine-tuning it.
doing the right things andunderstanding it, it's like
you're building an ATM machineis the way I put it.
(32:59):
And it doesn't happen overnight.
And if it was as easy as goingand throwing a bunch of
disjointed tools together andgrabbing a bunch of things and
putting it on the internet orwhatever, then everyone would do
that.
You see, they're preying, in alot of these cases, I'm not
saying any specific brand, but alot of times they're preying on
(33:20):
your your psyche.
What they're doing is saying,hey, you're smarter than this.
You don't want to spend moremoney, so why do it?
Use these tools, use theseprocesses, and come along with
it.
So when you look at the GoogleAds guy, he has a model that
(33:41):
works, and he has a model peopletrust.
And to shift gears on thatmodel, and then have to
understand that search engineoptimization is coming back in a
real way.
Now, not your dad's searchengine optimization, and I'm 52,
so you can see here I'm pokingat myself a little bit because
(34:04):
I've had to change as itchanged.
It's not the SEO of 2009, 2010.
It's a whole new world of searchengine optimization with a whole
new series of tools Differentthings you look at, such as
GAIO, Google ArtificialIntelligence Overview, or some
(34:25):
call it AIO.
Now we're not playing bingo.
You know, there was a farmer.
Okay, I digress.
But it's not that.
But what it is is looking atthese metrics that are
meaningful and then putting itall together in a way that's
going to build you a successfulplan.
And that takes time.
(34:46):
It's not something you gluetogether or put together with
duct tape.
I'm from the South.
We love our duct tape, butthat's not what we're talking
about here.
Okay, so those are the articlesI wanted to touch base on today.
We'll put the links to thosearticles in the footnote of the
show notes.
And what I want to do now ismove on to the client that we
(35:11):
had to part paths with lastweek.
Now, What's really interestingis our first podcast, it was a
client we had to fire.
Now, in that case, it was, wegot to let you go.
You know, we can't.
In this case, it was softer.
It was like, hey, I see whereyou're going.
I understand why you're doingit.
(35:32):
But, you know, we can't play inthat sandbox because it's
against our philosophy.
And we're just going to becollecting a paycheck to hurt
your business long term.
And I don't feel that that wouldbe ethical for our organization
to do that.
And so we had the conversation.
And so basically what happenedis they use a Google Ads guy out
(35:55):
of Canada, I think, and he hassome success.
Now, he had success with them.
I can also tell you that otherpeople that swim in the same
waters with the same product arehave had a miserable experience
with the same guy.
And so the idea that, you know,this guy spends gold is strictly
(36:18):
in the mind of this one client.
Well, they signed up with usthrough one of our partners, and
we started working on theirproject, but their Google Ads
wasn't going as quick as theywanted it to.
And they started to get nervous.
And they started to feel thatpull back to the previous guy.
(36:42):
And they also knew we were doinga lot of good things.
But they also had that tickingin the back of their head that,
boy, those leads felt reallygood and the growing pains
aren't feeling that great.
And when they talked to him, hewould give them arguments that
were half-truths.
They weren't legitimate incontext.
(37:03):
You remember our Bible analogy.
And so what happened was theywanted to go to him for that one
thing, and they wanted to keepus for all the other things that
we're doing because they said wedo wonderful work, our
creative's really good, theyliked everything that we were
doing, our SEO work, our socialmedia work, our content
(37:26):
marketing work, all that stuffwas really positive for them,
and our infrastructure.
That one thing they didn't wantto do.
Well, It came where I wasdebating if I wanted to
compromise or not.
But then I saw like a slide, youknow, where, yeah, but he's also
got to go to our Google businessprofile.
(37:47):
And yeah, he's going to be doingsome stuff in there.
And yeah, he's got to do that.
So I felt like I was basicallygiving up way too much ground
and not able to help the client.
And so at that point, I said,you know, I've just got to opt
out.
And one of the questions theyasked me was, well, I know also
(38:09):
he's been saying thingstechnically that are 100%
incorrect.
And one of the things that hehad told them, which is so crazy
when you think about this, butone of the things that he had
told them was, I'm sorry, I lostmy train of thought there for a
second.
It was about Google business.
So this is a Google ads guy whosays he's a specialist in Google
(38:32):
ads.
And then he does this littlezoom or go to webinar or
something like that.
And he pulls all thesefranchisees in and he's like
talking about the great trickthat he's come up with.
Now, keep in mind, trickingsearch engines is a bad word.
(38:53):
It may feel good for the day,but not long term.
And what he said to do was putthe keyword that you're
targeting in the name area ofthe Google business profile
section.
So let's get this out of the wayreal quick.
Google frowns upon that.
Google really, really frownsupon that.
(39:14):
And it was one of the strategiesthat he had said for them to do.
And he acted like he struckgold.
Like, man, this one thing isjust going to push you over the
top and and all this otherstuff.
So when he got access back toit, I knew the same old game was
going to start being played.
Well, maybe not this oneanymore.
(39:36):
But what's really funny iseverybody was there, but now
he's in strict denial thatthat's what he said.
However, it's recorded.
And so the idea is to see thosekind of practices going into a
campaign and then knowing thatThey could have their account go
through a re-verificationprocess, maybe even a suspension
(39:58):
process, which is not very fun.
And then being caught in the mixof that, to me, that also just
simply wasn't worth it, which iswhy we kind of had to draw the
line and say, hey, good luck.
But at the same time, I couldfully understand where they're
at.
Now, we were very clear when wefirst started out that this is
(40:19):
something we've got to relearnbecause You know, he had parts
of that already in his kind ofcanned system that's not really
the way you should do things.
And so we were very clear aboutthat, but they just got anxious.
And I don't blame them, and Itold them that.
You know, it's like it's okay.
(40:39):
You know, I get where you'recoming from.
I don't agree with why you'redoing it, but I also understand
why you're doing it, right?
So anyway, the lesson that youhave there, and it's a very
valuable lesson, is, you know,the deer that gets hits, the one
that sits in the middle of theroad, right?
It's not the deer that makes adecision.
(40:59):
It's the one that stands there.
And the idea is that, you know,they staggered.
And they were about a quarter,maybe a little bit further
across the street.
Now, they didn't have some oftheir stuff.
They just started a new divisionalso.
And so they didn't quite havethat figured out.
(41:21):
But the idea is that we wereworking with them to try to
figure that out.
But they were already, you know,almost there.
But it's like they hesitated.
And now they're back to the oldgames.
Right.
So we're back to the normalcybias.
Right.
We're back to the idea that,man, that felt good.
It's going to be all right.
We got to go back.
We got to go back.
(41:42):
And they're going to, I fear forthem long term.
But again, when it feels like ahe said, she said, those kind of
things do pop up.
By the way, as a side note,there are certain things that
we've learned not to do as anagency.
(42:04):
And one of those is tocollaborate with people that are
not partners with us.
And the reason that we do thatis because a lot of times you
find yourself kind of caught inthis mix of education and this
muddiness.
And also, it can become afinger-pointing situation, you
know, just this constantstruggle to try to move the
(42:27):
needle.
And so if you run into amarketing agency that is a
little bit resistant topartnering up with people on a
whim— There may be good reasonfor that.
So just a side note, a lot oftimes it's not just because they
think they're a certain thingand the other people are not.
It's mainly because you have toomany cooks.
(42:49):
You don't really know what'sgoing on.
Then you've got to collaborate.
Then you've got to see ifthey're following best
practices.
And then you've got to see ifthey're holding up their end.
And that's why, as our agency, aboutique agency business, In
Asheville, you know, we do alarge gamut, invest heavily into
certifications and equipment tobe able to handle a diverse
(43:13):
amount of needs and build customplans for people and be able to
fully execute it.
Because a lot of times the noisein trying to coordinate isn't
worth it.
And so for our standpoint, itjust feels better to be able to
do it that way.
We have a lot more success withit.
So patience is one of thosethings, guys.
(43:37):
You know, as business ownersand, you know, you're watching
cash flow and stuff like thatand you're used to hanging on to
something that's working oryou're happy with the guy that's
doing it and the language isconfusing and you're being
reassured that what's going onis going to be okay, you need to
be careful about that.
You know, I had an analogy here.
(44:00):
And it's one I'm sure you'veheard of.
I'm going to turn my head so thespeaker may get a little bit
funky here.
But it says, if the only toolyou have is a hammer, you tend
to see every problem as a nail.
And so when you go through thisand you start looking at what's
going on in the world of theweb, a lot of people are so
(44:21):
hyper-focused within a niche, orniche, however you want to say
that, that They kind of seeeverything as that nail.
And so if they're hyper-focusedon artificial intelligence and
they're building blog articleswithout any human intervention
and then saying, hey, great,look at all these articles that
(44:45):
I built.
And then they start building amodel and selling that more and
more.
There comes a point, regardlessof what the signal is, they're
going to push that.
And they're going to keeppushing it because it's a means
of what they do.
It's their hammer.
So, if working through designsquickly by pulling templates is
their hammer, they're going topush the hammer.
(45:07):
If it's running Google Ads in animproper way, it's the hammer,
you see, and they're going tohammer it and hammer it and do
whatever they can to justifythat.
It doesn't matter if they'rebanging it against glass, wood,
nails, the ground, whatever.
They're going to push that.
So, you kind of want to becareful about making sure that
the people you work with do havea good grasp.
(45:29):
And sometimes when peoplecollaborate on things, it's kind
of like they're all feeding offthe same thing.
And sometimes I think it's not agood sign when you see these
different companiescollaborating in certain ways.
I very seldom have actually seenthat pulled off really
successfully.
I've seen it where it gets sofuzzy that you really don't know
(45:51):
if it's working or not, but yousee so many people telling you
it's great that you really don'tknow what to do.
Again, I could be way wrong onthat.
Okay, so let's recap on somethings that you need to be
doing.
Number one, of course, never,never, ever answer cold emails.
Okay, I've said this time andtime again.
(46:12):
Cold emails, when it comes tomarketing and design, say one
thing about the person thatsends those emails.
They don't know how to markettheir own company ethically.
And if they don't, how are theygoing to market your company
ethically?
It's a big deal.
And here's the other thing, too.
When you do respond to it,you're actually contributing to
(46:34):
the problem.
And that is you're tellingspammers that when they send
unsolicited emails to your emailaddress and you respond to it,
you're saying that works.
And so it's one of my things Irecommend all the time.
Block them.
You only have so much time in aday.
You only have so many hours inyour life.
(46:54):
Don't waste it on things thatare just going to be a
distraction.
Don't fall for the salespitches.
And so I think that's the bigone I want to leave you on
today.
All right.
Well, guys, thank you so muchfor tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
I hope that this does help youout.
I hope that it gives you foodfor thought.
And I hope that it helps youmove the needle for your
(47:15):
business and gives you insightin ways that help you understand
that This web is changing.
This Internet is changing.
You know, moving from eighttracks to digital downloads and
skipping cassettes and CDs is, Ithink, what we're in the middle
of getting ready to see in amajor way.
(47:35):
And that's going to rock a lotof boats.
And, you know, stay true andmake sure you're following best
practices.
And you know what?
If you have somebodyrecommending something, ask them
to show you.
If it's the best practice or notthe best practice, ask a ton of
questions.
We always enjoy that.
Okay, I'm done rambling for thispodcast episode.
(47:57):
Until we meet again, this is Kenwith Over the Bull, talking to
you from the Integris Designheadquarters out of Asheville,
North Carolina.
SPEAKER_00 (48:06):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
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