In this episode of Over the Bull, Ken Carroll dismantles the obsession with “cutting-edge” marketing tactics and shiny new tools, arguing that the most effective strategy in today’s landscape is the one most businesses try to avoid: consistency, discipline, and doing the fundamentals exceptionally well.
From decades-old sales gimmicks to modern AI-fueled shortcuts, this episode exposes how quick fixes, hype-driven platforms, and abused automation are quietly eroding trust, credibility, and long-term business growth. Ken explains why credibility has become the real currency of the web—and why boring systems like structured websites, intent-driven service pages, proper schema, local citations, call tracking, and consistent content creation quietly compound into real momentum over time.
You’ll hear why momentum beats intensity, how “set it and forget it” marketing is costing businesses money, and what business owners should be demanding from their agencies right now—especially in an era where AI misuse is actively damaging otherwise healthy brands.
If you’re tired of chasing gimmicks, skeptical of easy promises, and ready to build something durable, trustworthy, and profitable, this episode is a reality check you don’t want to miss.
This show breaks down the unglamorous marketing systems that actually work—structured websites, schema, local signals, consistency, and momentum over time. No hacks. No trends. No dopamine marketing.
Each episode explains why boring, repeatable actions compound, how businesses accidentally reset their own progress, and what to build if you want growth that doesn’t collapse when the campaign ends.
If you’re tired of starting over, this is for you.
Over The Bull® is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.
Episode Transcript
You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut
through marketing noise.
Here's your host, Ken Carroll.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
Boring is the most exciting thing you could have in
marketing these days.
Yep, I said it.
Boring's in and innovative andcutting edge is just a gimmick
on this episode of Over theBull.
Thank you so much for joiningme.
I really appreciate it.
And you know, the idea is thatyou know boring works.
(00:31):
I mean, you already know this.
Now, you'll call it referralbusiness or things like that.
But the idea is, you know, a lotof your leads come from the
boring, mundane task ofconsistency and doing a great
job and making sure that allyour I's are dotted and your T's
are crossed in day-to-dayoperations, and those lead to
(00:52):
things like referrals.
Now, I've been saying for thelast, gosh, now about a year
that your credibility is a newcurrency of the web.
What I mean by that is thatyou've got to be dedicated to
the boring stuff.
Because the boring stuff isgoing to be what makes you
(01:14):
consistent.
It's the what they call cuttingedge, or we have the latest and
greatest widget or artificialintelligence tool that's going
to revolutionize your business.
Now, if you're an owner of abusiness, you probably have
already bought or at least biton some of these ideas.
(01:35):
You know, we got this greatestthing, and it's particularly bad
in the like uh roofers and uhplumber, especially plumbers and
electricians, these kind ofthings pop in and out all the
time where they promise they'regoing to deliver.
And guess what?
They don't.
I mean, I investigate thesetools all the time, and most of
(01:56):
the tools that I've investigatedare basically just sales
pitches.
And you know it, you know it,they sound good.
You get in there, they soundreally optimistic, they'll throw
out an idea, a referral, orsomething like that, and it
turns out to be nothing.
Now, this is nothing new, it'sjust that the shiny new toys are
(02:17):
new.
What I mean by that is I canremember, gosh, maybe a couple
decades ago going with a friendof mine to an e-commerce show,
and they were selling these uhe-commerce systems.
And I remember going in and theywere talking about how easy it
is to make money.
And they would come in and theywould uh present their
(02:40):
e-commerce system and their uhpartnerships where they could
work wholesellers intoagreements, and they were
bringing the most desperate ofthe desperate in, and they were
thinking that man, starting ane-commerce business is easy.
It was a two or three-day show,and I remember the first day
they just spoke easy, easy,easy, and uh some of this was
(03:02):
selling like candy, usually tothe most desperate or gullible
of the bunch.
And they would show atestimonial.
I still remember it, it was awheat germ kit, and they talked
about this one guy who made allthis money selling wheat germ
kits using their system, and itcame in.
(03:22):
Then you go to the evening show,and guess what?
We're talking about the wheatgerm kit guy again.
Next day, you guessed it, thewheat germ guy kit again.
They had no other examples, butthey kept banging the drum of
the one to stir the imagination,just like buying a lottery
(03:44):
ticket will stir yourimagination, tempt you to spend
a few bucks because what if itchecks out, right?
And so that's kind of what goeson in the real world.
And as the owner of a business,you need to understand that
you're going to be pitched many,many times through email, cold
(04:04):
calls, through sales pitches,through trade shows, through
whatever.
And the next group is going tojust know that they know that
they've got the greatest thing,and if you buy it, it's going to
transform your business.
This is nonsense.
Where businesses succeed is inthe trenches.
(04:25):
It's the hard work, it's thesystems, it's the reliability,
it's being there when you needto be there.
That's what it is.
And over a period of time,momentum builds, and as momentum
builds, your business grows, andthat's done through consistency.
Now, when it comes to theinternet, there is no doubt
(04:47):
artificial intelligence ismaking huge waves.
I mean, I use Chad GPT more thanever.
Now, not to write those blogarticles, because I know a lot
of those agencies out there areabusing AI and they are tanking
businesses.
Just go back and listen to thelast couple podcasts, and you're
(05:07):
going to see how agencies thatare abusing artificial
intelligence are destroyingbusinesses that were strong just
a year or two ago.
We're talking to more and moreof these guys.
And we're seeing it more oftenthe further we go, that uh these
bad practices are not helpingbusinesses, they're hurting
businesses.
(05:28):
But those lottery tickets in theworld of the internet, they just
keep on selling.
Just got to make the rightpitch.
So as the owner of a business,you've got to be careful because
the temptation is there.
And who doesn't want to missout?
You know, people like me, weunderstand things.
Like, you ever heard of FOMO,for example, F-O-M-O?
(05:51):
That's called fear of missingout.
They prey upon your desire tonot miss out on the latest and
greatest thing, and maybe that'sgoing to leverage you against
your competitors.
These are all intentionalstrategies, and you're going to
have to be very careful and veryskeptical to survive, or you're
just going to keep dumping moneyinto things that are going to
(06:13):
continually tank your businessstrength when it comes to the
internet.
So the idea is that boring isactually the thing that you
want.
Now, when I say boring, there'sa caveat.
Boring's incredible.
Boring will build you momentum.
Boring takes patience.
(06:34):
Boring takes all those thingsthat nobody wants to do.
But boring works.
Now, the trick, the caveat isyou got to work with somebody
that you know is going to do theboring the right way.
I have met with a lot ofbusinesses lately who have hired
(06:54):
agencies that make them thinkthey're doing the boring the
right way, and they're not.
They're blowing the companiesup.
So, number one, you want to makesure that they're not abusing
AI, and there's a very simpleterm that you need to know.
It's called EEAT.
Basically, what that means isthe internet loves human
(07:17):
authoritative content, not botcontent.
If you can remember that and askhow they incorporate EEAT
practices into their uh prosystems, then that's going to
help you out.
And guess what?
Those AI review responses toGoogle Business, that's not how
you do it.
(07:38):
So let's keep moving on here.
So the idea is, well, what isthe boring here?
So one is well, let's just startwith website design.
I mean, pretty pages is what alot of us look at, right, as
owners of businesses.
You know, they uh somebody willshow you a template.
(08:01):
Uh just go to the do-yourselfbuilders.
Pretty pages, pretty designs,pick it, use it.
Absolutely the wrong way to go.
Structured content andstructured pages is much more
important because it helps yourusers find what they're trying
to find quicker, it engagespeople the right way, it sends
(08:22):
people to the additional contentthat they need.
While typically pretty websitescreated by web designers is
nonsensical, it's poorly laidout, the call to actions are not
correct.
And the idea is that thetechnical and making changes is
where the money's at.
It's not in those pretty pages.
(08:43):
So if you're still buying basedon templates, you are making a
horrible move because structuredpages and following processes is
the way to go.
It's not very exciting, but it'swhere the money's at.
Now, the other idea is to createservice pages that match intent.
So, what I mean by that is youwant to make sure that when you
(09:06):
have any kind of service orproduct pages, that you're
matching the intent of thevisitor as closely as you can.
Are they shopping?
Are they ready to purchase?
Can you push them closer to apurchase?
How does that work?
And how do you do all that stuffethically?
The boring stuff.
Local business schemas.
If your agency is not talking toyou about schemas, they're not
(09:29):
doing you justice because thisis the big, big thing that every
business needs to be focused onthese days.
Just think schema is a fancy wayof organizing content so that
artificial intelligence andGoogle and all these other
companies can organize yourcontent and understand it.
The more they understand it, themore you're going to show up.
(09:52):
The more that momentum buildsslowly over time, not quickly.
It's not overnight.
There is nothing overnight aboutthe internet, not even Google
Ads, guys.
I've been running Google Adsforever, and the idea is you've
got to build that momentum.
You've got to clarify messages,landing pages, content.
(10:14):
The set it and forget it methodis going to do one thing, cost
you money.
All right.
So the idea is that these AI,uh, you know, I'm gonna stick
with chat for a while, but thereare others out there like
Perplexity and Gemini.
Um, but the idea is that theywant clarity.
They want to understand and beable to reference stuff that's
(10:36):
trustworthy.
Now, if we flipped a coin,Google is also demonetizing AI
content because no one wants it.
And so by throwing out AIcontent, you are actually going
to hurt your business and yourwebsite reputation.
Keep in mind, every website haswhat we call a DA or DR, domain
(11:00):
authority, domain rating.
Depends on the tool you'reusing.
That is an indicator of howtrustworthy and credible your
site is.
And if you start throwing abunch of junk content thinking
quantity over quality is a goodidea, that number will tank.
We're seeing it more and more.
(11:21):
Uh coincidentally, we haveincorporated the real work
portion, you know, that boringstuff I'm talking to you about,
and we've seen dramatic jumps indomain ratings.
So the choice is yours, butchasing the shiny is not the way
to go.
Okay, momentum is going to beatintensity.
(11:43):
Now, we call this the snowballeffect because we've all done it
when we were kids.
We go outside, we want to builda snowman, we start with the
snowball, we start rolling itaround, and then the snowball
gets bigger and bigger overtime.
That's why we use that term inhouse.
So, you know, one great month,it doesn't mean anything.
(12:04):
Um, I've been doing like uhlooking really hard at like uh
Joe Rogan and Dana White and alot of these guys with their
nutrition, and I'm one of theseguys that does crazy things.
And uh one of them is when youlook at weight loss, and you can
consume certain foods and it canretain a pound or two or even
(12:24):
three pounds of water, and youthink you're eating great but
gaining weight.
In reality, you're not.
You want to look at the bigpicture when it comes to things
like that.
Also, just look at it like this.
Um, yeah, you can go home and do50 sit-ups in one night and get
nothing out of it because ittakes time, it takes
(12:45):
consistency.
Your diet takes consistency.
These programs take consistency,it's really no different.
The only problem is people tryto sell you this because they
know it's what you want.
They know you want the quickfix, they know you want that
great month, and then they justkind of ride it from month to
month to month.
It's not, it's all aboutmomentum.
(13:07):
Um, one quick point, I do wantto tell you that we're working
with a pretty large nonprofit,and we're investigating social
media ads.
And just let you know, theyspend a pretty penny on those
ads, and it looks like that theywere absolutely worthless.
Uh, and the the big agency thatwas running those ads, uh, they
(13:30):
can't justify them.
And uh so let you know, not justthe little guy, sometimes these
big agencies, they're justrunning stuff wholesale.
And uh what they do is theycherry pick certain numbers to
make you think things are betterthan they are.
Um, so why gaps uh reset trustsignals?
This is why I'm doing my podcastwhen our team is partially out
(13:53):
today.
I'm trying to get a podcast outfor uh the week.
I'm running late on it.
I don't want to create huge gapsin data because data can create
trust signal issues.
For example, if you're creatingcontent and you've not done it
since January of this year andyour blog page has dates on it,
what does that tell people aboutthe seriousness of your business
(14:15):
or the trustworthiness of yourbusiness?
Probably says you're lackingcommitment.
And the other thing is if youget in there and it's just a
bunch of junk content, then thatalso doesn't help.
I mean, you want to be reallyfocused and dedicated to create
meaningful and consistentinformation over a period of
(14:36):
time.
Uh, social media, this isanother one.
You need to get uh veryconsistent on your social.
And so the idea is that thisslow momentum over time, it just
builds and builds and builds,and pretty soon you get a big
snowball, and that snowball iswhat's going to help you push to
the next level and the nextlevel.
(14:56):
It's not the gimmicks.
Direction maintained over timethat's consistent, that's
informative, that helps.
That's what's going to do thetrick.
Does the trick for my business,it does the trick for your
business.
The problem is, again, it's justnot as fun as some of the other
stuff.
(15:18):
So as we move through here, I'mlooking through my notes.
Uh let's talk about some boringsystems that compound quietly
over time.
One, local listings andcitations.
This is no longer optional.
And no, this is not going intoyour Google Business profile and
changing a couple categories.
(15:40):
That's not how you do it.
There are now systems that canbroadcast your business
information across the webconsistently.
They create what's known as aname, address, and phone number
or NAP score consistency.
That helps uh basically all theentities on the internet
understand that it's the samebusiness and helps through that
(16:03):
consistency to build authority.
Uh also, there are tools thatcan help you uh organize your
reviews.
You should be reviewing anytimeyou get them, the bad ones, the
good ones, all the way down, andnot just clicking that AI review
response.
Call tracking.
Oh man, call tracking is huge.
(16:24):
Every client that runs calltracking with us, we see so
much.
And it helps optimizeeverything.
More leads, more calls, moreforms, whatever, because we
understand what works anddoesn't work.
You can actually be takenadvantage of fairly easy if you
do not implement call tracking.
Uh, we do that uh with everyserious client that we have.
(16:47):
Uh when we're not able to, dueto their budget constraints, we
typically let them know thatthis is a huge weakness that
needs to be addressed.
Content.
Let's do talk about content thatanswers one question well.
The idea is people are lookingfor very specific questions.
(17:07):
Now, you can guess at thosequestions, or you can use tools
and have your agency provide youwith the questions that are
really being asked.
Then you focus on answeringthose questions, and then it's
put together in what we call aschema, and that schema is
easily digestible by artificialintelligence.
Is your agency doing that?
If they're not, you need to askwhy, because they should have
(17:29):
been doing this for some timenow.
Um, of course, user experienceimprovements.
I mean, I can't tell you howmany times we'll design
something, we think it's great,we run ads or we start looking
at what's going on, and we haveto make a lot of adjustments.
Because remember, it's not form,it's not pleasing family members
or the secretary in the officeor even high-level people.
(17:53):
What it is, is it's all aboutperformance.
And a lot of times when you lookat the data on the back end, you
make a lot of changes.
I know we do.
And uh it's not from lack oflooking because before we ever
build it, we look atcompetitors, we look at what
everybody's doing, we look atkind of gentle, anywhere from
soft to hard SWOT analysis,SWOT, strength, weaknesses,
(18:17):
opportunities and threats, andwe build a game plan, but we
still have to change it.
Did you have a website built andit still looks the same as it
did a month ago or two monthsago?
Has any changes been done?
Are you basing that on any data?
If those questions are notcoming up with your agency,
these are big flags that likelythey're setting it and
(18:39):
forgetting it.
I like using that phrase.
It was from a, I forget the umthe product.
There was one of those latenight shows years and years ago,
and it had the um set and forgetit thing, which uh is great
because it's absolutely what youdo not do on the internet.
And uh by the way, set it andlet AI handle it is also really,
really, really, really bad.
(19:03):
Okay, so let me go through therest of my notes here.
Um man, there's so much here,guys.
Um, I'm even thinking about likeI I got in my notes here, for
example, uh how uh web redesignscan set you back.
And they can because uh we had achurch and they wanted to uh
(19:26):
move to a system because I guessthey thought it'd be easier to
handle in-house.
And man, it it broke my heart.
But these guys did not migratethe site correctly, and it
negatively impacted theirwebsite's reputation because
they weren't thinking of thingslike redirects or what to do
with old pages, things likethat.
(19:47):
So in reality, we have I don'tknow, 95 96% customer retention
rate for over 20 years.
We've weathered the storms ofdifferent things, um different
things.
Different trends, transitions,things like that.
And we're able to stay on thecusp because we're always
looking at what's going on andresponding to it, and we're not
(20:10):
knee deep in building a systemthat can't change as the
internet is changing.
So when you think of that, justthink this.
Here's a really quick test foryou.
Are you paying for Google Ads?
So how are they running GoogleAds if you're paying for ads?
Are they running your ads tosome landing page in Never Never
(20:32):
Land that's not tied to yourmain website?
If so, this is an outdatedpractice.
It's getting worse.
It does work to some extentstill, but it's dying.
And the reason people aredefending it is because they've
built entire systems around thisfor years and years and they
don't want to let go of it.
(20:53):
So here's kind of the take-hometoday.
This is interesting.
Is your agency doing the boringstuff that actually matters in a
meaningful way?
Or are they just shooting itthrough AI systems, posting blog
articles, running ads to uhoffshoot landing pages, using
(21:17):
templates or do-it-yourselfwebsite builders?
Are they not helping youunderstand the things that you
need to post, doing the homeworkon things like FAQs you should
be answering, involving you tohelp you provide those answers
so they can be given in ameaningful way?
Or are they just kind of puttingyou on autopilot and making you
(21:41):
think that everything is goingwell?
Are they providing you withgeneral reports with no
explanations?
And are they focused on clicks,number of views, all that stuff
that doesn't add to the bottomline?
Or are they baking into itmeaningful conversions?
Have they talked to you aboutconversions and what those
(22:02):
conversions do and why you'retracking those conversions
specifically versus others?
Because that's teaching Googleand these other platforms what
your targets are.
Some make them look good, somehelp you make money.
Which one's going on?
Are they going to war with you?
(22:23):
Because this is going to warwhen you work with the business.
It's looking at the ugly, it'sunderstanding certain things
don't work, and it's fightingthrough it.
It's not a uh a parade ofvictory marches.
We always have to fight with ourclients to get them good
results, and we have to balancethings like budget, uh,
(22:46):
different systems, uh stoppingthings that they've trusted for
years and years, and gettingthem to rethink other things,
making sure that the money goesin the right places and that our
clients are not distracted withthe shiny object or the next big
sales pitch.
Is your agency doing thesethings?
(23:06):
And if they're not doing thesethings, it may be time to
reconsider what you're doing andfind an agency that's really
good at the boring stuff.
This is Ken Carroll with Overthe Bull.
Thank you so much for attending.
I really do appreciate listeningin, and until next time, to your
success.
SPEAKER_00 (23:26):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you
by Integrist Design, a fullservice design and marketing
agency out of Asheville, NorthCarolina.
Until next time.
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