April 30, 2025 • 9 mins
Paying a Premium for an Illusion: In this episode, we pull back the curtain on an agency we vetted during a client review process—one that promised white-glove service but was, in reality, reselling a cookie-cutter platform with massive markups.
We explore how agencies like this thrive by banking on a client’s lack of technical insight, and how their tactics—fancy dashboards, inflated fees, and vague service descriptions—create an illusion of value. If you’re a business owner who’s ever wondered what you’re really paying for, this episode will help you spot the difference between legitimate service and repackaged fluff.
Not all agencies are created equal—and not all value is visible on the invoice.
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):
How would you like to pay four times as much for
something that you could pay aquarter for on this episode of
Over the Bull?
As you know, our podcast isreally about real stories and
real experiences.
In the last week, I wasqualifying a vendor for a new
client.
Basically, he asked me to attenda meeting, and we were just
(00:33):
going to see what thisparticular vendor was offering,
because this company was a newlyacquired company.
So, I started to, you know, Iobviously joined a Zoom session,
and in that Zoom session...
This particular vendor opened upa custom portal with their logo
(00:53):
on it and spent about 30 minutesgoing through the services that
they offer.
Now, it ranged from localbusiness optimization, which
most of us are focused on Googlebusiness profile optimization,
And he was basically showing ushow he was optimizing what's
(01:17):
known as the NAP score, name,address, phone number.
Then he went into reviewmanagement.
He went into some call tracking.
He went into Google ads.
And then he landed on the factthat they create a couple of
blog articles a month and wereoptimizing a website.
(01:38):
So after the kind of beginningkind of overview session, I knew
what he was doing.
He's reselling a product and Iknew the product, but it did all
this stuff.
And so the question for an ownermay be, well, what's the big
deal?
Well, there's a lot of bigdeals.
The first biggest of all is thefact that this particular
(02:01):
product, he was marking upsignificantly in I mean,
absolutely significantly.
So in the meeting, I called itout and I said, so you're
literally using this product.
I said, everything you've shownme is like a tutorial from this
particular product.
Are you doing anything outsideof that?
And, you know, you got to hitthem.
Sometimes you just got to goright at it because you don't
(02:22):
have a lot of time, you know, inlife to kind of soft sell this
stuff.
And it turns out that that wasprimarily what they were
offering.
So then my questions before thatwas about assets and things like
that.
I wanted to make sure that ourclient owned the assets.
And so the first thing is you'regoing to spend a lot of money
when you buy a reseller product,especially if they market up to
(02:45):
such an extent, and then claimthat they're actually doing
human work when in realitythey're kind of putting this one
size fits all for your businessand then claiming that there's a
lot of work going on behind thescenes, which is usually not the
case.
There's also a lack oftransparency.
(03:05):
So when companies resell aproduct without making it clear,
clients don't understand whatthey're actually paying for,
right?
And so this lack of transparencynot only erodes your wallet, but
it's also going to erode yourtrust.
And you may not be the happiestcamper in the world when you
find out that that was going on,especially if they sell it as
(03:27):
though they're doing a lot ofmanual work.
So the next thing is the missedopportunities.
Okay.
You know why we didn't buy thisproduct?
It's a good product.
It really is a good product, butit has limited in its scope.
It's like if I was selling onlysize seven shoes, I'm only going
(03:48):
to be able to sell those to acertain number of people.
This particular product sells areally nice size seven shoe, but
it doesn't fit for mostbusinesses.
However, Companies like thisagency out of Nashville, they
force fit it and they force fitthe entire solution into every
single business.
And that's not wise.
So that's why we didn't opt intoit.
(04:10):
We do customization.
We have to do a lot of homeworkin order to make our clients
successful and have the bestopportunities.
So when you buy something thatlooks really shiny and nice, but
it's a reseller product, notonly are you going to pay more
for it, not only is there a lackof transparency, but you're also
going to miss out on thecustomization and what you could
(04:31):
really gain by having a productthat's tailored to your
business.
So There were a couple flagsthat went out immediately that
this, I assume, is adecent-sized agency, really
didn't know what they weredoing.
Number one, they're alsomanaging a website and talking
about search engineoptimization.
Yes, of course, knowing thatthey're just reselling a product
(04:54):
and that was 30 minutes of theirpresentation and me calling that
out in a meeting was enough.
But I wanted to make sure theclient's assets were secure and
that they own the assets andthey weren't basically using
intellectual property of thecompany.
Because sometimes, believe it ornot, you have someone build you
a website, they'll keepownership of that website even
though you paid for it.
(05:15):
So keep that in mind.
But they did say that both theweb address and the website
itself were the property of theclient.
By the way, web address, thereare other words for it.
The URL of a website, the domainof a website, those are all
synonymous terms with basicallythe web address.
(05:36):
But as it turns out, they didhave ownership of the web
address and the actual website.
There was some mental gymnasticsin order to get them to...
Release that content.
I think as of today, we do havethat content, but we pretty much
have already built it because itwas a minimal website effort.
(05:57):
So it wasn't that reallydifficult to just reconstruct
it.
Once we saw the hiccups, we justwent ahead and rebuilt it.
Now, the other thing that youwant to know about them was...
These clients didn't know, orthis vendor did not understand
some basic terminology.
Like they couldn't navigatethrough Google Ads very well.
(06:17):
They didn't know where they werehosting their websites.
And it turns out maybe they didbecause it was a truly kind of
cheap location that you reallyshouldn't market websites to.
You really want to use top tierhosting whenever you can with
features that make it as quickas possible.
You don't want to go with thecheapest hosting you get
because...
(06:38):
Just like bad neighborhoods inthe rural world, there are good
and bad neighborhoods on theInternet.
And so using like AWS or Googlehosting are always good ideas.
So the next thing was not onlydid they not understand some
basic terminology with GoogleAds, they were also using kind
(06:58):
of outdated techniques forcreating content.
They would just go solely basedon keywords or collaboration
with the previous owner and thencome up with an article and
write that article.
Basically, today, when you lookat how you generate content,
there are really advanced toolsto help you do that.
Those tools will help youdetermine what you should write
(07:20):
about, the subject of what youshould write about, how many
paragraphs should be in thatparticular article, how many
words should be in that article,how often you should use certain
words in that article, and alsowhat words you should not use
that often in that article.
It can be very elaborate, evendown to the number of pictures,
et cetera.
(07:40):
And so for someone just to crankout an article using something
like ChatGPT or even if it'sorganic but unfocused, those
articles have minimal value intoday's world.
Now you want to go back andcheck out the EEAT, which was
the last podcast, to understandhow organic content plays into
(08:02):
it and why you don't just usestrictly AI.
So the idea this week is youwant to make sure that when
you're qualifying a vendor, Youwant to make sure you have
somebody on your back.
And that's somebody that's gotyour back.
You want to make sure thatthey're qualifying those vendors
and making sure that they're notreselling a product and giving
(08:24):
you access to a portal thatappears like it's doing
something when in reality it'snot.
Now, without me being there...
That particular presentation, inall honesty, it probably would
have looked impressive.
You probably would have thoughtthis particular agency had some
magic and they invested a lot ofmoney into having a platform.
(08:45):
You would have never guessed ata glance that this particular
vendor for this client was usinga canned system that was not a
good fit for them.
So be careful out there.
Until next time, this is Overthe Bull.
SPEAKER_00 (09:00):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bowl, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut
through marketing noise.
Here's your host, Ken Carroll.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
How would you like to pay four times as much for
something that you could pay aquarter for on this episode of
Over the Bull?
As you know, our podcast isreally about real stories and
real experiences.
In the last week, I wasqualifying a vendor for a new
client.
Basically, he asked me to attenda meeting, and we were just
(00:33):
going to see what thisparticular vendor was offering,
because this company was a newlyacquired company.
So, I started to, you know, Iobviously joined a Zoom session,
and in that Zoom session...
This particular vendor opened upa custom portal with their logo
(00:53):
on it and spent about 30 minutesgoing through the services that
they offer.
Now, it ranged from localbusiness optimization, which
most of us are focused on Googlebusiness profile optimization,
And he was basically showing ushow he was optimizing what's
(01:17):
known as the NAP score, name,address, phone number.
Then he went into reviewmanagement.
He went into some call tracking.
He went into Google ads.
And then he landed on the factthat they create a couple of
blog articles a month and wereoptimizing a website.
(01:38):
So after the kind of beginningkind of overview session, I knew
what he was doing.
He's reselling a product and Iknew the product, but it did all
this stuff.
And so the question for an ownermay be, well, what's the big
deal?
Well, there's a lot of bigdeals.
The first biggest of all is thefact that this particular
(02:01):
product, he was marking upsignificantly in I mean,
absolutely significantly.
So in the meeting, I called itout and I said, so you're
literally using this product.
I said, everything you've shownme is like a tutorial from this
particular product.
Are you doing anything outsideof that?
And, you know, you got to hitthem.
Sometimes you just got to goright at it because you don't
(02:22):
have a lot of time, you know, inlife to kind of soft sell this
stuff.
And it turns out that that wasprimarily what they were
offering.
So then my questions before thatwas about assets and things like
that.
I wanted to make sure that ourclient owned the assets.
And so the first thing is you'regoing to spend a lot of money
when you buy a reseller product,especially if they market up to
(02:45):
such an extent, and then claimthat they're actually doing
human work when in realitythey're kind of putting this one
size fits all for your businessand then claiming that there's a
lot of work going on behind thescenes, which is usually not the
case.
There's also a lack oftransparency.
(03:05):
So when companies resell aproduct without making it clear,
clients don't understand whatthey're actually paying for,
right?
And so this lack of transparencynot only erodes your wallet, but
it's also going to erode yourtrust.
And you may not be the happiestcamper in the world when you
find out that that was going on,especially if they sell it as
(03:27):
though they're doing a lot ofmanual work.
So the next thing is the missedopportunities.
Okay.
You know why we didn't buy thisproduct?
It's a good product.
It really is a good product, butit has limited in its scope.
It's like if I was selling onlysize seven shoes, I'm only going
(03:48):
to be able to sell those to acertain number of people.
This particular product sells areally nice size seven shoe, but
it doesn't fit for mostbusinesses.
However, Companies like thisagency out of Nashville, they
force fit it and they force fitthe entire solution into every
single business.
And that's not wise.
So that's why we didn't opt intoit.
(04:10):
We do customization.
We have to do a lot of homeworkin order to make our clients
successful and have the bestopportunities.
So when you buy something thatlooks really shiny and nice, but
it's a reseller product, notonly are you going to pay more
for it, not only is there a lackof transparency, but you're also
going to miss out on thecustomization and what you could
(04:31):
really gain by having a productthat's tailored to your
business.
So There were a couple flagsthat went out immediately that
this, I assume, is adecent-sized agency, really
didn't know what they weredoing.
Number one, they're alsomanaging a website and talking
about search engineoptimization.
Yes, of course, knowing thatthey're just reselling a product
(04:54):
and that was 30 minutes of theirpresentation and me calling that
out in a meeting was enough.
But I wanted to make sure theclient's assets were secure and
that they own the assets andthey weren't basically using
intellectual property of thecompany.
Because sometimes, believe it ornot, you have someone build you
a website, they'll keepownership of that website even
though you paid for it.
(05:15):
So keep that in mind.
But they did say that both theweb address and the website
itself were the property of theclient.
By the way, web address, thereare other words for it.
The URL of a website, the domainof a website, those are all
synonymous terms with basicallythe web address.
(05:36):
But as it turns out, they didhave ownership of the web
address and the actual website.
There was some mental gymnasticsin order to get them to...
Release that content.
I think as of today, we do havethat content, but we pretty much
have already built it because itwas a minimal website effort.
(05:57):
So it wasn't that reallydifficult to just reconstruct
it.
Once we saw the hiccups, we justwent ahead and rebuilt it.
Now, the other thing that youwant to know about them was...
These clients didn't know, orthis vendor did not understand
some basic terminology.
Like they couldn't navigatethrough Google Ads very well.
(06:17):
They didn't know where they werehosting their websites.
And it turns out maybe they didbecause it was a truly kind of
cheap location that you reallyshouldn't market websites to.
You really want to use top tierhosting whenever you can with
features that make it as quickas possible.
You don't want to go with thecheapest hosting you get
because...
(06:38):
Just like bad neighborhoods inthe rural world, there are good
and bad neighborhoods on theInternet.
And so using like AWS or Googlehosting are always good ideas.
So the next thing was not onlydid they not understand some
basic terminology with GoogleAds, they were also using kind
(06:58):
of outdated techniques forcreating content.
They would just go solely basedon keywords or collaboration
with the previous owner and thencome up with an article and
write that article.
Basically, today, when you lookat how you generate content,
there are really advanced toolsto help you do that.
Those tools will help youdetermine what you should write
(07:20):
about, the subject of what youshould write about, how many
paragraphs should be in thatparticular article, how many
words should be in that article,how often you should use certain
words in that article, and alsowhat words you should not use
that often in that article.
It can be very elaborate, evendown to the number of pictures,
et cetera.
(07:40):
And so for someone just to crankout an article using something
like ChatGPT or even if it'sorganic but unfocused, those
articles have minimal value intoday's world.
Now you want to go back andcheck out the EEAT, which was
the last podcast, to understandhow organic content plays into
(08:02):
it and why you don't just usestrictly AI.
So the idea this week is youwant to make sure that when
you're qualifying a vendor, Youwant to make sure you have
somebody on your back.
And that's somebody that's gotyour back.
You want to make sure thatthey're qualifying those vendors
and making sure that they're notreselling a product and giving
(08:24):
you access to a portal thatappears like it's doing
something when in reality it'snot.
Now, without me being there...
That particular presentation, inall honesty, it probably would
have looked impressive.
You probably would have thoughtthis particular agency had some
magic and they invested a lot ofmoney into having a platform.
(08:45):
You would have never guessed ata glance that this particular
vendor for this client was usinga canned system that was not a
good fit for them.
So be careful out there.
Until next time, this is Overthe Bull.
SPEAKER_00 (09:00):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bowl, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
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