#41 - When Everything Feels Rigged: How to Tell If Your Marketing Is Helping or Hurting

Lately, it feels like everything is getting more expensive, more complicated, and harder to trust.

Insurance companies are pulling back. Marketing platforms keep changing the rules. Vendors promise protection, optimization, or “peace of mind,” but struggle to explain what they’re actually doing—or why it’s working.

In this episode of Over The Bull, we step back from the noise and look at the bigger pattern: complex systems, fear-based selling, and a growing gap between what business owners are paying for and what they actually understand.

This isn’t an episode about insurance.
It’s about how to tell whether any provider—marketing, tech, finance, or otherwise—is giving you clarity… or quietly making you dependent.

We break down a simple set of questions every business owner should be able to ask:
•Can this be explained in plain language?
•Is there real evidence behind the decisions being made?
•Are incentives aligned—or stacked against you?
•What happens when conditions change?
•And who actually owns the outcome?

If you’ve ever felt like the system is rigged, the rules keep changing, or the experts sound more like magicians than guides, this episode is for you.

No hype. No hacks.
Just a clearer way to see through the bull.

Transcript

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You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.

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Why in the world does it feel like everything is rigged on this episode of Over the Bull? I don't know if you feel it, but man, I sure am. Especially over the last month. You know, it seems like I pay subscriptions and I expect a service to be performed for those subscriptions. But it always feels one-sided. I don't know if you feel that. You know, they want their subscription paid every month on time, and if not, they're going to call you or bug you or whatever. But then when you want to cash in on what you're buying, it seems like you're caught up in this weird hamster wheel kind of thing where you can never take advantage of the thing you're buying to begin with. It always seems like there's a catch. Everybody wants to get on a subscription with me, but no one wants to follow through when it actually, you know, needs to happen. Now, I got a feeling I'm not the only guy on the planet that's going through that. You know, you probably have experienced it in different places. Maybe it's your insurance company. Maybe something happened and you've been paying your premiums, and now you need some help, and there's nothing to be found. Perhaps the marketing platforms you're using are just changing the rules. You see it all the time. And so the question is, is the whole darn thing rigged? Now, here's the thing. Regardless if it's marketing or insurance or other subscriptions, the thing is, is it's different industries, but they're using the same playbook. It's almost like what can we get away with? What can we sell on the front end that looks really good? But then once it's purchased, it becomes a ghost town. There's no help to be found anywhere at any point. Or at least it's really hard to get to, or you're redirected to somewhere where you can't get any answers, even if you needed to get those answers. They're using the same playbook. And it's very profitable as long as you never have to use the service and they can do it, or if they can divert when you do need to take advantage of the service you're buying and make it so difficult you can't take advantage of it in the first place. This is the world we live in today. Now, when it comes to marketing, you know, I can think of one client I've run into, and they're still suffering from shell shock, you know, where marketing companies have come to them and promised them the moon and delivered nothing. Matter of fact, in this one particular case, they actually hurt this company's reputation because they were going to partner with them in some way, some fashion. And so if you're feeling this, you're not alone. And if you translate it to marketing subscriptions, you're definitely not alone. The game is being played, and the tension that you feel, the money you pay, is absolutely part of the game. Sign you up, but not do much. So how do you avoid that? And what do we do as we live in this world? I know for me it's hard to sign up a vendor. You know, I talk to different vendors and you know, we look at different things periodically and investigate it, but it just seems like it's just so hard to find the right people to do things. So what do we do about this? Well, from our perspective, here's the thing. We we want to offer a service that's legitimate. And we don't want to do one that kind of follows this whole uh process. Like I've kind of identified three steps that seem to be prevalent. Uh the first one is fear, you know, fear of missing out, fear of not having this, or fear your competitors are gonna do something that you're not doing. And then what they do is they create this confusion. You know, I ran across, I think I told you last month I ran across a person who was spending about 1,200 bucks a month. And they were buying what they were calling SEO services. And I remember asking them, I said, well, what is SEO services? And they were like, we don't know. The person told us we're buying SEO services. And I asked, well, how much is going into it? And uh their response was they said everything. So then I took some independent tools when they were sitting in the office and I ran those tools, and lo and behold, there was nothing going on under the umbrella of organic search engine optimization that could be detected. Now, when I say none, I mean zero. I mean not even a hint. And so if you could imagine this poor company who's out here, this you know, husband and wife uh group, and they're paying someone $1,200 a month, and they've been doing it for months and months and months, and that person's collecting a paycheck and essentially delivering nothing, assuming that what we were told was correct, and have no reason to think otherwise. So the confusion, you know, the term SEO, you know, well, that sounds like something you would want, but they didn't give any metrics, no identifiers, no way of knowing exactly what's going on. And so the idea is to make it where you can understand if you're paying for a subscription, like maybe that insurance package you've got that never delivers, and be able to cut some of this stuff off or at least be able to change directions or hold people accountable. So let's talk about some tests that you could possibly go through. The first one that you should ask yourself is what you're buying, is it understandable? You know, can the person explain what they're doing for you and give you independent data and then show you how that's helping your company? Now, when we talk about data, a lot of times we get really wrapped up in the term KPIs and data and awareness and impressions and all these fancy terms that we can sometimes get lost in. But the idea is if that data does not point in the direction of how you're progressing and learning and growing your business, the data's useless. They become numbers of vanity. You know, it becomes something where you can look at it and you can say, well, I've got these clicks, but if they're not equating to the bottom line or at least showing progress on how it's contributing to the bottom line, or even moving toward the bottom line to help your business, then it's useless. If you don't know how to parse the data, it's useless. And so the question is: are you able to parse the data? Do you understand it? Or are you getting a report and not quite putting it together? Now, as you own a business, you should be able to ask the questions. I mean, when someone comes in here and sits in my office and we start talking about marketing language, one of the first rules that I have is if I say something and it sounds technical and you don't understand it, you make me stop. Make me explain to you exactly what I'm talking about and what we're trying to accomplish. And that way, the person clearly understands exactly what I'm saying. Now, now they may not like it. And the reason they don't typically is because they they are at a point in a lot of cases where they bought into this mythology of the internet, like we talked about last week, that if you can pay the right person enough money, then your business is going to grow, and then you can largely unplug from it. That doesn't exist. Uh, you need to stay intimately involved with the business and you need to be able to ask questions and then adjust data based upon your expertise. And so that's part of the uh the equation here is to make it understandable. So the question is, is your marketing people, your design people, do they explain it a way you understand it? Or do they say you have so many video views or so many impressions, or you got these clicks. If they're using it without direction, you need to make some adjustments in your communication or find a new person. The second test is is there evidence? Well, in order to have evidence, you've got to understand what you're trying to achieve. So, of course, before the first bit of design is laid down for a website, the first ads are run, uh, the first anything is done, the first thing that's got to happen is you've got to understand your goals. And because what is evidence if you're if you don't have a direction, you know, if you're trying to increase a certain thing or make a certain thing happen, but you don't know what that certain thing is, then the evidence is irrelevant. So the first thing is did they help you set up a goal? Did they discuss what you're trying to do? And if it merely stopped with increased phone calls or sign up for forms, something like that, a lot of times that's not quite enough. A lot of times you have to do a lot more into it to get to those goals because those are big goals and everything has to align in order to meet those goals. So the idea is we're not talking about dashboards here. If you have a dashboard and no explanation of the dashboard, it's useless to you. I mean, it's just a bunch of numbers that you're running and you can see them, but you may not truly understand it. It's really a simple case of cause and effect. We're doing this to try to increase that. This is what we're seeing, and these are the results. So is the proper cause and effect an evaluation to meet your goals? Is it truly happening? And if you've not had that conversation with your person, then that's another flag. Are they asking what changed? What happened? What did they adjust? What did they do to compensate for maybe things aren't happening the way that they should? And are you involved in those decisions? Because after all, you're the expert in your field. This person is kind of a conduit to put your best face forward to give you a strategic advantage. So what do those conversations look like? Now there's an interesting uh pull quote from Peter Drucker. Uh, it's often misused, but it's still relevant in this case. What gets measured gets managed, but only if it's measured honestly. And and you see so many games, guys. No wonder if you're so jaded when it comes to uh to marketing, because there are just so many games that are played behind the scenes in a technical field, um, such as web traffic. You know, if someone's selling you search engine optimization services and their metric is the amount of traffic that you're getting, it's not traffic, it's qualified traffic. For example, if you're selling apples and I'm sending a bunch of people to your website looking to buy bananas, that does you no good. But you see, a lot of times the keywords and the things that they're building your website for aren't even relevant to your website. I mean, I talked to one company and they had an SEO firm that did not involve them, and they were optimizing their website for stuff they didn't even do, but it increased the amount of traffic that they got. So that shows you how messed up numbers when they're not properly put in perspective can mess with you a little bit. So let's talk about the incentives being aligned. Is your marketing person benefiting whether you win or lose? Do they feel it? Are they involved? Or are they like that person you call when you're trying to get help after paying that premium? And they just kind of treat you and disregard you or minimize or don't quite feel like they're fully invested in your game plan. Are you paying flat retainers with no accountability? Are they showing you what they do? Uh they are they letting you know exactly what's going on behind the scenes? I mean, even hosting is a very profitable market if it's not done in your best advantage. So what I mean by that is you can get cheap hosting that costs a few bucks, but you can have an agency reselling that for substantially more money, and all it does is hurt your business. Now, of course, that's not what you want, and believe it or not, the big agencies, not just the freelancers, are in this game where they're using really poor hosting, and that's like using sand for the foundation of your home. It's not going to work for you. Are they thinking adaptability? So let's move on a little bit. Now, of course, if you're experiencing that they're indifferent to what you're doing and they're not invested in it, then you've got a problem because they're still making their money regardless of what you're doing. And in this world of confusion where things aren't being brought to the surface and clarity is not there, then you know, just maintaining you on a subscription is the name of the game. And uh they're hoping. I mean, let's be honest here, all these things that we're running into that feel like scams in the Western world today, we do feel like that they're getting us to uh sign up for something that's never really what we purchased to begin with. All right, so let's talk about adaptability. So, what happens when your market shifts? What happens in the spring, summer, fall, and winter? What happens if your competitors pick up on your strategic advantage and then they leverage that against you? What if they come up with something that you're not doing that you should be doing? So the question is, is your person addressing these problems? Or are they just running the same mads month after month after month? Are you consulting with them? Are you able to ask these questions? Now, if the answer is you just need to buy more. Or adjust strategy with some kind of nebulous adjust strategy. You know, that's the one thing I really can't handle in the world of marketing today because I see certain phrases like search engine optimization. Uh, it's almost used as like a product without even having anything in it. Uh, but adjust strategy is another one of those. Well, we're making some adjustments. Well, what adjustments are you making? How are you getting to know what those adjustments are? Can you share those adjustments with me? What do they look like? What do you expect to happen from it? Are you having these conversations? All right. Now, the last question is Is there real ownership? So who is responsible when it doesn't work? Or does responsibility disappear into the system? Now I can tell you from a recent subscription I'm dealing with, my email seemed to go to Never Neverland. I don't know about you, but mine do. Do your email seem to go to Never Neverland? Are you put into a never-ending chat or a wait queue? Is there an AI system that answers the phone and just puts you in this circle and drains you to where you finally just either give up or send an email or maybe move on? Where are you? Are you getting answers that just aren't satisfactory, but you still need to pay? Where is the ownership in this? Because the ownership really should be somewhat heavily vested in your success and then working with you to adapt and create a strategy and then be able to adjust it. You need someone who does that. That's not going to happen when you're a customer service number in a long line of numbers, and all they do is take your phone call, hang up, and move on to the next. You know as well as I do. You can yell, kick, scream, do all the things that you do, and that person has already heard it. They don't care. They're immune to it. Now, coincidentally, my own perspective is I think that's why a lot of these companies farm out their uh customer service. Um, I actually think that's one of the saddest things that happens in the world today because dealing with frustrated people is something that they just look at as a liability. You know, I'll give you somebody to scream at, we'll give you a carrot, we'll do this, that, and the other, but we're going to make you work for it. You see, that frustrates me because I look at my time as more valuable than money. And if I'm paying someone to help me out and I can't get that help, to me, that just frustrates me. So the question is, is how are they treating you, I guess? How are how are they owning your business and helping you market your business as though it's their own business? Do you feel that? And if you don't feel that, well, maybe it's time to move on. All right. So if you remember last time we talked about the Kraken and used the analogy that the internet is the modern day Kraken, the modern day mythology, the Zeus, the Roman gods, Greek gods, whatever may have you. Every generation historically has always had their mythological beings. And even in this world where we think we're so intelligent, there is a mythology that surrounds every business. And that mythology is the almighty internet. And then the person that guides it, the priest of the mythology, is the marketing person who claims they have magic that can harness this kraken, this internet. So I believe we shouldn't get too ramped up about how sophisticated we are because we're we just chase one myth after another myth. Now, if we look at it in this case, the problem is it isn't the kraken. Okay, the internet is extremely. Powerful, but it takes a long time to massage it, correct it. It takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of involvement in order to make it successful. And then, yes, you can benefit from this thing called the Internet. You see, the problem is people selling themselves as the Kraken controllers, the magicians behind the scenes, those that can push buttons and make things happen. That doesn't exist. And what they do, even if they do proclaim to be able to do it, what they want to do is perpetuate the myth. So what they do is give you fictitious numbers, they stack the cards, they take low-ranking websites and link it to your Google Business profile. They send you video views, they send you awareness metrics, they send you things that make them think that they're more in control than they are. Now, that's why you're no longer feeling the power of the internet because you've been sold a bill of goods and know it's not any good. You're buying a subscription that does not work. So here's the hard part to this thing nobody controls markets, algorithms, or risk. Um what you do is you you have to learn how to sell on those waters, and you have to make adjustments just like a wind that suddenly changes direction. You got to be able to change directions with it because your competitors, if they're on their game, they're not going to be doing the same thing in six months or 12 months. We had a client with us that's been around us for years and years, and in 2025, there was a lot of competitors who were mimicking this person's style, benefits, strategic advantages, and it was starting to confuse the market. So we can't control the fact that they took a lot of what we had done and used it in their own websites. So we had to move directions. We had to change the way we presented things to stay ahead of them. And so those are just the natural things that happen. All right. So here's the thing: you need good answers, you need interactivity, and you need to work with someone. You don't need a subscription to the latest and greatest AI widget, gadget, whatever is out there, because AI does not have all the answers. If someone tells you that they're going to introduce AI and they've got this great thing that they're going to do on the internet, and it's going to revolutionize every user on their social media platform, all they're doing is raising the floor. You see, the answers come from the hard work, just like in your business. The answers come from working with someone who actually cares and not someone who's just trying to get you to pencil in the next check so that they go one more month with the subscription with minimal effort. And it's getting worse. It's getting worse. So hopefully that's going to give you some ideas about what to do as you're looking for uh either evaluating your current marketing solution or maybe looking for another marketing solution. You know, it is really refreshing. You know, I got this thing where I just love to teach. And when we have someone come in here, it's hard. Okay, so so there is a there's part of it that's really interesting and fun, and there's part of the conversation that's really difficult. So the the fun part for me, the the part that kind of just really gives me a reason to be here, is the idea that you're educating and you're helping businesses make decisions that are true decisions that can really help their company. Not these decisions that um are fairy tales decisions. Now, the hard part is that even when you talk to a business and you give them the truth, and you can see that they know it's the truth, the problem is it's not what they want. They want the magic. They want to have that. The only way I can put it is the lottery ticket. They want the lottery ticket that they can take and tuck under their pillow and have dreams that maybe their entire world's going to change tomorrow based on that lottery ticket. And it doesn't. It truly doesn't. And so when they're when they're hiring marketing people and they say the right words and make them feel good and they move from one to the other, they're just after that fix, not after reality. So the businesses that make it, they live in reality. They work in reality, they escape the gravity of fantasy, and then they start to grow an advantage because they're learning month in and month out. And they're working with people that want them to succeed and have a vested interest in their success. That's a lot different than just buying a tool with a subscription with empty promises. So the hard part for you as the owner of a business is I believe that you're going to have to do what we all do and say, do I really just want to feel good about this or do I really want to make movement? And do I care enough about it to be involved in it, not just hand the reins over and hope that this person, one, knows what they're doing as far as marketing and design. And big hint, most of them don't know what they're doing with marketing and design. And number two, do they understand your business specifically enough to market it without your involvement? Now, the second part's kind of easy. I mean, I couldn't imagine going to a store and randomly pick out somebody or going to uh, you know, rent some equipment and then expect that person to understand what I do for a living. But that's essentially what you're doing. When you're hiring a marketing person, they don't involve you about your specific business. You're trusting that even though they know nothing about your business because they know this thing called marketing, that somehow they're going to pull it together and figure that part out because they're so smart about knowing all the marketing terms, surely they're going to be able to figure your business out. By the way, let me share a story with that, Bob. Yesterday we had a guy come over, uh, real nice guy, and uh he's in the concrete business. And to give you an idea of how much and how bad it is when you trust somebody to do that, you know, there's different types of uh concrete work. You know, my dad was in construction, and uh, you know, I'm kind of a hobby carpenter kind of guy, too. And uh every image that was listed on this poor guy's website, it was not even what it was supposed to be. For example, if it was concrete being poured for a patio, they had it labeled as steps. They had uh things that were listed as basement work that wasn't basement work, uh footers that weren't footers, uh just just crazy stuff that they they didn't even know what they were labeling, but they labeled it for him. And then they took months and months to give him business cards. I mean, so so the idea is you've got to be involved, right? You gotta you gotta have your hand in it. And that's one thing we explained to uh this person is you gotta you gotta be there. You know, you gotta you gotta bring your game and answer the questions. So um I think that's gonna help you maybe kind of navigate the waters a little bit. I'm sorry to pop your proverbial bloom. If you if you think that marketing is just going to a matter of finding the right person, you know, that may be how I conclude here. If you're talking to the marketing person and they think they make you think that they've got the answer without your involvement and they can do things and that they're going to make adjustments without involving your input or asking you some core questions in the beginning and work through it and modify it and do all these things, it's the wrong person. I think I'll conclude with that. Thank you so much for listening to Over the Bull. I appreciate it. And until next time we meet.