#29 - The 4 Marketing Shifts Small Businesses Can't Afford to Miss

The marketing landscape is shifting — fast. In this episode of Over The Bull, Ken breaks down four critical changes every small business owner needs to understand right now. From the collapse of third-party cookies to rising ad costs, this isn’t about trends — it’s about survival.

You’ll learn:
•Why first-party data is the new gold
•How your website and reviews might be doing more than your social media
•What “community-driven marketing” really means (and how to do it without faking it)
•Why throwing more money at ads won’t save you — but strategy will

Whether you’re running your own business or advising others, this episode is packed with real talk, real examples, and research-backed insights to help you adapt — and grow.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

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

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

Can you feel the seismic shift with the internet? Welcome to Over the Bull. I'm Ken. I'm your host on this rocky road path through the uh the web in 2025. And Over the Bull hopefully is one of your resources to help your business succeed and avoid a lot of the confusion that's going on. And man, there is a lot of confusion going on. To give you an idea, if you were to go back, say 20 years with search engine optimization, one thing that happened 20 years ago was that people were implementing strategies that were less than honest. Like, for example, they would put text, uh black text on a black background to try to fool search engines into thinking that a web page was about something when it really wasn't. And so they would try to trick these search engines. And as time progressed and search engines like Google got better and better, what they would do is they would make that technique where it would penalize your website, not help your website. And then as time moved on, you would see concepts like trading links that once was an idea that kind of worked, but then as time progressed, Google realized that trading links wasn't as valuable as one-way links. And so those were devalued too. If you fast forward through time, you see that different things happened in search engine optimization. And let me pump the brakes here for one second for all you new guys. Search engine optimization is basically the process of making your business more visible on the internet. Usually it's associated with your website, but lately it's also been mixed and muddled with things like Google Business Profiles and things like that. But basically, when we talk about it, if you look over the last 15 to 20 years, you see that the uh the muddiness has translated over the years. Like, for example, I still run into people that talk about trading links, and I see reciprocal linking practices implemented by some freelance agencies, or I see different techniques that were once something that kind of worked, that is now obsolete, still being part of this confusion of the internet as to what you do to make a business more reputable and gain more visibility on the internet. Now, if we fast forward to today, oh my goodness, um, that confusion is in hyperspeed. I mean, you the stuff you hear is is mind-boggling, but it's it's also one of those things where you go, wow, you you know, you need to keep your head above water. So if you look at, for example, um, I heard someone comment just this week uh that's uh an entrepreneur and a software developer, and he mentioned the words uh search engine optimization was dead. And I was kind of like thrown back by that, but I kind of understood where he's coming from because that's a cliche that was actually circulating around for two, three years, maybe even four years ago. And so that cliche has permeated everything today. And what people have done is draw lines and say, okay, if AI is taking over and all these things are going on, then the idea of optimizing your website for search engines, well, it must be really, really dead now. Uh however, if you go back to several of our podcasts, you find out that there's actually a resurgence in search engine optimization. It's arguably more important than ever. And but it's also changed. The rules are changing at such a quick pace that you really need to do a lot to keep up with it. For example, terms like schema are really important. Uh, making sure that your website fits certain criteria is really important. Building your website for more conversational language is really important. Uh, and then, of course, all the factors that go into it that help search engines and large language models like Chat GPT understand your content so that they can refer to your content. And you see that the way that this is going is that those things that have been confused and mixed and mashed and muddled for the last 20 years, now if you can imagine at the rate which things are changing, you can imagine how much worse that's going to get. Like, for example, if you talk about creating content, you know, in a very short period of time, we've gone to where we have artificial intelligence. And then, of course, we have people who start putting it together. Well, I can have my blog articles written through AI, and then I can publish them and optimize those articles, and then I can get those pushed up to uh the top of search engines. Now, that technique has worked to some extent, but you're already seeing the search engines just like putting black copy on black backgrounds, they're they're reacting to it because this type of content is devaluing search engine results, which means the hammer is going to come down on that kind of content. Well, I'm seeing SEO people still cranking out content using haphazard techniques with uh AI and then presenting it as either it's it's handwritten original content or that they're working some kind of voodoo behind the scenes that's helping people out. In reality, no, it's not helping out. And so the idea of original human authoritative content that really brings out your expertise is where the battle is going to be won or lost. Now, if over 20 years search engine optimization is still muddled concepts from 20 years, 15, 10 years ago to what's today, you can imagine how that confusion is going to get exponential, especially in the world of the professional who's not trying to keep his hand on the pulse of what works and does not work. It also is really going to emphasize how important it is to stay focused, stailigent, and use the biggest secret weapon that you could have, and that is patience. Because, man, patience is everything. So as you're working with people and you're going through it, um, the waters are going to get choppy. There's no doubt about it. These waters of people confusing concepts, miss or not really abusing AI, but using AI in kind of ridiculous ways or ways to try to game the system or cheat it, that's all going to come back. I mean, I remember uh I was consulting with one of my clients who uh one of their locations was absorbed by a private equity group. And this private equity group, I remember there was a guy on there, and he I talked to him on the phone and he was talking about how they're going to use AI to automatically generate all these websites and all this content in cities where they're going to compete. And I remember, I did tell him, I said, Well, I'm I'm curious how you're going to address a lot of the concerns, like with EEAT and things like that. And uh I'm curious how you're going to address those issues. And then as you go through it and you see that you know it's going to blow up and you're looking at a large, large equity group who's going to instill really poor practices, but they think they're great practices. And so if they're going to do it on a small business level working with the freelancer and they're not chasing this and they're not keeping up with it, you could easily go upside down really quick, which is why I really recommend you go back, start listening to the podcast episodes, and then pay attention to what's going on in the web. Now, um, what I want to do now is kind of translate that to some topics that are current and extremely relevant today. And um these are going to help you, but again, the thing is that every episode of the podcast, I'm kind of giving you pieces of the puzzle. And the reason being is there's a lot to absorb. It's like drinking from a fire hose. But the idea, the more you get into this and the more you understand the language, and the more you understand, you can't game the system. The more that you you get that, and the more that you look for people trying to game the system, the more that you can make the right moves for your business to avoid that gaming. Now, the other thing is this. If there's a baseline, like you know, they they have something called like uh uh universal basic income they've been beating up for some time now, where you know, let's just say everybody gets a couple thousand bucks. And what does that mean for a couple thousand bucks? What's the value of a Babe Ruth baseball card if everybody on the planet has a Babe Ruth baseball card? See, that that value goes down. Well, there's arguments about well, what happens to that base? Well, it becomes the new baseline, right? Well, it's the same thing with marketing. And so if everyone uses a technique or there's a technique that's easy to implement, well, that just becomes the new minimal standard. It's not the ceiling, it's the new floor. And if you don't get the floor right, then you're not going to be able to climb above it. But the internet is so competitive that by thinking you're going to gain the system by having a bunch of blog articles, clip art, do-it-yourself website builders, halfway doing things, but then thinking you're gaming it, or worse yet, being kind of manipulated into thinking that things are going right when they're really not, then your business is going to hurt and you're going to be able to harness less and less of the internet. And as things transition, as white-collar jobs fall to the wayside, blue-collar jobs start to increase, the competitive nature starts to increase within that, and the impact of AI is fully realized, then what you're going to start to see is that that's even going to get more and more competitive. So this is why it's incredibly important for you and your business to keep paying attention and don't just blindly trust someone, you know, as time move on, because they may have been great three months ago. They may have been great six months ago, but they may not be great today. One of the things I talk about right now are building these landing pages for Google Ads. Now, that's been a pretty positive technique historically. You know, where if your website's abc.com, your Google Ads guy makes abc1.com or whatever, and he sends all the ads to that squeeze page. Now, those squeeze pages in the wrong context are going to fall to the wayside. Now, I argue that they're already hurting your business if you're doing that. Uh it's still debatable, but the idea is the trends are changing and you need to stay on top of things. Okay, enough of that. Now, what I want to do is talk about a few things that are going on in the web that I think are relevant and they're in the news today. And uh, so this first insight uh comes from an article uh at SF Gate. And what they're doing is they're talking about the ongoing death of third-party cookies and privacy changes that are reshaping how the marketing, how marketing gets done. Okay, so this is big because what's going on is people think, well, email newsletters are are dying. Loyalty programs, they're dying. This is old stuff. We need to concentrate on the new stuff. Who reads emails anymore? Who does these things anymore? And when when people are presenting that as though something is antiquated, the idea of what flies in the face of that argument is when you see that third-party data, meaning like data you get that's not your information, but you're acquiring it from third-party resources. When you're seeing that noose tighten in sharing that data, it becomes more important that you become the source of your own data. You collect your own information. And so if you only collect information from people doing business with you or committed to doing business with you, well, then the your reach and the people that you know is going to be extremely limited. While if you use something like incentive programs, email marketing, things like that, now what you're going to do is you're going to be able to collect more information, more things from more people, and then you're going to be able to have first-party data, meaning it's yours directly, and then you can start marketing to that group. Now, if we go to a poll quote, it says, with the end of third-party cookies, small businesses are doubling down on loyalty programs, email signups, and collecting data directly. Okay. I think this is true. I think this is absolutely true, and I think they're spot on with this. And so if you're renting your audience from things like Google or Facebook, just think that lease is ending. You need to own your data. This means you need to start building a plan to collect that data. Now, if nothing else, when you think about when you run Google Ads, now uh the numbers as far as like how many people engage with your business once they come in from something like Google Ads, it's it's debatable and it's also changes from market to market, but industry right wide, it's something like three to five percent. So think about that. 95% of what you're paying for won't do business with you. Okay, that they're going to leave, they're going to shop, they're going to do other things. And the reason being is doing business with you is the equivalent to a marriage. When you introduce something as simple as an email, not, and I don't call it newsletter. I mean, goodness, don't do that. But when you introduce something like that, that's an incentive, it's an added value for that, let's call it 90, 50, 40, whatever percent that is within your sector. And then you can capture that part of the audience and then remarket to them from a first data perspective, well, you're onto something. And so the idea is you do not want to just sit there and keep riding that roller coaster. So if you go back to what I was saying earlier, and people aren't up to date on what's going on with privacy policies and data and these cookies and how they're working and how people are capturing data, and you're you're not paying attention to how this noose is tightening, then the idea of emails, you know, you may be thinking, well, that's cliche, or the person you're working with is going, that's dead. Let's not worry about that. In reality, it's very, very, very much still alive. It's just how you're going to use it. Okay, so let's talk about digital channels still doing the heavy lifting. Okay, now this trend is backed by Retail Insider, which found that 40% of small businesses said their online presence was a was the biggest factor in their business success last year. Okay, so the pull quote that we're looking at is SMBs are seeing the most measurable impact from websites, Google reviews, and digital channels that drive customer trust. So if you're still treating your website or review profile as an afterthought, like, you know, yeah, we need to do that at some point, yeah, we need to start thinking about our reviews. I understand that, but you're not emphasizing that. This is a huge mistake. Because people, your website doesn't live in a bubble, your reviews don't live in a bubble, your social media doesn't live in a bubble, none of this stuff lives by itself. I mean, your one algorithm change, if you're hyper-focused on one model from being obsolete, the idea is creating a plan that embraces multiple technologies, multiple outlets, and then using them to your strategic advantage. I mean, I have some people right now who are in the um uh the tourism business and it's in um vacation rentals. And if you look what's going in the vacation rental space, and you're looking at how the the uh margins are changing and what and how that's shifting, and the algorithms that's going on these vacation rental websites, and where some people are being shuffled to literally never never land overnight, and now they're scrambling to get on Google to gain that momentum back. You can see the danger of trying to trust one single thing. Everything matters now, and this is why our agency is diversifying the way that it is. We didn't buy tens and tens of thousands of dollars of uh video and camera equipment because we thought it was a good idea. We did it because we know original content is important. We know displaying that business as it needs to be displayed is important. And so the idea is halfway doing things is is no longer an option. To do do it yourself builders, the inconsistent branding, all these things that we were able to get away with at some point are now like the Pied Piper that's going to lead you down the wrong paths if you're not uh careful. So, yeah, I'm on I'm on a passion kick today, can you tell? Um so if we if we move on down, let's just see as we're as we're as we're looking at different things. All right. So let's talk about what we call EEAT principles. Um go go look go look that up on the internet. Basically, it's authoritative, original, expert content. That's what we're looking at doing. And when you look at certain things, like um let's do a quote here. See, community-driven marketing and loyalty matter. This is what this subject is here. And if we're going to stay with the retail insider, they're flagging the growing demand for story-driven community-based marketing. Okay, now I could not agree more with this. But what does this mean? How do you do that with generic content? You can't. You see, you're an expert in your field with the way you conduct your business and how you do things. And what you can do is you can create extremely powerful community-driven content based upon focusing on your area with your expertise, and you can you can create a narrative, a story. And then there's some products out there all around the idea of creating this not just a what we do, but creating kind of a culture or creating this brand loyalty about this brand story. Okay, so here's here's the pull quote. Today's consumers want to feel part of a brand's story, not just buy from it. So, how do you build this narrative? Well, you're not going to do it with generic content. You're not going to build the brand tone and who you are and what you are by just throwing up a bunch of generic stuff. Um, I tell clients this all the time: people remember stories, they don't remember slogans, you know, seeing your face, you know, highlighting your customers, bringing people into your journey, you know, that emotional return on investment. And that's what's going to drive real loyalty. Like when I'm talking to you right now, I'm passionate about this. I love this stuff. I love being able to help people and help honestly pull people out of the quagmire of getting stuck in these concepts where they think certain things are working when they're not. Now, the reality is is very painful because the reality is, is this kind of work takes time. Yeah, you may find somebody who's going to run your ads for almost nothing on Google, but really how much effort can they put into that? And how much of it is just set it and forget it, which doesn't work. And so this idea of being able to uh to build this momentum and build your story and your narrative following best practices, that's what's going to save you. Okay. This is what's going to make you different from everyone else. You see, I don't know. So not too long ago, it was like, you know, people would, you know, let's chase the lowest price, or let's chase this or chase that. It's never been true. Okay. Uh the idea is you build a value proposition, and then part of that value proposition today is to also build the story, share your culture. Um I'm I'm working right now at the print company, an amazing, an amazing family-owned print company. Some of the most beautiful people that I've I've think I've met in a long, long time. And they have an amazing story. Um, their website doesn't tell their story. And it's going under the radar. Now, once once someone gets in the door, they can see it. They can see the family and how much they care, and that they're not going to be pushed to AI, and they're going to talk to real people with real expertise, and they really care about the product that they produce. But that's not told on their website. The only thing is after you do business, you learn these things. And so what we're doing is we're trying to sculpt this and change it to where the story comes to the forefront. Why they do what they do, how they do it. You know, where where are their passions as a business? And then who's that going to attract? And then how do we do that? Because that's what's going to differentiate them from others. And it doesn't matter if you're an electrician, it doesn't matter if you're a tourism company, whatever, whatever you are, it doesn't matter. You've got a story, you've got a line. You've got you've got a story that's going to resonate with a certain group of people that want to do business with you. And you know what the most beautiful thing about that is? You're not manipulating people. You're presenting a real story about who you are, and you're not doing one of these big company things where they're publishing these television commercials, you know, trying to manipulate people and thinking that they're altruistic and really care about certain things. They don't. Everybody knows that. You have to be really gullible to think that a detergent company really cares about some social issue. They don't. It's basically they've done a demographic study and they know if they say they will, then they will. Just like the power company. Power company claims that they care and they're compassionate. Or the medical community says they care and they're compassionate. But however, when the rubber meets the road, they cut your power off. They're not compassionate. You go to the healthcare place, they're not they're not compassionate. Uh you know, you you're suffering, and then they're anyway, there's all these things, right? But but they want to convey something that they're really not. Well, by doing this and really telling your story and being who you are, you get to do something amazing, and that's be honest. So part of your brand is that. Part of your brand is understanding your identity and building that identity out. And that's really something that needs to be carefully thought through, and you can't plug that in to an AI system and have it crank that out. And uh, you're certainly not going to get it through do-it-yourself website builders and do-it-yourself design programs. Uh, the continuity breaks, the image, the messaging breaks, the images break, and then you've got uh complete disconnect. Okay, so let's move up here. Um ad cost are up, and strategy is mandatory. Okay, so according to allbusiness.com, small businesses are seeing higher costs per click and lower return on ad spend. Meaning, guess what, guys? We can't afford to throw money at ads and hope. The shotgun effect, which is a horrible, horrible way to do it, um, is is absolutely the wrong way to go. Now, here's the thing. There is a lot of noise when it comes to this kind of stuff. When you talk about ad cost, you know, you have companies like Google making recommendations to how you should run your ads. You have uh, and then Microsoft and all of them, they all have these recommendations that you do. And then you also have uh people who are freelancers and they they want to make money, so they're not spending necessarily the amount of time that they would want to do on things. And so you've got you've got the big companies, the proprietary companies making recommendations, you have freelancers making recommendations, and the idea is that you really don't know which way to go, but here's the thing it's important that your money gets spent in a way that is going to generate the highest return on investment for you. Now, I've gone through a lot of the training, and I do believe that uh, like for example, uh, when I was going through Google's uh stuff this year, I I thought that it was really good. In a lot of ways, I thought it was really good. And some of the ways I I wouldn't recommend personally, but there were some things that I'm seeing was kind of nice to see. Um but the idea is that when you have a limited budget, you really have to get those ads in front of the right people, and you need to be in front of the right people at the right moment. And the more that you shotgun affect this, and the more you you spend your bullets shooting randomly, the worse your return investment is going to be. And so what we're seeing here is more businesses are finding, this is the quote actually, more businesses are finding that throwing money at ads does not work anymore. Strategy is what wins. Man, I I could not agree more. And what's great is there's a lot of really nice tools, but you know, you got to put reins on those tools and you got to pull them back sometimes. And then other times you've got to go forward with it. Sometimes you kind of go um against the system with what companies are recommending, and sometimes um freelancers aren't making the best decision due to whatever reason. And so the idea here is to be laser focused. Now, uh this means you really want to think about your audience, your product, per product, how you're going to present that product, fine tuning that product, and making sure that your Constantly pulling your ad dollars away from eyes that are less likely to uh want your product or service. Okay, so if your funnel is broken, okay, now now funnels, you know, your sales funnel, right? Top to bottom. If it's broken, your message is unclear, or your audience is too broad, you're wasting money. And part of that too is the whole uh buying cycle. I mean, you send people to a website and that website's not built effectively, um, it's also going to waste money. I mean, we got a new client, and he's in uh we work with him now for gosh, a little over a was it a month, maybe six weeks. Uh we had to revamp, we we started building a site collaboratively looking at some stuff, and you know what, it had to be completely rebuilt uh as we're seeing data coming in from uh paid ads. And then what we did was we had to massage it again, and then we had to massage it again, and then on the third iteration, we were seeing that everything now is is garnering conversions or leads, form feels, you know, those kind of things. And so now we're seeing the momentum pick up, which is great. But part of that, part of that funnel, part of that that sales cycle, that website, part of that process was not working as it should work, and there was a lot of work that went into it. So if people aren't doing their work or adjusting those those systems, where regardless if it's the type of ad you're running, the keywords you're targeting, the landing page you're doing, you know, there's some really nice tools. But if they're not properly harnessed, they're going to be ineffective and cost you a lot of money. I mean, I can't tell you how many times, you know, I sit there and I look, and I think people are still going around talking about the number of impressions that they give a client, you know. And although it is a metric, it's a vanity metric, it's not the metric. Um, the idea is what really matters is how many meaningful actions did you get, and what is that cost per meaningful action. And the more you do this and fine-tune it and you couple it with patience, what you're what you're going to find is you can have success in it and you can survive and actually be in front of the right people, even with people who have exponentially larger budgets, but if you're more hyper-focused, you're going to be in front of the right people at the right time. I mean, at our company, that's what we do. And it's the right move and it works. All right, so um, let's let's have a recap here. What do you need to do? You need to own your own data. What this means is you need to start collecting data. And it's not not just people who do business with you, but try to capture parts of the audience or parts of the people that visit your website that do not engage with you when they initially come to your website. And build systems and build added value items that's going to encourage those people to share their email address. Sharing email addresses, I don't share my email address with just anybody, and I'm sure you don't either. It's got to be valuable, but you need to own your own data. You need to start collecting your own data, and you need to be serious about collecting your own data. Okay, building a real digital foundation. Um, it's really important. Finding the right people, diversifying in the right ways, picking the right places to market without spreading yourself too thin. Um, these are all things that need to be planned now. Uh, there's no more of this, you know, shotgun effect uh that's just simply not going to work. Um market with humanity. Okay. The thing is, is that human, real curated human content is more important than ever. And what you want to do is you do want to have your content that resonates with the people that would want to do business with you. And what's great is you can be honest, you can be forthright, and you can stand out from the noise of all these companies, especially the big ones, that say one thing, but they don't mean it. They're not really that identity. Own that identity, be that thing, and the more you can be that thing, the more it's going to resonate with people who want to do business with you. But that needs to tie into your brand and your overall image. And then here's the other thing: spend smarter, not louder. Okay, that this is a challenge because again, it requires patience. It requires work, it requires, you know, you've got to pay that guy who's managing your paid ads. You got to pay him enough where they can fine-tune it. And if you start shopping on price or who's going to run my ads for the least amount of money, that means less massaging. That means more money you're going to waste on ads. So, yeah, let's think about this for a second. So let's say you're you're trying to either run ads for yourself, by yourself, or you're paying, you're shopping for the lowest common denominator, the cheapest person to run your ads. Okay, that means less fine-tuning. Okay, when I went through my last paid ads thing, it was about a four-hour deal. Uh I could set ads up in 10 minutes. There's a reason that took four hours, take that course, because you can deep dive or you can do it on the topical level. All right, so if you do it yourself or you hire somebody that doesn't really understand it, then you're going to waste more money in the ad spend than you would hiring someone competent and paying them enough money in order to run your ads effectively to create more conversions. And so by just throwing money out there, you're actually losing it by trying to go cheap on the management end of it. It's the same thing with the do-it-yourself websites and all this other stuff. Um it's getting it's getting painful to watch a lot of businesses who really care about starting something meaningful and then getting kind of pulled down when they're when they're having to um when they think they can cheat the system or or shortcut it or not work with pros. Okay, so a lot thrown at you today. I felt kind of passionate today. I felt like I was kind of really uh throwing it out there. Um hopefully you guys find this interesting. I really do. And you know, we're growing, you know, over the bull is is really doing better and better all the time. And you know, my heart is I really want to see people who are trying to do something do it and do a better job of it. And that's what I want to see from you. We may never meet. You may become a client of Integrate's design one day. I don't know. But the idea is if you can use this and you can grow, I want to, I want to help you grow your business, realize your dream, and spend money effectively. And hopefully that's what you're getting from Over the Bull. Until next time, thank you so much, and I appreciate letting me rant on this uh fine afternoon. Take care.

SPEAKER_00: 38:00

Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you by Integris Design, a full service design and marketing agency out of Asheville, North Carolina. Until next time.