Digital Dominance
Running a business in 2023 will require a digital plan to dominate your opponents. Between websites, SEO, creating ads that convert and more, it is increasingly difficult to cut through the online noise and promote your business. Army Veteran Justin Charpentier has been helping business owners develop marketing that grows their business. Justin discusses various topics and advice on improving your digital efforts in 2023.
Battle Buddy Podcast Guest Links:
Transcript from Episode 82 with Justin Charpentier:
Keith McKeever 0:02
All right, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. You want to tune in, if you own a business, you're an entrepreneur, you're looking to getting into business, or anything that really requires PR, marketing, things like that. You definitely want to tune in to pay attention today. Got a great guest before we get them on. Let's, let's get going here. Welcome to the battle buddy podcast with Keith McKeever. All right. So welcome Justin Charpentier. guy I've known for gosh, I think I think we've been at the warrior counselor, entrepreneur tribe now for like two years together, something like that. Yeah, we did a few times. So welcome to the battle buddy podcast. I appreciate you coming on here.
Justin Charpentier 0:39
Yeah, thank you, sir. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Well, you
Keith McKeever 0:42
are a knowledge expert when it comes to marketing and PR and SEO websites, and we're gonna get dive into all that stuff. But before we do, tell us a little bit about your story, what you do in the military. Why did you join those kind of things?
Justin Charpentier 0:54
Yeah, right. So how much time do we have?
Keith McKeever 0:58
That's how much time you need.
Justin Charpentier 1:01
Yeah. So you know what, man, I grew up in the 80s. And early 90s. In GI Joe was the thing back then. So I fell in love with the idea of becoming a soldier someday. And somewhere along the way, in high school, I decided I was going to go to college instead. And I didn't went to college. I didn't do that. Well, you know, I was very lived a very sheltered small town life. And I got introduced to a lot of things in college, partying, being one of them. So I needed some discipline. The Army seemed like the logical choice, you know, so it was
Keith McKeever 1:38
a you can get a healthy dose of discipline there. That's,
Justin Charpentier 1:41
yeah. So I joined. I joined the army, I took the ASVAB. And they, you know, the recruiter was like, you can do whatever you want. And I said, I want to be special forces.
Keith McKeever 1:53
I'm sure they hear that all the time. Sure. They hear it all the time. You know, I can get further on here to find that out. Actually, that's a good one. So funny,
Justin Charpentier 1:59
but they were like, well, you can do that. But it's not like a choice that you make. You have to be infantry first, you know, and I was like, Sign me up. You know, I was 19. So I went the infantry. I loved it. I didn't really lose the partying all that much. To be perfectly honest with you. I may have gained some part in there.
Keith McKeever 2:20
And not surprised by that. But you gain disability. Right. gained a lot of discipline. Yep. Yeah. Became a disciplined partier.
Justin Charpentier 2:27
Yeah.
Keith McKeever 2:28
It was like a
Justin Charpentier 2:29
switch. You could turn it on and off, or go a different kind of discipline now, you know, so it's
Keith McKeever 2:33
one of those skills. Nobody talks about that we are. Yeah,
Justin Charpentier 2:37
yeah. I mean, that is definitely a skill, you know, party. Oh, my and still train hard, you know. But, yeah, and so I joined, I signed up on New Year's Eve, of 97, going into 98. And then it was like, delayed entry. So I shipped out three months later, you know, basic at Fort Benning, and I did some hometown recruiting. And then you know, wasn't very exciting to be honest with you. I wasn't much of a garrison soldier. I was really good in the field. But I was always in trouble in the garrison. My boots were in Polish. My uniforms weren't pressed. That wasn't that kind of soldier. And then September 11, happened a few years later, you know, and everything kind of changed. So I was actually in the National Guard unit. And we got activated for that here in New York. And so I spent some time on an anti Terrorism Task Force I started, you know, my, my priorities changed. You know, the world was certainly a different, different place. At that point. And, you know, I was on that task force for a couple of years. We worked around, we worked in the airports. We worked around City Hall in New York City, I patrolled the Brooklyn Bridge, I worked with FBI, I worked with NYPD, I worked with Port Authority PD, we did some really cool stuff. And then when it came time to get out, I had all this leave time, you know, the rules change and everything. So I was burning up my leave time, and I got stopped last. JS. Yep. So I actually started in business. And I got a call saying, Hey, you got to report you two days to get your things in order. You got to report the Fort Drum. And we're going to Iraq. So that was kind of a slap in the face. That was in 2003. I guess that was like September of 2003. And so I went and did that. We did the train up. We went over. We were there in 2004. Coincidentally, I landed back in the United States on New Year's Eve. Oh for going in 205. And then I was released from my stop loss may 16 of 2000. And five. So that's my military career, man. Wow.
Keith McKeever 5:04
Well, I got to just gotta ask, go back to working on the bridge with the FBI and other government agencies, because you got to military and air you got to the civilian agencies. Was it as big of a cluster? You know, what, as I would expect, or was it actually organized? No,
Justin Charpentier 5:19
it was very organized and organized. Initially, it probably was a little bit of a cluster, but it was it was very organized, and we shift work. I mean, a lot of what we did was really just like being a visible presence.
Keith McKeever 5:34
You know, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Especially, you know, given the time, I just was you said that I was like, oh, man, I don't know how the military is, right. If you put a bunch of troops on that bridge is, you know, the bridge is gonna fall down. For some reason, nobody's gonna know who did it. They're gonna be pointing fingers these direction. You know, but you think of government agencies zero smoother. And I'm like Kim cooperating back then, you know, in the chaos of everything, like, my mind works in weird ways like that. I'm like, I wonder if that was, that was smooth or not.
Justin Charpentier 6:01
So there wasn't a lot of management, emergency management systems that came out of that whole thing? Because it was overall, excuse my language as a shitshow. Overall. Yeah. And I later worked for New York State in the law enforcement capacity, and that was just as bad. I mean, nobody wants to share information. You know, everybody wants to be the one who, who does the thing that gets the glory.
Keith McKeever 6:26
Yeah. My father chess, get the metals and all the awards. And absolutely, yeah, that's unfortunate reality sometimes. So you said you got to start in business. Right, right. At that stop loss time? Yeah. What would you do? What you know, what, what prompted that? And would you start it?
Justin Charpentier 6:44
So my best friend from from childhood and his mom had had a business, they were in New York City, I happen to be there, right and doing this stuff. So actually started moonlighting on my downtime, I would go and just jump into doing various things, like the first thing that that I did with them was a sales tax audit. So we represented a hotel, the, you know, the state of New York said, Hey, you guys didn't pay enough sales tax. So we're gonna come audit your book. So I helped them prepare for that. And I learned a lot about like bureaucracy and how how things work that way. And the world of business and isn't hack, we could probably make a lot of money doing this. I mean, it's a valuable service, you know?
Keith McKeever 7:31
Oh, absolutely. I think you would visit when the government comes knocking to your business. Understandable, you're gonna freak out? Even if you know, everything is right. Like, that's one of those things can make you sit there a question whether Am I doing it right? To hire the right accountant is everything done on the up and up? Like, I think it is. But you know, this is the government so everybody freaks out. So I had that had been had to be very, very interesting.
Justin Charpentier 7:54
It was interesting. I mean, like that, like type of accounting can be very boring to and I'll tell you that times, it was very boring, like just going through files and making sure the the T's are crossed, and the i's are dotted and things like that. But you know, led to a lot more, we did a lot of different work. And I got into a little bit of just a little bit of marketing back then. Working for some, some brands that are pretty popular. I don't really know if I can say, but I'm gonna say anyway, we worked for a guy by the name of Tom Brown. Tom Brown is now massive men's fashion designer, which is kind of outside of, you know, my my persona, but it was pretty cool. Also a very cool guy, I got to see the way that he framed his business and the way that he built his brand. And that was, I mean, he did a phenomenal job. You know, one of the things he would say is you should be so memorable. Like, to the point where you wear the same thing every day that people remember you because of that, you know, it's
Keith McKeever 9:02
kind of like Steve Jobs. Like did you pretty much were like, pretty much you know, Johnny Cash the man in black, like that was just to say, yep, yep. Alright, so you're really old school. Minnie Pearl and the the, the price tag on the hat. Yeah, I'm too much of a fan of classic country but as too much information people didn't even know. But yeah, no, that's that's a really good point, though. Just be be memorable like that. Lesson.
Justin Charpentier 9:32
Yeah, no, I mean, he really revolutionized men's fashion men's suits. I don't know if you remember this. Probably around that time, the early 2000s to mid 2000s. Suits used to be like, like big boxy shoulders, double breasted, you know, pinstripes and blah, blah, blah. He came out and design these suits and they were very athletically caught the jackets were shorter, they fit more more naturally, they, you know, hug the body, the cuffs were shorter, the length of the pants are shorter. I mean, I see all kinds of other brands now and build making their suits the same way. I mean, he really did change. He changed the industry now. And I was super creative. He does a lot of women's stuff now too. And he does a lot of, you know, artistic, there's a lot of artistic elements to fashion. But that's that's kind of not my, that's not my realm.
Keith McKeever 10:32
Yeah, men's fashion isn't my thing, either. But I know exactly what you're saying. You look back into pictures of business guys in the 90s. And it's just like, they just draped the fabric over. You go back to the 80s. And everything was like baby blue. It was at 70. I don't know where they were doing it. The baby blue suits. Oh, yeah. I don't know why that was ever a trend. I don't understand that at all. There's no way you got leisure suits before that. And all you know, there's every I guess every decade has
Justin Charpentier 10:59
this thing, right? Yeah. Yeah, really?
Keith McKeever 11:02
So what? When did you get into the marketing and stuff full time? Yeah. So
Justin Charpentier 11:09
I, you know, we came home from Iraq. And again, I have leave time to burn. I had all this lead time the burn. So I think I actually stopped. My last day on Fortran was I can't remember exactly February maybe. And with all this leave time, it was like, what are you gonna do? And everybody was gonna go here and go there. And, you know, we were at. We were overseas at war for a long time. So everybody had money when they came home, you know, guys were buying trucks. Guys. Were going on these crazy vacations. And I, I just went back to business, which I probably should have taken some time off. But I went and I jumped back into it because I wanted, I felt like I was building something. And I missed, like, 15 months of I had to catch up, you know? Make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So I went back. And I had a difficult time being in the city, to be honest with you. So I did that for I don't know exactly, maybe a year and a half or so I did that. And then I felt like I needed to leave. I felt like I needed to leave for so many different reasons. But I'll tell you a story. So we had an office on 39th Street near Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. That's like the it's near Port Authority. It's like just south of Port Authority. It's just north of Madison Square Garden. And I was living just across the river in New Jersey. And I used to take a bus, I go right through the Lincoln Tunnel, which is right there. I would catch the bus at Port Authority. There was a gym on like for, say 40th Street or 41st Street or block or two away, I would go to the gym. And you know, I had a Molly Molly pack, like my old rucksack and I would just throw my suit in there and I would be walking with my gym clothes and I go to the bus. One day I was I was coming around the corner onto 42nd Street right by the Port Authority Bus Terminal. My little bosses there and I'm walking along and I see this guy like arguing with his girlfriend. I didn't really pay any attention to it. You know, I just saw that there was some kind of a commotion and I looked up. And this dude kind of got, I don't know, I guess he was heated or whatever. And he he he mimicked like he was gonna punch me. And my reaction to that was I punched him first. You know, I saw his hand coming. I don't know if he was going to punch me or what but I just kind of I punched him right in the throat. And he was all about Wait, find out right? He had a really funny reaction, like, you know, like, really comical thing. But instantly, I was like, What the hell did I just do and I ran to the boss and I got on the boss got on the back of the boss and I was like, you gotta go, we gotta go. I didn't know if the cops were gonna come. I didn't know what I just started, you know? So that that moment right there I was. That was a really big introspection. That was a really big point where I said maybe maybe the city is not for me right now. Maybe these crowds aren't aren't where I should be. And so I I'm originally from upstate New York, so I had a back home. And I I wound up getting a job with a local publisher up there. He had five newspapers and a magazine. And that's when I started in advertising. So that was 2006. That was 2006 I guess.
Keith McKeever 14:35
For print advertising. It's seen some changes since then.
Justin Charpentier 14:39
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's totally different, you know, but the thing I love about that is I was I was on the sales side and then I got into copywriting. And I wound up being first being the manager of the magazine, the the manager before me, she stepped down and it was just there really So I got some really great experience with writing a different type or producing a different type of ads, you know. It's completely different than what we see now.
Keith McKeever 15:12
Yeah, kinda got to make it. I mean, your audience is different, just depends on what magazine and newspaper and, you know, we can get so targeted with things with social media now.
Justin Charpentier 15:22
Yeah, that's it. I mean, social media when when Facebook came along, I didn't really get into AdWords until after I got into Facebook, you know. But the targeting tools with social media and with the internet and with this technology, in general are ridiculous, right? So but with a newspaper, and probably every demographic in every little small town that receives that newspaper, is reading a piece of it. So how do you target your demographic? You know, and how do you track that? And, you know, it's really, really crazy. But I learned a lot, I learned a lot about speaking to your audience, because that's really the way to do it, you know? And so that that was really cool. At the same time, I wanted to bind a bar.
Keith McKeever 16:08
I didn't expect that.
Justin Charpentier 16:09
Yeah, just just what an infantry guy needs is a bar. But yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that was in Oh, six also, Oh, 6070. Wait, we had it for two years. It 2008 the market crapped out, and we didn't do as well as we thought we're gonna do with this thing. My first son was born. So like chaos, you know, that whole time coming back from Iraq, and like, trying to try to really make my mark in business in Manhattan, and just that was so chaotic. And it's really reflective of what was going on in my head. You know, there was a lot, a lot of chaos going on there. So,
Keith McKeever 16:48
yeah, I'm sure a lot of people at that time. I mean, I was in the military at that time, but so I always felt like sheltered, you know, from the, from the crash and everything. But, you know, I mean, a lot of people lost a lot of things, you know, in the crash. And I think when people fall on hard times, it's one of the first things to go, they might be drinking more, but they're probably drinking at home. That's raising the cost of going out for restaurants and entertainment and things like that. But it's got to stop. It's just got to stop. I mean, same thing happened during COVID. When, you know, people weren't working and things, you know, it's people fell on hard times. And, you know, that's first thing, it's got to go. Yeah, you can, you can, it's kind of sad to go to some places. Now I'm in the Midwest, so it's not that bad. I have been places like Miami, where you can get a $50 Margarita. I can buy a lot of Margarita material. stuff here in my local liquor store for 50 bucks. There's no doubt about it. Yeah. So
Justin Charpentier 17:45
yeah, we were a dive bar to him. And I never, I never raised prices that probably didn't help. But I did notice that people were coming to the bar already primed up. So like, people would still come out, but they weren't spending as much money. And understandably, you know,
Keith McKeever 18:00
you got pregame. I mean, I was pretty good at pre gaming. When I was in the military. You gotta you know, get a drink in your dorm course that, you know, don't hate me for the Air Force and get a drink in your dorm room before you go to the day room and sit in front of the TV drink for a couple of hours with everybody play, shoot some pool, you know, we had a good life. But yeah, yeah, you gotta do what you got to do. So. So now it's been all these years, you've been in marketing and stuff. So just dive right into it. You know, as we look into going into 2023. There's a lot of a lot of trends and a lot of crazy stuff in marketing things changed so much over the last couple of years, especially with COVID and digital stuff and things that Google is doing. But what kind of strategies do you see? That is hot right now? And is there anything like on the horizon that people should be aware of that's coming down, whether it's Google or social or anything like that? Yeah.
Justin Charpentier 18:54
There's a bunch of answers here. You know, like, everything that we did two years ago still works. It's just we've been exposed to so much we probably don't think that it works, but it does. Whatever you do, if you focus on and you do it, then you do it. Well, it works Facebook Ads work, webinars still work, believe it or not, I mean, there's there's there's things that are replacing webinars. The iOS updates, they were crazy. So the tracking that we just talked about, while it's still very sophisticated compared to print in the early 2000s. Reads retargeting is a little more challenging, but there's a lot of tools out there now available to help people retarget and you know, Google, Google is a really great place to be search ads. But Google has a product now called performance max. And the Google algorithm is incredibly powerful. So I don't really know where I'm gonna go with this. I'm just gonna let this come out of my mouth.
Keith McKeever 19:55
Oh, yeah. Well go
Justin Charpentier 19:59
there, you know You would hear that people need to be touched five to seven times, maybe seven to nine times in order for them to be a lead. That that thing that's been kicking around for years, that's a study that the Harvard Business Review did in the 50s. So with all the distractions and all the events that are happening, right in the palm of your hand, nowadays, we more than five to seven touches. I mean, sometimes you don't, sometimes you don't
Keith McKeever 20:27
ask the right person at the at the right time when they're ready to act. Right product right service right time. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, sometimes it's, it's the the compound effect of constantly being in front of somebody's eyes.
Justin Charpentier 20:42
Yeah, completely. Well, the Google Performance Max algorithm is built on 500 touch points. So basically, you put in your ass your assets, the headlines, the copy that you want the pictures, this thing will actually even make a video for you if you want. But then the videos don't perform all that well in the videos that that Google makes, or that this performance Max algorithm makes. But the idea here is it's like very smart, it's AI based. And Google has so much information about each one of us, that they ant, you know, the algorithm analyzes your behavior, and it produces things that based on that behavior you will be most likely to interact with. So it takes all those assets, you give it a pool of assets, and it creates something unique for each person that it's showing an ad to and it's across every Google property. So Gmail, YouTube, you know, search display, display, Bing banner ads on partner websites. I mean, just everything that Google has shopping, you know, literally every property that's where it works and super powerful especially for E commerce brands, you know, people that are selling things online, super powerful, bringing people into your funnel. Retargeting is still an issue there. You know, retargeting. It requires people to get a little bit more creative. But the performance Max is a big thing. And then tick tock, tick tock is crazy. Tick tock organic is extremely powerful tick tock advertising is becoming extremely powerful.
Keith McKeever 22:22
I've been hearing the same thing, some of the things I've been watching. You know, it's, I think it's difficult for some people, though, not not only just video, but like the long form video to cut it up and people's technical abilities to do some of that stuff, I think puts a lot of people there's a lot of smart people that are really good in their industries. That would probably kill it with their knowledge. They just don't know how to do video.
Justin Charpentier 22:49
Well, you can do it with your phone. The cameras on your phone are ridiculous.
Keith McKeever 22:54
Oh, it's my my cell phone. Camera is just as good as the digital camera that I have behind me that I use for real estate photos.
Justin Charpentier 23:03
Yeah, I mean, I just I shoot, I shoot my reels with my with my phone. I use this. Sorry, trying to figure this out. I use this little shotgun mic in it. And it just plugs into my phone. And it cuts down the background noise.
Keith McKeever 23:21
I've got a nice yeah, free free advertisement for road fu that goes on my digital camera sits right there on my desk.
Justin Charpentier 23:27
Yeah. I mean, it doesn't take much, you know, a tripod in you know, I am no expert when it comes to making the videos, I have a guy right. But what I've learned from him is that push record, document what video you're recording, and then record and if you mess up, just go back a couple of words behind where you messed up and start again because you can just you can just edit everything. So you after you get the hang of it, you can take about two minutes and create a reel that will be anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds. And then subtitles in it maybe some sound effects and go probably given away some big secrets here. But it's like with anything in marketing you need a hook. So have a hook provide your information. So we would say hook story close hook provide your information, whether that's a story, a piece of advice, or any anecdotal evidence or whatever. And then a call to action. You know, if you liked this video, follow for more if you want to know more, click the link in my bio or go to go to my website and buy this thing you know, whatever it is. That's that's really simple framework. And if you can do that, I think it's extremely powerful. And on tick tock just do it just just you just have to do it literally.
Keith McKeever 24:49
If you get fluid enough, I think you could, you know shoot videos. You know, two minutes, you know from from start to hit him you're hopping in the app, hit record, do your thing. He really doesn't take much. But I do want to bring up something get should get your thoughts on this. I heard this somewhere years ago before I started this podcast. And I kept it in mind when I started this first 234 Or five episodes, or think about it as much now. But when you start diving into video for your marketing, or whatever you're doing, you're worst video. You've already done. Yeah, it might be one of the 75 or so episodes I've got out is my worst one. That's not up to me to just, I mean, you know what? And I think they're all good. But when you keep that perspective in the back of your mind of like, I can't screw this up anymore. You know, it can't, can't be that bad.
Justin Charpentier 25:41
Yeah, I mean, the more you do it, the better you get, and nobody's perfect. You know, but in social media, you know, it's cool to have a very cool, you know, produced video, I have a video that I had a videographer go with me this summer to a conference in Costa Rica. And he produced what I thought was an amazing piece. That's like, my lowest performing piece. It's over produced by over produce. I mean, it's just it looks very professional. But people don't respond to that on social media, you know?
Unknown Speaker 26:13
Yeah, I think my opinion, I think that works for commercials, or some things like that. But if you really want to connect with your audience, they need to see you know, who you are as a person. Yeah, not to scripted, polished, you know, things like that. I did some videos once with the audit of good number of years ago on real estate stuff. And it was, it was quite the experience. But yeah, nobody ever really paid attention to those.
Justin Charpentier 26:39
It's funny. It's funny that that happens. I mean, I love it. I love that video, because it looks so cool. But, and I and I see the video, and I remember those experiences, but in terms of value for the audience, or anybody that's watching it, you know, the people are just not watching it. So,
Keith McKeever 26:53
yeah, well, it's got to have it's got to have value. And somebody's got to listen to it and be like, hey, I can get something from this. If not, yeah, they're not gonna watch it. Yeah. So then, yeah, that tick tock. Tick tock is incredibly powerful. I mean, if you scroll through there, if you got tic tock account, you scroll through, think about how many people that you, you follow on there, because of one video, you just watched one video, and they're just being wrong, real genuine, and they're just telling their stories? You know, I have to admit that I found I found myself on mill talk, you know, we're now the algorithm works, right. As a veteran, you end up on mill talk. But, you know, you just kind of connect with the stories Follow, follow, follow. Next thing, you know, it's like, it's all you see between that and, you know, news clips here and there and information, I probably get more of my news, because I don't watch the news from tick tock that I do anywhere else. Yeah, it's crazy.
Justin Charpentier 27:45
I don't watch any news. I don't watch any TV really, at all. But I try. I also try not to consume too much on these things. Because I'm working on these platforms every day all you know, all day, it's, it'd be very easy to become extremely unproductive, you know?
Keith McKeever 28:00
Absolutely. I think that's, you know, I'm that way with Facebook, I have to shut down Facebook on my desktop when I'm working. Because I get a notification and I see it up there. It's like, oh, yeah, I got a couple of notifications, or I hear the ding It's, you know what I mean, I just have to shut those down. You have to focus on what I'm doing, which is helpful. And you know, to get things done, at the end, if you don't get things done, you ain't making any money in this. So, yeah. So as for what people are doing right now, and it's been open and open ended question or interesting one, what should people stop doing right now that you're seeing out there in terms of marketing, the thing that just like makes your blood boil? And you're like, why do people do this?
Justin Charpentier 28:42
Um, you know, I don't know if there's one thing that really makes my blood boil, but I think I know that, again, there's a couple of answers. You know, like, the biggest thing that people are doing is not doing anything, right. So if you're not doing anything, you could have the most amazing website in the world. But if you're not doing anything to get people there, it's like having an island a beautiful resort on an island in the middle of the ocean, with no way to get there.
Keith McKeever 29:05
Look at his big beautiful mansion, and the pools and all the wonderful food and nobody to enjoy with. Right. Right. So that's a darn good point. What am I in for marketing is these people that reach out like through LinkedIn, you know, and they send you a request, or hasn't happened, but somebody said to me on Facebook today, right? Six or seven mutual friends, they're all local. I look at this person's profile personal page on Facebook on this particular situation. And it's all like health and fitness. Like before and after a fitness coach, whatever. I'm not trying to pick on health and fitness coaches, but it goes across to all of the coaching and Guru brands, if you will. And some people do a great job of what they're doing. But I almost expect sometime in the next 24 hours, I'm gonna get a Facebook message. This is hey, I hope People lose weight. And are you interested, like no effort to build a connection? jump right into a sales pitch like that just That's my pet peeve. I see it all the time. I'm sure you do too, and everybody else listening?
Justin Charpentier 30:14
Yeah, no, I see. I mean, we do cold outbound to our approach is a little bit different. LinkedIn is extremely spammy. LinkedIn is like, you accept the request, and you get the pitch. Oh,
Keith McKeever 30:29
like 30 seconds. So you know, I'm not opposed to somebody reaching out through those platforms or Facebook. But there's no effort to like, soften that build some sort of relationship have a little bit of a conversation. You know, like, I've learned some things from you, you know, in the past, like, but they just jump straight to the sales pitch. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, you know, buy for me by my $500 program, and all these guaranteed results. Are you interested? Like, I don't know anything about you, like, you haven't shown me what the value is like, yeah, I might want to lose 100 pounds. But, you know, he never showed me like, how I'm going to do it. Or, you know, you know what I mean?
Justin Charpentier 31:09
People do that in groups, too. I've seen in groups all the time. Apps.
Keith McKeever 31:12
Yeah, it's that spam, I guess which just throw that under the blanket of spam?
Justin Charpentier 31:17
Yeah, it's spam. And it's, you know, what? In my life, I've done cold calling. I've actually gone to doors and knocked on doors. And so I understand what that is. And there's a reason why people still do it. Because you get yourself in front of someone and it's a numbers game. And you get enough nose, you're eventually going to get a yes. So yeah, that's that's what that's become. But I think that because I'm because I'm a marketer, because I come from a marketing background. We do things as a test, we do everything as a test. So I will start off with a message that I think is going to work as a baseline, and then we, we get certain numbers from it, we look at positive responses and negative responses. And we analyze and we say, alright, this message is garbage. People are not connecting to this. Let's try this a little bit differently.
Keith McKeever 32:10
The can spam message that reads the same way that all those people use, you know, instead of showing some of your personality making a little bit of a connection, or you're just jumping right into it and be like, Hey, do you know anybody? You know? Try the referral route. Like, I'm not trying to sell you do you know, anybody who might be interested? Like, yeah, go on those kinds of routes, like, it softens that low, and opens, I think it opens more opportunities and use it as number game. And the more opportunities you have, the better your odds.
Justin Charpentier 32:41
Yeah, you know, and if, if you expand your network, it's bound to be useful in one way or another, you know. And then, of course, if you can be yourself, then you're going to attract the right people and repel the wrong people. You know, like, some people hate mustaches.
Keith McKeever 33:03
I don't, I don't know how they can hate that. I mean, I'm kind of, I'm kind of jealous, because I just can't grow mine like that. It's just, I could try forever, I don't think I could pull that off. It's just not gonna happen. Just like I can't grow hair. I always wear the hat. I don't wear a hat. Because I'm bald, I think most of my viewers probably know that. I've just got this light that shines on my head, and it's extremely distracting and bothers the heck out of me, but I just haven't fixed it to make it dimmable yet. You know, it's anyway. So you know, speaking of like that spam, and in some people just kind of want that winning recipe. Like they want that success now, which we all know that you got to work for it is success doesn't happen overnight. But, you know, is there something that somebody can do to like jumpstart that success? If they're trying to market it, like a maybe a new business? Like, what gives them the best? First step? If that makes any sense?
Justin Charpentier 34:00
Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot of factors, right? So it depends on budget, if if you have either remodeling, or you have time, that's the target point. So if you if you don't have a lot of money, then you have to spend your time doing things like this, you have to reach out to the people you already know. And ask that question, hey, I don't know if you know this about me. But I started this business. And I help people do this. Do you know anybody that might benefit from this? Yes or no? Right? They say yes or no or they don't answer. That's a really great way to be in the DMS. And then from there, it's expanding the network and it's finding the people that you think you can serve and then delivering content to them that is valuable with no expectation. And then eventually you get them into a conversation where you make an ask whether that's an Ask for a referral or an ask for business, but you you have to ask, you know, you have to have that thing, I guess, probably getting started in business, you have to learn how to be uncomfortable. I really think that is probably one of the most valuable tools that you have. That's a good
Keith McKeever 35:11
one. I like where he went with that. Because it's true. I mean, you have to be uncomfortable, like, you're gonna put yourself out there in front of people, or like you said, you got, you know, pay for ads, and you know, do those go that kind of route, then you're gonna get uncomfortable financially, starting off a business, right? So like, one way or another? Yeah, there's no easy answer, middle of the road.
Justin Charpentier 35:34
Yeah. I mean, but and the thing is to, like, you know, everything is really a test that you you have to approach it that way, you have to track the what you're doing so that you can manage it. So you can analyze it and change, you know, to improve. We all have a notion, and probably some of us, you know, we're in the direction of a business, because we, at some point had the problem that we're solving. And so we're really selling to her a former version of ourselves. But that's not always the case, in that former version of yourself manifest that, you know, coming through somebody else, they may have different tastes. We don't know. So when one thing that I see this kind of going back to your last question, but one thing that I see that people do, is they make their decisions based on emotion, right, they see this, this piece that maybe isn't performing well, they think it's not performing well, or it makes them feel uncomfortable. And so they think everybody else is going to make them feel uncomfortable. And so they change it without analyzing the data without seeing that. You don't you don't know what you're doing. And then so if you do get results, or if your results get worse, you don't really know you have no direction to get there or to get back, you know, so.
Keith McKeever 36:51
Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I think data is data is like, not enough people look at data, or track the data. And another thing I see it, and I feel like I can see it pretty clearly, it's usually pretty obvious, but people who don't treat their business like a business. Like it's a hobby, it's whatever, just going through the motions, you know, whatever. You know, it's, I'll give you a perfect example, in my industry, in real estate, when I meet somebody new in the business, and you find out why they got in the business, and because Oh, I like watching the TV shows about houses, I love houses. Okay, boy, do you have a wake up call coming? Reality is about to slap you right across the face really quick. Because that's fine, too, like houses, but you have to build a business, have those website, manage your social, manage your transactions, do all your paperwork a lot and meet new people network? Like you, you know, do all that stuff, your financials, your business planning? Like, you know, the going out looking at houses like 5% 10% of your job? Yeah, maybe, you know, depending on how active you are. So, like, that's your reason to get into the business. But that's 10% of your business, like what you do. So, you know, that's, that's one thing. I see that all the time.
Justin Charpentier 38:20
Yeah. Yeah, I think that might be a defense mechanism to though, you know, like, going back to the comfort zone, if you if you don't take it seriously, if you don't put yourself 100% into it, then there's always an excuse. There's always a reason that you can fall back on the way didn't work. Yeah. Yeah.
Keith McKeever 38:42
Go back to them Be like, yeah, you know, I just, you know, I love houses. It just didn't work. Like whatever reason, instead of just ignoring facts, like, you know, what, I never had a business plan. I didn't structure my days, right. I didn't manage my time correctly. I didn't do this. I didn't do that, you know. But I think that's what makes some people successful, the people who are able to reflect to analyze the data, reflect and adjust accordingly.
Justin Charpentier 39:07
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I should be doing it in every aspect of my life. And I tried to do it a lot. You know, but there's still, even as somebody who's dealing with data with data and with numbers every day, I don't, I don't do as much as I should, you know, and we all need to
Keith McKeever 39:23
improve on that, honestly. Yeah. You know, if you're being if you Well, if you're reflecting appropriately, and you're honest with yourself, that I think everybody would say, Well, I'm not doing enough like, I could clean this up or clean data, or like, I need to do review this more often. Or I can do better. Yeah, keep raising that bar.
Justin Charpentier 39:41
You just said I'm not doing enough. And it reminds me I just read at my last book, The Power of One more
Keith McKeever 39:48
who I have not read that yet.
Justin Charpentier 39:50
That's a great it's a great book. And it's really that that mentality right there is that you know, you have to give more. If you want to improve you have to give more
Keith McKeever 40:02
I mean, how many times when you're when you're in the military, you hear, like, you know, like our unit or whatever, you have to set the bar higher. Yep, you got to compete against the next unit, I was Air Force security forces, we felt like as law enforcement as security. For the base, we were held to a higher standard than what the rest of the Air Force standard was. You can't enforce the laws, if you're not holding yourself to a higher standard. You know, it's just kind of an unspoken, semi unspoken, sometimes it was spoken out loud. But that was just the culture. You know what I mean, you set that culture of, this is what we're gonna do. Right? Yeah. Wow. There's a lot of takeaways on that one for people. Yeah, that's a good one there.
Justin Charpentier 40:46
No, I just, I think, if you're, if you're in business, and you're serious about it, if you're an entrepreneur, the thing that I love about entrepreneurship is all the growth that comes with it. Like I love making money, I love putting food on the table, I love my family to have great things. But the intrinsic reward is my personal growth, and then the growth of the people that I'm working with, and the growth of the people that I'm helping. And I think mindset is a massive piece of that. So I, you know, mindset is like one of those words nowadays, where all right, what's he selling? But
Keith McKeever 41:26
it goes back to that coaching. And no one's gonna No offense to that. But you have a very good point.
Justin Charpentier 41:32
Yeah, I mean, I think mindset, well, I've, we can talk for hours about this. But I think mindset is what's actually responsible for the other success, whether that's in a job in a career, in the military, in athletics, or in business, you know, it's your mindset.
Keith McKeever 41:51
Yeah, are you? Yeah. Are you focused on the right things? Are you focused on growth? Are you focused in the right direction? mostly focusing your energy on something positive and impactful versus wasted time? You know, like, you mentioned earlier, you don't watch TV I, I don't watch TV much either. I, unless it's a less it's football game. You know, and it's gonna be the Broncos are the bad guys. That's, that's my college and pro teams. I might catch a basketball game every now and then on TV, I don't watch baseball, or watch the Olympics when it comes up sometimes, like, casually, but that's it for live TV. You know, I've got a couple of streaming devices. And if I spent time at the evening, I might, I might watch two or three episodes of something before going to bed. That's it. I don't watch the news. I don't watch the daytime talk shows. I don't do anything. It's a waste of my time. Yeah, I got I got to focus my energy on other things. So, you know, just not focusing on that negative. Because, you know, we all know that. That to go down that rabbit hole. But the news is not it's not a positive thing to be focusing your attention on. Yeah, that was important. It's important to know what's going on in the world. Until consumers
Justin Charpentier 43:00
I don't know if the news as with what's actually going on in the world.
Keith McKeever 43:05
There's some truth in there somewhere, somewhere. You just got to figure out what what percentage of his truth right? Yeah. That's my thoughts. Like there's, there's there's some truth in there. But you know, another thing I've heard over the years, right, you know, there's two sides to every story and and the truth is in the middle. When you're listening to news, you're getting one side of the story. Right. So you know, you know, you're not getting the full truth. So
Justin Charpentier 43:29
yeah, that's my two cents. Yeah, no, I mean, I've seen I've seen things firsthand how they come out. And I was in Iraq during like Abu Ghraib, all that stuff. In a while I wasn't there. And I didn't take part in any of that. There were other events that were taking place. And the news that was being reported was way off. And I thought that was funny. When I came home. I didn't watch the news for a long time. And then eventually, I started watching news again, but I would say I gave news up. Officially, when this whole pandemic started.
Keith McKeever 44:05
It was probably a good time. There was a lot of stuff on the news at that point.
Justin Charpentier 44:10
Yeah, it was like, total divisive, totally divisive, you know, it was like pitting people against each other. And it's mostly hearsay, I think but I mean, I don't want to get into that you know, but yeah,
Keith McKeever 44:22
yeah, there's there's a there's a lot to that but we'll we'll bring this back back on the topic here. Back to marketing work, I switched to branding a little bit. Yeah. So you know, every business should have a logo that should have a brand you know, sort of brand identity. You know, any any tips for people who are looking to, you know, to establish that like do's and don'ts for brands?
Justin Charpentier 44:47
Well, I mean, I feel a certain way about this, like marketing is important marketing is giving your business the opportunity to make the sale. And I think branding, and PR kind of go hand in hand and that is You know, showing the identity of your brand and the personality of your brand. So, when anchored
Keith McKeever 45:06
in culture, like the culture of the company, what you stand for? Yeah.
Justin Charpentier 45:11
When when the public image, right, so when you, when you first start out, I don't think branding is as important. And I'm speaking very generally, you know, in some in some industries and some niches and some sizes of businesses, it's very important. But for the average, Joe will say, your personality of yourself coming through your, your brand, I think that is enough. You need to focus on getting your business in front of the right people and making those conversions that way. As that starts to happen, your brand develops, and that's when you that's when you can really lean into branding. It's my two cents. You know, some people will say the opposite. You need a brand before anything, but I think
Keith McKeever 45:57
if you focus on who you are, if you haven't started,
Justin Charpentier 46:01
yeah, exactly. And I think it's kind of an excuse to not get started, you know, you got a website, business cards, and you got wrote, you know, yard signs, and you got all this stuff, do you have customers, because until you have a customer, you're not a business. You know,
Keith McKeever 46:16
that's, that's a darn good point. My kids have talked about wanting to be business guys, right? They had ideas, and they're like, I'm gonna have a business, I'm like, you don't have a product or service yet. And until you get a product or service, you're not fixing the problem. And if you're not fixing the problem, you don't have anything. They were just like, Oh, yes, I gotta think about that. Yeah, they're kids, and they never thought more about it. But I would imagine, you know, going back to what you're saying, depends on if your product business or service. But yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, if you're a product you might need, you got to sell the product. It could be important, but if you're if your service, depending on what service you're providing, I guess, you might need more of a brand.
Justin Charpentier 47:01
Yeah, this is I think, in both cases, eventually, you need a brand, right? Like, you're gonna hit your limit your wall where your marketing is, your marketing works, but it doesn't, it doesn't go beyond what's working, right. So that's when the brand voice comes out. And I would point to brands like Nike, or Apple or you know, big brands like that, that Apple especially has a funny story, they focused on the features and benefits of their products for a long time, and like, they had great products, but they didn't sell, that's when Jobs got bounced, he got kicked out of his own company. And then because of the whole operating system that he built, when he got brought back, his approach was then to focus on how it changes, you know, the the users life, when they started focusing on that, that's when the Apple brand really was built and became big. So
Keith McKeever 48:00
I think that just shows our age right there. There's any young listeners, they're like, What are you talking about? I've had iPhones the whole life.
Justin Charpentier 48:07
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Keith McKeever 48:10
What I remember the day back in the days of, you know, Macintosh computers, or whatever the ones that were like, all in one, and they had to colorful shells. Yeah. Anyway,
Justin Charpentier 48:17
I have one here. I have one in my house still. Oh, yeah. It's in the dog. And I feel like it's worth something. So
Keith McKeever 48:23
yeah, like an antique now. I think anything over 25 years old is an antique and it's gotta be like, it's gotta be close to that.
Justin Charpentier 48:30
Yeah, I mean, we're pretty close to here. Really?
Keith McKeever 48:34
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I think like, there's a lot to that. I just, I wanted to ask that question. Because I see a lot of people just like, Oh, I'm starting a business, like, I have to get the I have to get the brand or I have to get the logo, right. It's like, do you really need it? Like, right off the bat?
Justin Charpentier 48:51
You could find that it's gonna help you early. I'm not saying delay. Yeah, I'm, you know, what comes with the brand is trust. So that's why I say if you put yourself out there, and you're a trustworthy person, which I like to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, you know, if you're in business, and you have good intentions, that's going to come out. And if that comes out, that's that's the trust that you established, then you can build the brand, the voice, the the persona, if you will. But, you know, branding and PR are very important to build that high, high level of trust and social proof. And it's kind of funny, because if you see somebody that's been featured, say in Forbes, or entrepreneur, just the fact that they've been featured gives them like, I don't know, it's just the psychological credibility that someone has because of that, whether you actually know them or not. It's interesting thing so that you know, when branding does come into play that that is huge.
Keith McKeever 49:57
Yeah, I mean, if you're public Speaker, like it's gonna be, it's gonna be huge if you have those kinds of things on your resume, like I've been featured on this new station and that new station and this podcast that podcast, blah, blah, blah, whatever down the list, but check out my third TED talk. Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, generally how you get into a TED talk in the first place.
Justin Charpentier 50:21
about it, but I know several people that have had spoken, and it's, it's got a lot of value for them, ya
Keith McKeever 50:26
know, that? Absolutely. I mean, it's a hugely recognized brand. Hell, I watched TED talks on YouTube all the time. Like, there's so so much great content out there. So like, it does, it gives that that credibility that your brand needs, then you got to have everything else to falls in line. You know, so
Justin Charpentier 50:43
maybe we assume that those brands have a powerful vetting process, you know, which, which they do. But I mean, unless you've been through that vetting process, you don't think you really know what it is.
Keith McKeever 50:54
Right? It might actually be way easier than you think. But you think about this big brand, it's established, everyone knows who it is. So it must be difficult to get yourself into that. Actually, a couple years ago, when I was in college, University of Illinois, Springfield, they had a TED Talk come in, and they were asking for speakers. And from my perspective, it was just like an app just apply, you know, fill out like, what do you want to talk about? How long is it? Which What's your slides? What do you need, and then somebody in some dark room, puts them all out in front of them and picks? We're going to pick these 10 or whatever, you know, I don't know how they do it, but it looked like it was actually fairly easy. Just depends if they're, you know, independently operated or whatever. But yeah, there's there's a lot to that. Yeah, yeah, I asked the right people getting on the news isn't all that difficult either. The ask, you know, Rob Garcia, you know, you can right, make the right pitch the right way. And you can get yourself on there.
Justin Charpentier 51:50
Yeah, he's he's gotten quite a few people on local news. Yeah, I mean, Rob's a smart guy, too, with, with all that visibility stuff. And Rob is the kind of person that's perfect for someone transitioning from that, that point where their brand, could use that voice, right?
Keith McKeever 52:10
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, they're not they're not big enough to, like, bring their own person in to the organization. But they need somebody who knows us, you know, walk me through the steps like guide me through, you know, for consultation fee, obviously. But you know, write this for me walk me through this, let's let's let's do this. Because the company is not big enough to bring that, you know, that one person in permanently in the company. So yeah, that's, that's a great one. That's a guy got to get on the podcast one of these days. I've been working on it. But we've got to nail down the date. Absolutely. So another another thing kind of working on the branding and the PR stuff. Websites? I got, I have two thoughts on websites where I see people screw up all the time, designs that look like or probably were built in the 1990s. Or people who run a business and seem to think that their Facebook is their website?
Justin Charpentier 53:00
Oh, yeah. Well, hey, in the absence of a website, Facebook can work. That should not be the permanent replacement for your website. You know, but I agree. I'm about to steal a word from Rob, it's about the visibility. So you and you need a place for people to see you and to learn about you, whatever that is, gonna be the one page website with that people call a funnel, it could be a traditional website, but like, you know, this, this kind of goes back a little bit to the conversation, to the point that conversation I was talking about touchpoints there are a ton of distractions in the palm of your hand. So if you don't want your website to be so cluttered and unusable that people don't invest 10 seconds, you know. So, Donald Miller and story brand is huge. I think. I think what he does, and the advice that he gives, in the way it's laid out a web a story brand website, or story branded wireframe website, that story brand is very powerful. And it's keep it really simple. Left to right across the top should be your logo, what you do and a call to action. And then people will scan from right back to the bottom of the screen to the left diagonally so so your, your piece whether that's a video or a picture your your image there with more a little bit more information. Very clearly telling people what you do, who you serve, and what you do, the problem you solve. And then again, across the bottom, they go left to right. That's how someone scans a website, left to right across the top, diagonal back to the bottom left to right across the bottom. So another call to action right there that we call that above the fold. That's very basic. Anybody can do that.
Keith McKeever 54:58
Yeah, no, it's just got to do laid out right? In some of those websites, these these days are like really good. That's why I kind of cringe when I see some of these from like the 1990s and they load slow and things like that, or I've seen some where you click on it, and it just redirects to the company website. It's like, you spent the time to get a domain name customized to whatever your business is, and if it just redirects to the company, like it's not even like a page for you like about the person or whatever, it's just like, Oh, back to the main page for the company. Yeah, you know, because they're dependent contractor or something below and it's all real estate. by reference, there's real estate.
Justin Charpentier 55:35
Even my so I I merged with height, width height digital this year. So my website my height digital website is part of the main height website. But it's It's definitely my I didn't mean for you to do that. But it was a
Keith McKeever 55:53
good reminder and it scrolled across the bottom and remind everybody and I'll be in the show notes. So
Justin Charpentier 56:00
but that's part of the the bigger the bigger site, but but it is dedicated to our branch of Millbrook.
Keith McKeever 56:12
So one of the things people shot other than you gave some great advice on the Z and above the fold and all that stuff. Anything else people should do on their websites? Yes. do other things like that, that like people are missing ingredient that somebody could probably reasonably do themselves to improve their performance? Yeah.
Justin Charpentier 56:34
SEO is, in my opinion, and the opinions of many others SEO is the pound for pound champ when it comes to digital marketing.
Keith McKeever 56:43
You like a foreign language? If you don't know anything about it, if you haven't studied, it's, I mean, it can be like a.it can be like learning Spanish, if you've never taken Spanish before, like, Yeah, but it's learning, you gotta put some time into it, put a little more time into it, to learn it to really master it or get good at it. But
Justin Charpentier 57:01
there's, there's some things that you can do. So this is what SEO is gaining trust from Google, that your users are going to have a positive experience on your website. That's it. So if you think of that, just laying it out that way is going to be an improvement. You know, you need to use search console you need to get I'm going to start spitting off stuff. And I I forget if people know this or don't know this, but Search Console is what you use to get your pages indexed and as well how you track the optimization. So you can use search console, you can add your page, your pages that you add to your search console and ask Google to index it. Once it's indexed, then it's eligible for ranking right. So then Google recognizes it and gets ranked.
Keith McKeever 57:48
That's every page and the overall website.
Justin Charpentier 57:51
Yeah, but basically, sometimes Google just won't rank a page like back in the day you they use location pages, and I'm sure people still use location pages where they they would have the exact same page for every location that they want to hit. So like. I'm going to use towns around me but like Poughkeepsie. It's like, let's say, landscaping services in Poughkeepsie, landscaping services in Fishkill, landscaping services in Carmel, you know, all these different towns with the page is exactly the same.
Keith McKeever 58:27
Well, the Google hard enough to see that, like it's the same thing. You just you just have a different page name.
Justin Charpentier 58:32
Yeah, Google thinks that's redundant, you know. So location pages now should should all have unique content on them. But that's, that's a little bit more maybe advanced. I don't know if I don't know if that's advanced or not. But simple things that you can do are like making sure that your page loads quickly. Like maybe that's the number one thing. If your page takes two seconds to load, you're losing people they don't they don't want to wait two seconds to see the first thing on your page, you know.
Keith McKeever 59:08
And so far, we've come since the 90s and dial up our manually oh my goodness,
Justin Charpentier 59:15
if you want to ever Dating Yourself website, you're you're talking about 45 minute investment. Just
Keith McKeever 59:20
don't write just like tight typing. Well, Google wasn't around to type in a website, Ask Jeeves, right. Typing Ask Jeeves. Hit enter. Go through that frozen pizza in the oven. Cook it cut it up, eat it, come back. Go back and get a drink. Come back now it's loaded. Yeah, that's for the youngsters right there. That's outlet.
Justin Charpentier 59:38
Yep. Yep. Yeah, crazy. But page load speeds and then so you have meta tags, right? So if you're, if you have the ability to get inside of your website and see those technical pieces, the meta tags are important, you know, you should be keyword rich. You should be the title tags should really be what you do. You know the name of your business what you do, and the the locations that you serve, you know, and then your h1 is really like the book title of your website, the h1 tag is, this is how we organize the website. And this is what Google looks at. So
Keith McKeever 1:00:20
by h1, you made the homepage, it's
Justin Charpentier 1:00:22
called an h1 tag, like your, your h1 tags. They're there. I don't know how to explain this. They're, they're just like the titles, the headings of sections of your website, there's h1, h2, h3, you should have one h1. And then everything else should be an h2 or h3. But it's, it's, it's basically how your site is organized as well. So it's like the this is really dating, but like the Dewey Decimal System, in the old libraries, this is this is how you're organizing your website. And then Google scans this and says, Okay, this is, this is good, this is going to serve these people, we trust this this is laid out, well, this is going to be a good user experience. Let's reward them with some ranking. You know, that's very basic stuff that you can do with just just by typing just by typing in those those spaces. There's plugins, you know, there's all kinds of things that help speed up your, your page, it's likely to do with the video, or the pictures that are on your page and the file size. So those those are some quick wins. And then in your, in your tags, if you put the location, that's, that's going to help tremendously.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:39
That's something I had heard lately, like I got a note somewhere on my desk, think about it, like, go back to grade school, like you got nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives, right, you need to make sure that, like, if you're a local service, you put in the noun, like,
Keith McKeever 1:01:56
where that community is, right, and then you know, what you do, how you do it, how it makes people feel, or what the benefit is, like, you have to spell that stuff out, and your content and, and all those things. And, you know, that's, that's how things are gonna get picked up. Pretty, pretty fair assessment of a general direction.
Justin Charpentier 1:02:17
I'm looking to have all these notes up here. But I know I have a recent note from a website that I audited. Um, I'm not gonna waste time. But that's one of the first things that we do, we look at a website where we can, we can use some tools to kind of scan the website and see those things. And if they're in order or not. It's always like the value that I give to someone, whether you want to work with me or not, if you want me to audit your website, you know, it takes a little bit of time on my end, but it's really easy for me, because we've done it so many times. It's going to help, it's going to help you know,
Keith McKeever 1:02:53
well, just knowing where, where you're good, and where you have deficiencies, where you know, where you can focus your attention. That's key. Because I mean, there's a lot of stuff to it. And I feel like I got a general idea on the on the websites and stuff. I am by no means an expert. But I learned stuff all the time, just like I said, like that was eye opening, writing descriptions and writing things on the page and make sure that you're hitting those different things in there.
Justin Charpentier 1:03:19
Well, here's, here's one, two, that's really simple. Google recommends that you have 500, at least 500 words on your homepage. I've seen so many websites with very little content on their homepage. And if you don't have those 500 words, basically Google saying people can't get enough information about you for this to be a positive experience. So really, 500 to 1000 words is a really great place to be. And guess why that gives you an opportunity to add more keywords. We don't just want to write a story meet up of keywords. But
Unknown Speaker 1:03:47
yeah, you don't want to stuff that full of nonsense gibberish. Sorry, actually reads it in there. Like what the heck are they doing here? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that's, that's that's a good one. Because I think that's where, you know, a lot of people in business, a lot of veteran entrepreneurs.
Keith McKeever 1:04:03
That's the struggle that everybody has is like, how do I get my, my, my website to rank higher? How do I stand out? above the crowd stand out all this noise? We've mentioned, just social media, like, our attention is everywhere. And it's short. I mean, the standard is two seconds on a website. You know, 2020 25 years ago, I mean, literally, I mean, you could literally go like, yeah, non jokingly, you could go make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and some chips and pour soda and come back into websites still not loaded.
Justin Charpentier 1:04:35
Yeah. I don't even know if two two seconds is a standard. I think it's like 1.4 or five.
Keith McKeever 1:04:41
That doesn't surprise me, you know, but I mean, what are the load fast? You know? In real, you know, then you also have, you know, especially mobile and mobile friendly. Uh, you're at the whim of where are you? You know, do you have 5g? Because 5g is not my area. I've been in 5g Boy, there's a speed difference.
Justin Charpentier 1:05:01
We didn't even 3g where I live.
Keith McKeever 1:05:04
You were like back in the Stone Age and The gees.
Justin Charpentier 1:05:06
Yeah, I have to use a wireless extender here. But I love that about where I live.
Keith McKeever 1:05:12
Well, it's there's some pros and cons there, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, if you get to the 5g, you know, you're living in the big city, and you're surrounded by all that. Yeah, maybe you like it? Maybe you don't. You know, it's faster, I wouldn't say it seemed like it was that much faster. But I've noticed a difference. Like, I get in pockets of areas where just it goes to 3g versus four. And there's a noticeable speed difference. And it's frustrating as we get used to it. So. So last thing, you know, kind of PR disasters when it comes to marketing. You know, anything you've seen out there things that people should just like just not do. It's just going to lead to a disaster. things people are doing wrong, any examples that might enlighten people make somebody sit up and say, yeah, maybe I should I'm doing that. And maybe I shouldn't. Or maybe I'm thinking about doing that I shouldn't, you know?
Justin Charpentier 1:06:06
Yeah, that's a tough question. I think when it comes to PR nightmares, what I think of is, is just bad press, you know, but I think these are some things that we can stay away from, we can stay away from politics, with our business, we can stay away from. Like, I gotta be careful how I say this, because divisive issues. Yes. But if you want to be like you should be polarizing in what you say. Because that's how you're going to attract the people that that want to work with you. Right, or that want your product or service. Right. But I think it has to be done tastefully, I think it has to be done? Well. I don't know. I mean, I might say something like, this is why your website sucks. I might say that as a hook at the beginning of a video where someone might say, Well, my website doesn't suck, but they want to watch to figure out what the heck I'm saying, right? Yeah, that kind of polarity is good, but, you know, call it out and go XYZ class of person sucks, you know, like, you know, your political party,
Keith McKeever 1:07:07
or I don't like this, I don't like that, that I think that's a really big one. I see that a lot. I can tell you as a consumer, of products and services, like we all are. And that's why I ask the questions about the websites earlier, is because you know, Facebook could be a website for a little while, doesn't replace it full time. But if somebody is, has a long established Facebook page, and no website, I may not do business with them. If I go to their personal page, and I start looking, and they're on one side of the aisle or the other strongly, or that I see them getting into arguments on Facebook on political stuff, or religious stuff or whatever. It ain't happening. We're not doing business. Yeah, the argument happened. I don't care what side it's on. I'm not doing business with somebody who's divisive. Yeah.
Justin Charpentier 1:08:00
You know, an interesting observation to about somebody that has a presence on social media, no website, or they have a website and they don't invest in a domain or you know, they haven't put a lot of effort. There's, you wonder, like, you know, what level is this business app?
Keith McKeever 1:08:19
There's a perception there. There might be a great legitimate business. They're just they just, yeah, I've seen those two, like trying to remember the last one I saw. Like you can get the domain but like, dot Weebly, or.wix.com, or whatever, like whatever it is, I
Justin Charpentier 1:08:35
mean, for like seven
Unknown Speaker 1:08:36
bucks. Yeah, it's not that bad. Seven Bucks, maybe 2025. Should note to say you probably shouldn't pay a couple $100 For one, unless it's very popular one that has become available.
Justin Charpentier 1:08:50
I paid way too much for my domain. Yeah, I couldn't understand why I paid like six or $700. For my domain. I was in love with my domain because of what it meant to me. That was an emotional purchase. And
Keith McKeever 1:09:02
I was offered for my own personal one, not the battle buddy. podcast.net. But Keith McKeever, when I established that I was Keith mckeever.co because.com was unavailable. It was an attorney up in Canada, which sucked. Then I started getting emails about like, it's available, you could get it for 600 bucks. And then I kept looking at websites, and it wasn't the website was down, wasn't really listed on websites. And some time went by. And I went to my domain provider, and I typed it in and sure enough, it was available and I got it for 20 Oh, there you go. And now I own it. I own both of them and pointed to one towards the other and other good. I was like alright, I've already established a little bit of my brand. So I'm not going to you know, roll it over. But I'm going to point that domain towards the other one. You know, it's so yeah, I've seen some of those things. But I've seen some of those Oh, by this by this for x amount of dollars. It's like just be cautious. Yeah, it may be worth it to you if it's like a hot domain and this thing has been off the market for 20 years, and you have an opportunity for 600 bucks take it, it might be worth it. It might be worth his weight. But, you know, I was getting those spam things, you know, for my particular case, and I was like, I'm not. I don't want it that bad. Yeah. You know,
Justin Charpentier 1:10:16
well used to be like a practice in SEO used to be to have a keyword rich domain. But it's not the case anymore either. You know, like Keith McKeever real estate broker.com. Is is bulky, it's not Oh, that'd be terrible. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's more important to have the brand I think, than to have the keyword because the keyword becomes very vague.
Keith McKeever 1:10:45
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more, and go ahead and wrap this up. But just and I appreciate the knowledge drop, because that's, there's a lot to unpack for people who are veteran entrepreneurs are interested in it, or they're running a business right now. There's a lot of things you could point people on the right path, and just kind of get them started little things that they could actually take action on which i i love it,
Unknown Speaker 1:11:10
I appreciate it. I really, really do. Because that's the whole purpose of this podcast is to give my listeners something that they can go do to start improving some things. So I really appreciate that.
Justin Charpentier 1:11:20
Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Man. I love to talk this. I could talk this forever. I probably talk too much about a lot of things here. But
Keith McKeever 1:11:30
yeah, passion shows through, right? Yeah, yeah. Yep. So once again, everybody I've got his website, scroll across bottle, height digital.com, backslash, Millbrook. It's in shownotes for anybody who wants to listen to it. In case you're not watching it. So go like follow. I'm assuming you probably have a few social channels as well. Oh, yeah. Got assumption, right. So go like follows if you know, if you need some services reach out to Justin. He's easy to get ahold of. So
Justin Charpentier 1:11:59
yeah, I would say this to man, like anybody that's listening, any of your listeners that that want a quick audit on their website with zero expectation, feel free to reach out to me. I'll do probably like a quick video on it like a five minute video audit, just looking at the website giving giving pointers and some action items. And like I said, zero expectation.
Keith McKeever 1:12:21
It's worth its weight in gold. And then if you need an expert, you know what? So once you get Justin, I appreciate it. I'll see you next time and the water council or tribe or wherever we wherever we see. You take it easy.
Justin Charpentier 1:12:35
Thank you very much, Keith,
Keith McKeever 1:12:36
you too. All right, there you go. Folks, hope you enjoyed that and hope you got a lot of good information. Some things you might be able to take back to your own business or business you're planning. Remember my websites battle buddy podcast.net. Most trying to add resources and information there. But like I always say, if there's not something there that you think should be for a resource, let me know so we can try and get that built in. It's all about providing value. And if you're struggling for any reason, please remember the National Suicide Hotline numbers now. 988 press one or you can text 838255
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
