- We’re super excited about our Tool of the Episode this week. If you need some help deciding when and what to post on your social media accounts to promote your web content, MissingLettr has got. You. Covered. It’s easy. It’s free. It’s what Clarity uses. Get on board.
- For our Deep Dive this week, we are really diving deep into marketing through your website. We all know that The Almighty Google is the end-all and be-all when it comes to getting people to your site. But how do you leverage that for your benefit? Keywords, LSI and otherwise. Find out what those are, how to select them, and how you can use them on your site.
- The competition continues in our trivia round, as David proves that he’s still living in 2007 and Craig proves that he’s the Champion…of Cheating. Test your knowledge of classic commercial trivia against the guys. And don’t forget to subscribe.
Hard of hearing? We don’t want you to miss out on the cool info. Read the transcription below. ⬇️
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Episode Transcript
Craig: Welcome to IWantBusiness, the Small Business Podcast, brought to you by Clarity Creative Group. My name is Craig, I am here alongside with my bro! David.
David: Hey, Craig.
Craig: You change your greeting every time. I like this. I want you to come up with a staple, though. But then I don’t, because I want to be surprised.
David: Ehh, I’m not a catchphrase type of guy.
Craig: Fair. We also have in studio, and by “studio,” I mean our Winter Springs office, Brian Fritz of Podcasting Done Right. He doesn’t like to say a greeting, but he will come in later as our Quiz Master for the trivia segment.
You’ve tuned in. Our episode is gonna be all about using your website for marketing. That’s huge. How are you gonna get the word out? How are you gonna build business? But first, we love to offer you a free tool, sometimes one that costs money later, but at least it starts free. David’s Tool of the Episode to help you market your website.
David: So this is a tool that we have actually been using for the last year. And it actually helps market your website onto social media. (laughing) It’s really helpful in what it does.
Craig’s writing me notes. (laughing) Cheating! No notes! That’s for trivia.
Craig: (laughing)
David: So, what we’re really focusing on is … (laughing)
Craig: (laughing) All right. I got him! I got him. You know what? Just for funzies. We’re up to episode 17. I got him. Every episode, I try to mess with him. Giving the listeners a throwback, what number was Indeed! Dot com?
David: (exasperated sigh) Indeed!
Craig: That was, like, episode 11. (Transcriber note: It wasn’t. It was episode 14.) I was messing with him. So I did it again. Just simple stuff. Simple stuff. (laughing)
David: Wrote me a note. While I’m talking.
Craig: (laughing hysterically)
David: Wants me to—
Craig: It works!
Brian: (laughing)
Craig: It’s subtle, but it works. And this is all gonna stay in the episode, because I think that they need to see the process. David’s gonna get his stuff back together and tell you about Missinglettr. Missinglettr.com.
David: I’m gonna power through this. Missinglettr helps you link up the content that you put out on your website, maybe a blog content or a page that you want to promote and it helps promote it to social media. Now, what it does is, you pretty much put the post that you want and it scours it and gets quotes from it. And then, pretty much creates little X or Facebook—
Craig: What do you mean “create”? It does it by itself?
David: It does it by itself.
Craig: Ooh!
David: It just looks at your paragraphs and figures out what would be a good … Usually your first one is, “Hey, I just posted a brand-new article about …” and then it gives you the title of the article.
Craig: So this is something that would help someone automate a little bit of social, right?
David: Correct. And you can do X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.
Craig: Let’s be honest, nobody’s using Google+.
David: Okay. Well, it’s an option if you want it.
Craig: They even abandoned it.
David: Well, Missinglettr isn’t. So it’s Missinglettr, without the final E in letter.
Craig: Super confusing.
David: So “Missing.” “Lettr” L-E-T-T-R, dot com. The free version, which of course, gets people started, allows you to do two campaigns, so two blog posts or whatever. They’re able to scour two pages and do everything for you on one social media profile. The paid ones you’re able to do the four social media profiles with more campaigns per week. This one does two per month, but it’s a good starting point.
And what’s really cool … Okay, so it gets you the content going. So it’s gonna give you, maybe, seven or eight posts that are timed out throughout an entire year. So, there’s probably one that happens on Day 1. Another happens on Day 3, another one happens on Day 7, Day 112. Because you never know when people are looking at stuff on social. And again, assuming the stuff that you’re posting has some good time … You can have an ending date.
What’s really nice about it is it gives you sometimes 20 or 30 quotes. Obviously, you’re only posting maybe eight different times throughout that year using that content, but they’ll have 30 ones and you can go through it. And every one has an image. And they do a really cool thing where they actually put the quote in an image.
Craig: Yeah, with your logo and stuff.
David: With your logo.
Craig: It really is cool, because the thing that confuses a lot of small business owners that we talk to, is they don’t know what to post or when to post, right? And this kind of tool takes care of at least the what and when for what you give it.
And what I mean by that is, if you were paying attention to our last episode, we were talking traffic, and we kinda mentioned evergreen content. And we’re gonna talk a little bit more about keywords in a little bit, but if you wrote a really cool article, a really cool blog post, it’s unlikely that posting it one time on your Facebook or X, your whole group is gonna see it. Your whole fanbase, if you will, or the amount of likes you have. In fact, on Facebook, it is impossible that all of them would see it, because their algorithm doesn’t allow it.
So this really does something for you that is all about long-term planning and all about getting your content out there to as many people as possible. So you have a cool post, you put it into this software piece, and it comes up with those little blurbs it’s gonna put out, and plans it out over the term that you expect.
So now, instead of forgetting, which is what you’re going to do, to post about that cool blog you did a year ago, it’s already got you.
David: Mm-hmm. It has it and it’s helped it by scouring it already, creating graphics for you, and creating the post. It helps you create hashtags, tells you if these hashtags ever got retweeted so you know if there’s even any popularity in what you’re doing.
And you’d be surprised, some of the quotes that you put out there, people like it—
Craig: Oh, yeah!
David: People comment on it, you’re getting people to interact with it. So there’s definitely a part where you have to interact with that content still. But it’s kinda fun. And it helped make social media posting a little bit easier.
Craig: Social media can be very daunting. And for a small business getting your start, you don’t have the budget usually to hire somebody to do this. Big companies, they have people to do this full-time. So having a tool like this to help you so that you can spend maybe an hour a week instead of time every single day. You can set this up in advance.
I think Missinglettr without that final E, Missing L-E-T-T-R dot com can be a tool that really gets you moving forward with your social media.
So, we’ve talked about this a couple of times. Instead of telling you about our fancy sponsor of the episode, which is PodcastingDoneRight.com, the finest podcast producer in existence. I got it in; I did it. I will implore you, as you listen, to get on iTunes and give us a review. Preferably five stars.
IWantBusiness, the Small Business Podcast, it’s for you. It’s for the small business owners who are wanting to start something, get something going. We’re doing this already and we think you can, too. So give us a review, comment, let us know what you want to hear about, questions you might have. Check us out on iTunes: IWantBusiness, the Small Business Podcast.
Now this episode is all about using your website for marketing. And that could mean a lot of things. So David’s gonna narrow this down because he’s gonna start talking about keywords. And I say “start” for a reason, because if you ask him, he will talk for way too long about the differential things between LSI keywords and regular keywords and all this stuff.
So I’m gonna be your asset, listener, to try to rein him in a little bit. Because he has so much knowledge up there about this. We wanna give you a start of what would you write about or what would you use to market? And he’s gonna give you a beginner’s touch of “what the heck’s a keyword?”
David: Yeah! So, keywords are important because it’s all about what you rank for. We talked about it previously on the last episode where we talked about SEO for the long-term. And with keywords, you want to make sure that you’re picking … We talk about proper content, getting ranked, the importance of that.
But picking the right keywords can be anything and everything. I’ve seen the reports online about how a company can get you ranked for hundreds and hundreds of keywords. Number one. But the problem is, none of those keywords actually get searched.
Craig: Right. People have to remember that you can get sold on a company that’s out there saying, “We’ll rank you for every keyword ever.” But that doesn’t mean those are the ones people are looking for. It starts way, way back in the beginning, doing the research on what is relevant to your business.
David: Yeah, so what keywords work? What keywords are going to be the customers that you’re looking for? So, let’s go to sandwich shops, because—
Craig: I love sandwiches!
David: I’m hungry.
Craig: I had a two-sandwich day earlier this week.
David: Wow.
Craig: To me, that’s a win.
David: That’s commitment.
Craig: A lot of people won’t go two sandwich, definitely won’t go three. I’ve done it. But I had a two-sandwich day. I had a homemade sandwich, I had a Firehouse sandwich. Then, a couple days later, I did a two-sandwich homemade. Two homemade sandwiches in one day.
David: Wow!
Craig: Super tangent. I like sandwiches.
David: I know. So the sandwich shop wants to be ranked for “turkey sandwiches.”
Craig: Right, turkey sandwiches. I make turkey sandwiches, I’m in Altamonte Springs, what do I do?
David: So all of a sudden, they go, “Oh, I want to be ‘turkey sandwiches Altamonte Springs.'” But then you realize you start ranking number one for that. Fantastic. But then you realize there’s not anybody that actually searches that. Or the people that are actually searching it are searching for recipes or they’re not searching for a sub shop or whatever it is that you are.
So keywords only matter on how much you expect the return to be on.
Craig: Right, and the problem is that … We all get into this. Because it happens to us and it happens to many of the business owners that we communicate with, they think they know what people would want to find out. But without the research, how would you know?
So you’re the sandwich shop owner and you’re like, “It’s the most commonly ordered thing, so ‘turkey sandwich shop Altamonte Springs,’ that’s me.” But people are maybe searching things like “food near me,” “I’m hungry.” The things that you don’t know. So, David, what is the resource where you can even find what keyword is working?
David: We talked about it previously, and Google Trends is pretty awesome. I think we talked about it in the … let me think here. Episode 15. Where we talked about Google Tools. And what Google Trends does is … you’re able to type in a keyword and then you type in another keyword and it tells you which one actually got more traffic. How is it trending? Is it going up? Is it going down?
There’s not actual, real numbers, but they’re a segment of …
Craig: It gives you—
David: It gives you numbers …
Craig: Estimate.
David: But if it says “14,” there’s probably gonna be more than 14 people searching for it.
Craig: Right. Those numbers aren’t to be used in a sense that, “Oh, there’s only 14 people searching that.”
David: Right.
Craig: There’s a ranking that Google does based on this. And what’s really cool is, walking through the process, I can tell you because I’ve seen him do it. “Him” being David, I’ve watched him do this research. There’s steps to it. And you start with the Google Trend, getting the data on what, even, is working, then you take it to another level.
And this is where I don’t want you to go so crazy so that you’re getting super deep into it, but I referenced LSI keywords, right? Now, I’m telling you a regular business owner’s not gonna know what that is. Explain what that even means and why they should care about it.
David: Well, I’m not even gonna make them have to use a tool. What I want people to do is search for their service that they do. So maybe it’s “sandwich shops.”
Craig: Or plumber. We talked about plumbers, we talk about a lot of things.
David: Right.
Craig: Handyman. It’s gonna be a handyman today.
David: You type in “handyman,” and then what happens is always on the bottom, or even when you start typing in “handyman,” all of a sudden it starts to finish your statement, right?
Craig: Google knows your thoughts.
David: Google Auto Suggest, or whatever you call it. And on the bottom there’s always between six or eight ideas that are already filled in. Maybe it talks about “handyman near me,” “handyman service,” maybe even mentions a specific handyman that’s local, that’s in your area.
Craig: Now, to be clear, this is at the bottom.
David: At the bottom.
Craig: Of the first page of results. Most people glaze right over this.
David: They do.
Craig: But it’s super valuable for you as the business owner, that’s what we’re saying. So get down that first page and take a moment.
David: Take a look at those keywords, because a lot of those keywords actually might be the more important keywords to use. But they also might be keywords that you could be using to help fortify that keyword. So maybe it’s “Orlando handyman.” Maybe you’re also seeing “handyman painting services.”
Craig: Or “repairman” starts showing up and you’re thinking to yourself, “I didn’t call myself a repairman,” but Google is associating “repairman” and “handyman” together.
David: They see them as the same.
Craig: Right!
David: And that’s where we talk about … they call them LSI keywords, semantic keywords. I would call it a thesaurus version of—
Craig: Synonyms, right.
David: Synonyms, yeah. So you’re able to see what words are similar enough that Google might get a little bit more information and see what those keywords mean and what they would probably rank for and how they would rank. Help understand what that page is about.
And that’s really what keywords are. It’s really telling Google what that page is, what it’s about, and what information are you gonna get from it.
So if you’re a sandwich shop in Orlando, the last thing you should be talking about is Jacksonville, Miami …
Craig: Of course.
David: Even if you’re a New York sandwich shop in Orlando, you gotta be selective to make sure you don’t say “New York, New York, New York—”
Craig: A lot of restaurants do that, because they’re doing that New York-style and the irony is—again, we love talking about sandwiches and sandwich shops—but restaurants are some of the weakest in the web game, where they don’t do the things to get people on the web. And you’ll see some of the big companies are really starting to push it. Bonefish is one that I’ve noticed, where they’re really aggressive with web, really aggressive with email marketing, and yet there’s other companies that are completely falling flat with it.
But the free element of what we’re saying is, you don’t gotta spend a lot of money, you don’t gotta buy some tools here. Come up with whatever you think your business is. You’re a handyman. You’re a plumber. Whatever it is. Type that into Google, scroll down that first page, and write down those other words.
It’s helping you! The Google machine is telling you what other keywords are relevant for you. What that can do for you is give you ideas on the type of content you want to put up on your site. If you’re a handyman, and you have “handyman” on your site 45,000 times, that’s no longer gonna value anything for Google. Google’s not gonna look at you and say, “All right, you’re the handyman expert” anymore.
But, if now you have terms like “repairman” or “guy that fixes things” or whatever Google is suggesting as a related search term, you’re now really connecting the dots on marketing your website properly online.
David: Right, so that’s Google marketing. So let’s talk about how else to use your website to market you, to represent you. Isn’t that what it’s all about? You get the people there. Who are you? What do you stand for? Why should I work with you? That’s the question that is what’s going on in customers’ minds.
I think we do it ourselves. There’s tunnel vision. As soon as they go to that website, they know where they want to go, they don’t even see the stuff around it. The problem with Facebook, there might be an ad on the side, there might be an ad in-between, people just miss it completely.
What can a business owner do to get their website out there in front of people?
Craig: Tell us. Give it to me. I want it.
David: It’s really about looking at your website from the user’s perspective, right?
Craig: When you say “user,” you mean “a potential customer”?
David: Yeah, yeah. So not just you as an expert, but you as the person that is visiting the website for the very first time. How many times have you signed up for your own contact form or joined your own mailing list?
Craig: (laughing) Never!
David: Probably not. It’s probably not a normal thing to do or to think, “okay, I’m the customer and I want to find a plumber and I came to my site, how quickly could I join? how quickly could I contact? how quickly could I find the information that I’m looking for or even find anything?
Craig: You touch on something here that is so near and dear to us. We’re on our … I think third version of our own website, on IWantClarity.com. And the irony is that this experience of trying to look at your own site with fresh eyes, it’s a challenge. And it’s something you may want to ask a loved one and friends to do as well.
Because you may think, because you know the most about your business, “I know exactly what to put up.” That would be, in our case, very incorrect. We’re a lot further along Year 7, 8 here than we were at Year 1. We didn’t even know what people we were looking for. We thought we knew what we were to put out. But that isn’t what the client or potential customer is looking for.
If you’re thinking, “Oh my God, I’m gonna put a picture of the service I provide, here’s a toilet that I plunged, I’m a plumber,” that’s maybe not the first thing people want to see. Maybe they don’t want to see a toilet. It gets, “Ugh! I’m gonna get off this page.” Maybe they want to see your smiling face with a wrench in your hand because they’re like, “Ooh! I trust this guy! Look at his face! He’s wearing the same shirt that’s the logo.” You never know.
And doing some of this work to figure out the user experience, kinda a long-winded way to say “user experience.” We put so much time and effort into this because it’s what changes the game for people. What’s gonna get them to fill out that contact form? What’s gonna get them to fill out whatever it is your lead generation is in less than two or three clicks.
David: Right. It’s gotta be simple; it’s gotta be easy. And it’s gotta work.
It’s so funny, though, people are going, “Well, my website doesn’t work. It just didn’t do what I wanted it to do.”
Craig: “I didn’t get anything from it. Nobody goes to it. Once they’re on it, they don’t do anything!” Well, how easy is it for them to do something?
David: Right. What was your goal? Did you take your goal into account when you built the website or put any effort into that?
Craig: Right. Did you plan it? Did you answer their question?
I think for us, and we’re giving you some inside scoop, one of our early questions that we always ask a new client is “What are the questions your customers ask you?” Because they forget to think about that. And you could be a dry cleaner, a handyman, a pizza shop, what’s the first question or the most common question you get?
Thinking about the kind of things that your customers ask is gonna make you better at servicing them when you can’t answer; the website can answer for you. So start answering some of those questions.
David: I think that’s key. Again, it’s being there for the customer and not for yourself. If we write for ourselves, never for the client, that’s a problem. Because the client obviously has a very different perspective.
Craig: That’s how most people operate. You think about, “Wow, I know a lot about my business, I’m gonna write everything about it and I don’t understand why people don’t get it. This is how I do things.” But the reality is, to be out there and acquire new business, you have to be a little bit open-minded because people don’t perceive things the same.
Just like how I was giving the example of a toilet on a plumber site, that might not be the image that people— Yes! We know that plumbers mess with toilets. But that’s not the image that makes you want to make that purchase decision.
David: Might not be very professional.
Craig: Exactly. Now, if you’re Kohler and you make toilets and it’s this pristine gold toilet you’re showing, sure. But not the plumber, because you’re associating the plumber with the one who has to go in to what goes in the toilet. It’s a negative imagery kind of thing.
You’ve really got to put yourself in the customer’s shoes in order to really market your website. There’s a lot of time and effort on your part to go into how you want to be perceived. And sometimes if you just quickly, “Oh, I know who I am, I know what I do, they’re just gonna get it…” No, they’re not. (laughs)
The people are not gonna get it because you believe it. You’ve gotta really put yourself in their shoes and that’s what asking friends, family, loved ones … That’s all you have to begin with, to spec that out and look at your site, not from knowing you the way you are but from “Would I make this purchase?” or “Would I ever fill this form out? Would I ever sign up for this?”
David: Well, sometimes people are like, “I’m a shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy, so I’m gonna make sure all my content is crass and a little edgy because that’s me. Maybe that’s who I am.” And you’ve done that and somebody shows up to your website for the first time and doesn’t know who you are.
What’s the first thing that they think of when they see that? The first thing they think is, “this guy has an ego” or “this guy is talking down to me” or “this guy is using a tone” and you’ve now scared them off only because you thought you were coming across in a certain way.
And maybe somebody who knows you goes, “Oh, that’s exactly what he sounds like.” But when you’re selling yourself, your website is selling you, you’re not there to go, “Hey, just to let you know, that’s my funny side” or “that’s the side that everybody likes of me when I’m at a party” or something like that. That’s not you. Your business has to speak about you and that’s why it’s so important…
If you’re trying to do this all yourself and maybe not having a friend, a coworker, a loved one to look at it with you and say, “Hey, I looked at this and this doesn’t look right. This doesn’t come across well; this doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit the image that you want to come across.” That’s gonna be a problem.
Craig: There’s a lot of different ways to market and there’s agencies that make millions and billions of dollars doing that. But as a small business owner getting your start, you got to spend some time thinking about who’s gonna be on your site and what they’re gonna be looking at immediately.
So hopefully you’ve gotten a little bit of information of what a keyword even is, how you can wield it, how you can get some free data right from Google on the bottom of that first page. And we’re gonna transition to our trivia segment of the episode.
We’ve hopefully given you a little insight, but I have to say, for those of you that have been listening, episode-in, episode-out: dark days. Dark days confirmed. This just in: David cheated last episode.
David: I did not ever cheat.
Brian: He did not cheat.
Craig: Brian Fritz, our Quiz Master … (laughing)
Brian: He did not cheat.
David: This is …
Brian: You’re just a sore loser.
Craig: I’m sorry, for listeners. I’m really sorry because—
Brian: You had every opportunity to at least get a tie …
Craig: It didn’t feel that way.
David: You could have tied it.
Craig: I was treated unfairly. That win has been voided. The score is 2-1.
David: No, it’s not voided.
Craig: What’s the score then?
David: I don’t know. 2-2.
Craig: See, you don’t even know the score. That’s voided. 3-0. I am in the lead.
David: You don’t even know the …
Craig: You don’t even know the score!
David: You don’t know the score! (laughing)
Craig: You see how I get him down to my level and then I destroy him.
Brian: I was waiting for somebody to pop out the “You don’t know the truth!”
Craig: You can’t handle the truth!
David: We’ve now been … copyright infringement.
Craig: And our listeners can handle the truth…that David cheated last episode, episode 16…
David: That’s not true.
Craig: I’m really sorry, guys. I know you were rooting for me—
David: You’re just a sore loser. I apologize to all the listeners…
Craig: You were rooting for me to win.
David: …That he’s so sore about this. His fragile ego is a little bit rough. It’s okay.
Craig: Who sounds petty, though?
David: The one—
Craig: (whispering) You do.
Craig and David: (laughing)
Craig: Mr. Fritz of Podcasting Done Right, our Quiz Master Extraordinaire.
David: (still laughing)
Craig: You won’t get me on that; I started that. It’s not gonna happen.
Hit us with some queries.
Brian: So, you guys are talking about marketing. So I started thinking about TV commercials.
Craig: Love ’em.
Brian: Some of the most effective, the best known …
Craig: Where’s the beef?
Brian: … Commercials of all time. There’s an idea for one of them. “Where’s the beef?” The Wendy’s ad, right?
Craig: Yes.
David: Yeah, I knew that.
Brian: So the trivia questions are based off of famous commercials.
Craig: I love it.
David: Fantastic.
Craig: Predicting a victory right here.
Brian: Right. Okay, we’ll start with this one.
David: Pointing to the outfield?
Brian: Every year, a lot of different companies spend a lot of money to put out their biggest ad of the year at the Super Bowl.
Craig: Oh, yeah.
Brian: So they’ve been doing this for a long time. So Super Bowl XXVI, back in 1992, one of the most famous commercials then … Don’t worry, this is gonna be multiple choice, David.
David: Whew! ‘Cause I probably watched that one.
Brian: So one of the most famous commercials from then featured a beautiful supermodel, at the time, and she got a Pepsi out of a machine and she drank the Pepsi and a couple boys were watching it and they’re like—
Craig: Can I name her now and get a double?
Brian: They were in awe of this woman. And everybody knows they were actually in awe of the new Pepsi can. So you have to name who the supermodel was. Now, I’ll give you choices—
David: Hold on, hold on, hold on. I might even know it.
Brian: Oh, you don’t even need it.
Craig: I’m torn between two now.
David: Can we just show him up and see if we’re right?
Craig: For two … I guess … how are we gonna do this? Dead, on the money with no choices … But I wanna … (groans in frustration)
Brian: No, because you guys feel so confident, I’m not gonna give you choices.
Craig: Oh, but then we both have the same one, probably.
Brian: I’m not gonna give you choices.
Craig: It might be the other one.
Brian: David, you could show me yours. Okay, so …
Craig: Did we have the same one?
Brian: You guys both have the same one, Cindy Crawford, and you’d be correct.
Craig: Yeah.
David: Yeah!
Craig: But late, I started thinking Claudia Schiffer and I couldn’t remember …
Brian: Well, it’s funny, because she wasn’t even in the choices that I had.
Craig: Oh, good, I would have got it.
Brian: The choices that I had were gonna be Cindy Crawford, Elle MacPherson, and Heather Locklear.
Craig: Ooh!
Brian: See if I could throw you guys off with that.
Craig: All right, so he knows his supermodels. Fun fact about Cindy: worth, like, 400 million or something now. 300 million?
Brian: Furniture line.
Craig: Because of her furniture line. Kathy Ireland worth more.
Brian: And you know what? I almost had Kathy Ireland as one of the choices.
Craig: That would have been sneaky.
David: That might have … I was thinking about that.
Craig: I had to go with the gut, because I remembered the commercial, she got the mole, and I remember her sipping, but I got a little bit, “Ooh, was it Coke?”
Brian: Yeah, because she’s wearing just a pair of jeans and a white tank top—
David: Yeah, I remember it.
Craig: It was a nice image for all of us.
Brian: All right. Little bit of a sports theme with this one, too. There’s a very famous commercial involving McDonald’s called “The Showdown” and it featured a game of Horse between two of the all-time greats in the NBA, playing against one another. You guys both seem confident. I’m not gonna even give you choices, tell me who the two players were involved in this epic game of Horse with the winner getting one of their bag of McDonald’s.
Craig: I know. It was just for McDonald’s … I’m in Second-Guess City, right now, really. That’s what’s happening right now. I’m gonna come up with an answer, but I’m absolutely second-guessing—
Brian: And you know what? You guys are both right, it was Michael Jordan playing Larry Bird!
David: Yeah!
Craig: Yeah. We know our commercials. Here’s the cool thing, this maybe adds credibility to us, but we research marketing stuff.
David: We know some stuff about marketing.
Craig: We know a little bit about marketing. I like these questions, though.
Brian: So this one you guys just have to know, because there is no multiple choice, I didn’t write this down.
Craig: Ooh, good question.
David: Doing well so far.
Craig: Final query.
David: This is all or nothing.
Brian: I don’t know if you guys watch the show or not, but a show that wrapped up just a couple years ago featuring commercials is Mad Men.
David: I did.
Brian: Don Draper, of course, on that show. Now, Don Draper, an ad man during the ’60s. So the final scene of the show is Don Draper, who is always out of his wits or whatnot, and he goes to this spiritual retreat place and he’s finally totally calm, totally cool with himself, kinda got this smile on his face at the end. And then after that, the show ends by airing what many people consider the all-time greatest commercial, the most effective commercial ever, for a very popular product that’s still out there. A drinking product. I already named it’s competition in another commercial.
Both of you guys are looking at me like you have no idea. This is an iconic commercial—
Craig: Here’s the deal—
Brian: And they played this in Mad Men.
Craig: Right, and we need to come up with the product or—
Brian: You just have to tell me what the product was. You don’t have to tell me what the commercial was.
Craig: Yeah, here’s the thing …
Brian: There’s a famous song that they created in the commercial that we still know to this day.
Craig: Oh, I like that.
Brian: That people still associate with this product, even 40 years after this commercial came out.
Craig: Really…?
Brian: Actually, this commercial came out, let me think here … would have been 45 years ago.
Craig: I never watched Mad Men. This could hurt me, because I think David did.
Brian: This is an iconic commercial—
Craig: I think David watched Mad Men with the wife.
David: Okay. Okay.
Craig: Oh no, wait, hold on. Hold on. Oh sh—
David: Confidence!
Craig: No bad language. No bad language.
David: Confidence.
Craig: I mean, you said “competitor,” but this seems too … It’s not right. It’s not right.
Brian: You both got the product right. So tell me—
Craig: Oh, baby …
David: I got it quicker!
Craig: Oh, baby. It’s Coca-Cola.
Brian: Throw it out there, what’s the commercial?
Craig: The problem is, I’ve got the wrong song in my head. I’ve got the Pepsi song in my head.
Brian: Okay, then, so what is it?
David: Is the song “Always Coca-Cola?”
Brian: No.
Craig: No. Wait, gimme a chance here.
Brian: No, you got, like, five seconds.
Craig: It’s not? Oh, God. Oh, God. What is it called? Hold on, I can do this!
Brian: You guys are killing me! This is not that hard!
Craig: I still get a chance!
(all talking at once)
Craig: It’s not “The Joy of Cola,” that was Pepsi …
Brian: No! Come on!
Craig: It’s … what’s on the Coke bottle?
Brian: You guys are killing me.
Craig: What’s on the Coke bottle? I know this, I know this.
David: Joy, refreshing …
Craig: “Classic” Coca-Cola Classic.
Brian: No no no no no. What was the theme for this commercial? It’s not on the bottle! It’s a famous theme for Coke, for the commercial.
Craig: It’s … Oh, that’s their new one, though. “Open Up Happiness”? That’s not it.
Brian: No!
Craig: That’s too new.
Brian: This is 1972!
Craig: (whispering) ’72. 1972. I was unborn. I was preborn.
Brian: There’s a little song that goes with it that they created …
Craig: Yeah, and why is only Britney Spears “bah bah bah bah bah”?
Brian: Extremely famous commercial …
Craig: (singing) The joy of cola!
Brian: People say it’s the most effective commercial of all time …
David: (frustrated laughter)
Craig: I believe that, I know that. Is it Christmas related? It’s not Christmas related.
David: No Santa Claus.
Brian: Five seconds!
David: This is … This is …
Brian: 4…3…2…1
Craig: I’m feeling like a failure.
David: Maybe Pepsi needs to sponsor us.
Brian: It’s over!
Craig: We got Coca-Cola.
Brian: You got Coca-Cola.
David: We’re tied.
Brian: “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.”
Craig: Oh, my God. I’ve played that at trivia a thousand times, “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.”
David: Oh!
Craig: I hate that commercial, by the way, on a personal level. I don’t like it.
Brian: (laughing)
Craig: I know that it’s, like, the most famous commercial. That it’s the big deal—
Brian: Obviously it was lost on you guys, because you didn’t get it (laughing)
Craig: But I’ve heard that. When I see that commercial, it does nothing for me. It does nothing for me. And I am so much more susceptible to Cindy Crawford opening the Pepsi or … I’ll give you the example, this works on me, like, every year. Whichever beer comes out and is really aggressively the official NFL beer this season, I find myself saying, “You know what? Those beers taste so similar. I’m gonna buy the one that marketed better this year.”
David: “The one that made me laugh, that I got the chuckle out of”?
Craig: Exactly. So, I’m buying Coors Light because the mountains turn blue and they told me they were the official beer. I’ve switched to Miller Lite because now they’re the official beer. I want, this year, the official ketchup. I’m only buying Heinz. I don’t buy Hunt’s. Marketing.
David: Does anybody buy Hunt’s?
Craig: So, here’s what happened, guys, it went 3-3 and due to our tiebreaker rules, it defaults back to the person that won two episodes ago … (laughing)
David: No, it doesn’t! It actually might have been me, you don’t know.
Craig: I took a win.
Brian: Give me a minute here, I’m gonna come up with a tiebreaker.
Craig: Oh, he’s coming up with a tiebreaker. Argh! Why did “The Joy of Cola” stick in my head? Britney Spears, you’ve done me wrong so many times.
David: Yeah, I don’t even …
Craig: That was the Pepsi song, “The Joy of Cola.” And they all sang it.
David: (humming)
Craig: Why couldn’t you ask which company did Michael Jackson get his hair burned off with?
David: (laughing)
Craig: I would have got that one.
Brian: Okay, I just came up with one off the top of my head.
Craig: Do it.
Brian: Since we’re talking about soft drinks …
Craig: Fine.
Brian: Which very popular NBA player currently is the lead guy for Sprite?
Craig: Lebron James. I was fast. Did I win? Say it.
Brian: Don’t you have to write it down and give him a chance?
Craig: No, it’s a tiebreaker. You said “fastest”!
Brian: I didn’t say that!
Craig: On the last question, you said that.
(all arguing)
David: I didn’t write it yet!
Craig: All right, the game’s over.
Brian: You’re killing me, man.
David: It’s not over!
Craig: I’ve won.
David: No, you did not.
Craig: All right.
David: You cheated!
Craig: You want a marketing basketball question?
David: (laughing) I don’t want anymore basketball…
Brian: I came up with something off the top of my head and you blow it!
David: Okay, all right. To be continued.
Brian and Craig: (laughing)
David: To. Be. Continued.
Craig: I want the field to know that he wasn’t even writing an “L.” He was gonna write “Kobe Bryant. ”
David: Why— He’s not—
Craig: Who did Sprite before.
Brian: Okay, all right. So who is the—
Craig: I’ll write this one.
Brian: Who is the musician that’s also in Sprite commercials?
(silence)
Brian: If I remember right …
Craig: Dead. Silence. Absolute, dead silence. Oh, wait, I have a … No, I don’t have the answer. That’s not Sprite.
David: Oh, I don’t know.
Craig: Singer or rapper?
Brian: That’s up for interpretation.
Craig: Oh no. Because that wasn’t a Sprite commercial, that was for something else. That was for yogurt or something.
David: (laughing)
Craig: Oh, my God.
Brian: You know what? Lemme double check on this. Okay…
Craig: Quiz Master.
Brian: Right there …
Craig: Is he right?
Brian: Because I think I have the wrong… Okay, the person I have in my mind currently is the lead person for Kit Kat.
Craig: Kit Kat.
David: Oh, that’s not gonna change anything.
Craig: (singing) Give me a break, give me a break …
Brian: That’s a rapper, so—
Craig: (singing) Kat Kat bar! Kendrick Lamar.
Brian: No.
Craig: I don’t know.
David: Black Eyed Peas.
Brian: No.
Craig: What?!
David: (laughing) I don’t know.
Craig: David’s living in 2007. Lil Wayne!
Brian: You know what? I am right, this person did do Sprite as well. He did do Sprite as well.
Craig: Was it Lil Wayne?
Brian: No.
Craig: Aw, man.
Brian: You wanna throw out another name, David?
David: It’s not gonna matter.
Craig: What did Lil Wayne Do? It was, like, somebody was cooking and Lil Wayne was on the couch?
David: T-Pain!
Brian: No.
David: Because you could…
Craig: It’s a rapper, though.
Brian: That’s giving it away right there, too.
Craig: Drake or something like that.
Brian: (laughing) It’s Chance the Rapper.
David: Oh!
Craig: Chance the Rapper.
David: He’s everywhere now.
Craig: You know what? I got beef with Chance the Rapper. Soundcloud, it’s not working out. Chance bought it, I think.
Brian: He gave it some money.
Craig: He gave it some money. He did what he could.
Brian: You guys tied.
Craig: We did not tie, because the rules that I talked about earlier. It defaults to the winner two episodes ago.
David: I think I won.
Craig: Check it out, in episode 15, David lost.
David: Victory.
Brian: I can’t believe you guys couldn’t come up with the Coke commercial.
Craig: I want to buy everyone a Coke, I don’t like it. I don’t wanna buy everyone a Coke. I like their new marketing better than their old. I like “Open Happiness,” I like the names on the bottles, because it actually worked. That was some high-level stuff.
Brian: You know what else worked? In 1972, “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.”
David and Craig: (laughing)
Brian: That’s why it’s considered the greatest commercial of all time, especially among ad people.
Craig: Some people say.
Brian: Most effective ad of all time.
Craig: Hopefully you’ve enjoyed our quiz segment of episode 17. We’re talking how to market your website. Our Quiz Master hit us with a couple that stumped us, but we both actually went perfect on that in regulation. In overtime, we were chucking up bricks and … what do you call it when you miss completely? Airballs? We were airballing, we were bricking. But, again, I took a win from David—
David: Nope.
Craig: And it felt really good.
David: Not. Didn’t happen.
Craig: So here’s what you need to do, you need to find—
Brian: I was actually proud of David, because he’s not the sports guy.
Craig: Oh, come on!
David: See, I got proud points.
Craig: These were beyond sports. MJ and Larry Bird? That’s icon status. Of the McDonald’s commercials. I’m sorry. I wish I knew something about a new commercial—
David: Oh, I got nothing! I don’t have cable anymore.
Craig: Nobody watches TV anymore. Nobody watches cable.
Brian: Well, heck, I threw one out there and you just jumped the gun and didn’t give David a chance!
David: You didn’t give me a chance.
Craig: Would you have gotten it? Tell the truth.
David: Yes! I was about to write it down—
Craig: I don’t think so.
David: I knew that one!
Craig: I don’t think so.
David: Because they show ’em during football games is the only reason why. It’s the only time I ever see commercials.
Craig: All right, which basketball player, who I think was also Sprite, this is years ago, this is when we were kids. Not only was he in it, but a puppet of him was in it?
David: Oh, that’s Anthony Hardaway.
Craig: Pronounced it wrong, I get the point. Anfernee, there’s an R you forgot.
Brian: I’ll give you one. What’s an iconic Super Bowl commercial that saw a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers give his jersey to a kid? Who’s the name of the player?
Craig: I got that. I’ll let him go for it.
David: Oh, gosh.
Brian: Pittsburgh Steelers. Seventies.
Craig: And wasn’t that Coke as well?
Brian: I believe it was, but he does give his jersey to the kid.
Craig: This was a huge commercial—
David: Was it Dennis?
Craig: No, it wasn’t. It was … You want me to say it? You want to take another guess?
David: I know the name…
Craig: It was from their iconic team.
David: Yeah, I know.
Craig: From the seventies.
Brian: Even has a nickname, that makes it a little bit easier.
Craig: He does have a nickname. And it wasn’t a nice …
David: Mean Green…?
Craig: Mean Joe Greene.
Brian: Bingo! You still got it!
Craig: He got it. He was there.
David: It was there. I just … I saw the person, I just couldn’t see the name.
Craig: So now we’re clearly in a spokesperson battle. We must continue this until someone can’t get one.
Brian: I’ll do more for the next episode.
David: This is gonna continue.
Craig: We’re not … people are still listening. They have no control, it’s—
(all laughing)
Craig: It’s on in their car. You can’t shut us off!
But you can follow us on Stitcher, on Soundcloud, on iTunes, IWantBusiness, the Small Business Podcast. We’re doing it for ya! Get on there. Please, please, please leave us a review. Get on our Facebook, our Clarity Creative Group, comment, ask us questions, see, anything else you wanna hear on this show. We got a lot more episodes coming your way, we will see you next time.
David: Later.