Marketing Guides for Small Businesses: Recent Episodes

Marketing Guides for Small Businesses

We dive into one topic per episode so you really get the nuts and bolts of the idea and understand what it takes to add it to your company's marketing system or leave it out as it may not apply to your business. Either way, you'll be better informed about the topic and understand what will really work for your company, and what shiny, new marketing concepts to leave alone.

Who are we? Your hosts are a team of established and active marketing agency owners covering one key marketing topic each episode. Topics include Marketing Strategy, Digital Marketing, Websites, Content Marketing, Reputation Management, Social Media, Email Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Sales Funnels, Paid Lead Generation, Marketing Analytics and Return on Investment.

Welcome to a captivating episode of Marketing Guides for Small Business, where we unlock the secrets behind "Content Marketing for Local Search: Why Is Strategy Content's Best Friend?" If you've ever wondered about the symbiotic relationship between strategy and content creation for local search, this enlightening discussion is a must-listen.

Strategy and content go hand in hand when it comes to achieving success in local search. Our seasoned marketing experts, Ian and Ken, take you on a journey through the crucial role that strategy plays in shaping your content marketing efforts.

From defining your target audience and conducting thorough keyword research to crafting compelling and locally optimized content, we reveal how strategy sets the stage for achieving your SEO goals. Discover the art of tailoring your content to match user intent, enhancing your website's visibility in local search results.

Whether you're a small business owner or a marketing enthusiast, this episode will equip you with the tools and insights to leverage the powerful alliance of strategy and content in your local marketing endeavors. Tune in now and gain the knowledge to thrive in the competitive landscape of local search marketing!

In this thought-provoking episode of Marketing Guides for Small Business, we dive deep into the world of "Content Marketing for Local Search." If you're wondering why strategy is essential before crafting SEO-driven content and what marketing strategy entails, this is the episode for you.

Content creation is the backbone of successful SEO, but without a well-thought-out strategy, your efforts may fall short. Join our marketing experts, Ian and Ken, as they explore the importance of having a solid plan in place before embarking on your content marketing journey.

From understanding your target audience and setting clear objectives to creating engaging and locally relevant content, we'll unveil the key components of an effective marketing strategy. Learn how to align your content with your business goals, boost local search visibility, and capture the attention of your ideal customers.

Unlock the secrets to building a strategic content marketing approach that not only drives organic traffic but also sets the stage for long-term success. Tune in now and gain the knowledge to propel your local business to new heights with content marketing excellence!

Join us in this insightful episode of Marketing Guides for Small Business, where we uncover the secrets of "How Can I Start Marketing With A Small Budget?" Despite limited resources, every small business can kickstart its marketing journey with strategic and cost-effective tactics.

In this dynamic discussion, our marketing guides, Ian and Ken, will share their wealth of experience and proven strategies to help you make the most of your budget constraints. Discover how to lay a strong foundation for your marketing efforts, generate leads, and drive growth without breaking the bank.

From leveraging social media, email marketing, and content creation to mastering the art of targeting and maximizing ROI, we've got you covered. Tune in and learn how to optimize every penny spent on marketing, ensuring that your business thrives and expands beyond expectations. Let's set you on the path to success with savvy marketing on a shoestring budget!

In this illuminating episode of Marketing Guides for Small Business, we delve deep into the heart of Google's mysterious ranking algorithm. Join us as we explore the fascinating world of "Google's 200+ Ranking Factors" and uncover the secrets behind achieving better search visibility for your website.

Understanding the factors that influence your search presence can be a game-changer for your business. Our marketing guides, Ian and Ken, will break down these ranking factors, shedding light on their significance and how they impact your website's search performance. From on-page optimization to backlinks, content quality to user experience, we'll demystify each element to help you craft a winning SEO strategy.

While search engine algorithms are ever-evolving, we'll provide you with actionable insights to navigate these complexities and stay ahead in the competitive digital landscape. Tune in now to gain a deeper understanding of Google's ranking factors and unlock the potential to boost your online presence. Let's embark on the journey of unraveling the secrets of search visibility together!

Welcome to a special episode of Marketing Guides for Small Business, where we delve into the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 101. If you're new to the term or seeking to sharpen your SEO skills, this episode is your ultimate guide to understanding the fundamentals and leveraging SEO for your small business.

Our marketing guides, Ian and Ken, will unravel the mysteries of SEO and break it down into simple, actionable steps. From optimizing your website for search engines to understanding keywords and backlinks, we'll cover it all. Whether you're a solopreneur, a local business owner, or a budding marketer, this episode will equip you with the knowledge to boost your online visibility and drive organic traffic to your website.

Tune in as we demystify SEO, share expert tips, and provide practical strategies that you can implement right away. Don't miss this chance to conquer the world of SEO and elevate your small business to new heights. Let's dive into SEO 101 together!

Online reviews hold tremendous power in shaping your business's reputation and influencing customer decisions. In this episode, we uncover the story your reviews tell prospects about your business. We discuss the impact of online reviews, effective reputation management strategies, and how to generate proactive reviews. Join us as we reveal how to harness the storytelling potential of reviews and create a positive narrative for your business.

Local landing pages play a crucial role in local rankings and capturing local customers. In this episode, our marketing guides delve into the importance of local landing pages, the different types, and how they impact local SEO. We provide practical insights on optimizing location pages, implementing structured data, and leveraging local points of interest. Tune in to learn how to boost your local presence and attract customers in your target area.

Discover the key strategies to increase the value of your business through effective marketing in this episode of the Marketing Guides for Small Business podcast. We explore how to build your business for long-term success, enhance its reputation, attract potential buyers, and maximize its valuation. Whether you're planning to sell your business or simply want to increase its worth, this episode offers valuable insights and practical tips.

Having a marketing system helps increase the value of your business by:

Streamlining operations.
Creating consistent growth.
Targets your marketing efforts.
Consistent branding and messaging.
Data-driven decision-making.
Scalability and future growth.

In this episode of the Marketing Guides for Small Business podcast, we dive into the strategies and techniques to succeed with social media marketing. We explore how to effectively utilize popular social media platforms, create engaging content, build a loyal following, and drive conversions. Whether you're a small business owner or a marketing professional, this episode provides valuable insights to elevate your social media game.

Are you a plumber? And are you the same as every plumber or do you do things better than every other plumber? Are you a business coach that's the best at what you do? Are you a dentist that uniquely serves your marketplace? Whatever your business is, there’s likely at least one thing that differentiates you from all the other businesses offering the same or similar products or services. The question is, do people looking for your product or service know about this core difference?

On today’s episode, we’re looking at the foundational topic of core differences–why your business needs one, how to go about creating one, and how to leverage it powerfully in your business.

We’ll look at:

What a core difference is.

Why your business needs to identify and establish a core difference.

How to determine what your core difference is.

How to create your core difference.

Things to avoid when creating a core difference.

Where and how you can leverage your core difference in your marketing.

When a potential customer arrives at your website, is it immediately clear to them how you can help them? Is your message clear? When your marketing message isn’t clear, you lose people immediately.

In today’s episode, Dr. J.J. Peterson, Head of StoryBrand and Host of the Marketing Made Simple Podcast, joins us to share how you can clarify your message.

Since 2013, Dr. J.J. Peterson has used the StoryBrand Framework to help thousands of organizations clarify their message in order to grow their business. StoryBrand helps business owners and marketers confidently create websites, emails, and more that actually work, without spending a fortune on consultants or agencies.

Listen to this episode to learn:

What the StoryBrand Framework is and why it’s so important.

How to create a common thread throughout your messaging if you offer more than one core product or service.

Common problems Dr. Peterson sees with business websites.

The value and benefits that come from having a website with a clear message.

How non-profit organizations leverage StoryBrand.

What a sales funnel is and why every organization needs one.

How you can attract visitors to your website once you’ve developed a clear message and built a strong site.

What the biggest misconceptions are about the StoryBrand Framework.

The most challenging industry for which Dr. Peterson has created a BrandScript.

Are you a plumber? And are you the same as every plumber or do you do things better than every other plumber? Are you a business coach that's the best at what you do? Are you a dentist that uniquely serves your marketplace? Whatever your business is, there’s likely at least one thing that differentiates you from all the other businesses offering the same or similar products or services. The question is, do people looking for your product or service know about this core difference?

On today’s episode, we’re looking at the foundational topic of core differences–why your business needs one, how to go about creating one, and how to leverage it powerfully in your business.

We’ll look at:

What a core difference is.

Why your business needs to identify and establish a core difference.

How to determine what your core difference is.

How to create your core difference.

Things to avoid when creating a core difference.

Where and how you can leverage your core difference in your marketing.

Are you planning your marketing strategy and feeling overwhelmed with all of the different social media types available? Choosing the best social media platforms for your small business can help you find new customers, grow your sales, and increase your online presence, but they’re not a silver bullet.

In today’s episode, we’ll look at what different social media platforms exist and what you should keep in mind when deciding where your small business should be active so you can make the most of your efforts.

Tune in as we discuss:

The evolution of social media over the years.

What makes a platform a social media network and how to decide which ones your business should be on.

The five main different types of social media and how they work.

How reach and engagement rates, especially on Instagram and Facebook, have seen significant drops recently and what that means for your business.

How social media has changed search and how local businesses are found.

How TikTok and other media sharing networks work and how your business can use them.

What a discussion network is and how your business can leverage them.

What social blogging networks are and how they’re different from discussion networks.

What review networks are and how your small business can use them.

When many people think of SEO, they think of what is called on-page SEO. On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing certain elements on your web pages to rank higher on search engines and be found more easily by your potential customers–think content, headlines and headers, image optimization, title tags, meta descriptions, structured data, etc.

If you want your page to rank, however, you’ll need to look at more than just on-page SEO. In today’s episode, we’ll be discussing off-page SEO–what it is, why it’s important, and how to use it to improve your site’s visibility.

Tune in to learn how you can get started.

We’ll discuss:

What off page SEO is and why it’s important.

What link building is and why it is a vital part of off-page SEO.

What the difference between link building and off-page SEO is.

How you can use press releases and guest posting as part of your off-page SEO strategy.

How brand building can be an off-page SEO tactic.

In today’s episode we’re talking about content writing. We’ll look at what it is, how it can benefit your small business and why your business should consider outsourcing your writing needs.

Tune in to learn how you can go about hiring a great content writer, how to vet potential writers and how to get the most out of your working relationship with a new writer.

Tune in to learn:

What content writing is and how it can help a small business.

Why you should consider hiring a content writer and how much you can expect to pay one.

How and where you can find a quality writer.

What to include in a content writer job description.

How to properly screen content writing candidates and what to avoid.

How to get the most out value out of a content writer

When your prospective customers are looking for your product or service chances are high that they’ll Google it. When somebody is looking for a dentist near them, they’ll Google it. If somebody needs a mechanic in their town, they’ll Google it. And when they Google it, they’ll see organic results as well as paid results.

Today we’ll be exploring the topic of Google Ads and how to get started with them. Google Ads are a powerful form of advertising and even though Google has made big steps to make them more accessible, there are some things you need to understand and areas to avoid.

Tune in to learn how to get started with Google Ads.

We’ll discuss:

Why Google Ads are such a powerful form of advertising.

How Google Ads work.

Choosing between Smart Campaign and Expert Mode options when setting up your Google Ads account.

An overview of what types of ad campaigns you can run and which type a first time advertiser should use and why?

Choosing your ad networks, schedule, and location–what ad networks you can choose and how you can target by location.

Setting up a daily budget and choosing your bidding strategy.

What keywords are, how they work, and tips for selecting keywords.

What negative keywords are and why they are so important.

What keyword match types are and why it’s so important to get them right.

The important elements of any ad and tips for building your ads.

The importance of landing pages when creating ad campaigns.

Key things you should measure when running Google Ads to maximize your return on investment.

For extra information, you might find these articles helpful: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2022/03/21/how-to-run-google-ads

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2021/09/07/ppc-reporting

While it may be tempting to take a “set it and forget it” approach after you’ve developed your website, regular maintenance of your website is important for many reasons. Did you know that 88% of consumers are unlikely to return to a website if they had a bad experience?

Properly maintaining your site will ensure your visitors have a positive experience. Website maintenance ensures site security and can increase the number of new visitors, boost returning traffic, and more.

In today’s episode we’re exploring website maintenance in depth–why it’s important, what’s involved and why you might want to outsource this.

Listen in to learn:

What website maintenance is, why it’s important and why even a new website needs it.

What could cause a visitor to your website to have a bad experience.

What ensuring your website is secure actually entails.

Why, even if you don’t sell anything on your website, you need to be concerned about security.

What tools you can use to review your website for any security issues.

How website maintenance can help increase your traffic.

The importance of website speed–how to know if your site loads too slowly and what to do if it does.

What monthly tests should be performed on your website?

The pros and cons of managing your own website maintenance as a small business owner.

The benefits of outsourcing your website maintenance.

According to a Marketo study, 96% of the visitors to your website aren’t ready to buy yet. And depending on the source you view, research shows that on average it takes anywhere from 5 to 10 touchpoints before a buyer makes a sale. In B2B business, it could take up to 13 touchpoints to even generate a qualified sales lead.

So, how do you help move your prospects along through your buyer’s journey and turn them into customers? One excellent way is through email nurture campaigns. Email nurture campaigns are powerful tools for influencing prospects to become customers and generating repeat customers.

If you're not leveraging Nurture campaigns to guide prospects through their buying journey then you are missing out on a marketing powerhouse and you are losing opportunities. So let’s jump in and look at what email and text nurture campaigns are and how you can start using them today.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

What lead nurturing is and why it’s important.

How a small business can nurture leads using email.

The different parts that make up an email lead nurturing campaign.

How you can leverage marketing automation to nurture leads.

Real-life examples of email nurture campaigns to help you understand how they work.

How you can get started with a lead nurturing strategy for your small business.

Did you know that email marketing can have a 4400% return on investment? Studies show that for every $1 spent on email marketing, a company can see a return of $44.25. Email Marketing can be used for acquisition, branding, traffic, engagement, direct Sales, referrals, reactivation, and retention.

Needless to say, learning how to craft a compelling email that prompts your customers and prospective customers to take action is worth it. In today’s episode, we’re discussing the key elements of successful marketing emails.

Tune in to learn:

What you should consider when creating an effective subject line.

What you should think about from a branding perspective when writing marketing emails.

Important considerations for targeting your email campaigns.

Best practices for writing the body of the email.

How to write a call-to-action that actually works.

Whether you should include social media in your emails.

How and when you should consider using images or video in your emails.

Which links you should always include in the footer of your marketing emails.

Spam trigger words to avoid and other things that could land your email in the spam box.

The experience a potential customer has when they arrive at your landing page may be their first impression of your brand. And first impressions, especially negative ones, tend to stick. Research shows you only have about seven seconds to make that first impression a positive one before your visitors decide to leave your website.

Landing pages play a key role in conversion–they are all about getting visitors to take action–and as such they warrant different design considerations. In today’s episode, we’ll look at the key elements every landing page needs and how to design your landing pages to actually convert.

Check out the episode as we discuss:

When you should consider using a landing page.

How long a landing page should be.

Some big mistakes we see businesses making when using landing pages.

The importance of having a clear message and a clear call to action on your landing pages.

Whether or not your landing page should include navigation.

What A/B testing is and what 5 key landing page elements you should A/B test.

If and where you should include social proof or authority on your landing pages.

How to write a great value proposition.

The role of the lead magnet on landing pages.

How much information you should collect from the person claiming a lead magnet.

Custom “Thank You” pages for visitors after they take action.

Systems are everywhere in your business. You have accounting systems, service delivery systems, customer management systems, human resources systems and more. Even your facilities run on systems–think security, heating, ventilation and cooling systems.

In the same way, you need a marketing system. Marketing has become a complex dance of numerous strategies, tactics, tools, platforms, and best practices, with expertise needed to not only perform the work but to truly make it work for your business. In the midst of this challenging environment the concept of a systematic approach to marketing has risen as the answer to aligning all your marketing efforts to get maximum results.

In this podcast we'll explore what a marketing system is, why you need one, what it looks like in real businesses and what the results are. Listen as we explore this topic that could radically help your business.

We’ll discuss:

The general definition of a system and how that definition plays out when discussing marketing systems.

How a marketing system works.

The different parts and subsystems that are often part of a marketing system.

Why your business needs a marketing system (and what happens when you don’t have one or your system isn’t working).

The elements your marketing system needs to ensure it’s working optimally.

The concept of ‘force multiplier’ and how it applies to a marketing system.

Why so few businesses have a marketing system in place.

Whether a marketing system does really produce better results.

If you want to make sure your business is welcoming to all customers and clients, you need to go beyond considering the accessibility of physical spaces. You also need to take steps to ensure your digital spaces can be experienced by everyone, including those with disabilities. Assessing and updating your website’s accessibility isn’t just important from an inclusivity aspect, it’s also important in terms of compliance.

Today Landon Shefts of accessiBe joins us to discuss all things website accessibility, ADA and WCAG compliance, and why it’s important for your website.

Everyone should be able to enjoy your website , regardless of ability. Tune in to learn how you can make yours more accessible.

We’ll discuss:

The most important things business owners should know about website accessibility.

What the user experience on an accessible vs. a non-accessible website is like for someone with a disability.

What ADA and WCAG compliance is.

What the current legal landscape is like and any existing guidelines related to web accessibility.

What options exist for small and medium-sized businesses to make their websites accessible.

How accessibility can help with lead conversion.

The benefits of inclusivity as it relates to compliance.

How automation can bring websites into compliance.

How web accessibility affects SEO.

These days, your website needs to be more than a digital brochure. It’s your 24/7, 365-days-a-year, always-on sales representative. Your website is where customers and prospects look before they ever engage with your business. Are you sure your website represents the best of your company?

Your homepage and your ‘About’ page are the two pages that usually get the most website traffic. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss how you can ensure your ‘Home’ and ‘About’ pages are working hardest for your business.

We’ll discuss:

What the ‘hero section’ of your homepage is and what elements it should include.

What important considerations you should make for your call to action at the top of your website.

The value of a pop-up CTA.

Having photos and videos of your own people on your website vs. using stock images.

The importance of a credibility and trust section.

Whether you should highlight your core services and the problems your product or service solves on your home page.

The importance of bringing in new content to your home page and how you can do so.

How you can ensure your homepage easily guides visitors to take action.

What to include in the footer of your homepage.

What to consider when planning the navigation of your homepage.

What makes a good ‘About’ page.

Today’s episode is about the Marketing Hourglass. The Marketing Hourglass is similar to the sales funnel but starts before a potential customer would be considered a prospect and continues two steps after the sale. The Marketing Hourglass is a practical way to understand how your customers become your customers and what type of marketing and content you can provide at each stage. It provides a lot of clarity to the marketing madness you may find yourself in.

If you’d like to learn how understanding the Marketing Hourglass framework could help your small business, tune in to this episode.

We’ll explore:

The five stages of the Marketing Hourglass–Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, Refer– and different marketing tactics and content that can be used during each stage.

How using the Marketing Hourglass framework can help you build an overall strategy and launch a product or campaign.

How the Marketing Hourglass can help you create an end-to-end customer journey.

Imagine if there was a way to get your brand in front of prospective customers who visited your website but haven’t filled in a form or called you. And imagine if they viewed a particular product or service page, that you could influence them even after they’ve left your website using messaging related to the product or service they showed interest in. It sounds impossible and a little too good to be true, but it’s very real and top brands use it all the time.

It’s called retargeting or retargeted advertising (or sometimes remarketing). Whatever you call it, it is a hidden secret weapon in your marketing toolbox. In today’s episode we’ll take a look at what retargeting is, its benefits, and how you can start leveraging this low-cost secret weapon right away to help your business grow sales and conversions.

We’ll discuss:

What retargeting is and how it actually works.

Why companies need retargeting.

How you can use other types of advertising like search campaigns or social campaigns to help make your retargeting most worthwhile.

How you can create retargeting campaigns that go beyond brand exposure.

Different types of retargeting and what platforms you can do retargeted advertising on.

How retargeting can be one of the most cost effective forms of advertising.

As a small business owner, you’ve probably heard that one of the keys to growing your business is producing great content connect you with a larger audience. “Content is king,” we hear over and over again. We know we should be producing quality content regularly, but as a small business, how do we generate ideas for all of this content? How do we set aside time to create it all?

In today’s episode, we look at how you can create a small business content strategy that helps you grow your audience without needing a huge budget or large content team.

Join us as we discuss:

What kind of content works best at each different stage of the marketing funnel.

Content ideas for the awareness stage of the funnel.

What other types of content, beyond blogs, you can use for inbound marketing.

What content repurposing is and why its important.

How to decide what content to repurpose.

What evergreen content is and how to use it across channels.

How you can use infographics in your small business’s content across different platforms.

What user-generated content is and how your small business could use it.

What kind of video content is feasible for small businesses.

Email newsletters are the daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletter you receive from a company. Some of them are full of deals, others of announcements, others share tips or case studies, and others dive deep into one topic.

There are many ways to set up your newsletter. The key is to determine the best style, content and cadence that works for you and your ideal customers. And, most importantly, to keep sending regularly. Today’s episode is all about email newsletters for small and medium businesses.

Tune in to learn:

Why your business should consider starting a newsletter if you don’t already have one.

How to determine where to start when creating an email newsletter.

How frequently you should send your newsletter.

How to decide the best format and content types for your newsletter.

Why businesses tend to stall on sending out their newsletter regularly and how you can avoid this pitfall.

What easy and/or free email newsletter software systems exist and why you should use one.

How to use newsletter analytics to help determine if a newsletter is a useful tool for your business.

Having an email list you can use for marketing still remains one of the most important things a business can have in their marketing tool kit, but growing that email list seems daunting to most small businesses. In this episode, we’ll discuss clever ways to grow your list for both email and text message marketing.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

How to build an email list and why having one is so important.

How you can use online tools to build your email list.

Different offline tactics for building your email list.

How to craft an irresistible offer to get people to opt-in and share their email address or cell phone number.

What types of lead magnets work well for most small businesses.

How a sales funnel can help you build your email list and how you can create a high converting sales funnel opt-in.

How to drive traffic to your lead magnet.

How to move people through the buyer’s journey after they opt-in.

The differences between text message marketing and email marketing for building and engaging your list(s).

Anyone who has worked in a large organization understands that there’s often tension between sales and marketing. The sales people complain about the quality of leads they get, where their tradeshow booth is located, or the lack of sales support materials to help them land customers.

At the same time, the marketing team sends what they believe are highly qualified vetted leads and think they have equipped the sales team with the materials they need to help move customers through their buying journey.

Often there can be built up animosity between the two camps. But marketing and sales are each vital and are part of the same continuum, the customer’s buying journey. Join us for this episode to learn how you can ensure your sales and marketing teams are working together to maximize your efforts to move customers through the entire buyer’s journey.

We’ll discuss:

Whether sales and marketing generally have different goals and thus different priorities.

How a divide between your sales and marketing teams can impact your small or medium-sized business.

Signs that indicate a problem between your sales and marketing efforts.

The difference between the customer buying journey and the sales process most businesses are familiar with.

A framework for a buyer’s journey that is on a continuum from the buyer’s perspective and how it can help you combine your sales and marketing processes.

What sales support or sales enablement is and why it is important in the customer’s buying process.

Common examples of sales support that a marketing team or agency could provide.

What you as a business owner can do to help align your sales and marketing teams.

It’s estimated that more than 50% of today’s total web site visits are mobile. That number is typically even higher for websites in certain industry categories, like food and beverage. While your website can act as your 24/7 salesperson, if it doesn’t work well for more than half of your visitors, you’re definitely missing out on potential business. Mobile optimization makes sure your website and all digital content works optimally on mobile phones.

In this episode, we’re diving deep into mobile optimization so you can make sure your website is working as hard as possible for you! Join us to learn:

What “responsive web design” is and why it is important.

Why your business needs mobile optimization.

What mobile first indexing is and how it affects your company’s search rankings.

What types of content help local SEO.

How optimizing for mobile is different from “traditional” website optimization.

How to get started in optimizing your website for mobile.

What key tools and resources are available to help you with mobile optimizations.

“Finding good employees doesn’t work. Instead, start attracting top talent.” Ryan Englin, CEO of Core Matters, joins us for this episode to share his knowledge on recruiting top talent to your business’ open roles. Core Matters focuses on the issues of high turnover or high growth and what businesses need to do to fill their open positions. Even as a small business, it’s possible to compete for the best people if you have the right system in place.

In this episode, Ryan shares how to implement a process for attracting and retaining good people. Tune in to learn:

How small businesses can compete for the best people.

How you can improve your hiring process to be more efficient and effective.

How to avoid common mistakes many businesses make when hiring.

If it makes sense for your business to shift part of your marketing budget to recruiting and hiring.

Why hiring in the trades is so difficult and how you can make it easier.

Where companies can find good applicants

Nonprofits are just like many small businesses - they need to make the most of their limited marketing budgets. In today’s episode, Ben Chambers, marketing and fundraising consultant for nonprofits of Team Kat & Mouse joins us to share his experience in marketing for nonprofits. We’ll discuss how to make your nonprofit stand out when you have a limited budget and resources. Tune in as we discuss:

The biggest mistakes most nonprofits make when they market themselves and how to avoid them.

The biggest marketing challenge for nonprofits.

What you should focus on when setting marketing goals for your nonprofit.

The channels you should use when marketing your nonprofit.

The most underutilized marketing tool is for nonprofits

How to prioritize marketing resources when you have limited funds or staff capacity.

Whether you can you depend on a volunteer to manage your social media.

The key elements of an effective nonprofit PR strategy.

Tik-Tok’s potential as a channel for nonprofits.

The importance of having a defined marketing strategy for your nonprofit.

Are you the owner of a growing business wondering whether you should hire an in-house marketer or continue using vendors or marketing agencies? Both models have their pros and cons, though many business owners tend to gravitate towards hiring in-house employees because that feels most familiar. They think they’ll have more control, that results will be better, and sometimes think it will save them money. But is that true?

Choosing to hire an in-house marketer or an agency is a big decision that will have a big impact on your business. In this episode, our marketing guides use their experience in both hiring in-house marketers and as agency owners themselves to share the information you need to make the best decision for your business.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why businesses gravitate towards hiring an internal marketer vs. an agency or remote marketing team

How to determine what level of marketer you need

How to gauge the marketing expertise of a potential marketer if marketing isn’t your area of expertise

The important questions you should ask yourself before hiring an in-house marketer like:

Who Will MANAGE and LEAD this internal marketer?
What tools/software subscriptions will an internal marketer need and what will these cost?
Who will define the strategic marketing plan that they will execute?
Is this person an expert in the area of marketing that my marketing plan requires?

How to determine the metrics for gauging success of the marketer in their role

As an online directory and resource site for people looking for businesses, Yelp is a true powerhouse. But, there are also many myths about Yelp that lead business owners to miss out on using it as an opportunity for growth.

Our guest this week is Alley Lieberman, Partner Account Executive, Yelp Inc. Alley joins us to help dispel many of the common myths about Yelp, like that Yelp is only for restaurants or that good reviews are removed for no reason. Alley will also show you how you can take control of your Yelp page to capture a new audience and level up your business.

Before we get started, in full disclosure, Changescape Web is a Yelp Advertising Partner.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why the following are myths about Yelp and what the truth is instead:

Yelp is only for restaurants
You have to pay to drive business from Yelp
Ad spend positively influences Yelp reviews
Only people with the Yelp app see your Yelp page
People just go to Yelp to complain

What the difference between Google and Yelp is in terms of searching for businesses

The biggest mistakes that businesses make with their Yelp Profile

What Yelp ad products are and how they help your business

Best practices for creating your Yelp profile

We’re recording this episode in mid-2022 where some parts of the world are very open and other parts are just emerging from COVID lockdowns and various restrictions. For some, it may be the first time in a couple of years you’re finally able to attend an in-person conference, event or tradeshow.

In this episode we’ll discuss ways to make those events and tradeshows more meaningful and effective for you. Whether you’re a first time attendee at an annual event or have gone all in as a tier one trade show sponsor with a 10x30 booth, we’ll give you ideas on how to make the most of it for your business.

For the purpose of this conversation, events are one day or less and conferences/tradeshows are multi-day.

Tune in to this episode to learn:

How to find relevant events and tradeshows to attend.

Why attending or displaying at events and tradeshows is worth it for small businesses.

What you can do before the event to maximize the value of each event or tradeshow.

How to improve booth traffic and engagements at tradeshows and events.

How you can make the most of a tradeshow by attending as an attendee.

When Google recognizes that a searcher is likely looking for something local - think searches like, “24-hour laundromat” or “math tutors in Toronto” or “Thai restaurants open now” or any time somebody uses the “Near Me” functionality - the results prioritized are those found in Google’s Map Pack or Local Pack and other relevant organic search results.

Having a strong local SEO strategy is how you can get your business listed in the Map Pack and on that first page of Google search results. You want to show up every time a potential customer searches for, “Insert Your Business Product or Service Here in Insert Your Location Here”.

But it takes work to accomplish this goal, and there are many ways to get burned. In this episode, we’ll discuss how to improve your local SEO the right way.

Our four marketing guides will share:

What local links are and why they are important.

Why it’s difficult to rank a local business and why the Google Local Pack is important.

Which categories Google considers as spammy or high risk.

Why you want to avoid keyword stuffing in your business name.

Common mistakes that service area businesses and online-only businesses make that put their Google Business Profile at risk for being suspended.

The importance of directories and reviews for local SEO signals.

The technical aspects of getting local SEO signals.

Ideas for building local links and finding local link opportunities

It's been said that word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful strategies a business can use, but is it? And if it is powerful, how can a business use it to create a constant flow of leads to their business?

In this podcast we'll explore what word-of-mouth marketing is, why it's so powerful, common word-of-mouth marketing myths, and how businesses can strategically leverage word-of-mouth marketing as part of their marketing plan.

Our four marketing guides will also explore:

Some common examples of good word-of-mouth marketing in 2022

Why relying solely on word of mouth marketing could be limiting your business’ growth opportunities

The value of word of mouth marketing for B2B and B2C businesses

How to measure the impact of word of mouth marketing

We’ll talk with Virginia Muzquiz (The Referral Diva) about becoming a master connector and how to build your business with referrals. Virginia Muzquiz is the founder of Master Connectors, Inc and the creator of the Referrals On Demand® program which teaches solo entrepreneurs how to turn their network into a referral-generating machine.

With more than two decades of experience creating business by referral, Virginia teaches entrepreneurs and small business owners the art and science of filling their sales funnels with high quality business referrals. Tune in to learn how you can start building your business with referrals.

Virginia answers these questions and more:

Why don’t more businesses have a referral program?

What kind of results can a well-curated, well-leveraged network produce?

Do you have to be an extrovert to be an effective networker?

What are some of the biggest mistakes people make when they network?

How can a person build trust and authority to become referral-worthy?

Why is Business Network International (BNI) so effective for building referrals and how does someone get started with BNI?

Why is it important to ‘niche down’ to build an effective referral system?

What is Referral Alchemy® and how do we create it?

If you’ve listened to previous episodes, you know we’ve talked at length about the value of an omni-channel approach to marketing - that is, ensuring the integration between all of the channels you use to interact with your customers (both physical and digital) to create a consistent brand experience.

In this episode, we’ll dig into specific traffic sources, explore their differences and discuss how to best use each. Picking the right source of traffic is vital to generating leads and sales - check out this episode to learn what the best source or sources of traffic are for your business!

In this episode, our marketing guides will explore:

The difference between SEO and SEM

Popular online paid traffic sources other than Google Search ads and Social Media ads

If SEO is a legitimate traffic source for your small business

Different offline tactics that a small business can use to drive traffic to their website

Social Media Ads vs Google Search Ads and how to know when to use each

How content can increase traffic

Whether organic social media is the great traffic source most small businesses think it is

How many traffic sources you should pick to drive traffic to your website or landing page and how to decide which ones are best for your business

If I asked you to tell me the difference between your company and your closest competitor, would you be able to clearly articulate that difference? If not, you’re not alone. This is where customer interviews come in. The responses you receive from quality customer interviews can help you better articulate your company’s differences and craft messaging that really resonates with your target audience by speaking directly to them using the language they use.

Have you included customer interviews in your marketing strategy efforts? If not, tune in to this episode to learn how to get started.

Our marketing guides will walk us through the following:

What customer interviews are and are not (hint: they are not testimonials or online reviews)

Why you should include customer interviews as part of your marketing strategy work

What kinds of questions should be included in customer interviews

What to do with negative responses

Why it’s important to have a third party interview your customers instead of you or your team

Marketing doesn’t work! SEO Doesn't Work! Google Ads Don't Work! Email marketing doesn’t work!

We’ve heard it all. As marketing consultants and agency owners we hear these complaints often from business owners who have tried certain marketing tactics without success. The truth is, every marketing strategy or tactic has both the potential for great success and for great failure. Check out our latest episode to learn why marketing sometimes fails and how you can avoid falling into common traps.

After listening to this episode, you’ll have a clearer understanding of:

What the most common marketing failures are and why they happen

What the real cost of marketing failures is

What areas of marketing tend to be most challenging for business owners

How to avoid marketing failures

How to monitor the health of your marketing to change course before it fails

While most businesses are aware of the importance of SEO, an UpCity commissioned study found that as many as 57% of North American SMB’s lack an SEO strategy. According to the same survey, some of the top goals for businesses were to increase organic traffic, strengthen domain authority and increase brand awareness, among other things. Yet, only 34% of businesses have made SEO a priority for 2022.

If your business is hoping to achieve any of the goals listed above, but doesn’t yet have an SEO strategy, you’ll want to stay tuned for this episode!

Our four marketing guides will discuss the survey findings and also:

Outline what an SEO strategy is and how it could help your business

Explain why ad hoc or random SEO efforts won’t help you achieve the results you want (and why you need an SEO strategy instead)

Discuss why so few businesses are making SEO a priority and what effects this might have for them

How not investing in SEO could be putting your business at a competitive disadvantage

Explore whether you should be combining SEO efforts with your PPC strategies

A white paper is a long-form document (typically 2500 to 3000 words) that is used mostly in the business-to-business (B2B) space. It is typically an in-depth report on a specific topic that explains a particular problem and provides a solution. A well-researched and well-written white paper can be a great opportunity to demonstrate your organization’s knowledge and expertise and can, when used effectively, help you generate leads, increase sales, convert prospects into customers and improve brand awareness.

In this episode, we’ll cover how to determine if your company would benefit from creating a white paper and, if so, how to get started.

Tune in to learn:

What a white paper is and isn’t

How to know if creating a white paper is right for your company

Why a white paper takes 12 to 14 weeks to deliver

How to determine if you’ll need help writing a white paper

What pitfalls you might face on the road to creating a white paper

How to maximize the value of your white paper through proper promotion

Creating an effective marketing strategy is hard work and it can feel overwhelming knowing where to start and what to prioritize. But, marketing results don’t just happen by accident. Creating a strategy is key to ensuring you’re targeting the right audience with relevant content. It’s like the blueprint for all of your upcoming marketing activity and helps guide all of the decisions you make. The more time you spend building a quality strategy, the more opportunities you’ll create for your business.

Tune in to learn how to create a solid marketing strategy and how to go about getting started one one for your own business.

In this week’s episode, our marketing guides walk us through:

How to analyze your company’s current online presence

How to go about doing client interviews and why they are so valuable

How to look at what your top competitors are doing well to find opportunities for your own business

How to decide what element of marketing your business should prioritize

Why you should create a content calendar and how to create one

How to create marketing personas and why you should use them

How to craft a concise message that clearly communicates the client problem your business solves

How to leverage your current marketing assets by conducting a Marketing Assets Inventory

What a marketing system is and why your business needs one

Why doing the hard work of creating an effective marketing strategy is totally worth it!

There are a lot of opinions out there about what an appropriate marketing budget is for a business, and it often depends upon who you ask. In this episode our four marketing guides will help unpack this important topic with the goal of helping you answer this important question of ‘What Should My Marketing Budget Be’.

The questions we provide answers to in this episode include:

Why is setting your company’s marketing budget such a hard topic?

What is the difference between an overhead budget item and an investment budget item?

What should drive your marketing budget?

What factors should go into a marketing budget?

What about the 5% of revenue rule of thumb?

How do you determine the amount of budget spend vs what you actually want to accomplish?

The Four Common Problems Small Businesses Face

Most business leak leads online
Most marketing efforts take several week to show results
Speed of response is critical to winning the business
Tool costs add up

Nearly every small business has a limited budget. So if you have limited time and money, and you know that you can’t ignore the reality of digital marketing in today’s world, what do you do? Especially if you don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on SEO?

In this episode we cover answers to the following questions:

When we talk about things like quick wins or automated wins, what does this mean from a marketing perspective?

What is a website widget and why is it so important?

Google Business Profile (formerly GMB) has the ability for someone to text a business right from their Google Business Profile; so it seems like Google recognizes how important this is. Or is there another reason as well?

There are a ton of communication channels out there that people can use to communicate with a business, and some of them have to be done on that platform. Does this mean a small local business has to be monitoring all these channels or is there a way to simplify that?

About 62% of calls to local businesses go unanswered. Now don’t confuse this with ignoring them; but if there is only one person in the office answering the phone it either goes to voicemail or they are put on hold. If they hang up or don’t leave a message, that's a missed opportunity. Is there a way to immediately respond to that missed call and let them know someone will be contacting them?

What about review management and review requests? We’ve talked about the importance of reviews in the past; and that’s just one more thing that a business owner has to deal with. Any thoughts on automating this to one degree or another?

Join into the conversation and learn about quick marketing wins for your company.

Learn what works, what doesn't and how to get in on the podcasting opportunity if you don't want to host your own show.

If you’re listening to us, you’re probably already familiar with podcasts and with so many of them out there now for every niche possible, you may be wondering if it is worth it to start your own. You have full control over content, promotion, scheduling…what is more freeing than that? But is it a good idea and with all the demands on your time already, is this a worthwhile content channel to pursue??

Questions covered include:

Walk us through the early days of a podcast set up and what it really takes to get one going?

What has been the most challenging thing about keeping a podcast of 2 years going?

Is it that hard to build an audience for a business podcast?

Is guest podcasting an option, and what is guest podcasting?

Do podcasts need to broadcast on video these days or is audio ok?

Join us for the practical tips on what works, what doesn't, what is expected and what to do if you want to jump in on the podcast mania that seems to be never ending. We give you practical tips. Join in the conversation.

In this episode we cover answers to such questions as:

What is User Generated Content and why is it important?

Can Online Reviews Help With User Generated Content?

What Are Some Examples of User Generated Content?

For B2B Companies - Recommendations on How To Get User Generated Content

And much more…listen in.

Almost everyone has a love-hate relationship with email. It's a relentless taskmaster interrupting our days with endless requests and endless spam. We would all agree that email isn't all bad, and it turns out that email marketing is one of the most underutilized powerhouses in a company's marketing arsenal. In this podcast, we'll talk about why and how you should leverage email marketing in your small business this year and provide tips for getting the most out of your email marketing efforts.

In this episode we cover:

Why Email Marketing Shouldn’t Be Ignored

How COVID Has Affected the Use of Email Marketing

How To Start Building an Email List

How Email Marketing Can Be Used During The Buyer’s Journey

Listen in and join in the conversation.

Marketing is a two-way street and does need input from the client - oftentimes, more than they know. We’re talking today about how the various aspects of social media can be practically tackled by small businesses and the marketing agencies who support them.

Tune in to learn more about:

Is attention span really shortening? Reels went to 60 seconds and TikTok expanded to 3 minutes in length, up from 60 seconds.

The trend toward people wanting experiences in smaller niche communities.

Video strategy for introverts.

Overwhelming feature releases on each social media channel.

This episode is more about the discussion of the pro/cons of some of the social media trends we are seeing, what to ignore, how it can feel overwhelming and what to do about it - from a small business perspective.

Join in the conversation.

You know, all too often, we go through the motions of marketing and sales without taking a moment to reflect on WHY we are doing what we do. Sure, we blog. We optimize. We post and tweet. We build. We meet. But what does it all MEAN?

So today, we’re going to help you take a step back from the day to day, stop going through the motions and ask: Am I still helping who I want to? Does my mission still have meaning? Do my people still believe that?

Items we discuss:

How often do you think a company should take a step back and say, “Are we still who we are and want to be? What do we stand for? Has that changed?”

Thinking of the website as a home base for the brand, if things need to evolve with the company’s larger purpose, does this tend to result in a whole new site revamp or are we talking more of a change to the About Us page?

We often see that the company CEO’s values become the company’s values. Are there any fundamental flaws with this direction, do people just have to “live with it” or is there a more, all-inclusive way to come to a collective?

As a business owner, am I still doing what I wanted to do?

Join in for an insightful discussion.

Marketing, like many other industries, changes at a rapid pace each year. Follow along with our predictions and some insights as we share what we see as changes and more of the same this year. Do you agree or disagree with any of our predictions?

While the start of a new year is a good time for these lists and predictions, it is important to understand that change happens throughout the year and that some change happens faster than we expect, while other changes happen slowly - how many remember “the year of mobile” for a few years in a row before it took off?

As always, join in the conversation and let us know what you think and what is working well for your company’s marketing.

Topics we cover in this episode:

Social Media platforms of importance in 2022

Search in 2022

Video marketing. Is this the year to finally stop being shy around the camera?

Voice search. Will it impact us as much as the hype suggests?

Ecommerce - even for those without a typical product to sell

Conversion and optimization and the customer experience

Advertising

Online competition

In this episode we’re tackling the customer journey. These are the seven steps that someone goes through to buy and become a repeat customer. The steps are: know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, refer.

A way to explain the customer journey would be like this...No matter what product or service you sell, your customers, buyers or clients go through a few common steps from the time they find out about your offer until the time they buy from you.

I recently did a deep dive presentation with business owners and took them through the concept of the customer journey and they were so blown away by how it helped them simplify how to look at their company’s marketing that I wanted to share this concept with a wider audience.

All of us on the panel are familiar with the customer journey so as we dive in, we’ll explain the steps, talk through each one, explain how the steps don’t alway happen in order and discuss what types of marketing tactics you may want to use at each stage and why.

Some of the topics covered include:

What are some examples of the “right” kind of marketing done at each of the steps?

We’ve explained the seven steps in a very logical fashion, does the customer always follow this path? Why/why not?

Do you find that a lot of business owners want their customers to jump past certain steps in the customer journey and just get to the buying already??? How do you counsel patience and good marketing to enhance that journey?

If a listener was brand new to the customer journey concept today, what one or two things would you advise they start to do in their marketing to put them on a good path to guiding the customer journey for their clients?

Join us for the conversation.

The Client And Agency Are Not Always Right: The Smartest Steps To Set, Correct, Save And Grow A Business Relationship

The client is not always right. But the agency is not always right either. The way we communicate throughout the duration of a business relationship means everything but let’s face it: Anybody who says they’ve figured out how to have the perfect client relationship every time is lying.

There’s the honeymoon phase when everybody’s excited. But then, it’s not long before there are tests and challenges for both sides of the table. Today, we’re going to speak about what you can do to set, correct, repair, save and grow the business relationship – whether you’re the client or the agency.

And we’re going to draw on our own experiences, some good and some bad to share with you.

Topics covered in this episode include:

When you and another party are just about to agree to an engagement, what kinds of things do you look for to indicate that you want to go forward full throttle with a client? Conversely, what kinds of things said or behaviors exhibited does the other side do that you know you’ve got to walk away or run from?

What kind of expectation setting can be done here by both parties to extend that honeymoon period beyond 30 days?

What kinds of things can we tell a client about these longer-term projects to put their mind at ease, especially when there’s a lot that they’re not going to see right away?

What’s the right balance for an agency in terms of how you properly educate the client on marketing concepts and on what to expect with the work an agency will do for them? What level of client education is too light and what is too far?

What are some of the worst things that agencies and web firms do to potentially jeopardize the client relationship within the first 6-9 months?

Are we agencies talking about the things WE care a lot more about than what CLIENTS care about? If so, what kinds of things can we communicate more clearly to small business owners so that we stay on the same wavelength as them?

It seems like one of the biggest threats to a relationship is the wealth of information out there that a client can read or hear. They read an article with advice that’s different than what you told them. They hear a speaker talking about a social media tool and wonder, “Why aren’t we on TikTok?”? They have a friend or colleague telling them that they should change their website, their LinkedIn profile, their email marketing. How can an agency cope with this kind of dynamic knowing that there’s a ton of info out there that can confuse and conflict -and keep the client walking on the same path as you?

Join us for a lively discussion.

Fractional Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are those professionals a company would hire on a part-time or fractional basis. Perhaps the company has a marketing team great at the day-to-day execution but needs the strategic vision and path that a CMO can provide - this would be an ideal opportunity for a fractional CMO.

Today we have a guest on the podcast, Casey Stanton, who is the foremost expert in building a business as a fractional chief marketing officer. After working in a marketing agency for almost a decade, he had a stint as a professor of marketing at Tulane University. Casey is based in Philadelphia where he runs the premiere fractional CMO education and support company, CMOx.

Topics we cover in this episode include:

What is the role of a fractional CMO? What niches are best for a fractional CMO?

What does the future of a marketing team look like?

How can a fractional CMO manage multiple teams if they have multiple clients?

How does a Fractional CMO know they've done a great job?

Join us and tune in to this episode.

Free offers are everywhere. Free iPad when you open a bank account, free decoder ring with your Fruit Loops, Act Now And Get A Free months membership, Buy one get one free. Our world is filled with free offers because we as consumers love free stuff. No doubt about it, there’s nothing like the thrill of getting a great deal and the marketing industry is full of free offers. But what if there’s a hidden cost to free.

What if by accepting a free offer you’re actually hurting your business by accepting something that will keep you from achieving the results that you would achieve otherwise?

Some of the concepts we discuss in this episode include:

Everyone loves getting stuff for free, but in the world of marketing investment, what are some of the potential costs that a business owner may not be aware of when accepting a free offer?

One of the often-overlooked aspects of free deals is that it lures us as business owners away from a better long-term choice by offering a short-term perceived incentive. How could this potentially keep the business owner from choosing the best choice for their marketing investment?

How can a business owner avoid bad deals/free offers etc. that would hurt their business?

Are there free offers that are often a good thing? Meaning not harmful to either business or the potential investment in moving forward with a paid-for purchase after the free offer is consumed?

Join us for this episode.

With so many new marketing tools and tricks and tips coming at you each week, which ones really matter? Which stand the test of time? Which are favoured by marketing professionals who use these tools day in and out on either their own company marketing or their clients’ marketing.

Each of the five Marketing Guides explained some of their favs and why. You’ll have to tune in to hear the whole show, but here are some highlights of what was discussed:

Ian had SEM RUSH as a go to as well as he discussed some Google Ads ninja stuff (legit ninja stuff!!).

Dan dove into the world of online press releases and then took us on a tour of his best tips for LinkedIn usage.

Paul talked all about SEO tips he uses and then weighed in on tips to get back in touch via email marketing - those customers who haven’t purchased from you in a while.

Ken hosted the show so he had a lot to contribute on each topic and then took us on a deep dive into developing a customer referral program

Jen profiled content repurposing (getting more mileage out of your content) and talked about the legit way to get more Google Reviews for your business.

Enjoy the show.

To lay the groundwork for our discussion in this episode, when we talk about marketing experts, we mean those people who have a talent or expertise in ONE THING that you are hiring them for ...some examples could be

a web developer
content writer
graphic designer
email marketing expert
photographer - specific experts you need to get your marketing work out the door.

When we talk about a marketing team, we mean a coordinated group of people who are hired to work as your marketing team and these are typically an outsourced team. It may be you have a fractional CMO who brings his or her team to ensure all the strategies are implemented. It could be a consultant who sells your company a year-long engagement of marketing services.

The difference being that with the marketing experts, you the business owner are doing all the quarterbacking and strategizing to get all these experts to deliver what you need on time, on budget, on strategy.. When you hire the fractional CMO or the consultant with the program, they typically come with a team ready to implement and they handle the quarterbacking, coordination and alignment of the work to execute your marketing strategy.

So with both options being used by millions of businesses all over the world, one has to be better than the other right?

We’ll discuss and help you figure out the best option for your business. Tune in!

Today, we’re going to dive into a topic that virtually every small business owner struggles with and never has enough of: Time.

Specifically, we’re talking about having enough time in your day, your week, your month for doing one of the most important activities to develop and grow your business: Marketing. You have a million things to do in a day. We get it. We’re business owners too. And yet, if you don’t have time for Marketing, what’s the small business owner to do?

Well, as it turns out, there are things you can do to further your marketing efforts right now, even if you’re one of the many time-challenged small business owners out there. And the five of us are going to help show you how to do just that in this episode.

Can't wrap your head around starting your own company podcast? You don't have to do all the heavy lifting to benefit from this powerhouse channel.

Try guest podcasting.

We'll cover guest podcasting in this episode and discuss:

How does one go about getting booked as a guest on a podcast?
What is the 'one sheet' and why it is important to guest podcasting.
Why is guest podcasting such a powerful SEO tactic?
Advice for someone who is making their first guest podcast appearance.
How to find podcasts that you can be a guest on.

And much more. Tune into this episode and see how you can take advantage of this great opportunity for your own business.

Today we’re going to talk about some, but probably not all, of the SEO scams out there so you will be able to recognize and avoid them.

In this episode, we answer common questions about SEO scams such as:

Misleading reporting
Guest posting
Domain authority link building
Google SEO partners
Your website isn't ranking
Google listing is about to expire
We rank #1 for this keyword

Join in for the conversation and find out which scams to look out for and which "scams" sound odd but are in fact not scams but rather legitimate ways to help your company website improve its presence.

Lisa Staff and Deevo join us from Sprout Connectors.

This is a full-service creative agency with a focus on social media management and content storytelling.

Both Lisa and Deevo are accomplished photographers and entrepreneurs who have been growing their voice through their own podcast called the Mind Body Business show that explores central topics to the human race and the planet as a whole.

They believe in the power of the human spirit, innovation, and like to push the bubble on information dissemination highlighting all the wonderful things others are doing with their superpowers.

Join us for a fantastic episode that doesn't mince words!

Sprout Connectors: https://sproutconnectors.com/

Today we’re talking about marketing and sales. Particularly where marketing stops and sales starts...or should start.

We’ll discuss why the marketing/sales hand-off is a hard thing to do in many companies.

And what to do about it.

On our panel today we’ve got five experienced marketing consultants all with different views and experiences on this topic and we’ll share what has worked and what hasn’t.

Say it with me LEADS DON’T MEAN SALES...you still need to qualify and close your leads….

Two of us on the panel, myself and Dan, have incorporated sales experts into our own offering so that we can offer sales and marketing services to clients and we’ll discuss how that is working out for our clients.

We’ll get the point of view from the other side of the desk with Paul and Ken hiring a sales team for their agency.

And we’ll get Ian’s common sense approach to it all.

It’s a full show. Listen in!

Lane Houk of Signal Genesys dropped by our studio to talk about his company and the unique benefits users get when using the platform.

Marketing agencies and company owners will be very interested to find out how ranking, brand awareness and the consistent promotion of your company's or clients' online properties.

How to keep that content working for you long after it has been written and published to the web.

This episode is a real game changer, you don't want to miss it.

You know, you don’t have to do this thing called New Business Development alone.

Especially not as a small business owner.

The secret sauce is not in going to more events and drinking a lot more coffee with people but actually developing deeper relationships with what we call Power Partners.

We cover:

What is a Power Partner
How to become a Power Partner
Mistakes to avoid
Virtual Power Partners

Join in and learn how to use this valuable tactic for the months and years to come to help grow your business.

We’re excited to be talking with Zach Anderson of MoLoMedia about:

Website Lead Capture
Speed of Response
Text Message Marketing

Learn the answers to help your own company's website presence. We asked Zach:

What does text-enabling your website mean and why is it so important?
Is it possible to use a web text widget to call or text someone in a company or even contact different people or departments?
Why is the speed of response from the business so important?
What’s the difference between SMS and MMS?
Does text message marketing work for any business?
How do you get people to opt-in to your text message marketing list?
How do automated text messages campaigns work?
How important is it to use a text message marketing system to communicate with leads and customers? Couldn’t a business just use their cell phone?
Why do most businesses fail with the text message marketing that comes with something like a Point of Sale (or POS) system?
How important is it to be able to track revenue by campaign and by phone number? Are there any other metrics that show how effective text campaigns are?

Join in for an informative episode and learn the power of text message marketing for your own business.

Nobody likes stale bread and nobody likes a stale website, not your prospects, your customers, and definitely not Google.

You may be asking yourself ‘what makes a website stale, why does it matter, and how can I freshen it up’. So let’s get fresh today and jump into this important topic.

We cover:

Broken Links
Outdated Copyright Stamps
Not Enough Information
No Call to Action
And more

Join in and learn what to look for on your own company website and see what quick fixes you can do today and which updates you may need to call in a professional for.

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame drops by for a lively interview about his latest book.

The Ultimate Marketing Engine: 5 Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth is available widely in bookstores and online.

The Guides interview John who continues his practical advice for business owners.

It is more difficult than ever for businesses and marketing professionals to cut through the noise to create relationships with their customers.

Organizations that focus on converting their customers to members and helping them achieve the lasting transformation they are seeking rather than simply offering the transaction of the moment are winning.

The Ultimate Marketing Engine promises to teach readers how to develop a system to take every customer from where they are to where they want to be by building on the innovative principles first brought to the marketing world in Duct Tape Marketing and honed over three decades of working with thousands of businesses.

Introducing the Customer Success Track

The Ultimate Marketing Engine introduces an innovative new approach to marketing strategy that will transform how owners view their business, their marketing and perhaps, even how they view every customer.

We covered:

Why strategy must come before tactics.
How to narrow your focus and choose only ideal customers.
Why no one wants what you sell – and what they actually want.
How to use story and narrative as the voice of strategy.
How to construct the perfect customer journey.
How to grow your business with your customers.

Play the episode!

Important and relevant marketing trends covered in this podcast include:

Mobile-first - what that means
Voice search - what is it?
Google Analytics - always the "go to"?
Online upsells, downsells and bumps and what that means
Setting your company apart from the competition
Chat bots
Marketing automation
Local search

There are a lot of topics covered, but all in a practical and sensible way. Tune in to find out more.

This episode we tackle the unfortunate situation some business owners face, and that is what to do when you felt like you've been burned by your marketing, SEO, web developer or branding agency.

By "burned" we mean that they could have taken your money without delivering services, done a bait and switch or left you with a bug-infested website. Nevertheless, your company paid good money in good faith for good services you feel you didn't get and now you feel burned.

So how do you ever trust a marketing or advertising vendor again? Sounds dramatic, but we’ve all been there.

In this episode, we tackle this thorny topic and give some help to our marketing wounded and get them some reliable ways to evaluate their next marketing company and set them up for success.

In the time of the internet, mobile phones and not to mention COVID, does direct mail still work?

You can bet the panel has some practical ideas for direct mail strategies for all industries.

Listen now!

Live Chat, Chatbots, and instant messaging are a hot topic.

What are these technologies?

How do they differ from each other?

How can they help you connect with customers and prospects?

And should you invest in them?

That’s what we’re going to explore today. So let’s get chatting….

Google Core Algorithm Updates, quality content, backlinks, bad links, thin content, broken (internal) links. What does it all mean? And does it all matter?

There is a lot of outdated information floating around about what helps and hurts your rankings on Google.

It’s hard to keep up; Google makes changes every day. Most are minor, but some are huge and can help or hurt a website’s rankings. Join us as we break down what it all means in a "non-technical" manner.

Why the 101-level explanations will win you trust of your customers...

Basic content. What does that mean? Firs, content is any information that your company produces to explain, educate, entertain people about the product or service your company sells.

The basic content is the introductory or 101-level information about your company’s products or services.

For us on the panel, all marketing company owners, some basic content that we would produce would be basic information about a website or introductory information about how to choose a social media scheduling tool or 101-level information about how to get started with email marketing. This is the basic stuff.

Here’s the problem - While most of our clients and potential clients and probably YOUR potential clients and customers are searching for the basic information on a product or service they are learning about, most companies want to talk about the advanced stuff. They want to talk about the thought leadership stuff, or the high-level concept stuff not the basic stuff.

So right away we have a disconnect between you and your customer. Not good. Join us today as we discuss basic content and get you on the road to creating this essential information for your customers.

What can small businesses do to crack the hiring code? Business owners need to be marketing their business to attract more of those special all-star candidates.

Every business at one time or another, even in a challenging economy, has to consider who they need to bring aboard for not only support but for growth. If that’s something on the horizon for you anytime soon, we’re going to discuss several terrific strategies to get your business hiring smarter and in line with your brand at the same time.

Perhaps the number one factor in business success is marketing... Most clients get their leads from referrals, but that can be risky.

All businesses need a system where they can throttle up their lead flow.

We'll talk with Mike about his new system Different Is Better.

In his new marketing book, Mike Michalowicz offers a proven, no-bullsh*t method to position your business, service, or brand to get noticed, attract the best prospects, and convert those opportunities into sales.

Join us and listen in.

Find out more about our guest, Mike Michaelowicz here: https://mikemichalowicz.com/

You’ve invested time, energy, and money to create fantastic content, now what?

We'll cover:

What do we mean by marketing your content, and why would we do this?

What are some of the best ways to market your content? Free and Paid strategies

Are there any potential challenges for marketing content that our listeners should be aware of? And how can they overcome these challenges?

These questions are covered and more. Tune in!

Content gets old and outdated. Why does a blog post, article, or tip sheet that performed well a while back not drive the traffic it used to?

What types of content and which pieces of content do you refresh?

Tune in as we explore this topic today.

Each of the Marketing Guides shares how they started their businesses. Some always wanted to be a business owner, others fell into entrepreneurship.

Join us to hear of the humble beginnings and the challenges to get each Guides' empire off the ground.

The topic we’re talking about today is ... Another 'B' Word - Branding. Today we’re talking with Branding strategists and Root + River co-founders, Emily Soccorsy and Justin Foster. They are also the co-authors of “Rooting Up: Essays on Modern Branding.”

Join in for a lively discussion about branding and what it means for your business, company, products and services.

A lot of businesses have heard that blogging is important and that it can help their business in numerous ways, but not everybody understands what a blog is, why it’s important or how to go about creating a blog.

Tune in to learn if blogging is the right thing to add to your company's marketing.

Having a "try" offer in your business is a good way for your potential clients to get the feel of what it is like to work with you.

Try offers don't have to be free offers either. There are paid offers that give your potential client a lot of value, help you earn a good profit margin on it, and give both parties an idea if they'd be a good fit to do more business together.

Listen in to learn about "try" offers.

We talk a lot on this podcast about:

know
like
trust

and being seen or recognized as an authority in your industry is a big part of the trust factor. People have to know that you know what you’re talking about.

That being said, it’s always important to remember that no one cares how much you know until they know you can solve whatever problem it is they have.

Listen in and learn how to start on the path to authority in your industry.

We’re recording this during the Spring of 2021 when some parts of North America are experiencing great success with the re-opening of businesses while others remain in lock-down or very close to lockdown. So how is a business owner to make decisions on marketing, advertising and promoting when operating in such an uncertain environment?

On the panel today we have a good mix of marketing consultants from various areas in North America, so you’ll get different points of view that can work for your business no matter where you are.

Listen in!

There is so much information out there and keeping up to date with all the changes can be daunting.

The five marketing guides share our favorite books and resources on the topics of marketing, business, teamwork, and leading yourself.

Listen in to find out our recommendations.

In this Online Funnel Series, we’ve explored what it takes to build an online funnel and the different components, technologies, and strategies that go into building a funnel.

But the ultimate goal of the funnel is to drive action and sales. So today we’re going to explore how we can measure success and optimize our funnels to squeeze even more profit out of them.

Listen in to learn more.

Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.

The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.

Aside from the math, what are some reasons a business owner needs to seriously develop a strategy for repeat/returning customers? Listen in to find out...

Once you have people who know about your business, most are not yet ready to buy from you.

How does an online funnel help you nurture prospects until they are ready to buy?

Find out in this episode. Listen now!

Miruna and Planable have launched Social Teams 100, celebrating the top social media teams that have grown last year against all the odds of 2020.

The list is based on their own market research and comes with some interesting stats such as top titles or most popular cities for social media hires.

Listen now!

Landing pages.

Those mysterious things that float out there on the web that aren’t websites but are still the secret weapons of conversion for those who know how best to use them.

We’re going to talk about how you can understand not only what landing pages are but how they fit into your marketing ecosystem, what makes for a good landing page, what we should we avoid, even lead magnets.

We’re continuing our series about online funnels and the role OFFERS play in the success of your funnels.

If you’re having challenges building out your funnels or if your current funnels aren’t generating leads as you want, the culprit might be your offer.

You'll learn:

What an online funnel offer is
Types of offers
How offers vary depending on industry
How offers vary between products and services
How to start thinking about offers to promote for your own business

If you’re wondering why no one is buying your stiff after they download your ebook, why no one is taking the next step after signing up for your newsletter or wondering why your online ads are not helping you sell anything - the missing link may be a missing funnel.

Learn what funnels are and how they help your business online. Hint: you already know this stuff from "real life" interactions with customers.

In this episode, our guest is Steve Clark of New School Selling. Selling can be hard enough in normal times, so understanding how to sell in challenging times is critical. And for many businesses, selling is frequently one of the biggest challenges. Listen to learn practical ways to overcome those challenges and start implementing the suggestions this week.

Video marketing! How can small businesses use video in their marketing and when does it make the most sense? Plus - what to do if not everyone loves the spotlight, should introverts be on video too? What about the company owner/leader or should just the customer-facing team be on video? These questions and more are covered in this episode. You'll be armed and ready to add video to your small business marketing plan after listening to these practical tips.

In this episode, we’re going to dig deeper into the secrets of local SEO to really help small business owners and fellow marketers discover what matters most in local search ranking to get into the invaluable real estate known as the Google 3-Pack.

This episode will resonate with all small business owners, the feeling of being overwhelmed and not growing their business fast enough because they have to do it all. Learn how to free yourself to succeed by outsourcing more of your company's marketing.

In this episode, learn what the Total Online Presence Audits or TOPAs for short. We’ll explain what that is, how it helps and why you need to consider running your business through a TOPA.

Since most businesses are found online, wouldn't it help to know how your company's online presence is showing up to Google, your potential customers and compared to your competition?

Join in as the panel discusses this simple process and how it can help set your marketing up for success.

In this episode, we are talking about personal branding, who needs it and how it differs from business branding with Diana Jennings, a personal branding and image strategist.

Learn answers to common personal branding questions:

What is a Personal Brand?
Is a personal brand different from a business brand?
Does everyone need to develop a personal brand?
How do you develop a personal brand?
What is an Image Strategist?
Examples of how personal branding and business branding should work together
What are the most common mistakes people make when it comes to personal branding?

http://www.dianajennings.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/in/dianajennings/

http://www.facebook.com/DianaJenningsPersonalBrandStrategist/

http://twitter.com/dianajennings

http://www.instagram.com/di_jennings.personal.branding/

We discuss what sales funnels a Small Business should have:

Are sales funnels new?
How do they power the customer journey?
Can sales and marketing funnels work together?
What funnels should a business start with?
How does content support funnels?
Can funnels be used to qualify prospects?
How important are automated booking calendars?

We talk about how to use geofencing to steal your competitors' customers. There are actually ethical ways that advertisers can target their competitors to get new customers. Topics we discuss:

What is geofencing and how is it different from just advertising in target-specific geographies?
Where do these ads display?
Can you do geofencing using Facebook?
Who are these ads most effective for?
Is it possible to go back in time and advertise to people who were in my geofenced area before I started my campaign?
Are there other ways you can target your competitor's potential customers with ads besides geofencing?

We talk about how to make local marketing work for your small business, some slightly more advanced local marketing tactics and how to get the most from your investments to attract the right kinds of customers in your local geographic market.

A quick overview of what we mean by “local marketing” and how it is different from online marketing that is not targeted to a specific geography?
What should a small business think of when it comes to Content for local marketing - how can a small business really optimize their content for local markets they are targeting and want to serve?
One thing our listeners have probably heard of, but may struggle to really take advantage of, is “geofencing” or “geo-targeted” local marketing - we'll provide a better understanding of what that is? What kinds of local businesses could most benefit from using geo-targeted marketing like this?
When you work with a client to set up and market in a Local Service Area, what does that entail and what must a small business owner think about in terms of service areas - selection, tactics, measurement, etc.?
What is most important for you in working with clients to get good content input and ideas from your clients so you can help them with their local marketing initiatives?
What metrics matter most in working on Local Marketing initiatives and what do small business owners need to know about tracking results for their local marketing?

We talk with Shaun Clark, Co-Founder/CEO of High Level, an All-In-One Sales & Marketing Platform for agencies.

Our topics in this episode focus on the challenges that small businesses face when it comes to sales and marketing:

Too many businesses leak leads… we talk about what a small business should put in place regarding a sales and a marketing system.
How important is it for a small business to have an automated booking calendar, and what features should it have?
What are your thoughts about lead generation for a small business? What’s working and what’s not right now?
What are your top 3-5 tips for a small business owner looking to improve their marketing in the current environment?
The challenges and costs of a business having several different marketing tools, and getting them all to work together. How big of a problem is this for businesses?
How important is marketing automation for small businesses? What do you recommend that business should automate?
What has been most UN-changed in marketing for Small Businesses?
There seems to be a trend in the marketing world where agencies are taking disjointed services that need to be cobbled together or integrated with third party tools and turning them into an integrated software system. What are your thoughts on this?

High Level is only available for Marketing Agencies. If you are a marketing agency and would like to learn more, visit High Level

We talk about what it takes to properly onboard, train and uplevel your marketing manager. What should they be doing? What should they not be doing? This is a topic that’s been very near and dear to the heart of many small business owners, so today, we’re going to bring a world of clarity and share what we believe it takes to ensure your marketing manager’s success.

We'll discuss:

first steps to start the process
foundational characteristics
what marketing concepts they need to learn
what tools should the be prepared to learn
what should the marketing manager own and what could/should be outsourced

To learn more about the Marketing Manager Training Program, just contact us using the links below

Caliber

Changescape Web

Fortune Marketing

We discuss how small businesses can work with a digital marketing agency, the onboarding process, what to expect from the agency, and what the agency needs from you when you hire them.

Why should a business hire a marketing agency and are there times when maybe the business should do some or all of it themselves?
Why this needs to be a partnership and is not something that a business can just throw over the wall.
What are some things the client and the agency can do to help the onboarding process go smoothly?
What to do if you don’t have all the logins the marketing agency asks for
How to help the marketing agency set up the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System for you as well as any type of marketing automations
Does the client input stop after the kickoff meeting and once the account access is obtained? What should both the client and agency expect from each other moving forward?

We talk with Staci Wallace. Staci Wallace, EVP of Marketing and Strategy for Voxox, currently the host of The Comeback Small Business Radio Show, and founder of the non-profit, EMwomen (Empowering Women).

Our topics in this episode are:

The importance of supporting small business (especially helping them make a ‘comeback’) and
Text message marketing – why it works so well.
What is text message marketing and how can small businesses use it effectively?
What is the future scope for text message marketing?
What industries can benefit from text message marketing?
What is the future for small business communications?
How important is AI (artificial intelligence) and bot technology in 2021 and into the future?
What can we all do to support small businesses make a comeback after this challenging year?
The role of integrated, omni-channel messaging (email, text/sms, phone, and chatbots) in small business communications?

To find out more about Staci Wallace:

The Comeback Small Business Radio Show:

https://www.facebook.com/thecomebackshow/

https://www.voxdirect.com/the-comeback-show

Voxox - https://www.voxox.com/ or for small business owners go to https://www.voxdirect.com/

EMwomen (Empowering Women) - https://emwomen.com/

Staci Wallace:

https://www.staciwallace.com/home

http://www.facebook.com/staciwallace

http://instagram.com/staciwallace

https://twitter.com/staciwallace

We talk about how to make Google Ads work for your small business.

Google makes it very easy to create a Google Ads account, drop in a credit card number and start advertising. But should you take that super-fast way to get online? Generally speaking most small businesses will quickly waste a lot of money without a more strategic approach to Google Ads

What are Google Ads and how does “Pay Per Click” marketing works?
Why would a small business use Google Ads vs other online ad platforms such as the social media platforms?
How “Google Local Services Ads” work and what do small business owners need to consider in using this service?
What are tips for doing keyword research to decide which keywords to buy ads against? What are negative keywords?
There is very little space in a Google Search ad to get a message across, how should small business owners think about their ad creative when creating Search Ads?
What about after the click? What should a business owner think about when it comes to Landing Pages, Thank You Pages and Metrics? Should ads just be sent to the company’s homepage?

We talk about some more advanced social media topics with Ben Dell, Founder at Missinglettr, HeySummit, HelpShelf and OnboardFlow.

There are so many ways to amplify your social media, yet most businesses stop at just posting. We’re going to talk about some ways to do this and how it can really help your business.

Is content curation still an effective strategy for social media?
What role do influencers play in social media, and how can a small business take advantage of using influencers?
What is the importance of social media driving traffic to your website?
Why do you need to post about the same content multiple times on social media, and over what period of time?
Why is it important for your social media posts to be shared, including by people you don’t know?
How can you leverage a community to help you share your social media content?
What role do hashtags play in content discovery and promotion? How do you find the right hashtags?
What is the most important thing a small business can do to improve their social media effectiveness?

You can find out more about Ben Dell at https://twitter.com/bendell and https://missinglettr.com/

Wetalk about what a fractional CMO is and why it is important. Our guest today is Dan Gershenson, one of the co-authors of the book Content Marketing for Local Search.

Many businesses can’t afford a full-time marketing person with all the expertise needed to handle all aspects of marketing in the digital world we now live in. One way to handle this is to work with a virtual or fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

What is the Fractional CMO (also referred to as “Virtual CMO") approach and how is it unique to other types of businesses in the space such as large agencies or individual freelancers?
How does having a Fractional CMO help a small business owner scale up? What kinds of situations are ideal to have such a role?
How to address the concerns a small business might have about hiring a virtual CMO? What types of businesses is it best for, like niches they serve or business size?

We talk about a topic that either confuses many small businesses, or maybe they just ignore it - Analytics and Return on Investment (or ROI).

Analytics can be very confusing and there are a lot of things that can be measured with online marketing, but how do you know what to measure? And what do you need to measure to even be able to start calculating ROI?

We talk about local SEO vs. traditional SEO and how they relate to one another.

What are search engine Crawls, Indexes, and Retrieves?
How can you help the search engines crawl and index your pages?
What are some of the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO? Are they different algorithms?
How does Google My Business (GMB) fit into local SEO?
Can you just ignore traditional SEO and focus entirely on local SEO? Or do they relate to each other to some degree?
How does Google determine local intent behind a search query?
How does a small business take advantage of geographically relevant information and user intent to increase my local search rankings on Google?

We talk with one of the really big influencers of Small Business Marketing, Mike Cooch. Mike is an entrepreneur and fast-growth CEO that has founded businesses in technology services, marketing services, digital publishing, and ecommerce. His businesses have been named to the INC Magazine List of Fastest Growing Companies, and were also nominated as a Best Place to Work in their respective cities.

You can find out more about Mike and his businesses atL

https://lvrg.com/
https://theresandiego.com/

In our discussion we cover:

What a small business should put in place regarding a sales and a marketing system
What are your top 3-5 tips for a small business owner looking to improve their marketing in the current environment?
How realistic is it for a small business owner to get their marketing work done on their own / without either hiring staff or contracting with consultants or agencies?
Thoughts about social media marketing for a small business - and which platforms to use
How important is marketing automation for small businesses?
What has been most UN-changed in marketing for Small Businesses since you first wrote Duct Tape Marketing?
What can a business do to vet a marketing agency or consultant?

In this episode, we talk with Glennetta Haymon, Esq. Glennetta assists clients with business law, intellectual property issues such as trademark, copyright, and probate issues. We cover:

⦁ What the difference is between a trademark, copyright, a registered trademark?

⦁ In what ways can you legally protect your brand?

⦁ What is intellectual property, basically what can and should be protected?

⦁ What types of businesses should consider protection? How does this pertain to local businesses like professional services, brick and mortar, or even local service area businesses?

⦁ Describe the process and typical timeframes for trademarks and copyrights?

⦁ If you find that someone has violated trademark or copyright, what can you do?

Additional information: Attorney Haymon is a graduate of the University of Missouri, Columbia, where she earned bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Interdisciplinary Studies. She obtained a degree in Law from Arizona Summit Law School and a master’s degree in Forensic Psychology. Currently, she serves as a board of directors for 3 non-profit organizations, is a serial entrepreneur with 3 total businesses, and is a mom to a fantastic and athletic middle schooler.

Haymon Law Office, LLC

www.haymonlawoffice.com

We talk about the world of mobile optimization and what it means for your website, your rankings, and your business, including:

What does it mean to have a mobile optimized website?
What is Mobile SEO and why is it important?
What is Google’s Mobile First Index?
Google recently announced an upcoming change to their algorithm in the area of page experience called web vital metrics. What is this change and how does it affect small businesses?
How should we go about optimizing for mobile?
What are some tools and/or resources that can help with mobile optimizations
Should we still care at all about desktop optimization and why?

We talk with one of the real gurus of Small Business Marketing, John Jantsch. John wrote the groundbreaking book Duct Tape Marketing, and also recently published a new book called The Self Reliant Entrepreneur. To find out more about John, visit https://ducttapemarketing.com/

In our discussion we cover:

What is the Marketing Hourglass and why is the concept of the hourglass so important in understanding the customer journey?
What are your top 3-5 tips for a small business owner looking to improve their marketing in the current environment?
How realistic is it for a small business owner to get their marketing work done on their own / without either hiring staff or contracting with consultants or agencies?
What is most important for a small business owner to get done when it comes to marketing strategy?
How important is marketing automation for small businesses?
What is a total online presence and why isn’t a website or a Facebook Page enough?
What has been most UN-changed in marketing for Small Businesses since you first wrote Duct Tape Marketing?
What can a business do to vet a marketing agency or consultant?

We talk about a topic that either confuses many small businesses, or can be very difficult to get a grasp on and can feel like just one more thing to deal with - Optimizing your Google My Business - or GMB - presence.

It is an absolutely critical factor in making sure your business shows up in Local Search - or Maps - Search Results.

Why is Google My Business so important for local businesses?
How can a business tell if they’ve claimed their Google My Business listing? What can they do if it’s been claimed but they’re not sure who has access?
What should a small business owner think about doing first once they’ve claimed their Google My Business Listing?
How should a business think about tracking results and the impacts of Google My Business on their listing?
What are Posts on Google My Business? How should a local business think about using these in their marketing?
How about businesses that are “practitioners” within a “practice” - for example, doctors within a practice or lawyers within a firm - how should they manage and work with Google My Business?
How should “Service Area Businesses” work with Google My Business?
What impacts could this have for Small Business Owners if Google ads a paid option for GMBs ?

We talk about something we get a lot of questions about - Facebook Ads. This could be either one of the best lead generation channels you use or one of the worst most expensive if not harnessed correctly. We provide you with an introduction to the world of Facebook ads.

What types of small businesses should be using Facebook and why?
What are the first steps to getting started running ads on Facebook?
There are many different types of ads on Facebook. Which one’s should a small business use and why?
What kind of targeting options are available for small businesses?
What supporting Assets do I need to have in order to get the most out of my Facebook account?
What are custom audiences and lookalike audiences and when should I use them?
What are the biggest pitfalls or mistakes small business owners should avoid when starting with Facebook ads?

we are going to talk about how to get the most out of Facebook as a marketing channel for your business, given that things change on Facebook pretty frequently.

Facebook and social media in general is a very common topic when we work with clients. And all of the social platforms frequently change what they use in their algorithms to show visitors their clients. And, like it or hate it, Facebook remains the gorilla in the space with well over 2 BILLION monthly users...so this is where your customers are spending time. So it creates an enormous opportunity to build awareness and convert folks to customers.

When it comes to Facebook, is it worth doing organic posts with no ad dollars behind it?
What kind of content or what types of topics should be posted about on Facebook?
Should every Facebook post be boosted or advertised? Also, how should a business owner think about planning a Facebook advertising budget?
What is the best way to generate leads directly from Facebook?
How often should you post?
What are the best tips / methods for growing a business’ audience / following on Facebook?

We answer the who, what, where, and why of Virtual Marketing Services.

Why you should consider using virtual marketing services
Why virtual marketing services might be better for your business
What to look for and what to avoid when hiring a virtual marketing service
Does it matter where a virtual marketing service is located
How to get the most out of using a virtual marketing service

We talk about how America’s privacy laws could significantly impact small businesses.

We're joined by a couple of guests - Donata Kalnenaite and Hans Skillrud from Termageddon.

Privacy on the internet has become a big deal, and there have been several laws passed at the federal and state level that impact the collection of even something as simple as a name and email address. If your website has a contact form, you need a privacy policy!

Termageddon helps its customers avoid privacy related fines and lawsuits via its Privacy Policy generator. If you have a website collecting as little as an email address via contact form, you may be required to comply with an ever-growing list of privacy laws. Termageddon removes this hassle by monitoring privacy laws for you and updating your Privacy Policy whenever the laws change.

Donata Kalnenaite is the President of Termageddon, a licensed attorney and a certified information privacy professional. She also serves as the Newsletter Editor of the American Bar Association - ePrivacy Committee and as the Chicago Chair of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP.org). Donata often volunteers at the Illinois State Bar Association holding courses on the General Data Protection Regulation where she teaches other attorneys on the importance of privacy and what Privacy Policies should contain. In her free time, Donata enjoys bee keeping, hunting for morel mushrooms and walks with her fiancé and two dogs.

Hans Skillrud is the Vice President of Termageddon, overseeing sales & marketing. Hans ran a 12-person web design agency in downtown Chicago for 7 years, and sold it in March of 2019 to focus all of his attention on Termageddon. Like Donata, he too enjoys bee keeping, hunting for morel mushrooms and walks with his fiancée and two dogs. Yes, they are engaged to be married in October 2020!

Changescape Web is a Termageddon Reseller.

We talk about how to pick the right traffic source(s) for your business. Getting more traffic to a businesses website is almost a universal problem for every small business. While traffic isn’t the most important metric, driving the right traffic is paramount for success. The challenge is determining what are the right traffic sources for your business. In this episode, we discuss:

categories of traffic sources
how many sources you should use
how to measure the effectiveness of a traffic source
what non-paid. offline, online, and third-party traffic sources you should consider

We discuss a topic we’re asked about all the time in regard to Small Business Marketing - Social Media.

Obviously this is a big topic, so today we’re going to focus at a high level on what social media platforms are working, why social media is important, and how small businesses can most effectively leverage social media.

We’ll do deeper dives into specific social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram in future episodes.

Topics discussed:

What social media platforms are most important right now for small businesses?
Does social media help drive traffic back to the website? How can you even track something like that?
What kinds of posts should a business post and what types should they avoid?
Content curation has been an effective strategy for many businesses. What is it and is it still effective?
Let’s talk about social media reach - is it an effective way to reach your ideal customer?
Is there a recommended content mix that works for most businesses?
How important is it to advertise on social media platforms?
What social media platforms should you advertise on?
We’ve talked about the customer value journey in past episodes. In what stages does social media seem to work the best as a tactic?
How does a small business with a limited budget choose between building a sales funnel, doing search engine optimization, or using social media as their primary channel?
Is social media a big difference maker for small businesses?

In this 2 part episode, we discuss a very fundamental, but often misunderstood aspect of Small Business Marketing - Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. What SEO is, why it matters for business owners and how you can improve your presence in search engines will be discussed.

What is SEO and why is it important?
What is Local SEO and how is it different?
What is the difference between paid search marketing and SEO - and can and should they work together?
Ways to improve your SEO
How content plays into search results

In the second part of this 2 part episode, we discuss a very fundamental, but often misunderstood aspect of Small Business Marketing - Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. What SEO is, why it matters for business owners and how you can improve your presence in search engines will be discussed.

Algorithm changes and a couple that have had the most impact on small businesses
What impact does mobile have on SEO, and how can you improve it
What should you measure and what tools should you use

Does Antonio catch the chicken?

We discuss a topic that can be a major game changer for the average small business - reviews and reputation, including:

What is Reputation Management?
What is Reputation Marketing?
How to get reviews
What to do about bad reviews
What content helps a business's reputation?
How can you showcase your reviews on your website?

Reputation Management is the title of one of the books in the Marketing Guides For Small Business available now on amazon.com

In this episode we discuss what goes in to an effective small business marketing strategy:

Why it matters for every small business
What is at risk without a sound marketing strategy
What a well-thought out marketing strategy means for a small business in terms of execution and effectiveness of marketing
What does it mean to start each engagement with marketing strategy?
What is the risk of not having a marketing strategy in place?
Where do clients most often struggle when working on their marketing strategy?
Does working on a marketing strategy mean that all other activity stops until the strategy is 100% determined?
Why is differentiation so important to marketing strategy?
How do you determine what a client’s most valuable target clients are?
As marketing strategies, target markets and differentiation becomes clearer, how does this inform the rest of your marketing work?

How to generate more leads for your business, at a high return on investment is important for every small business. Today we will cover:

the difference between “search engine optimization” and “search engine marketing”
components of building & launching a successful Google Ads search campaign
where should you send people to from your ads
common mistakes or opportunities for improvement
what should a business do in terms of follow up
what the keyword match types are
and more...

We talk about an essential weapon for small business marketing: funnels. We break down what funnels are and what they can do for you and your business.

What are the components of a “proper” marketing funnel?
What technologies and tools do you need to build and run funnels?
What makes funnels different from some of the traditional services agencies offer?
How can a local business take advantage of marketing funnels?

In this episode we'll talk about what goes in to creating a website that builds trust:

Why it matters for every small business
What is at risk without a trust-worthy website
What a well-thought website design means for a small business in terms of execution and the role it plays in the effectiveness of their marketing
Why is the 5 second test so important?
What some of the key home page elements are
Why Mobile-Optimized is so important
What platform you should to build your website

We talk about something essential to inbound and digital marketing success: content, different types of content, how content relates to the buyer journey, and what it can do for you and your business.

Overview of the buyer journey and how content fits into that journey
What types of content you should consider, and how you can use them
What content is needed
How to start creating content
Common mistakes people make putting together a content strategy

We discuss a topic that is probably mis-understood and under utilized by many small business owners - Email Marketing.

Topics include:

Is email marketing “dead”?
What problems can you run into with email marketing?
Is it a good idea to buy a list?
Should you send email campaigns from your business domain?
How do you build an effective email list?
Should you have an email marketing strategy? Why or why not?
Why should you regularly cleanse your email list?
What do terms like blacklisted, spam, and bounce mean?
Should you use an email services provider?
Are incentives and promotions good in emails?
What should you include in your email marketing?