Jeremy Reeves is the host of the popular Sales Funnel Mastery podcast and a widely recognized expert when it comes to helping small business owners create a sales funnel that greatly simplifies their lead conversion process.  In today's episode of the Small Business Marketing Minute podcast, Jeremy shares some of his wisdom.  Specifically, he answers the following questions:

If Jeremy's answers to those questions leave you hungry for more info, you can visit his website for tons of additional free content, or better yet, just hire him to help you build your sales funnel!

Last week, Google began rolling out a change that might affect your local business.  Instead of showing up to seven businesses in the "maps" section that typically shows up on page 1 of search results whenever someone does a "local" search (i.e., a search involving a local term like the name of a city or state), Google will now only show three businesses.  Listen to today's episode to find out how this change might affect you and why you should care (or shouldn't care, as the case may be). 

In this high-tech on-line world, one often-overlooked marketing tactic that can really help certain local businesses is direct mail.  In today's episode, I teach you about the USPS Every Door Direct Mail program, and tell you what types of businesses should consider using it in their marketing.

In episode 147 of the Small Business Marketing Minute Show, I talk about a tool that I've recently "rediscovered" after researching it for my new book, The Small Business Owner's Guide to Local Lead Generation.  The tool is Send Out Cards, a service that allows you to send customized and personalized greeting cards, post cards, and gifts to customers and prospects.

Lead generation with Send Out Cards is simply a matter of designing a series of cards, adding them to a campaign, and then assigning a lead to the campaign.  You can have the cards get sent out days, weeks, or months apart, all automatically--very much like an email autoresponder, only with direct mail. 

You can also use Send Out Cards as a customer service tool, by sending personalized cards to your customers on their birthdays, anniversaries, or other special occasions. 

Watch this episode to learn some of the ways I use the service in my own business, and to get ideas about how you can use it also. 

Last week I saw a story in the news about how Southwest Airlines went above and beyond what was expected when helping out a customer in a difficult situation. 

Many big businesses benefit from this type of publicity, but there aren't many small businesses using this tactic.  In fact, most small businesses don't even think about customer service as a marketing function--which it absolutely is. 

In today's episode, I discuss how a small business can use great customer service to get attention from the local media.

My special guest for today's podcast is Alex Harris, the founder of AlexDesigns.com and the best-selling author of Small Business Big Money Online, which is all about helping small business owners increase the conversion rate of their websites. 

Some of the questions I asked Alex in our interview were:

Listen to today's episode to get the answers to these questions and more, or head over to AlexDesigns.com to find out all about Alex and check out some of is free training courses.

Your customers are talking about you online.  Are you listening?

In chapter seven of my new book, I talk about how important it is for a local business to monitor its online reputation.  Consider these statistics from a BrightLocal study:

These numbers are pretty compelling reasons to monitor your business's online reputation.  However, hardly any local business owners are paying attention to this important area of their marketing.  In my BNI meeting last week, I asked how many of the business owners present used ratings and reviews when shopping as consumers, and almost everyone raised their hand.  I then asked them how many of them, as business owners, were doing anything proactive to encourage customers to leave positive reviews or to monitor top review sites for mentions of their business, and not a single hand went up.  Interesting, isn't it?

In order to help them change that, I offered them all a free month of my reputation management service, and I'd like to extend the same offer to all of you.  The service helps you collect more positive reviews from your customers, filter out negative reviews before they get posted online, and monitors all the top review sites for mentions of your business.  Think of it like an insurance policy for your online reputation--which, in this day and age, is one of the most valuable assets your business has.  

Video marketing is one of the most powerful tools available for a small business owner, and also one of the least utilized.  In today's episode, Mark Fortune--one of my co-authors of The Small Business Owner's Guide to Local Lead Generation--interviews me on my own podcast about video marketing for small businesses.  I discuss why it's important, how to get started, and how to make amazing videos without breaking the bank on expensive equipment.

On this, day four of our week-long book launch for The Small Business Owner's Guide to Local Lead Generation, I interview my co-author Phil Singleton about small business website design best practices.  Phil discusses, among other things, the importance of thinking about a website as an investment and asset rather than an expense and liability.  He alos provides some great tips about how to improve your website.

In today's episode, I interview one of my co-authors of The Small Business Owner's Guide to Local Lead Generation about search engine optimization for local businesses.  This is a topic that is a complete mystery for many local business owners, so in our interview Justin explains the basics of SEO and how it's different for a local vs a national business.