It's hard to believe, but after only 5 months, I've already reached 100 episodes of the Marketing Minute podcast (including both the video and audio versions).  In honor of that milestone, in today's episode I offer a few free bonus gifts to my listeners.  Tune in to find out how to get your gifts!

Today we discuss the marketing hourglass, and specifically how you can create a "try" step in your marketing hourglass so that potential customers have a low-risk or zero-risk way of experiencing your business before making a purchase decision.I give you three ideas about how you can let people try out your business, so that you can weed out bad customers and give good customers the chance to learn more about the unique value you bring to the table (and why you cost a little more than your competitors). 

The holidays are approaching, and this time of year many people and businessess think about how they can help local charities that are active in the community.  Not coincidentally, it's also the time that many charities begin their year-end giving campaigns.  In today's episode, I interview my fellow Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Randy Vaughn about how non-profits can use social media, especially Facebook, to help in their marketing efforts--and how for-profit businesses can benefit by helping them out.

The holidays is a great time to show your appreciation to your customers by giving them some kind of gift.  This could be a coupon, gift certificate, free upgrade, or anything else related to your products or services.  A good practice is to make it something that the person could use themselves, or give to a friend as a gift.  In today's episode, I give you some ideas about how to go about doing that.

Cause marketing is when a business uses the platform they have as a member of the local or national busienss community to advance a cause they are passionate about...and do it in a strategic way that also generates a posive buzz about their business.  Today, I give you a few tips about how to use cause marketing in your business.

Did you know that when someone visits your website, you only have 5-7 seconds to get their attention and convince them to stay on your website to look at more content?  It's true...study after study has confirmed this.  If that website visitor doesn't see what they are looking for in those 5 seconds, or at least doesn't see where they might click to find it, they will leave.  In today's episode, I talk about how you can take full advantage of those five seconds.

One nice piece of trust-building educational content you can use in your marketing is your marketing story--i.e., the story of how your business got started, and WHY you do what you do.  When people know why you're passionate about your business, it will help them connect with you and trust you...and thus make it more likely they'll do business with you.  In today's episode, I tell you MY marketing story so that you'll know how to tell yours.

All too often, when business owners try and talk about what they do, what they actually end up talking about is how they do it.  Guess what?  Most of the time your customres don't actually care how you do it.  What's exciting to them is the results that they are going to get.  THAT'S what you need to talk about, and that's the subject of today's episode.

Like water dripping on stone, the effect of a small task repeated consistently and frequently can be huge over time.  What small marketing-related task are you going to complete today to market your business?  If you're not sure, listen to today's episode for some ideas.

Strategically using press releases as part of your overall marketing plan can go a long way towards helping generate know, like, and trust in your target market.  In my interview with fellow Duct Tape Marketing Consultant David Smith (www.valenspoint.com), we discuss why a business might issue a press release, and how doing so can help generate leads.