The Clean and Green Club

One of the rules in pitching journalists through services that send queries from journalists seeking stories–such as HARO (helpareporter.com), ReporterConnection.com, and the others I discussed in the July, 2011 issue–is to stay closely in tune with what the journalist is looking for.

Still, it IS possible to answer a query where you’re a near-miss. I’ve gotten quite a bit of coverage over the years, writing to journalists where I didn’t have exactly what they were looking for. It happened I wrote two pitches on the same day last month.

In the first, the reporter wanted businesses actually using this strategy, and instead, I offered her expert commentary. In hindsight, I would list some case studies I could discuss. Instead, I focused only on my credentials.

The second one was particularly a long shot, which I knew going in: Newsmax is a Rupert Murdock property with an extremely right-wing slant, and I doubted the reporter would be interested in a counter-view. However, it was certainly worth 10 minutes of my time to try, especially since I really want to reach more conservative elements of the business world with the message of my book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, that good environmental practices are also very good for business.

FIRST QUERY:

19) Summary: Buy Something, Do Good

Name: Alison Miller Southwest Airlines Spirit Magazine

I’m looking for companies that are following the TOMS Shoes mold

by donating money, products, or services to organizations in

need each time a consumer buys their product. Any product

category is fair game, not just apparel.

Requirements:

Readers must be able to buy products via a website and have them

shipped to U.S. addresses.

MY RESPONSE:

Subject: HARO: Buy Something, Do Good (expert perspective)

Hi, Alison,

If you need an expert perspective to comment on why this is good for business, I’m happy to volunteer. I discuss cause-related marketing in every marketing book I’ve written back to 1985 (before the phrase existed, as far as I know), and go into some detail in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet, as well as an earlier book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World (both books have won awards, BTW)

Note: Please keep “HARO” or “New Pitch” in the subject line so that my email program will mark it as Priority.

_________

[My lengthy signature for journalist query responses, including book credentials, contact information via e-mail, phone, and Twitter, some of the media that have interviewed me, and talking points, went here

__________________________

SECOND QUERY:

8) Summary: Sources needed for EPA-related feature

Name: Jeff Louderback Newsmax Magazine

Category: Energy and Green Tech

Query:

The EPA has made a series of aggressive moves that makes it

tougher for business.

Among these moves are:

– Its declaration that carbon dioxide is a gas emission covered

by the clean air act.

– Its crackdown on coal-fired power plants.

– Its opposition to fracking for oil and natural gas production.

For Newsmax, I am writing a feature about OTHER new ways the EPA

is lining up a major power grab to stack the deck against

business even further. What else don’t we know about aside from

the aforementioned concerns?

Requirements:

I am searching for sources anywhere in the United States, but I

am on a tight deadline and need to speak with them no later than

noon ET on Friday, Jan. 21.

MY RESPONSE:

Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 06:43:32 -0500

Subject: HARO: Sources needed for EPA-related feature  – counterpoint

Hi, Jeff,

If you want to throw in a little controversy, I’d be glad to make the case for why tough EPA regs can be GREAT for business. I’m the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet, write a monthly syndicated column, Green And Profitable, and run a marketing consulting company specializing in green business.

[My signature, as above]

__________________________

Notice the appeal I made to the second reporter to inject some controversy into the story. Reporters often love controversy. Also notice how I “volunteer” my expertise to the first journalist. I always try to come across as helpful, rather than self-aggrandizing. This is part of why I got quoted or cited in 143 print stories last year, 131 in 2010.

Another thing you can offer is a “sidebar”–a little sub-article that accompanies the main story, and may expose a different angle. But be prepared for the journalist to ask YOU to write the sidebar (for no pay). This has actually happened to me, and yes, I’ve written those articles when asked.

–>This article is already pretty long–but if you’d like more on this topic, I’ll send an 1174-word excerpt from my seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers that includes two successful thin-match queries I sent (one of which resulted in a sidebar assignment, the other, in coverage) plus a story from publicity ninja Jill Lublin (co-author of Guerrilla Publicity) of how she stepped out of her niche to get coverage on NBC and elsewhere.

Drop me a note at shel AT principledprofit.com and use this exact subject line:

Please send thin-match journo query excerpt

– and then I’ll know exactly what to send you. 🙂

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for several years, you know I’ve been marketing through social media all the way back to 1995. These days, a lot of my social media goes into Twitter.

People either love Twitter or hate it. My wife can’t stand it; I think it’s great.

Why?

• You can have a big impact while investing almost no time
• It’s easy to gain very targeted followers—and influential “followees” (people you follow)
• Very short learning curve
• Interface stays reasonably constant, and the changes are improvements that make sense (unlike Facebook, where you have to keep relearning how to do it, or frequently discover that the expensive tools and processes you invested in before the latest redesign are now them obsolete)
• Third-party tools like TweetDeck (now owned by Twitter), MarketMeSuite, and HootSuite add enormous functionality: scanning the most important contacts quickly, searching topics, scheduling ahead, adding users to groups quickly
• Trends, posts, and connections can easily go viral through the power of retweets and other devices—and as they do, you can easily expand your circles of influence
• You can build real relationships with people by responding personally to their tweets
• While there are lots of ways around the 140-character limit, it does force you to sharpen your brain and be concise
• Oh yeah, and it’s fun!

I find Twitter a terrific research tool: I get a lot of my information on new trends in the green, business, and  political worlds by following links. I also find it a great way to get into conversations with people I haven’t met before, some of whom are very well-connected. Often, I’ll start a conversation on Twitter and then move it to 1-to-1 e-mail.

Twitter is also a great way to get noticed by speakers: if you tweet highlights of their talks or Twitter chat presentations—and either include a designated hashtag for the event (e.g., #sustainchat ) and/or mention them by their Twitter handle (e.g., @ShelHorowitz), you’ll get on their radar. I can tell you that when someone puts @ShelHorowitz in a tweet, I go visit their profile unless it’s obvious spam, and usually follow back. And when someone at a networking event tells me he or she follows me on Twitter, I pay closer attention.

And yes, I’ve sold books, started conversations about my consulting, copywriting or speaking, and attended networking events that I learned about on Twitter.

This is the first of a three-part series. Next month, what you can tweet, and in May, what Twitter is NOT

If you’re marketing a green product or service, it’s up to you to demonstrate why your offering is superior to the conventional alternatives. That means drilling down and drilling down to identify and brag about the core reasons, and to do so in a way that resonates with your audience.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’re a building manager and you offer the feature I mention in this month’s book review: graywater recycling. How can you turn that feature into benefits, and then drill deeper to get at the core benefits?

Good green marketing usually involves showing the benefits both to the customers themselves and to the world as a whole. In this case, the feature is a system to capture waste water from relatively clean uses like sinks and showers, and use it again to water lawns, flush toilets, etc.

The primary benefits are reduced water use and less water contamination. On the personal benefit side, that means lower water bills. Municipal water is artificially cheap in many developed countries, just as oil used to be, so thats a relatively weak benefit. Can we find any deeper personal benefits? How about this: by recycling the water, there is less need to draw down the water supply, which in turn keeps it available for other uses. OK, so if the aquifer is drawn down more slowly, it can recharge properly—and that keeps the water clean and pure.

Ah ha! Now there are both health and aesthetic benefits! The feature of clean and pure water turns into the benefit of staying healthy, not getting sick—and also the benefit of water that is not only good for you, but tastes good, too. This in turn means the customer doesn’t have to go out and spend money on bottled water, because the tap water is good enough to drink. So now we have two economic benefits (tap water lasts longer and therefore costs less, and eliminating the need to buy water bottles) as well as a health benefit because the water stays pure.

Let’s turn to the social goods. More water is available for other uses—and fewer oil-based plastic bottles are needed. If we accept Bill Roth’s statement (see book review) that 5000 kids die every day from lack of good water, we now see a clear benefit to conserving through recycling the graywater: we stop kids from dying. Add that to the benefit of protecting the water supply for our own kids and grandkids in the generations to come, and not squandering that resource the way we’ve squandered oil for so many years, and it should be pretty easy to write some powerful marketing copy.

Wrapping up our three-part series on Twitter. First, we looked at the advantages of Twitter for marketers, then last month, how to tweet for maximum benefit. We’ll finish out by discussing how not to be a jerk on Twitter.

My title is a little bit pushy, in that for some people, Twitter is exactly these things—but they have few human followers (robots don’t count) and no influence; it would have been more accurate to say, How Not to Use Twitter. But I didn’t think about that when I lined out the topic titles in March.

Remember the key principle: Twitter is only worth doing if you create a tweet stream that people want to read. Otherwise, there’s no point. Every person who follows you makes a decision whether to follow you. If they’re using a tool like TweetDeck or HootSuite, they also decide whether to place you in a most-favored column of people they pay close attention to you. In my case, I am following 5823 people as of May 12, when I’m writing this. But really, I’m paying attention to about 100 in my “must follow” column. So here are some pointers on what not to tweet:

1. An endless barrage of self-promotion. If more than 50 percent of your tweets are promoting your products and services, you’ll lose followers fast. I strive for a ratio of one self-promotional tweet to 10 other tweets.

2. Continuous Amazon (or other) affiliate links. I don’t understand these people at all. Their entire stream is nothing but affiliate links, and the products usually have nothing to do with each other. I see a lot of these pages because my Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green book is a popular product to feature, and I do click through to the profile every time someone mentions my book or me. The most recent person to list my book this way has made 22,288 tweets (probably all automated), has 421 followers, and is following 486 people. Of those 421, I’ll guess that 400 are from people who automatically follow back. In short, no one is reading, the account is not operated by a human, and affiliate commissions are probably near zero. Why bother?

3. Daily minutiae. If you tweet about what you had for breakfast, or that you’ve just brushed your teeth, you’d better do it in a way that’s funny or interesting. and keep it to maybe one post in 50. This is one of several reasons I don’t do Foresquare, which tweets your location with alarming frequency. (Not inviting burglars to my house is another reason.) Don’t bore people into shutting you out.

4. Lists and lists of people to follow. Again, boring! I do one Follow Friday (hashtag #ff) and one #ecomonday a week, and I publicly thank people who list me as someone to follow. It’s a very small part of my stream.

5. Spam. Duh! It doesn’t work in social media any better than it works with e-mail. Sending the same URL to a lot of people you don’t know, or direct-messaging a URL labeled as a picture of me when it’s not is just plain stupid. In TweetDeck, I can block and report a spammer in exactly two clicks, and I will do so unless I think the sender was hacked.Sometimes I’ll publicly shame them first. (And because I don’t automatically follow back, I am not plagued with direct-message spam. I get one or two a month, usually when someone was hacked.)

Two final bits of advice: Get five or ten juicy, high-quality tweets up on your profile page, along with a picture and something useful in the bio box, before you start looking for followers. And stay away from all the robot game-the-system approaches to building a followers list. You want real people who influence others to be following you because they love your content, not a bunch of robots following back in.

If you’d like me to consider following you, I might or might not if you have an interesting screen name. But I will definitely visit your profile (maybe not right away—be patient) if you engage with me. So send me an @shelhorowitz message that tells me something you found useful or helpful about this series (hint: if the @shelhorowitz is not the very beginning of the tweet, more people will see it). If I like what I see on your profile, I will follow back.

Another Recommended Book: The Underdog Edge: How Ordinary People Change the Minds of the Powerful…and Live to Tell About It, by Amy Showalter

A Theory of Social Change to Make Sense of this Book

One of my long-held theories of social change is that it’s easier to influence the power structure, and accomplish change within it, if you’re seen as the rational and reasonable negotiating partner. And in order to be perceived as a good negotiating partner, there has to be someone more extreme, who can be dismissed as the lunatic fringe, but who actually makes space for your demands to seem like a compromise.

Examples:
• Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement were able to make more progress because Malcolm X and the Black Panthers existed (very publicly).
• George W. Bush was forced to endorse same-sex civil unions even though the idea was anathema to his Fundamentalist “base”—because the alternative was same-sex marriage (this example also shows how society can evolve very quickly sometimes—we’ve moved way past civil unions now).
• Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, a radical restructuring of capitalism, was more palatable to the business/financial world because massive unrest made Communism (the destruction of capitalism) somewhat likely.
• My own outsider candidacy for my local City Council, many years ago, gave space for a more moderate progressive to win in a four-way race, and then go on to serve four terms as Mayor.

A Book for More Moderate Activists

Through this lens, I view Amy Showalter’s book, The Underdog Edge: How Ordinary People Change the Minds of the Powerful…and Live to Tell About It. Showalter targets those who want to be seen as the reasonable and rational alternative. Those who want to meet with powerful politicians and heads of corporations, and get them to change their actions.

And thus, her message about dialing down the passion makes sense. Big dogs try not to negotiate with (or concede points to) those they find threatening. But I believe that seeing the threat out there in the distance makes them more willing to come to the table with those who are more persistent than passionate, those who’ve done their homework, and those who can articulate a change program that leaves the top dog feeling he or she did the right thing.

Without that lens, the book would leave me confused, because I can point to hundreds of examples throughout history where loud, passionate, angry people made big, sweeping changes. But in many of those cases, it was a symbiosis between the loud and angry in public view and the quiet, warm and friendly, but very persistent negotiators in the background; each needed the other to succeed.

However, reasonable doesn’t mean passive. The more vivid you make your case, the more likely you are to succeed, Showalter says. And this is true whether your cause is liberal, conservative, or nonideological.

While charisma makes the struggle easier, Showalter says a much more essential quality is grit: determination, doggedness—not going away. Proximity, which she sees as the key element of vividness, is a big part of winning, because you’re much harder to ignore if you’re right there.

From “Underdog” to “Sled Dog”

But it’s not enough if you’re so ego-involved that you make it all about you. Showalter has examples that take the “dog” metaphor from underdog to sled dog. Success, she says, depends on the pack leader being collaborative and encouraging of the entire group.

Not surprisingly, those underdogs who succeed in persuading their big dogs have often built relationships with them years before they ever tried to sway them or gain a favor. Not that it’s impossible to do it cold, but it’s much, much easier if you have an existing relationship based in mutual respect.

And it is helped, as she points out, if you can win over sincere and influential converts who can be seen by your opponents as one of their own, and pave the way for a change of heart by documenting their own impetus to change.

Social change theory also says that if you start to experience heavy repression, it means the power structure is scared of you and thinks you need to be crushed. If you can hang on through the crackdown, you succeed…eventually. As Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Can Social Media Spark Social Change

Gandhi, like most successful revolutionaries throughout history, did not have access to Twitter and Facebook. Showalter is highly skeptical of the role of social media in fostering change, pointing out that even Egypt’s much-celebrated revolution was primarily offline—in the streets. She notes that only a quarter of Egypt’s population even has Internet access.

I believe social media—like TV during the civil rights and Vietnam struggles, and like printed publications of an earlier era—is crucial for bringing awareness of the struggle into the public eye.

The election protests in Iran are an obvious case, even though they failed to bring about regime change. Revolution is not always quick; Gandhi’s revolution in India took decades, Ireland’s, centuries.

However, as she points out, that awareness must be accompanied by action—and action is a lot more than signing a petition or posting a status update.

And where am I on the continuum? I’ve been all over it. I’ve risked arrest several times for what I believe in, and was actually arrested once. I’ve been the militant marcher shaking my fist into the TV camera—but I’ve also negotiated privately with a developer to create a compromise that allowed him to build after failing to gain a yes vote three times, once he agreed to protect a bunch of farmland and granted other concessions to the activist community. Both approaches are effective, in their time.

During my trip last month to Ireland and Northern Ireland, I was pleasantly shocked to see evidence that this was a culture that cared about working conditions for both humans and animals.

Yes, of course, I could find fairly traded products in the health food stores and even in supermarkets. But it was astounding to me that every roadside convenience store had them as well. Little places in the middle of nowhere, just bathroom stops on the motorways, uniformly offered a pretty good selection of fair-trade chocolate and coffee, among other products. Such items are much harder to find in those types of stores in the United States, where I live.

Furthermore, the Insomnia coffee chain, which seems to be Ireland’s largest, has also gone fair-trade over there. When I encountered that brand in Canada about seven months ago, I saw no fair-trade markings.

Supermarket shopping was actually fun. I got a fantastic house-brand fair-trade chocolate bar at Sainsbury’s, which is comparable to Giant Food or A&P. If I remember right, the cocoa content was around 82 percent, and the quality was terrific. I also noticed that Hellman’s mayonaise is made with free-range eggs over there; if that’s true in the US, it hasn’t said so on the label, last time I checked.

As a percentage, the number of “conscious” products in these stores is still quite small. But if roadside convenience stores are carrying fair-trade products, that means enough people who shop in those stores have requested those products that the store chains have decided to carry them. And I find that remarkable, especially considering that as a culture (and particularly outside of Cork, Galway, and Dublin, which all seem to have higher food awareness), Ireland is not particularly focused on eating well. It’s very meat-centric, vegetables are routinely overcooked, and the food generally is bland and heavy. Dairy is very good, however.

Those three cities seem to have a well-established local/organic culture. We found vegetarian restaurants in Dublin and Cork, a terrific Saturday farmers market including not only organic produce but also artisan foods and crafts in Galway, just outside an amazing artisan cheese shop. A health food store in Dublin offered an amazing selection of raw chocolates, and one raw chocolatier had a booth at the Galway market.

One other trend that surprised me: the infiltration of ethnic restaurants (particularly South Asian and Far Asian) into just about every corner of the island. So if you’d rather not have beef and cabbage stew with potatoes, you’ll find options like Afghani kebab shops, Chinese or Korean restaurants, or Pakistani takeaways in even relatively small towns.

This is a slice of globalization that actually leads toward greater sustainability—not only because it’s easier to find healthy food choices, but also because I believe monocultures are not sustainable, whether you’re talking about growing a single crop or a single human culture. Cultural diversity allows for cross-pollinating the best practices that other societies have come up with, recognizing that some may not be appropriate for a different climate.

Here are a few other random observations from my trip:

• Wind power plays a significant role. It’s common to see large wind turbines (as in much of the rest of Europe), though for the most part in small clusters of one to five, rather than in the vast wind farms of say, Spain—and also to see older, smaller  private installations on individual farms, of the sort that were common on US farms in the late 1970s.
• Solar’s role is minimal. I have seen only a handful of rooftop solar hot water installations, and most of the  photovoltaic have been on self-powered electronic highway signs. Of course, it’s not the sunniest place in the world; an Italian immigrant told us, “in Ireland, they call this a beautiful day. In Italy, we would call it a disaster.”  But there must be more than is obvious, because we passed quite a number of solar businesses, even in some pretty rural areas.
• Big cities have some limited public recycling in the major commercial and tourist areas. I imagine there are recycling programs for households, too.
• On the campus of the technical college we visited, environmental awareness was quite high. This school is also about to launch a degree program in sustainability and one in agriculture, yet they haven’t explored the obvious linkages between those two program offerings—in part because they’re slotted for different campus, 50 miles apart.

• Since it’s part of Europe, I wasn’t surprised that attention to conservation is more prevalent. Toilets with low/high settings, tiny cars, and composting projects all seem fairly common.Yet. to my shock, the small conference center we stayed at in rural Donegal was still using energy-hogging incandescent light bulbs.

In This Issue…

• This Month’s Tip: Market With Video, Part 2
• Hear & Meet Shel
• Friends Who Want to Help
• Another Recommended Book: Predictable Revenue

Market With Video, Part 2

Last month, we looked at the culture of video making, its enormous popularity, and how easy it is to be part of it. This month, we’ll get specific with some quick pointers to keep in mind when making videos, as well as a list of content ideas (only scraping the edge of what’s possible).

Here are the production tips:

• Keep videos short if you want to be accessible to people without broadband, and if you want pass-alongs. One minute up to three minutes or so is a good goal.
• Good lighting is essential.
• Music helps.
• Cool graphics help.
• Humor helps, if it’s done well.
• Many people run videos in the background. So if your use of words is restricted to silent text images, many of your “viewers” will miss the whole point. Have a person actually say the words out loud, preferably with excitement and emotion in the delivery.
• Be sure to end with a call to action, such as an easy-to-type, easy-to-remember website URL that stays on the screen for at least 15 seconds.
• Add all the linking and sharing social media tools to make it easy for people to pass videos on: Facebook Like button, Google +1 button, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.
• Share the video on your own blog, in your newsletter, on all your social media profiles, and in those of your Internet discussion groups where it makes sense.
• Get written permission from anyone who is visible in the video or whose material you are using (make this permission very inclusive, so you don’t have to go back again to reuse the footage some other way).
• Style can be as bold or sedate as you want, as long as YOU can feel comfortable with it. Some marketers make wild, zany videos filmed driving in a sports car, others are simply one person talking.

Now, a few of the many thematic possibilities; let your imagination run wild to generate more:

• Do a movie-style trailer for your book, or even for some other kind of product.
• Use videos to demonstrate a product’s features and capabilities (I actually had a local inventor client who did this 92-second video to show off his machine that peels industrial quantities of butternut squash).
• Collect video testimonials or endorsements from clients and from famous people (you may have to do some coaching on what makes a good endorsement, but don’t worry if your ordinary users don’t look or sound like models or movie stars–you actually want them to come across as real and authentic, though at least somewhat articulate).
• Film news events or action videos involving your product.
• Use screenshot capture software like Camtasia, Jing, Camstudio, or EasyScreenCapture to provide instructions and technical support.
• Show clips of your appearances on TV (again, make sure you have the producer’s permission).
• Create an action video for your memoir.
• Interview experts on the topic of your nonfiction book.
• Get interviewed on the subject of your expertise, and post it.
• Get interviewed about your writing process, your inspiration, the backstory of your book, etc.
• Make a call to action regarding the wider world, and tie it to your book.
• Participate as a solo speaker or in a panel at a conference, and post the video.
• Have a professional put together clips from your best speeches or author talks, and turn it into a classy speaking demo video to get more speaking gigs.

Hear and Meet Shel

• Susan Rich interviews me once again Monday, Jan. 30, 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT, this time on book marketing. Listen at w4wn.com
• It’s looking like I might actually be speaking in Bangladesh at a conference in Dakka March 8-10. I should have the details ready in time for next month’s newsletter. Meanwhile, if you can get me a paying gig that I can piggyback on in India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, you could earn a generous commission.
• Also confirmed for the Gulf Coast Green conference in Houston, May 1, and trying to also set up at least one more event while I’m out there. https://gulfcoastgreen.org/pages/default.asp

Friends Who Want to Help You

Gift for You: Publicity Planner

If you work in publicity or marketing, Paul Krupin’s annual Publicity Planner is a must-have—and it’s a gift to you with no strings attached, no registration required. It’s a monthly calendar with events you can peg news stories around, very nicely laid out, too. Get yours at https://www.directcontactpr.com/files/files/PublicityCalendar2012.pdf

Gift for You: Ethical Business Manifesto

The Internet marketing world (and the business world in general) contains far too many people who seem to have forgotten basic ethics somewhere a long the way. I get so tired of people hearing abut my books on business ethics as a success strategy and telling me, “Business ethics? That’s an oxymoron.”

No, it’s not. It’s actually a key to long-term surviving and thriving. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve always been willing to partner with Marcia Yudkin, one of the most ethical people I know, and a very successful marketer. Marcia has a new gift for you: Get yours, again, with no strings attached and no registration required, at “The No-Harm Marketing Manifesto.” https://shelhorowitz.com/go/noharmmarketing/

Book Award to Enter

One of the best ways to market a book is to be able to list yourself as an award-winning author. Dan Poynter, author of The Self-Publishing Manual and numerous other books for authors and publishers, has put together a new Global E-Book Award program. Knowing Dan, it’s likely to be known as a prestigious honor in the fairly near future. Enter by March 12 at https://globalebookawards.com

Books with Bonus Packages

Shocking betrayals at home and work. Confrontations with cancer, and corrupt businessmen. Building a business worth millions. Paul Streitz has experienced it all, triumphed, and documented everything in his new book, Blue Collar Buddha, with powerful life lessons for the reader. Check out this new book along with the big bonus package (a lot of stuff about healthy relationships and healthy families, as well as my own Painless Green e-book) at https://bit.ly/bcb1412

Are you ready to make 2012 your best year ever? Take charge of your business and your life with this easily digested book—a distillation of business wisdom from Napoleon Hill through Dan Kennedy as expressed in one entrepreneur’s life. Maybe you’ve thought about leaving the rat race and being an entrepreneur. Maybe you’ve already made the jump. Discover the power of 1 focused hour a day with Henry Evans, The Hour A Day Entrepreneur. I am very proud and excited to be a part of the launch of this new book because it is only with YOU – the entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur – that we will overcome these current economic times. Join in and make 2012 YOUR best year ever!  https://bit.ly/1hrbook  Bonuses include a bunch of video training, among other things, and the book itself contains links to numerous resources.

Want to shift to a new career? A new relationship? A new path in your life? Want to simply find peace of mind? Make Your SHIFT: The Five Most Powerful Moves You Can Make to Get Where YOU Want to Go is the newest book by Beverly Flaxington, who has spent over two decades working with individuals and groups as a hypnotherapist, career coach, corporate consultant, behavioral expert, and change management leader. Now for the first time, she has focused her phenomenal depth of experience and knowledge to create a groundbreaking book to help you make the SHIFT. Bev’s trademarked SHIFT Model is taught in colleges and used by corporations. Now this book gives you the tools you need to make your shift. Visit https://shiftmodel.com/ for more information and over $1,500.00 in FREE bonus offers! Includes a free offer from the author.

International journalist Judah Freed has launched his new book, GLOBAL SENSE: The 2012 Edition: A spiritual handbook on the nature of society and how to change the world by changing ourselves. Global Sense encourages an evolutionary shift of consciousness into seeing our global interdependence. This awareness of our connectivity empowers us to change the world by changing ourselves. Filled with concrete strategies and tools, this amazingly practical book brings our highest ideals down to earth where we can use them.

Disclosures: 1. I haven’t read this version, but I read and favorably reviewed the original edition several years ago. 2. Also, he cites my book Grassroots Marketing on page 228.

Judah’s not doing a bonus promotion, but if you visit his site, https://globalsense.com, he’ll give you the introduction and first two chapters. He’s a brilliant thinker and I think you’ll like this one.

Buy at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0972890580

Learn more: https://globalsense.com

Another Recommended Book: Predictable Revenue

Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com, by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler (Pebblestorm Press, 2011)

In today’s world, old-fashioned pushy selling doesn’t work any more (there’s some doubt in my mind about whether it ever did). Smart businesspeople realize there has to be a new model for selling, expressed in “heresies” like these:

• Sales works best when you and your customer are not adversaries but are working toward common, shared goals
• Pushy traditional sales approaches like “always be closing” don’t work—instead, once you make sure there’s a fit, the customer moves inexorably toward the sale, with your skilled guidance and knowledge of their situation
• Automation and systemization prevents leads from falling through the cracks; the best leads get immediate service while they’re HOT and ready to move
• Revenue not only becomes predictable—it can multiply by as much as 300%

How?

For starters, salespeople should spend their time selling; let other team members do the prospecting/lead generation and qualification, and post-sale service. For another, the whole process is one of active engagement, solving problems and advancing goals for the customer, and in the process, doing well for the sales team.

Then bring in systemization. If you only pay for leads and contacts that have been properly entered into your sales automation system, if senior execs from the CEO down adopt and publicly use the system, and if you build training and work-role customization into the migration, everyone will be using the sales automation system. This in turn helps you understand when you have a real prospect, and when you just have a tire-kicker…what leads need what kind of follow-up, and at what points in the process…and what to do with the data you’ve extracted as you manage your team.

In addition to giving you the “cold calling 2.0” process (which is actually a way of making sure that your leads are nice and warmed up before a sales person ever gets involved), Predictable Revenue is also full of great checklists and info graphics. Examples include the top 6 prospecting mistakes, questions to ask a prospect before scheduling a demo, 5 types of prospects (and three techniques), and 9 principles to “build a sales machine.”

Predictable Revenue has a ton of wisdom–such as some really great questions to ask a prospect (example: “if you were me, how would you approach this organization?”), and a whole lot on when to step back and let the prospect lead him/herself to the sale, instead of trying to force it. Individual sales and marketing people could learn a lot here, and there’s also a big section on how to manage a sales and prospecting force.

Interestingly, in that section, Ross and Tyler recommend a mix of salary and commission rather than a 100% commission model, and they also recommend that employees (as a group) be involved in designing their own compensation package, with full transparency so everyone knows what all the other members of the lead gen and sales team is making, and why. Add in some powerful cross-fertilization techniques to build skills of your internal teams and even your channel partners, and things are going to start bubbling.

Note: you can get an excerpt at no charge by visiting https://predictablerevenue.com/

News Flash: I Was Inducted Into the National Environmental Hall of Fame

Read all about it and see a picture at https://greenandprofitable.com/i-was-inducted-into-the-national-environmental-hall-of-fame-today/ I hope to post a video next week, if the videographer sends me something I can use. Several dignitaries in attendance, too.

Contents of This Issue:

• A Marketing Ploy that Cut Through the Clutter
• Hear & Meet Shel
• Friends Who Want to Help
• Another Recommended Book: Brandwashed

A Marketing Ploy that Cut Through the Clutter

UPS dropped off a surprise package from Random House recently; it looked like a box that would be used to ship a case of books.

When I opened the box, I saw a smaller, unmarked, white box, shrinkwrapped and floating on a cushion of air-filled plastic bags. I cut the shrinkwrap, opened the box, and took out a black slipcase, unadorned except for a line of headline type saying “GUESS THE YOUNGEST AGE EVER TARGETED BY A MARKETER.” Just below and to the right, these words in a starburst: “Be the first to know with this fascinating sneak-peek.”

Finally, inside the slipcase, another, very deluxe box.  The front cover answered the question on the slipcase. When I opened it, the inside cover had four panels of marketing copy, contact information, *and* a video player containing three video trailers and a screen about the size of an iPhone’s. Needless to say, the graphics on the whole thing were extremely professional. The main part of the box contained two cutouts: one held an advance review copy of a new book, Brandwashed, by Martin Lindstrom, and the other held a small red plastic infant bottle whose label, extremely reminiscent of the famous Heinz catsup bottle, declared,

“WHINES EST’D 2011 BRAND WASHING YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG”

The two enclosures were topped with a custom plastic tray that had a cut out for the bottle and fit snugly but comfortably into the box.

I remembered that Lindstrom had personally e-mailed me two weeks earlier, asking if I’d be interested in reviewing his forthcoming book. He’d written,

Like you, I have long been a proponent of environmental responsibility and have sought ways to encourage others to take a more active role in making and keeping our communities more “green”. That is why I think you should take a careful look at the multi-million dollar world-of-mouth marketing experiment that I had funded and chronicled in Brandwashed. I wanted to study just how persuasive word-of-mouth marketing could be as pertaining to household decisions, and in the latter stages focused specifically on environmentally conscious products and services. The results were shocking!

I’d been impressed at the time that he not only sought me out but that he spoke directly to my key interest area: the intersection of marketing with the environment.

As book reviewers go, I’m pretty low on the food chain. Typically, I do one review a month, in this newsletter (whose circulation figures don’t exactly set the world on fire)—and then the reviews get posted on Amazon about a month later. To receive such an intricate package despite my low status in the book review world was a recognition that somebody, in this case a best-selling author and top consultant in my field, values my opinion enough to be sure he gets noticed—and that’s flattering.

I had a number of reactions to receiving this package, and as a marketer/environmentalist who educates other marketers and environmentalists, I’d like to share some of them with you. The insights you might gain from a look into my psyche may help you as you design your next campaign.

1. Undeniably, it was effective. As it happened, I hadn’t yet picked out a book to review this month, and with half the month gone, I needed to start. Martin’s book didn’t even stop at the top of the pile; it went directly to my exercise bike, where I read while working out, and I started reading it that very night (see my review elsewhere in this issue).
2. To make that impression cost quite a bit of money. I’m guessing the package cost at least $50 per copy to design, prepare, and send. Am I enough of an influencer to be worth that investment? It would be nice to think so, but I don’t know.
3. Obviously, the campaign is reaching people who do have a great deal of influence. On October 6, less than 10 days after publication, the book not only has 41 reviews on Amazon, but the #1 and #2 slots on three subcategories for marketing books and an enviable overall rank of 283. His earlier book, Buyology, is also doing quite well at the moment, probably with a little help from Amazon’s “people who bought also bought” trick.
4. While the marketer in me is quite impressed, the environmentalist part of my brain is appalled. This was a very resource-intensive effort involving unrecyclable mixed materials and weighing seven pounds. In tiny print on the back of the player box, it notes that you’re not supposed to throw this out in the trash and should return the box to the video player company for processing. Not a lot of reviewers will even see that note, and fewer still will go through the trouble to find a suitable box, address a label, and pay for the postage to return it. Reviewers get dozens of packages per day, and many cases, get them pre-opened by a mailroom employee. The slipcase and the two outer boxes can be recycled with my other cardboard, but the rest of it is problematic. This is especially ironic, given Lindstrom’s personal message to me.
5. After experiencing this elaborate and expensive press kit, I am surprised by the book cover, which in my opinion is both unattractive and unimaginative. If a client came to me with this cover, I’d have advised a different concept.
6. Targeting is key. This book was well-targeted to me, and Lindstrom’s personal message was even more targeted. Had I received a similar press kit for, let’s say, a book about Britney Spears’ hairstyle shenaningans, I would have been annoyed instead of intrigued, and the whole thing would have gone into the recycle bin without a second look.

How would you react if you received a package like this? Click on this link to tell me, or to make any other comments. Please tell me if I have permission to publish your comment publicly. I’m thinking of gathering the responses into a blog post (which is also an easy way for you to get a link from my site—just include your URL in the e-mail).

Friends Who Want to Help

The Best-Conceived JV I’ve Seen

Do you do Joint Ventures? As I hinted last month, I’m helping to orchestrate a particularly exciting one, involving celebrities, politicians, environmental education, kids, quilts and all sorts of other cool stuff that appeals to the media and will get you coverage and contacts. We’re planning ahead on this–want to get commitments this year for ramping up early next year and a launch that ties in with Earth Day next spring–but don’t wait to get involved. If you’d like to receive an invitation as soon as we’re ready, please use this link to tell me (and let me know if you think of yourself as more of a marketer, or more of an environmentalist).

Unfamiliar with Joint Ventures? Basically, we partner with you, you tell your own contacts (like the readers of your e-zine or blog), and if people make purchases from your link, you earn a commission.

30-minute No-Cost Consultation with Scott Cooney from Green Business Owner, and a Cool-Looking Sustainability Game, Too

Scott gave me one of these consultations, and I very much appreciated his fresh perspective. He’s also just developed a very spiffy-looking game on sustainability themes, set in Hawaiii. To get your consult, visit GreenBusinessOwner.com, and then click on the Consulting link on the top menu. For the game, go directly to this link.

Two Book-Publishing Conferences:

D’vorah Lansky’s Online Book Marketing Conference

Check out the amazing speaker line-up for the 3rd Annual Book Marketing Conference Online–I now almost all of them and can vouch for their good work. And this one has a series of free preview calls, too.

* Kathleen Gage: “Become an Online Bestselling Author in Today’s Crowded Author’s Market”
* Carolyn Howard-Johnson: “Your Awards: How to win them and then use them to set your book apart”
* Brian Jud: “Selling More Books, More Profitably to Non-Bookstore Buyers”
* Lynne Klippel: “Going Beyond the Book: Fast, Easy Product Creation for Authors”
* Jill Lublin: “Be the News”
* Connie Ragen Green: “How to Repurpose Your Existing Content to Become a Bestselling Author”
* Marnie Pehrson: “Using Social Media to Create a Buzz About Your Book”
* Penny Sansevieri: “Maximize and Monetize Social Media -3rd Annual Book Marketing Conference”
* Felicia J. Slattery: “How Authors Can Create a Signature Speech to Build Platform and Sell More Books”
* Dana Lynn Smith: “The Secrets to Planning a Profitable Virtual Book Tour”
* Steven E. Schmitt: “How I made millions by listening to my intuitive voice”
* Noah St. John: “Attract More Money Blueprint: Your Hidden Power for More Wealth and Happiness”
* Denise Wakeman: “The Secret to Author Blog Success: How to Dominate Your Niche with a Book Blog”

Get the details at: https://www.bookmarketingmadeeasy.com/center/idevaffiliate.php?id=139

Publishing Conference in Nevada Next Month

This is taken directly from a press release I received: PubWest, the leading trade association for small- and medium-sized book publishers, is pleased to announce the full agenda for the PubWest Conference 2011 in November. The programming includes notable keynotes by Len Riggio, Chairman of Barnes & Noble; Tyson Cornell of Rare Bird Lit; and Kevin Smokler, author of the forthcoming essay collection Practical Classics. Sessions include intensives on Digital Publishing and Creating EPUBS with Adobe InDesign CS5.5, Exploration and Discussion of the Chicago Manual of Style’s New 16th Edition with Alice Levine, Evaluating the Effectiveness of Social Marketing, Optimizing Digital Production Workflows, Improving Your Publishing Company’s Profitability, Product Line Branding and Permissions, “Green” Publishing, Faceoff between Traditional and New Social Media, Enhanced E-Books, Metadata and Discoverability, plus lively and interactive roundtables held by professionals in the industry.

Registration: www.pubwest.org/conference. More info: kent@pubwest.org

The Living Organization

Tough times call for better ideas – Packed with powerful insights, tools, and practices, this book is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike. Norman Wolfe reframes and broadens our understanding of how organizations can create better results. Every leader, every CEO, board member and senior executive will benefit from the practical guidance this book provides. The Living Organization – check it out: https://bit.ly/puW6nt

Hear & Meet Shel

October

• Speaking at Bioneers-By-The-Bay, wonderful conference October 21-23 in New Bedford, MA, https://www.marioninstitute.org/connecting-for-change My talk is Sunday October 23: signing books at 12:30-1 p.m. at Bakers Books tables inside the Butterfly Exhibition Tent, then presenting Getting Buy-In: Building Stakeholder Consensus for Sustainability, at Bristol Community College, 800 Purchase St., Conference Room. Note: this is the very first time I’m giving this talk, aimed at activists, government leaders, and green business owners. Lots of good nitty-gritty stuff about how to analyze and reach your market.
• October 28 and beyond, my interview on Good And Green Radio will be available at https://wgrnradio.com/archive-good-and-green-radio-with-susan-davis/

• I’ll be walking the floor in the afternoon at the Green Expo Opportunity Fair in Springfield, MA, at the MassMutual Center. Let me know ahead if you’d like to meet there.
• November 15, 8:00 pm ET/5 pm PT, January Jones interviews me: 818-431-8506
• November 16, 7 pm ET/4 pm PT: Interviewed on Your15Minutes Radio’s “Brand This” with Shaun Walker and Reid Stone, www.your15minutesradio.com
• November 17, 11 a.m. ET/8 am PT: Interviewed by Susan Rich on “Get Noticed Now.”

Another Recommended Book: Brandwashed

Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, by Martin Lindstrom (Crown, division of Random House, 2011)

Both as a marketer and as a consumer, you want to understand the psychology of modern-day marketing (and especially the particular marketing subset called advertising). Without a clear picture of just how deeply manipulated we are, at a level not even dreamed of when Vance Packard wrote The Hidden Persuaders back in the 1950s, you will be defenseless against the continual assault on your wallet.

Martin Lindstrom, an industry insider who has helped big brands go deep into their consumers’ minds and come out the other end with fistfuls of money, turns his attention to explaining how these companies get inside your brains, and what they do once they get there.

While he certainly pays attention to the traditional buy triggers, like fear, sex, celebrity, spirituality, fear, and nostalgia—each of which gets its own chapter—the real news in this book is the evolution of companies’ knowledge about us, and how they manipulate every aspect of your “buyer experience,” through a huge range of tools, to create the desired effect: a ravenous, insatiable hunger for the company’s brand.

This well-written and well-researched book should give anyone pause. But perhaps the scariest part is how early it starts. Marketers have known for many years that buying habits and brand loyalties acquired in childhood can shape lifelong preferences. That’s why, for instance, computer companies value the elementary education market so highly.

But it starts much earlier than that. Literally, the music you hear, the smells you experience in the womb can influence your choices all through life. And peer pressure has been documented at 14 months old.

The positive side of this is that these sensual memories can help with things like stroke recovery. But the Big Brotherish part of it is disturbing. Add in such factors as the deliberate manipulation of fear to literally make us stupid and not only do you have a commercial marketer’s paradise, but also (here I’m extrapolating from Lindstrom) the easy ability to whip up patriotic fervor to justify evil actions by governments (think about the manufacture of anti-Jewish sentiment during the Holocaust, or anti-Muslim sentiment in the US following 9/11, with the media cheering on the crackdown in both cases).

Another key insight: when we encounter arousing images, we perceive ourselves as sexier. (This is what psychologists call “transference.”) No wonder so much of advertising features sultry women and hunky men. And according to his research, straight men are a major, if hidden, market that responds to those pictures of hunky men. Also, the male who is conscious of his own beauty and spends lavishly on personal care products/services is a hot new trend.

Celebrity marketing is related to this; we perceive ourselves as increasing our status and power when we read and watch those with high status and power—they are our idealized future selves. Celebs (including various royal families) feed into this and deliberately manage their personal brands very carefully.

Concerned about privacy? Basically, it no longer exists. Data mining is far more sophisticated now, and companies can create incredibly detailed profiles not just segment-by-segment, but person-by-person. They know who you are, what you wear, what you eat, where you work, where you are (if you use a cell phone), and how long you’ve spent on which web pages. Not only do we voluntarily reveal enormous amounts of information about ourselves to companies like Facebook and Google (and some companies have learned how to subvert the privacy safeguards and harvest this), but there’s plenty of data collection going on without our consent, too. And data mining companies sometimes require their customers to provide more data if they want the service.

But wait! There’s more!

• Some products, notably in the cosmetics industry, do the opposite of what they promise, thus feeding more purchases because the wearer thinks, “I must not have put enough on.”
• 60 percent of teens think they can buy their way to happiness with the right brands (and many of them will outright reject unbranded items)
• While brands are seen as a path to self-esteem, knowingly buying a counterfeit lowers self-esteem
• Nostalgia marketing has hooks back to our earliest childhood; we long for simpler times before we had grown up worries, and will welcome even products we ignored at the time
• GPS-like devices on shopping carts allow stores to track individual movement patterns in the store—while digital price signage allows companies to actually change prices to reflect trends at different times of day
• Receiving advice that seems to be expert shuts down our critical thinking, even if the expertise is weak or is really celebrity in disguise)—and word-of-mouth from a trusted friend or colleague *definitely* counts heavily

Lindstrom ends the book with a complex experiment he set up, giving a real family a mission to influence the buying habits of their friends.  The results are shocking; go read the book to learn what happened, and to learn many more startling tidbits than I had room to describe. (See, now I just implanted a suggestion to you. I’m not being paid in any way to recommend this book and am not using my Amazon affiliate code. But I’d love to see whether my self-perception as a trusted expert translates into sales that bear out Lindstrom’s hypothesis, despite my transparency about it —so if you buy the book on my say-so, please drop me a note: mailto:shel@frugalfun.com?subject=IBoughtBrandwashed .) Please tell me if I have permission to publish your comment publicly. I’m thinking of gathering the responses into a blog post (which is also an easy way for you to get a link from my site—just include your URL in the e-mail).

Ever dream of getting a big New York publisher for your future best seller? Don’t do it like this—in fact, don’t esend any kind of pitch letter that makes these mistakes:

M husband has a finished book and he is looking for a Book Agent or Book Publisher. His book is geared for young adults. He is a Highschool teacher and his students are chomping at the bit to read his book. We are sitting on a gold-mine! If you are interested, please leave your information so we can send you more information on the book! Thank you so much.

This was an actual query, submitted through a media query submission service. Let’s play a little game with this, just for fun. How many things can you find wrong with this post? Use the comment form to respond, and then scroll down to see my list (don’t cheat!)

Publishers are deluged with queries and are actively looking for reasons to say no. Any of the eight points below will probably trigger rejection. All of them together? This proposal is going nowhere, fast. Similarly, executives look for reasons to brush off sales pitches…customers of any kind want to be romanced, but this letter is more like the equivalent of a wolf-whistle on the street corner.

1. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation count. I notice two typos (dropping the y in My and running high and school together into one non-existent word), one inappropriate hyphenation, and four inappropriate capitalizations.
2. Writing style counts. This limp and wooden paragraph gives me no confidence in the author’s ability.
3. I don’t even know if this is fiction or nonfiction, let alone the subject and genre. Tell me what the book is about, tell me your working title, get me interested.
4. Young Adult, in the children’s book market, is a much younger reader than high school. She doesn’t know her terms and her audience, which means she doesn’t know the industry, which means the product is not likely to be salable.
5. Don’t give me hype (gold-mine). Give me facts.
6. What a great market analysis—NOT! His students are eager for the book. OK, let’s say he teaches five classes of 30 kids each, which would be a pretty big load but not out of the question. OK, so that’s a universe of 150 students per semester. If even 25 percent of the market actually buys (and that’s about 5 to 10x more than I’d guess), you’ve just sold a whopping six books. That won’t even pay for the cover design. I think this particular gold mine may be all played out. And no other markets are mentioned.
7. What’s his name, what are his credentials, and why isn’t he writing his own letter?
8. Finally, why submit this to a media pitch service that goes to experts across all genres, seeking publicity by answering reporters’ queries? The targeting is very poor. It would make a lot more sense to pitch a list of actual publishers, don’t you think?

And by the way, if you’re thinking of submitting a book proposal or query letter to an agent or publisher, a bit of expert help can make a huge difference. I offer critique services, rewriting, or writing from scratch. And I’ve sold to Wiley, Simon & Schuster,and Chelsea Green, as well as gotten nibbles for my clients from many other fine houses. For those authors better suited to self-publishing, I walk you through every step of the process and we come out the other end with something as good as books coming from major publishers.