The Clean and Green Club, July 2020
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Category Archive for Frugal Marketing
The Clean and Green Club, June 2020
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The Clean and Green Club, May 2015
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The Clean and Green Club, December 2014
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Does Your Inbound Marketing Suffer from Outbound Mindset?
Outbound marketing: you go out and solicit your prospects. Inbound marketing: they come to you. And they require different mindsets, different approaches.
I really enjoyed this article on <https://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/june2012/why-green-consumers-are-leading-inbound-marketing-revolution?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=brandsweekly&utm_campaign=jun21>traditional, marketer-driven outbound (“push”) marketing versus consumer-driven inbound (“pull”) marketing—and it had a really good insight I want to share with you:
Whereas outbound marketing often provided consumers with fantasies (think of Budweiser commercials or luxury car ads,) inbound marketing provides consumers with facts. People aren’t researching and gathering information on what fantasy a company is trying to sell them on, they are researching the efficacy of their products, and (with ever-growing regularity) the social and environmental policies of specific brands.
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I’m a huge believer in pull marketing, in putting the consumer in the driver’s seat to actively seek out solutions and find you. All the way back in 1985, when I published my first marketing book, I talked about effective Yellow Pages presence. Yellow Pages was the web browser of its time, a way to seek out and compare all the providers of a service and make a decision based on who could serve you best. By the time I did my most recent (sixth) marketing book, the award-winning and category-best-selling Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I devoted significant space to inbound/pull strategies, from social media to Internet discussion groups. This kind of marketing is not at all intrusive; in fact, prospects actually welcome it.
But the insight that the reason it works so well is that it’s based in fact rather than fantasy is something I’d never articulated.
Conventional marketing wisdom tells us that emotions do the selling, and intellect serves only to justify the purchase to others.
That may or may not be true for outbound marketing. I’ve always been quite skeptical of that claim; I have said for years that the best selling uses both emotion and rationality, complementing each other. To put it another way, selling is much easier when the buyer has both the need and the desire. Either one by itself is rarely enough to close a purchase.
But it’s certainly not true of inbound marketing. When a prospect comes to you, he or she is presold on the purchase, or at least seriously considering and actively researching how to solve the problem or meet the goal. But the prospect may not be sold on which vendor to use.
This is your opportunity with inbound marketing: to show how your company is the right solution for the already motivated prospect. And here, intellect is often going to trump emotion. That doesn’t mean you eliminate all the emotional appeals—but you make sure they are rooted in an informational approach, and assume that the prospect already knows why he or she wants what you sell.
In last month’s newsletter, I reviewed a book right now that says businesses don’t need to advertise—but it makes a huge exception for directory listings (including Yellow Pages and search engine ads). I was having trouble with that differentiation, until I read this article. Now I finally understand what the authors are getting at: outbound advertising = fantasy, while listings (inbound advertising and marketing) = fact.
I’m not sure I agree, but at least now I see where they’re coming from.
What do you think—and feel—about this?
Pitching Journalists A Bit Off-Topic Without Pissing Them Off (February 2011 Tip)
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. 🙂
Why Tweet? Shel Horowtiz’s Clean And Green Newsletter, March 2012
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
Twitter, Part 2: What to Tweet
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, April 2012
Twitter, Part 2: What to Tweet
A key principle: Twitter is about building relationships over time.
That means if all you do is shout sales messages, you’re wasting most of Twitter’s potential. Yes, if you have a popular brand or retail store, your customers do want information about bargains. But they also want to feel like a human being is talking–and listening.
Personally, I strive for a ratio that is no more than 10 percent blatant self-promotion. The other 90% is a mix of passing on links to interesting information (often by retweeting someone else, with acknowledgment), responding to requests for–or asking for–advice, commenting on news or trends, engaging directly with people (responding or passing on a tweet, saying thank-you to people who have retweeted me, mentioned me as someone to follow, or mentioned my latest book (Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green), or just bringing a smile with a quote or a cool picture.
However, if other people say nice things about me or my offerings, I will retweet and/or thank them, and I don’t count that toward the 10 percent.
I guess it must be working, as I get 20 to 50 new followers in a typical week, all of them earned organically, without any game-the-system crap.
Last month’s Twitter, Part 1 newsletter brought this comment from Sherry Lowry in Austin, TX (@sherrylowry on Twitter):
“I really love Twitter (or actually the Twittter-related tools) and was expecting when reading your March news to either:
– see clips from your Twitter stream
– a chance to click right into or follow you
Ask and ye shall receive, at least this time. To follow me on Twitter, visit @ShelHorowitz or https://www.twitter.com/shelhorowitz
And here are five of my Tweets (all posted April 1). You’ll notice they illustrate several of the types above.
RT @TalkAboutIssues
Fact: President Ronald Reagan, an icon to most conservatives, supported increases in the debt limit 12 times over his two terms.#Obama2012 [Retweet]
Blog: How Southwest Airlines is Greening Their Planes
https://greenandprofitable.com/how-southwest-airlines-is-greening-their-planes/ [passing on interesting links–in this case, an automatic post to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn from my blog]
Fabulous! Beethoven’s 9 10,000 in the chorus, Japan https://www.youtube.com/embed/paH0V6JLxSI[passing on an interesting link that I found elsewhere]
@maddow I’m hoping for 39 x 3 more years of your speaking truth to power. Very happy birthday. [engaging directly, in this case with TV commentator Rachel maddow]
RT @SW_Coalition: Denise Hamler of @GreenAmerica will be hosting@ShelHorowitz for a talk on green business at (cont) https://tl.gd/goltff [Retweet of someone else’s tweet that promotes me]
I’m a pretty active Tweeter, so you can see lots more at https://twitter.com/shelhorowitz
The Clean & Green Club, February 2012
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One of the rules in pitching journalists through services that send queries from journalists seeking stories–such as HARO (
Great New Telesummit from Ryan Elliason
Ebook Award to Enter
Is there a more authentic marketing strategy than turning your fans into brand ambassadors? I’ve long been an advocate of this approach, but even so, Brains On Fire opened my eyes to possibilities I’d never thought about.
Read this book as an excellent companion to Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. And be sure to read the introduction, which has enormous value. Shel Horowitz’s Clean & Green Newsletter, December 2011
In This Issue…
- Will YOU be the One to Get a Brand New $1299 Multifunction Printer from Dell?
- This Month’s Tip: Market With Video, Part 1
- Friends Who Want to Help
- Hear & Meet Shel
- Another Recommended Book: The New Relationship Marketing
Will YOU be the One to Get a Brand New $1299 Multifunction Printer from Dell?
A few weeks ago, I received a gift of a very spiffy Dell 3335dn multifunction printer, which not only prints two-sided at high resolution from any computer on our network, but also scans, copies, e-mails, and stores documents in its memory. I have to tell you, even though I’ve gotten along just fine without in-house copying and faxing capabilities, I’m finding that I really enjoy having them.
Because the company is courting the green market for this printer (which not only can print both sides of the paper but also has some cool energy management features), Dell’s promotion team came to me and asked if I’d like to give one of these printers away. Of course, I agreed. But I put a condition on it. Rather than just give one away randomly, I’ll give it to the person who submits the best sustainability tip via my Twitter account during the giveaway days.
So you’ll be rewarded for your thinking processes, and probably not facing an enormous number of entries. In other words, if you give this your best shot, you’ll have a much better chance of winning than in most contests.
And five runners-up get a copy of my very useful e-book, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle.
Disclosure: as is obvious from above, I got one of these printers as a gift and have been using it steadily ever since.
By entering, you agree to both my rules and Dell’s rules for the contest. You’ll find both sets of rules posted at https://painlessgreenbook.com/win-a-1299-printer-december-16-19-2011
This Month’s Tip: Market With Video, Part 1
In this two-part series, I’ll first introduce the context of video marketing in today’s world–which is quite different from even a few years ago. Next month, I’ll follow up with specific things to keep in mind when shooting a video, and some ideas for what kind of content to create.
There are probably at least 1001 ways to promote a product or a service with video–a medium that penetrates the brain like no other (as we’ve known since the popularization of television began more than 60 years ago). Video used to require considerable technical skill and a whole pile of expensive equipment. But these days, anyone can shoot and produce a video. All you need is a pocket video camera or (for interviews) even just a Skype account with the call recorder add-on; distribution is as simple as uploading to a video sharing site like Youtube, Vimeo, Viddler, Ustream, or their many competitors.
(Note: For some purposes, I still advise professional production; the quality will be way better. Your speaker demo reel, for instance, should absolutely be done by a pro, and so should anything that you expect to go head-to-head with footage shot by big studios. But you can do a lot with homegrown videos.)
Video is enormously popular. This list of more than 300 video sharing sites <https://www.reelseo.com/list-video-sharing-websites/> includes Alexa rank (how much they get visited) and Google Page Rank (a vague indication of how much search engines like them). Astoundingly, 46 sites have an Alexa rank better than 1000. That means out of the roughly 300 million websites in the entire world, 46 of the 1000 most-visited websites exist to share video. And many of these sites allow user submissions of videos.
Alexa’s own Top Sites page gives Youtube the number 3 position in both the world and the United States, trailing only Google (which owns Youtube) and Facebook (data checked 12/12/11).
On Youtube, and presumably other sites, you can set up a branded URL for your own channel, building name recognition. You can also easily embed a video hosted on any of these sites into your own web pages and even e-mails.
And don’t forget that these sites are typically non-exclusive. You can post the same video on multiple sites, which may be especially useful if there’s a niche video site covering your area of expertise.
Friends Who Want to Help
Guerrilla Marketing Intensive–$1000 discount just for you
My co-author, Jay Conrad Levinson, “the Father of Guerilla Marketing,” has a few seats left in his next Guerrilla Marketing Intensive, at his Florida home, January 23rd-25th. 21 hours of training over three days. Normally $4997 (payable in up to four installments)–but Jay’s manager (his daughter Amy) has offered a $1000 discount to my subscribers. Limited to just ten people, so this is pretty in-depth. https://gmarketing.
To get this special rate, just click this link: mailto:olympiagal@aol.com?subject=Discount?cc=shel@frugalfun.com to tell Amy you want the $1000 off for Shel’s subscribers (Also tell her whether you prefer an online payment link or prefer to call in your payment info).
Remember the hit song, “Don’t Worry…Be happy?” But how do you GET happy without worrying? Ana Weber’s book/course, “The Happiness Thermometer,” can give you more than a few clues to increase your happiness quotient without having to worry about it. https://3bl.me/rb3y6n
Coop-themed Poetry Contest for Middle Schoolers
Know a middle-schooler who likes to write? Cheese and milk co-op Cabot is doing a poetry contest for students in grades 5-8, on the cooperative spirit. Winner not only gets a cash prize, but his or her poem on a Cabot butter box. For details: https://potatohill.com/files/20
Hear & Meet Shel
- Listen to the repay of my December 5 webinar for Ventureneer: Green Marketing: Leveraging Your Social Responsibility to Improve Profit, https://ventureneer.com/
webclass/green-marketing- leveraging-your-social- responsibility-improve-profit
- 1/4/12: Visit https://bigamericangiveaway.
com/ –I’m that day’s Massachusetts sponsor, and I’ll have some cool stuff for you: a gratis copy of my e-book Painless Green, and a $25 gift certificate good toward any consultation or copywriting. Same Deal applies to the London page of https:// bigbritishgiveaway.com on January 17.
- In negotiation to speak at conferences in Bangladesh and Switzerland. Nothing definite yet.
- 4/2/12: I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be doing a program for The Shift Network. For a year now, I’ve been listening to many of their calls, interviewing the creme de la creme of experts in sustainability and global consciousness. I’ll be part of the Green Business track of the ambitious Spring of Sustainability program, which also features such luminaries as Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben, Hunter Lovins, David Korten, Frances Moore Lappe and Duane Elgin. You will want to sign up for this entire series. I plan to listen to as many of the calls as possible. Watch for the registration link (no cost, I believe) in a future issue.
Another Recommended Book: The New Relationship Marketing by Mari Smith
About 80 percent of Mari Smith’s new book is about social media–but I’d say the other 20 percent might be worth the closest look.
That’s because Smith is not only a believer in meeting face-to-face, but a brilliant tactician who uses her prodigious online skills to totally win over the people she meets offline (at conferences, for example)–and tells you exactly how to do the same.
Using a powerful yet very accessible set of online research tools to steer her face-to-face encounters, Smith creates quite a bit of “wow factor” by integrating online comments about her presentation directly into the speech, in real time–and to not just show up very prepared to network with other speakers and attenders, but to have impressed them so much ahead of (as well as during) the event that they actually seek you out.
Smith outlines how she does this, step by step, in Chapter 7 of her new book, The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web (John Wiley and Sons, 2011). She titles the chapter, Go Offline to Optimize Your Online Marketing–but I’d actually flip that around. Really, it’s about going *online* to maximize your *offline* marketing.
While that chapter alone would be worth buying the book, it’s typical of the other good stuff, all based on the idea of using “radical strategic visibility” to build real relationships in business. She encourages businesses to think beyond B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) to “P2P”–people-to-people. For instance, she talks about how to get your A-list–the people you want to impress–to see you as a valued colleague…what parts of your social media presence you should and should not delegate, and why…how to recovery gracefully and with minimal damage from a social-media faux pas…how businesses with purely local clientele (such as restaurants) can market effectively on social media…identifying and cultivating “superfans” who will advance your brand perhaps better than you can do on your own.
And it all comes from an attitude of service, perhaps best summed up by this quote from pages 193-194: “Always be thinking about how you can tap into the intelligent network of people that will allow you to bring greater value to each and every individual and your community at large. Provide a better product and better service, and consistently build your social equity to establish your brand as the natural “go-to” for your field. You can become a top industry leader by utilizing the inclusion of your marketplace. If you’re really treating people as equals–whether it’s 10 or 10 million–then you are relating to each one with the greatest of respect by including and involving them.”
The book is also crammed with resources, both in the main text and in the appendix, and features a wonderfully comprehensive index (something I desperately wish more business books paid attention to).
About Shel and this Newsletter
As a marketing consultant and copywriter … award-winning author of eight books… international speaker, blogger, syndicated columnist — Shel Horowitz shows how green and ethical businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.
Shel began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way). Shel brings you a mix of actionable marketing tips, profiles of successful green and ethical businesses, and reviews of worthwhile books.
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