The Clean and Green Club

A lot of marketers think the one-page salesletter website is the one solution for all kinds of businesses. Other marketers believe every website should be a full-blown info-portal, with lots of links and menus. But I’m not in either camp.

I believe firmly that different products, offers, and audiences lend themselves to different approaches. In fact, in my seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, I describe seven different types of websites and suggest good situations for each.

One of those seven that you probably haven’t come across elsewhere is the “triage website”: a concept that I’m pretty sure I invented, and that’s very helpful selling the same product to different audiences (something that fits many books), or sells different products. Ironically enough, if you’re using a one-page salesletter site and driving traffic through anything other than extremely specific campaigns such as pay-per-click, it might be the perfect front end to show visitors before they get to your salesletter.

A triage website uses the home page to identify and separate different categories of visitors, and to present content that resonates with those specific people.

So, for instance, if you visit https://www.grassrootsmarketingforauthors.com/, you’ll see some introductory text about the book industry overall, and then these choices:

• Click here if you’ve already written and published your book
• Click here if you’re a publisher of more than one author
• Click here if you have written or mostly written your book and you’re trying to figure out how to get it published and marketed
• Click here if you have an idea for a book but haven’t written it yet
• Click here to read what Dan Poynter, John Kremer, Fern Reiss, and other experts say about Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers
• Click here if you love facts and statistics and want sources for all the numbers cited in this report
• Click here if you’re ready to order

Each leads to a slightly different page, tweaked to provide maximum impact to those particular visitors.

Note that it’s helpful if the categories are at least somewhat related. I noticed that publishing guru Dan Poynter has actually moved away from a triage homepage at parapublishing.com. Previously, his home page offered four widely disparate choices: book publishing/marketing, expert witness, cat lovers, and of course, parachuting. (You can see an archived version here.) Now, the home page is about publishing, and if you know where to look (bottom of the left column) you can find links to the other sites (subsections of the main site).

I’m guessing he changed because the four topics just had too little to do with each other , creating challenges for things like search engine optimization, not to mention possible confusion. However, from a user interface point of view, the transition wasn’t all that smooth. If I were him, I’d probably set up different domains for each major area, and go through the whole site to make sure that key pages reflect the new architecture.

What’s the best kind of website to promote *your* book? You might just find the answer in Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers. And remember–if you order either that book or Principled Profit, you can currently get the original Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World (which has very little overlap witht he Grassroots for Authors and Publishers) at half price.

The last two months, we’ve talked about social networking communities–places like Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, CollectiveX, Ning, LinkedIn, and literally hundreds of others.

But social networking is only one of many types of Web 2.0 sites. Any site that allows visitors to participate actively, and not just passively receive information, is a Web 2.0 site, and can be used in some ways for marketing purposes. Among the possibilities.

Your Own and Others’ Blogs

Blogs have several advantages over traditional websites. To name a few:

• They get into the search engines almost instantly (I once did a Google search for something I’d blogged about ten minutes earlier, and my blog post was there, on the first page of the results)
• It’s easy to increase the reach of a blog by feeding it to your social networking profiles
• You can set your blog to automatically ping Technorati and other blog content aggregators, so people will find you quickly if you blog about something topical and hot

Your own blog should be closely focused on the topic you want to promote. It’s OK to have an occasional post that’s off topic, but you’ll get much better results if you can stay on track. This is a challenge for me, so I describe my blog broadly: as covering “the intersections of ethics, politics, media, marketing, and sustainability–that’s big enough territory that I can ramble, and still be within that rubric.

Note: I strongly advise hosting your blog on your own server, and not on the software’s server

There are also other blogs I follow, and make public comments every once in a while. Posting on others’ blogs gets me known and respected by people I want to impress, exposes me to their fans, and also provides high-quality backlinks to my own various sites.

More kinds of sites next month.

If you are involved with a retail business, a community agency or nonprofit, a home-based entrepreneurial venture, an Internet business, or any other venture where you try to find markets for your products, services, or ideas–listen up!

Here’s a special half-price offer on Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, which was a Finalist for ForeWord magazine’s Book of the Year Award, has been endorsed by Jay Conrad Levinson (author of the Guerrilla Marketing books), and praised in the national press.
Read the rest of this entry »

Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip, April, 2008
Vol. 11, #11

In order to get much out of a networking site, you need to network. There are dozens of ways to do this, and here are a few.

1. Friending. Most social networks offer the option of sending a friend or business connection request–called “friending.” Start with friends, colleagues, relatives, people in nearby locations, and see where it leads. The cool thing is that when you “friend” someone, and they accept, you get to look over their friends and friend any that look interesting. Since I travel in marketing circles, I often find very good connections (industry leaders, gurus and such) within the friend networks of those who reach out to me. Almost as cool: every time you post something to your profile, all your connections get a notice about it. Note: You will get friend requests too. I say yes to most of mine if I can see some common interests–or if they respond appropriately to a note I send saying I don’t recognize them, how do we know each other or if we don’t, what led them to friend me?

2. Public messaging. One tip I picked up from Facebook guru Mari Smith: the social networks offer private and public message options. If you’re welcoming someone to the network or thanking that person for a friend invite, do it in the public comment space (like the profile or the wall) rather than in a private message. I usually include *one* link at the end of my post.

3. Interest groups. This is the 800-pound gorilla of successful social networking, and so far, relatively few people are taking advantage. Find groups that are relevant to your interests, your geography/history (e.g., your city, the schools you attended) and/or your business, and participate actively on a few of them (don’t forget that link at the end).

4. Requests for help. Ask questions about resources, tactics, suppliers. Answer questions in your field of interest. (LinkedIn is really nice for that).

P.S. If you’d like to friend me, here are my most active profiles.
Plaxo: https://pulse.plaxo.com/pulse/profile/show/128849525442/
Facebook shortcut: https://profile.to/shelhorowitz
LinkedIn: https://snipurl.com/1w1s3
CollectiveX: https://www.collectivex.com/network/show_profile/54661

If you include a message that you subscribe to my newsletter, I’ll accept your request.

Correction: The Facebook group for reporter queries got too big for Facebook’s 1200-member limit. It now has its own website, and you can sign up to receive queries at https://helpareporter.com/

Note: Do NOT abuse this list. Only respond appropriately, and only to appropriate queries, or you’ll spoil it for everyone. You don’t want to get journalists mad at you, and nor do you want to get on the bad side of either Peter or me.

Next month: Other Web 2.0 sites

Something very special: Jay Conrad Levinson, the man who gave us both the Guerrilla Marketing series and the Marlboro Man, is doing a seminar on the French Riviera, May 24 & 25, 2008, and there are only 79 seats, total.

“Jay Conrad Levinson had coffee with me in 1983 and it changed my life forever. Jay has forgotten
more about effective marketing techniques than most of us will ever know. He’s the man.”
— Seth Godin, best-selling author of Permission Marketing and Unleashing the Ideavirus.

Jay is sharing the program with a couple of other marketing legends, among them Mitch Meyerson, Monroe Mann and Alexandru Israil (who is apparently an Internet marketing legend in Europe), plus there are $847 worth of goodies for attenders.Organizer Christophe Poizat, whom I’ve been networking with since December, has allowed me to offer some special pricing, on a limited basis:

• Code Savings Number available
• xgmcp999 —> 50.00% discount –> 1 Ticket
• xgmcp998 —> 30.00% discount –> 5 Tickets
• xgmcp997 —> 20.00% discount –> 10 Tickets
• xgmcp996 —> 10.00% discount –> 20 Tickets

Use whichever discount code gives you the best price still available.

To register, or to learn more about the speakers, etc., please click here. (Yes, it’s an affiliate link)

Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip, March, 2008
Vol. 11, #10

It’s kind of funny, but it took me quite a while to begin actually marketing on social networking sites. I’ve been on LinkedIn for probably five years, MySpace for maybe a year, and several others (Ning, Ryze, Eons, probably more I’m forgetting). But it was only when I joined Facebook in October, and then shortly thereafter found my way to Plaxo and CollectiveX that I finally started using them to really do some business.

It’s kind of odd that it took me so long because I’ve been marketing very effectively on their predecessors–email discussion groups or web-based forums and bulletin boards–for over a decade, and I first wrote about the idea of marketing online via many-to-many groups way back in 1991, when I wrote Marketing Without Megabucks.

And I freely admit there are bugs to be worked out. Some of the interfaces are confusing. I find that I see a screen and find two or three things I want to follow, and then after I’ve followed one I can’t always get back easily to the next one. The e-mail notifications seem to be very erratic; sometimes I’ll sign on and find a dozen posts I should have been notified about.

Yet in the few months that I’ve been participating actively, I’ve found that there’s a lot of good to be had. A few examples:
* I get notices from a Facebook group called “If I can help out a reporter, I will”–Peter Shankman, a well-known NYC PR, guy posts notices from journalists looking for sources. There’s a lot less competition from other responders compared to some of the other media services, and the price is right (zero). Very few of the leads are relevant to me, but if I get covered in even one major publication, that’s well worth participating.
* The owner of a large marketing agency on the West Coast had a long talk with me about the possibility of opening up an East Coast division for him. This is in the formative stages, but should it materialize, it would be a major step forward in my business. I met him on Plaxo.
* This same person connected me with a like-minded gentleman only an hour away from me. I’m scheduled to meet him in person later this month when he attends my speech. And all three of us have a number of ways we can co-market.
* Facebook allows me to post my blog into my profile, potentially exposing it to many, many more readers.
* When I post something to my blog that I think will be relevant to some of my social networking communities, I can post the link and a comment. I can also do this for links I didn’t write, but which others will find useful, and this boosts my standing in these communities.
* The France-based founder of two of the communities I participate on through CollectiveX had a long phone call with me, and will be looking for chances to bring me to Europe to speak at his conferences. And if that happens, I can finally bill myself as an international speaker (a goal of mine for several years).
* Industry experts who no longer respond to e-mail can often be reached through social network sites.

Next month: Specific strategies to use on social network sites

Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip, February 2008

Sometimes, you have to eat some crow. Over the years, I’ve built a number of relationships with reporters who have interviewed me or used me as a source.

One of these reporters was looking for sources on a story, and I responded. He came back with a no, thank you–and I asked why.

When he responded, I made an almost fatal mistake, and made a remark that he interpreted as pushing too hard. He found my remark patronizing, thought his judgment was being attacked, and basically told me never to darken his door again.

Ooops! Time to mend fences.

I’ve learned from my friend Bob Burg, author of Winning Without Intimidation, that antagonistic interactions are almost always less effective than being nice. And I hadn’t even meant to antagonize this man to begin with!

So I let it set overnight so as not to do anything even more rash, and then wrote a note with a one-word subject line: “Apology”:

I am so sorry. I totally respect your decision and wasn’t trying to badger you to change it–but rereading what I wrote, I can see how it came across. I’m a morning person. I should just not do email late at night when I don’t always say what I mean. I actually thought you’d be amused by the irony, as I was.

Mea culpa.

Happy holiday to you and yours.

The apology was effective. I got back a note that began, “Thanks for the apology – I can understand a tone going awry.” he then outlined a bit more about what the was actually looking for, and I responded with a few suggestions that didn’t have anything to do with what I’d been pitching and didn’t benefit me personally. In fact, I even cited one book that “I just tried to find it for you on Amazon but it seems to be out of print.”

He wrote back a very friendly note.

The lesson here is that it was worth the time and effort to redeem a relationship that had turned sour–and not just because he’s someone with the power to help me by writing abut me, but because my life is better for not carrying around the negative baggage of building an unnecessary wall of hostility.

I had the advantage that the reporter actually communicated his frustration with me, giving me the chance to respond. Sometimes you have to actually figure out what’s really going on, because the other person hasn’t told you. This was brought home to me many years ago, when a relative expressed concern that he felt a lot of distance from me. That gave me the opening to explain (rather loudly) exactly why I was furious with him. He hadn’t had a clue what was going on inside me and why, but to his eternal credit, he acknowledged his contribution to the problem, changed the behavior, and rebuilt the relationship he had lost. And we’re both very glad of this, more than 30 years later.

I’ve decided to stay with last month’s theme of email conversations for a couple of more issues. Long-time readers will know that I’m very big on building relationships–before you need them–with people who can help you.

Here’s an example of how I turned my negative reaction to an article in a very prominent Internet marketing newsletter (circulation 40,000 or so) into a bylined article in that newsletter. Read the rest of this entry »

Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip: December 2007

Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Book Marketing Tip: November 2007

[Note to Frugal Marketing readers: I believe the points in my last Book Marketing column are very relevant to marketing in general, even though some of what I cited is industry-specific. If you subscribe to both newsletters, you may have read this article ten days ago, though I’ve modified it slightly and added a third point.]

I was just beginning to think about what I’d write in today’s issue when an email arrived with a rambling, incoherent book proposal for a genre I don’t publish in. It is clearly being sent to every publisher this author could find, although at least this person had the sense to send individually addressed e-mails one at a time.

It’s not a coincidence that this showed up just as I was contemplating my monthly message. So, rather than hitting the delete key, I actually answered–and I’ll share my answer with you.

There are three marketing points I want to make with this letter:

1: In any business communication–a book proposal, a joint venture proposal, a salesletter, even a press release–understand who is reading it and focus on what your audience has to gain from your idea

2. Do your research, so that *you* understand the other party’s interests and markets.

3. If someone who doesn’t understand the above approaches you inappropriately, think about how you can respond in a way that draws that person’s attention to how you can solve that person’s problem or satisfies his or her desires in a way that benefits you as well–just as I turned the conversation to why this author needs my book. Ultimately, marketing is always about a conversation.

And now, on to my response.

Dear (author’s name):

Thank you for your proposal. It isn’t going to work for us, and I wanted to explain why. This is going to sound harsh–but you will be wondering why your proposal isn’t even being answered–and I’m going to tell you, because I believe you have a right to know, and that once you understand, you’ll be in a better position to do it differently, and perhaps eventually find the publisher you seek. I am guessing my response will be the only answer you get other than a form note saying thank you, not interested.

1. If you want to be taken seriously in the publishing world, you need to do your research. You would see that my firm doesn’t publish books like this, and in fact doesn’t publish books by other authors. Just as you wouldn’t propose a business venture to a car manufacturer to make breakfast cereal, so you wouldn’t query a business book publisher with one author about a book that is not about business.

2. No publisher wants to know that you’re sending this around to lots and lots of publishers. You want to make the publisher feel special, talk about the books they’ve done that are in the same market, show them you know something about their company–and with the Internet, it’s so easy to do this now.

3. A book proposal should focus on why it is to the advantage of *the publisher* to take on this project. That means you look at how similar books have performed, you demonstrate the size of the audience, and you show the publisher how you intend to reach this audience through your speaking and writing, your personal networks, the publications with which you have relationships, etc.

4. Your proposal shows a lack of understanding about the industry. Most publishers do not translate in-house; they sell the rights to a publisher that produces books in that language (and not all books get translated–there has to be a publisher interested in the destination country). And publishers don’t find you a “famous book store.” Most publishers reach bookstores through distributors and wholesalers, and those orders occur for the most part when you, the author, generate interest in the book through media interviews and other methods (I go into this in detail in my own book Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers).

I would suggest that you visit https://www.grassrootsmarketingforauthors.com and purchase a copy of my book Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers. Orders from that website (either printed book or electronic edition) include several bonuses, including a five-chapter e-book called “How to Write and Publish a Marketable Book” (which I think would be extremely helpful to you). It also includes two actual marketing plans that you can use either to use as a model for your book proposal (though you would have to add an analysis of competing titles and your own credentials) or to map out a workable strategy for becoming your own publisher.

Wishing you the best of luck,
Shel Horowitz, Publisher
AWM Books

Concluding our series on pay-per-click advertising–Shel Horowitz’s Frugal Marketing Tip, November 2007.

With any paid strategy, where dollars are flowing–in some cases quite rapidly–out of your pocket for your marketing, you want to be sure you’re tracking and tweaking and tracking again.

Sometimes, changing a single word in the headline or reversing two lines in the body of the ad can shift response enormously. So you measure your results, make changes, test the results again. You do this for any ad medium, but the beauty of pay-per-click is that you can get the data very quickly, make the tweak within minutes, and test again. So you can refine your tactics on the fly, rather than waiting months if your campaign is based on (as an example) print advertising in monthly magazines.

You need to test the ad headline, the ad body copy, the landing page headline, design, body copy, offer, etc. Testing is so critical that if you’re not willing to put in the time for testing, I don’t think you should be doing PPC to begin with. This is the big reason why I haven’t really used it so far; I just don’t have the time to look at how well it’s working.

The traditional way is to test one element at a time–but that takes too long and is far too much work. I’d recommend using “multivariate testing” software that automates the whole process and allows you to test a number of variables at once.

Since I have no experience, I can’t recommend a specific solution–but here’s a link that will connect you with lots of possibilities. Ask questions like:

• How much will it cost–upfront and ongoing?
• How many variables can you track at once?
• Is your solution appropriate for my size business–why or why not, and if not, what would you recommend?
• Please give me a rough idea of the technology you use.
• Please send me a link to objective third-party reviews.
• May I have contact information for some happy customers?
• How long have you been in business?

If money is a factor, this link goes to freeware and shareware possibilities