The Clean and Green Club

-> Turning Birthday Guests Into World Citizens: Clean & Green Spotlight

If the consumer pressure directed to kids is an issue for you…if you’re disgusted by over-the-top parties for 6- or 10-year-olds that cost thousands of dollars…if you want to raise your children with an awareness of how they can make a difference in the wider world—here’s something I found remarkable and inspiring.

A mom-run Canadian company, EchoAge.com, has completely turned traditional birthday parties inside out.  Instead of… (click here to continue reading)

-> All Pre-March Clean and Green Memberships Extended

Note: Because February presented some logistical challenges in getting the Club rolling, if you joined the Clean and Green Club in January or February either as a paying member or for the two-month no-cost trial, we are counting your membership as starting from March 1; trial memberships will run through March and April.

There are now well more than one million exact-match hits on Google for “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green”–wow! I don’t think I’ve ever been involved with something that had this much buzz.

This book is going to make some serious waves. It’s a completely different approach to the business mindset, based in ethics, cooperation, and environmental principles, and it’s generating some significant buzz. Reporters who’ve been interviewing me have been asking a lot deeper questions than I’m accustomed to getting–which is great.

Grab your copy and run your business according to its principles. You may find you suddenly have a significant competitive edge, and that it’s easier to be profitable even during a downturn.

Three formats available: paperback, Kindle, and traditional e-book. However you buy it, be sure to visit

https://guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/bonuses to claim the $2600 worth of bonuses (that’s about 120 times the price of the book!).

For paperback, your choice of five bookseller links from the bottom of the home page and several other pages at https://guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com

For e-books for B&N Nook, Blackberry, iPhone, iPhone Touch, PC and MAC: click here

For Kindle: click here

Oh, and if you’d like to help out with the launch, and at your option earn some very healthy commissions, please visit https://guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/submit-a-bonus/jv

-> Hear and Meet Shel

• John Ritskowitz, a/k/a the Marketing Medic, will be interviewing both me and my Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green co-author Jay Conrad Levinson Tuesday, March 16, 3 pm ET/noon PT. This should be interesting, because John is coming up from Connecticut to do the interview live, and Jay will join us by phone from Florida. John and I have known each other online for several years, but have never met. So he’s coming up for the afternoon, we’ll have lunch together, I’ll show him around the farm, I’ll tape an interview with him for my Clean and Green Club, and then he’ll interview me and Jay. By that time, we should be all warmed up and will probably head into some pretty advanced territory. https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/481396353
• Dave Mathison from Be The Media–a wonderful book, BTW–interviews me on Green markerting. david (at) bethemedia.com
• Just Added! I’ll be speaking in NYC Friday March 19 at GoGreenExpo’s Business Day, 12:30 pm ET, and then signing copies of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. Business buyers get in at no charge on Friday (with a relevant business card). If you’d like to attend Saturday and/or Sunday, here’s a discount code (gets you into the Architecture Fair also): visit https://www.gogreenexpo.com and use promo code NYSPEAKER when registering for tickets.
• March 24, I’m doing a teleseminar for Stacy Karacostas on Green and ethical business success: stacy (at) success-stream.com
• April 15, 9 pm ET/6 pm PT: Tweleseminar, “Communicate the Value in Your Values.” Justin Sachs, justin (at) justinsachscompanies.com
• April 24, I’ll be exhibiting at the Sustainability Expo in downtown Amherst, MA: CiccarelloS (at) amherstma.gov
• April 25, I’ll be speaking on collaborating with a co-author at the American Society of Journalists and Authors conference in New York. https://asja.org/wc/2010/
• April 29, 3 pm ET/noon PT, I’ll be presenting on Grassroots Book Marketing Strategies for Stephanie Chandler’s virtual Nonfiction Book Writers Conference: Contact janica (at) authoritypublishing.com
• May 8, I’ll be speaking once again on book marketing at CAPA University in Hartford, CT: https://www.aboutcapa.com/capa_university_writers_conferen.htm
• It looks pretty likely that I’ll be speaking on Green Marketing at SolarFest, sometime the weekend of July 16-18, in Tinmouth, Vermont. This is a wonderful event; I attended several years ago, and you can read about it here: https://www.frugalfun.com/solarfest.html
• October 12 at 7pm ET/4 pm PT: My third annual presentation to the MUSE Online Writers Conference. This time, Selling a Self-Published Book to a Traditional Publisher

-> Friends Who Want to Help You

• I’ve listened to several calls with Jack Zufelt over the years, and read a number of his newsletters. He’s smart, aggressive, and not afraid to be direct. $1 gets you a trial of his DNA of Success membership program – read all the details at https://bit.ly/b0C7Cg (affiliate link)
• If you’re a freelancer, consultant or solo professional in any field, I have a book recommendation for you. My friend Ed Gandia and two co-authors just released The Wealthy Freelancer: 12 Secrets to a Great Income and an Enviable Lifestyle (Penguin/Alpha). This book is brimming with practical, proven strategies the authors have used to consistently attract great clients, earn high incomes and enjoy a flexible lifestyle. And if you pick up a copy by midnight this Friday, you’ll get up to $321 in extra goodies. To learn more, visit https://www.TheWealthyFreelancer.com/amazon
• There’s no better way to get traditional press (a/k/a mainstream media) covering you than to answer inquiries from reporters looking for sources. I’ve used this strategy to be cited multiple times in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, even Woman’s Day (among many, many others). I subscribe to every service I know about that connects journalists and sources. My old friend Steve Harrison from Radio TV Interview Report has just launched a new one, with no charge for leads. https://bit.ly/bD6WzG (affiliate link). Given how much it costs to advertise in RTIR, this is a real bargain, at zero cost.

-> New on the Sites, March 2010

-> Media Coverage of Shel

-> Which of Shel’s Books is Right for You?

-> Administrative Information

Subscribe, unsubscribe, back issues, etc.

Published monthly since March 2010 by Shel Horowitz
16 Barstow Lane, Hadley, MA 01035 USA
413/586-2388

Here are the links of the month:
Read the rest of this entry »

If the consumer pressure directed to kids is an issue for you…if you’re disgusted by over-the-top parties for 6- or 10-year-olds that cost thousands of dollars…if you want to raise your children with an awareness of how they can make a difference in the wider world—here’s something I found remarkable and inspiring.

A mom-run Canadian company, EchoAge.com, has completely turned traditional birthday parties inside out. Instead of the usual model of everyone bringing a little present, Read the rest of this entry »

My eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson), was released just over a month ago, and I’ve been completely consumed with launch activities for several months leading up to the release.

Working with a major publisher for the first time in 18 years, I’m keenly aware of the publisher’s high expectations, and doing what I can to make waves. Here’s a bit of what I’ve done:

The partnership strategy

One of the most powerful marketing strategies I advocate in the book is to form alliances with others who are already reaching your key market. And taking my own advice, I put together several alliances in the project. First of all, I brought my co-author in: Jay Conrad Levinson, “the father of Guerrilla marketing,” is a marketing superstar with not only an extremely well-known brand but also a large and well-oiled marketing machine. From reading some of his other books, I had a feeling this concept of Green marketing would resonate with him. He was delighted to be part of this project. And that made it a much bigger book from the publisher’s point of view, and thus gave us considerably more leverage in negotiating a contract. Wiley has been great to work with, and I think part of the reason is that they see this as an important book. Oh yes, and when I asked them to do the book on recycled paper, they said, sure.

Next, I sought a charity partner for the launch. I brought in Green America, which is perfectly aligned with the philosophy of the book. It’s an organization that supports Green, local businesses.

And finally, I went out to my considerable network of bloggers, e-zine publishers, and such, and offered them the opportunity to benefit from promoting the launch: first, by submitting a bonus and getting exposure to everyone who registers as a buyer—resulting in a package of over $2600 worth of extra goodies that anyone who buys the book (no matter where they buy it) can get with a couple of clicks. And second, by launching a membership program in conjunction with the launch, and offering commissions on any sales of that program. So they had two incentives to participate, and these make it sweeter for  buyers of the book as well as for the marketing partners.

What are the results of these three partnerships? On my own, I have access to about 10-12,000 people (depending on how much overlap there is between my newsletter subscribers and my book buyers). Bringing Jay in added 84,000 people. Adding Green America added 94,000. And adding the bloggers/publishers reached another 800,000. So I went from the 10,000 people I could reach on my own to 988,000. In other words, I could reach almost a million people through partnerships. And those partners and their networks are spreading the word even further; as of February 23, exactly one month after the publication date,  hits on Google for “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green” (exact match) were an extraordinary 1,140,000. I don’t think I’ve ever been involved with anything that got a million hits on Google before.

What did these partner campaigns cost me? Almost nothing. The only things I had to pay out were to cover a few hours of my assistant’s time to set up the infrastructure (less than $200), and the results-based payment to the charity partner. All the rest was just time and creativity.

Partnering was only one strategy in this launch. Tune in next month for more takeaways from this campaign.

REMINDER: Unless you step forward, next month will be the last issue of this newsletter. If you want it to keep going, make your voluntary contribution via paypal: shel@frugalfun.com, specify Book Marketing Tips. You’ll get refunded if we don’t reach a critical mass of funding. Why not do it now, while you’re thinking about it?

NOTE: Now that this column is restricted to paid subscribers, you’ll notice the reviews are a lot more in-depth, and I’m picking the books more carefully. Order links will be at the end of the reviews, when possible. Enjoy!

All Customers Are Irrational: Understanding What They Think, What They Feel, and What Keeps Them Coming Back, by William J. Cusick (Amacom, 2009)

Reviewed by Shel Horowitz, primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green

Most companies, says Cusick, are completely wrong-headed about customer satisfaction. If they pay attention to it at all, Read the rest of this entry »

6. Create an Irresistible Product! Once again, these partners have only a limited number of products they can promote—so a smart thing to do is to make a product they’ll fall in love with. The more they personally think the product is fabulous, the more they’ll want to promote it. Your product should make people’s lives better when they use it! At least since my third book came out in 1993, my books have gotten extremely positive feedback from readers. People constantly praise their practicality, their approachable language, and their easy-to-implement yet radically different concepts. This newest book, in my opinion, is far and away the best book I’ve written yet. It has the potential to actually change the business culture in our society.

7. Sweeten the Appeal with Social Proof—and Let Others Spread It Not only does this book have the imprimatur of one of the country’s most successful publishers of business books, not only does it carry the name of the single most successful author in the field, but the book is also going to press with more than 50 endorsements, some of them quite prominent. Not to mention a foreword by another celebrity author, Stephen M.R. Covey, son of the 7 Habits guy (also named Stephen Covey) and author in his own right of the amazing (and relevant to my book) bestseller The Speed of Trust. In short, we’ve made it a no-brainer to believe that this is a book worth reading, because the experts have already certified it. And throughout the marketing, we have subtle little messages that it’s ok, even encouraged, to pass it on. For instance, the launch email invites recipients to pass it on.

8. Remember to Implement the Traditional Marketing Strategies While I expect to gain most of my sales through the power of endorsements from my partners, we’re also doing a lot of the lower-cost pieces of traditional marketing:

9. Build the Buzz For months, I’ve been dropping hints (not repeating the exact same message, but creating different messages) about this book everywhere I can. I’ve even had a form up to collect e-mail addresses for advance notification. Since it often takes multiple contacts to move people to action, when they get the announcement that the book is finally out, I’m hoping for a lot of “oh, yeah, I’ve been hearing about this and I need it.”

10. Have the Infrastructure In Place We set a week-long window for the partner mailings, so people could mail on their own schedules (and told them they could still mail even if they missed the window). We bought inexpensive, robust software for managing password-protected membership sites that include affiliate programs (yes, this is an affiliate link). We thoroughly tested the forms to capture bonuses and load them into the bonus package with minimal work from us (we see and approve it so nobody fills it with crap, and then off it goes). We put up two new websites, one for the book and one for the membership program. We talked to the charity partner ahead of time. Ideally, that phase would be a couple of months,but we had to compress it into a couple of weeks.

The secret to a successful online product launch is no secret at all: It’s to extend your reach well beyond your own network, by recruiting other people to get behind the launch and spread your offer around. This is the keystone of most Internet-millionaire fortunes, and a very different way of thinking from what’s typically found in the off-line world.

Experts who run these campaigns or who sell how-to packages charge many thousands of dollars. I charge a whole lot less than that to tell you step by step the 10 steps I’m incorporating into my own launch campaign for my just-released eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson) , which I’m hoping will reach five million people. Here we go: Read the rest of this entry »

For authors and publishers, certain ways to structure a website make particular sense. Lets explore six different models (three this month, and three next month): Resource sites, author sites, publisher or series sites, buy-my-book sites, blog sites, and salesletter sites.

Common Elements

For the first four of these six, certain common elements could be:

•            A navigation mechanism

•            Pages that create interest in your book(s) and/or you as the author

•            Pages that market the author to the media and to meeting planners, schools, bookstores and libraries

•            Pages that market your book to resellers

•            Materials that others can freely use on their own websites, e-newsletters, and print publications (thus spreading you to new audiences)

•            A blog that you can update on your own, at any time (some whole sites are nothing but a blog; see the fifth model)

•            Schedule of appearances (if you can keep it current—personally, I find it easier to do this in my newsletters)

•            Archive of past newsletters

•            Some way of keeping in touch with visitors

•            Feedback mechanisms: contact information and forms, order forms, comment pages, etc. (Warning: Never put your e-mail address as a text link on your website; the spam robots will collect it and you’ll be sorry! I recommend web-based contact forms)

•            Links to other relevant websites

•            A site-wide search tool (Google has a particularly nice one, and it’s free)

Let’s look more closely at the pages that generate interest in you and your book; they should offer…

• Solid information that will save or earn the reader money, solve a problem, learn a new skill, address a pressing desire (e.g., lose weight, find a mate, de-stress), shed light on historical or current events, etc.
• Excellent entertainment
• A brush with celebrity

Resource Sites

When people search on the Web, they’re typically looking for specific information about a topic. If they find your site while they’re searching, you hope the high-quality information you provide will convince them to buy—or at least sign up for your newsletter so you can sell to them later.

To set up this type of site, create a few dozen pages on your topic. These are fun sites to do and easy to gain traffic but they can get out of hand pretty quickly, because there’s so much good stuff out there.

You can see examples at <https://www.frugalfun.com > (my site on having fun cheaply, with arts and travel magazines and frugality resources—which gets at least 50,000 visits every month these days) and <https://www.frugalmarketing.com> (my general business site). Both of these sites actively promote my books but also attract a lot of traffic that will never buy, because they just want the specific information they came for

Author Sites

A site to promote your ” brand” as an author. It should let readers get a sense that they know you personally, as well as, of course, introduce them to your various books. It may or may not have a direct-selling component.

This kind of site is also an ideal place to set up a fan club.

My wife’s site at <https://www.ddinafriedman.com> is one of these

Publisher or Series Sites

Similar to the author site, but promoting the book series or entire publisher line. Typically, these present a catalog page, with tiny book covers and brief descriptions; when you click on the cover or description, you get much deeper information about the book.

Condensed from a much more in-depth section in Shel Horowitz’s seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers.

Would you believe…a household paper products company that switched to recycled raw materials in 1950, and has been producing recycled paper towels, napkins, toilet paper, and tissues ever since? A company that was so dedicated to creating “paper made from paper, not from trees”(TM) that it actually set up its own paper collection service (and currently collects paper for recycling from a 300mile radius)? A company that saw no reason to jack up prices and has remained a consistent player in the lower price points? And a company that did this with such humility that it didn’t bother telling the public for decades, and didn’t make a big deal about it until this spring?

Yes, this company exists. Marcal, founded in 1932, went to manufacturing its paper products from recycled paper nearly 60 years ago. Small mentions had crept into the packing by the early 1990s—but only when turnaround CEO Tim Spring and several other executives were hired to bring the company back from bankruptcy in 2008 did the company realize it was sitting on a marketing goldmine. This spring (2009), Marcal launched its Small Steps(TM) consumer brand, aimed squarely at environmentally conscious consumers. Not only is it 100% recycled, but the manufacturing process does not use chlorine bleach, the products are hypoallergenic and nearly lint-free

We could save a full million trees if every American household bought just a single roll of recycled paper towels, box of recycled tissues, or package of napkins, the company says.

What does that mean specifically? Every year, saving a million trees would:

• Keep 250 million pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air while adding 260 million pounds of oxygen (enough to supply 520 million people)
• Absorb the much carbon produced by a million cars each driving 26,000 miles
• Substantially reduce methane emissions (potentially a bigger problem than CO2) from landfills, compared to using virgin paper

As a consumer, I became aware of recycled paper in the early 1970s, and started looking for suppliers. At that time it was very hard to find any paper identified as recycled, and even harder to find recycled paper that was high enough quality and low enough price to make the switch worth it.

In the past ten or fifteen years, it’s gotten much easier. I now buy exclusively recycled paper not only for household products (where prices are comparable to standard brands) but also for my office printers (where I have to pay substantially more). When I think of how much Marcal recycled paper I would have bought in the decades starting from when I became aware until the market finally caught up, I have to wonder what took them so long.

And now that in the few months since its introduction, Small Steps, which is in about 50 percent of US markets, has become the top-selling recycled brand, Marcal executives must be wondering the same thing. (It just proves the case I make in my forthcoming book Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet that it’s not enough to be a Green company, you also have to tell the world.)

Marcal is even beginning to gather signatures on this nice little eco-pledge:

I am only one person.
But what I do impacts the whole world.

I have decided that the health of the earth is important to me.
I have decided to honor this priority in small ways.

If I can share a ride or take public transportation to help save the air, I will.

If I can make everyday choices that help save energy, I will.

If I can choose recycled paper that help save the forests and wildlife habitats, I will.

The company is promoting the pledge through social media, appearances by its spokesperson, and through a link on its community page. I signed, and I hope you will too. Meanwhile, I’ve been buying Small Steps, and can report that the quality is fine.

Incidentally, in the new book, I discuss ways companies can protect themselves from accusations of greenwashing. One of those is to state honestly that you’ve been using recycled materials for 30 years. Next year, Marcal will be able to double that claim.

(Special thanks to Lindsay Jacob of Marcal for supplying a lot of raw material I used in researching this article.)

Dealing with the Tough Stuff: Practical Wisdom for Running a Values-Driven Business, by Margot Fraser and Lisa Lorimer (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009)

Every business faces challenge like revenue crunches, supplier issues, personnel problems, and of coure, stress. For socially conscious businesses, the challenges re multiplied by the need to address these problems in ways consistent with the company’s social and environmental commitment, even if that’s not the easiest path.

In this latest entry in B-K’s excellent Social Ventue Network series, Fraser and Lorimer, past CEOs of Birkenstock USA and Vermont Bread Company, resectively (with substantial help from Carol Berry of Putney Pasta, Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Yogurt, Joe O’Connell of Creative Machines, Marie Wilson of the Ms. Foundation and White House Project, and Tom Raffio of Northeast Delta Dental) show solutions that worked, and solutions that failed.

The book will be very useful to companies with at least a few employees and revenues in the seven to nine figures, and particularly those facing rapid changes in their market or corporate identity (from products going out of fashion to challenges in getting financing without onerous strings attached, to dealing with rapid growth). One section that will apply just as clearly to much smaller and perhaps larger companies is the last chapter, on how to exit from the business while still maintaining not only the viability of the company but also its core values. Even social entrepreneurship pioneer Ben & Jerry’s got burned on that one.

Learning from Ben & Jerry’s mistakes, Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg describes how he held out for the right buyer, one who would take the ownership burden while leaving him with decision-making power. It was a long search, but he did find his buyer. Birkenstock’s Fraser was not as fortunate; transfer of ownership to her employees was a disaster, and the company had to be regrouped and sold off to its German parent, even as the German company was gong through management transition of its own.

Some advice comes though consistently in chapter after chapter:

• Understand the numbers and what they mean
• Use a board of outside advisors (including ten great tips on how to set up and work with your board)
• Heart, head, and gut all play important roles—but you also need a reality check
• Don’t undersell yourself, don’t overcommit yourself, and yet don’t be afraid to take on big challenges
• Avoid getting trapped by your own “socially responsible mindset arrogance” (as Lorimer puts it)—but don’t let the nay-sayers stop you from bringing those values into every aspect of your business; as Fraser says, you don’t have to give your vision away to make quotas
• Hire people who know more than you—but don’t let them push you into decisions you’ll regret

While the book spends a fair bit of time on the grim realities, it also offers hope that companies who maintain their high standards of ethics and social/environmental responsibilities are often well-placed to survive the challenges of the corporate world and the marketplace, and come out stronger as a result.