The Clean and Green Club

Several months ago, I had Dee Boyle-Clapp, co-owner of Starlight Llama Bed & Breakfast in Florence, MA, as a guest on my radio show. Prior to the show, she sent me a marvelous list of the Green steps she and her husband have taken with the inn, and the list so inspired me that I put it in my Future Positive Power Spotlight file. Having just read Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (all about eating locally and minimizing environmental impact), I feel this is the perfect time to share it with you–in part as a tribute to Barbara, whose book doesn’t quite fit the criteria for reviewing in my column, but is extremely worth reading, and in part because it shows how much each of us can actually do to improve our environment, even here in cloudy, cold New England. I have both photovoltaic and hot water solar systems on my own roof, but unike Starlight Llama, we do remain connected to (and dependent on) the grid.

Here’s Dee:

We are Massachusetts’ first solar-powered, off the grid B&B.  Our house has never been grid-tied.

We serve gourmet vegetarian breakfasts using organic or locally grown products.  We feature vegetables, fruit and herbs grown in our own organic gardens and we serve eggs from our own free-range hens.

Wherever possible we use green and scent-free laundry and cleaning products.  We never use a dryer, which we feel wastes energy.

The house was built with wood taken from our own land and many found or recycled products including our large  4 x 8 ft windows in the greenhouse and diningroom.

We are commited to preservation and put 55 acres of our property into a conservation restriction, to help serve as a wildlife corridor for the region’s deer, bobcat, coyotes, moose, bear, fox and other animals.

Much of our heat is from our passive solar greenhouse (in the winter on sunny days we don’t need to turn on other heat sources).  Our home is also heated by wood cut, split, stacked by family members from our own land.

We heat our hot water via 3 systems: on-demand for the B&B rooms, and a blend of wood heated or solar heated water for the kitchen and the rest of the house

The B&B is located on a llama farm that uses integrated pest management to control ticks and bugs harmful to llamas.  Our guinea fowl and peacocks wander our property freely and together have reduced deer and dog ticks.

Our product choices are as low impact as possible.  Many of our bed sheets are made from bamboo.  We use cloth napkins at breakfast, and reusable cups in the rooms.

I knew bamboo could be used as a sustainable, regrowble building material, but didn’t know you could make bedsheets out of it!

Yeah, the big words in the headline are on purpose…and very relevant. Cognoscenti are those in the know, the experts, connoisseurs (same route word, I believe—but French origin, rather than Italian). the secret society,if you will. What Edward Bulwer-Lytton called “the great unwashed.”

Hoi polloi are the rest of us, the masses.

Sometimes you want to market to one sometimes the other. There’s actually a lot to be said for marketing to an in-group, especially if you don’t have to pay to reach those not in your target audience. When you make your prospects feel special, they’re more likely not only to do business with you, but to maintain an ongoing business relationship. You make them feel appreciated, you talk to them on their own level. Just as with my headline, I’m identifying you, my reader, as someone sophisticated enough to be curious about the headline and to read the article. After all, I could have said “snobs vs. the masses” or “the elite vs. the common people.” But those are so…ordinary! You get no satisfaction from conquering those molehills.

When you write for the masses, make your language as accessible as possible. But when you’re seeking a much more select audience, jargon and “secrets” have their place, if not done to excess. Not only does your audience feel like you’re talking directly to them, they feel like you’re one of them.

I was inspired to write this after reading copywriter Ivan Levison’s critique of an ad with the headline,

Levison wrote,

It seems to me that this is less a headline than a secret message that needs decoding, and make no mistake. Writing an ambiguous headline like this  can destroy readership of an ad, email, Web page, brochure, you name it.

Now, I’ve been involved at least a bit with energy and environmental issues all the way back to the 1970s, and to me, this headline made perfect sense. The grid is the infrastructure that transmits the nation’s electricity. The footprint, of course, is a carbon footprint: the impact on our environment, and specifically on climate change.

Levison is right that the headline needs decoding—but he’s wrong in seeing it as ineffective. Those who grapple daily with issues of climate change and CO2 in electricity transmission will be immediately clued in that this ad is for them.

Whether it made sense to place this two-page ad in Business Week is another question; it might have had far better results in something like the trade magazine Electric Light & Power, where actual prospects would be a much higher percentage of total readership. And it probably didn’t need two whole pages. So from a frugality point of view, the campaign could certainly be improved, even if advertising—the most expensive marketing method—is a big part of the mix (which, as regular readers of this newsletter and my books on frugal marketing understand, it doesn’t have to be).

But if the goal was to select and attract those people in the general big business community with key decision-making roles in power generation, it was probably effective. They were marketing to the cognoscenti.

Have you been cited in places like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Woman’s Day, Entrepreneur, and the top trade publications in your industry?

I’ve been in all the above–several times each. I’ve also been in hundreds of lesser known publications.

If you’d like that kind of ink, your pitches and press releases have to reflect the reality of the newsroom: overworked journalists sort through a mountain of information, mining for the nuggets to share with their readers, often under severe deadline pressure.

Here are a few approaches that tend to work:

• Solve a problem/ease a pain point/make people’s life better
• Expose some hidden truth that can change people’s thinking or behavior
• Tie in to a current and immediate news story or trend
• Provide a deeper “back story” on a news topic—or on a celebrity’s life
• Dip into your personal journey to show how you overcame adversity, did something really unusual, or separated yourself from the crowd in some other way
• Win an award, achieve a big milestone, etc.
• Create a catchphrase or buzzword that so perfectly captures an idea that it enters the common language

Next month: specific tools you can use to make your pitch. Note: my seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, offers six entire chapters on effective publicity. Click on the book title to order your copy.

Looking around for the perfect business to complement this month’s book review on gratitude, I thought of SendOutCards.com, and particularly of one of their top affiliates, Michael Stammer.

SendOutCards is a system of using technology to replicate the personal touch. My Virtual Assistant sent us a SendOutCard recently, and my wife said, “I think she made it herself.” Actually, she’d used the website to create a personal message and design on a personalized card, and have it sent to me postally. To my wife, it had more impact than a store-bought card that would have to have been hand-addressed and mailed. And to me, even though I was aware of SendOutCards and recognized what she was doing.

Michael leapt onto my radar two years ago, when I received an unsolicited card in the mail, from a stranger–Michael–complementing me on the new format for my newsletter.

Wow! I was so shocked and delighted, I picked up the phone–and found a delightful, helpful individual.

Next, Michael followed up with this personal e-mail:

It was such a pleasure to speak with you this evening. I do like the new format for the newsletter. The shorter abstracts of articles format has always appealed to me. It lets me get a sense if an article is something I have an interest in and quickly move through a  to what I want to spend more time on. That’s the way hypertext should be used in my opinion.

As for the cards program you can set up a gift account for yourself on my dime by clicking this link: <https://www.sendoutcards.com/stammer>www.sendoutcards.com/stammer. When there, click the banner and an interactive audio will lead you step-by-step through the process. I think you’ll find it’s pretty easy to figure it out. Call me at 817.261.2108 if you have more questions.

Feel free to contact me any time, Shel.

Michael has stayed in touch, but not obnoxiously. I see five e-mails from him in the last two years, plus some Facebook and Twitter He has connected me with someone he thought I should know. He offered to bring my book to the attention of SendOutCards’ catalog division. He’s sent me gifts through the service, including brownies around my birthday. And he has quietly reminded me that if I choose to get involved with the service, I can sign up under him.

If I ever do sign up, it will be under him. I’ve turned down at least two other people who’ve tried to recruit me, telling them that Michael had earned my loyalty, and would earn my business if I decided I wanted to use the service.

And just to prove once again that what goes around comes around, my next book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, includes HIS URL for the service: https://jumproductions.com/businessbyreferrals.html

Another Recommended Book: Appreciation Marketing: How to Achieve Greatness Through Gratitude, By Tommy Wyatt and Curtis Lewsey (BFG Group Publishing, Westport, CT)

As Wyatt and Lewsey point out, your customer can leave you for ever in just two clicks: the first to Google or another search tool, and from there to a competitor. This is one among many reasons why I’m a big believer in marketing by building real relationships (something I spend quite a bit of time on in my own award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First).

And one of the best ways to build relationships is to say thank you. A lot. To say thank you without any obvious self-interest motive on your part, such as enclosing your business card and asking for a referral along with the thank-you. It shows up your thanks as insincere. In Wyatt and Lewsey’s vivid metaphor, it’s “chocolate frosted dog crap.”

The authors spend a fair amount of time describing that kind of person, and several others you want to avoid turning into. Fortunately, they also provide plenty of examples of sincere thanks expressed well. Start your thanking program by appreciating the blessings in your own life, and with that grounding, thank others every chance you get. This is their strategy to achieve “TOMATO: Top of Mind Awareness…Through Others.” Once you have that, your marketing will almost take care of itself.

Mobile Marketing, Part 2: Legal, Ethical, and Strategic Considerations: Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip, September 2009

Once again, this article owes much to The Mobile Marketing Handbook: Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Mobile Marketing Campaigns, by Kim Dushinski–read this book BEFORE you implement any mobile campaign.

The careful mobile marketer will keep some basic principles in mind, not only to avoid alienating your prospects, but to stay on the right side of the law. First of all, in a potentially intrusive technology, privacy concerns are key. Second, more than in any other medium (even the Internet), you must coax the customer to opt in. And third, the customer or prospect should feel that interacting with you improves his or her life.

With its legally mandated emphasis on authenticity, honest disclosure, and customer involvement/opt-in, mobile marketing is very much in harmony with the ethical methods I’ve been advocating for years (see my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People first, https://www.principledprofit.com).

Still, mobile marketing may or may not make sense for you–or for me. Dushinski’s 16-point checklist is a great tool to determine if there’s a fit. In my case, she convinced me that if I do any mobile marketing at all, it will be a text-based SMS newsfeed that I can pilot first on Twitter; most of the other mobile technologies are either too expensive and complicated for me, or simply don’t apply to a non-location-based business like mine–this is crucial information that could prevent me from wasting a lot of time and money on methods that aren’t appropriate.

One thing I WILL do after reading Dushinski’s book–and soon!–is set up a website that’s optimized for mobile phone users, and includes a press kit for reporters on the go; this is a no-brainer! Optimizing the experience for anyone wishing to access at least my main site from mobile could potentially yield huge dividends, and can be set up simply by simplifying existing content and hosting on a subdomain of one of my existing sites.

Guest Post By Scott Lorenz

[Editor’s Note: This article has three important lessons I wanted to highlight: 1) follow news events and tie your book and/or your author in–legitimately, don’t force it–to breaking news; 2) if there’s a news event you know will happen eventually that has such a tie-in, do the advance prep; 3) old books can get good play under the right circumstances. This article was published previously in Fran Silverman’s Book Marketing Newsletter and is used with the gracious permission of the author.

–Shel Horowitz, author of Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers]

Can you pounce on a breaking news event? Not everybody can, but if your subject has breaking news potential then you’d better be ready to take advantage of it.

One such opportunity presented itself to Westwind Communications on February 19, 2008 when Fidel Castro announced his resignation. One of my author clients has a gorgeous coffee table photo book on Cuba and has made 40 plus quasi illegal trips to the island nation. He’s an American citizen and expert on Cuba. https://www.corazonpress.com.

Having pitched this book and his story to all major media from Good Morning America and Nightline to Syndicated Radio, all of the big media outlets said–I’m not exaggerating–“Sure we’ll cover it–when Fidel dies.”

So, like vultures circling above, we’ve been waiting for every slip, fall, missed parade, bad medical report about Fidel so that we could jump on the opportunity. It finally came at 5:30am on the morning of February 19, 2008 with the announcement of Fidel’s resignation. That was almost as good as the dictator passing on! Less drama but still worth covering since it announced a change in power of the United States’ long time nemesis of 50 years.

So, I dusted off the release about Fidel’s death that had been sitting in wait for two years, changed the headline to reflect his resignation, and a few other items and out it went to my carefully maintained and targeted list of media contacts and put it on the wire by 6AM while everyone else was still sleeping.

The result was outstanding. CBS Radio immediately saw the release, set up an interview that ran in Detroit all day and night. Then National Public Radio set up an in-studio interview as did WJR and WCSX radio. Print media got into the act with interviews in The Ann Arbor News https://www.mlive.com/news/annarbornews/index.ssf?/base/news-26/120352203518630.xml&coll=2, Detroit News, Observer & Eccentric https://www.hometownlife.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=C5&Dato=20080225&Kategori=NEWS&Lopenr=225001&Ref=PH and Oakland Press https://www.theoaklandpress.com/stories/022008/loc_20080220268.shtml. We even got interest, but unfortunately no story since the book was not newly released, from the Wall Street Journal.

Then, one of Amazon’s Top Ten reviewers asked for a review copy, which, by itself could create a ground swell of book sales. (thousands have already read his review https://www.amazon.com/Cuba-Photographs-Jack-Kenny/dp/0976834901). A travel writer from MSNBC https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23278430 wanted to get Kenny’s expert advice on traveling to CUBA and the media inquires are still coming in. Interestingly enough, three producers and reporters called me after they got to their office and found out that Fidel had resigned, needed a Cuba expert, did a Google search and found my press release on top of the Google News section.  I love technology!

This whole operation was a success because I constantly monitor the news and set Google Alerts https://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en to watch for key news items. And, of course, I had the release ready to go. Everything was thought out, my client was ready–for 2 years. The gun was loaded, cocked, and ready to fire.

And you know another upside of this? I can still use a version of my original “Fidel’s Death” release later! Don’t think bad things about me, somebody somewhere might have your obituary already written too!

When should you send out a press release? My acid test is that if it’s newsworthy and if it’s timely and useful to the reader, send it. It’s that simple.

There are many factors to weigh when considering the need to send out a press release. As a publicist I have sent thousands of releases over the years and while there are no hard and fast rules, the most important factor is that you’ve got to make sure it’s newsworthy and useful to the reader. Anything else and it’s just a waste of time for the members of the media.

So what press release do you have in your hip pocket? Are you ready when breaking news hits?

————-

Scott is President of Westwind Communications, a public relations and marketing firm. He has handled public relations and marketing for numerous authors, doctors, lawyers, inventors and entrepreneurs. As a book marketing expert Scott is called upon by top execs and bestselling authors to promote their books. Learn more about Westwind Communications’ book marketing approach at https://www.book-marketing-expert.com or contact Scott at scottlorenz@westwindcos.com or by phone at 734-667-2090

Reviewed by Shel Horowitz

As I complete six years of writing this column, I believe this is the first time I’ve reviewed an e-book instead of a physical book. Not only that, but an e-book with a absurdly low price of $9.95 US. I’ve seen a lot of those, and the vast majority I’d never recommend. They tend to be shallow, fluffy, and to exist only to upsell various other offers.

Tipping the Point is different. It has far more practical value than many e-books I’ve seen at five or even ten times the price.

Basically, it’s a quick-start guide to viral marketing, using integrity and ethics–and incorporating many examples (yes, including upsells). It starts with a theory section, but one made accessible and clear even to people who haven’t studied a lot of marketing–and one emphasizing the importance of building a real relationship. He covers force multipliers, the difference between viral ideas that spread via influencers and those that spread through the general public (a much larger group, of course, and therefore able to spread your idea or product much faster), and even looked at where Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point may have gotten some of its best ideas. He also covers some niceties as the ratio you need to become self-replicating and the ease with which you can get others to pass your stuff on.

Other goodies:
* 21-item glossary
* 11-point checklist for creating a message that people welcome and pass along
* More in-depth coverage of 14 different strategy success factors (not the same as those on the checklist)
* 12 problems that can sabotage your campaign
* 29 tactics to draw attention to your viral offering
* Plus a gazillion specific URLs for resources (more than I’m willing to hand-count!)
* A software bonus called The DOT (Do It Now), which claims to support you in achieving focus and concentration. It’s PC only and I’m on a Mac, so I can’t vouch for it.

Tom walks his talk, too. In the little over a year we’ve known each other online, I’ve noticed that he’s always doing little favors for me and others, without expectation of a direct return: a principle he espouses repeatedly in Tipping the Point (and one that I recommend in Principled Profit, as well). Oh yes, and he’s set up some nice charity stuff in this e-book, in keeping with the work he’s been doing at JointWinWin for a while now.

The book isn’t perfect. Yes, it does suffer from a few of the typical e-book flaws, like the occasional instance of poor proofreading and amateurish clipart illustrations. And while I prefer to think of his Britishisms (not just spelling, but idioms) as charming, not everyone may feel that way. (It’s honest, though–he is based in England.) But there’s an awful lot of good stuff here.

In fact, there’s so much good stuff that I took the very unusual step of becoming a dealer and putting it up for download on my own cart. And let me tell you, something has to be really good for me to do that. I still can’t believe he only wants $9.95 for this!

Please click here to get your own copy, and yes, I do benefit financially (a little, anyhow) from your purchase.

https://shelhorowitz.com/go/tippingthepoint/

Note: There are two volumes in Tipping the Point. Volume 1 is free and you can download it from this link. Volume 2 is available for $9.95 with the “add to cart” button on the page linked above.

How’s this for a mission statement (transcribed from the cheery video by the head of customer service, right at the top of the home page): “To help you find the most effective products to make your house most efficient.” The same video offers a great guarantee: “If you aren’t satisfied with anything you buy from us, we’ll replace it, refund your money, or work with you to make it right. We as a company, and I personally, are committed to you being 100% thrilled with us.”

Now, add a great selection of Green household products in these categories: electricity monitors, power strips, programmable thermostats, lighting, rechargeable batteries, water saving, window insulation, crank powered, space heaters, weatherstrips/air sealing, indoor air/ventilation, controls, timers & switches

Round it all out with a bunch of informative articles and how-to videos on topics like preparing for energy audits and keeping your house cool in summer, plus news articles and blogs about energy issues (one I particularly liked stated that LED lights, which are many times more efficient than even compact fluorescents, don’t attract bugs), and you have the wonderful site, https://energycircle.com/ – a great combination of green products and a helpful, approachable, customer-focused attitude. And that’s our Spotlight business for this month.