Tag Archive for competitive advantage

The Clean and Green Club, November 2020

12 Nov, 2020 No Comment competitive advantage marketing ethics marketing plan media coverage quoted

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Going Beyond Sustainabiilty with Shel Horowitz

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: November 2020

17 Steps to a Powerful Marketing Plan

Sooner or later, you might need a marketing plan. Actually, you might need a few marketing plans—because, like any good marketing document, your plan should be targeted to a specific audience. So you might need a plan for investors and lenders, a different one for media where you plan to buy advertising, and a third for people you want as stakeholders to the concept of your higher mission: the ways your product makes the world better. All of these would tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but slant the material differently for the different sets of readers.While every marketing plan is different, there are some things you should probably include:

What the product (or service, idea, etc.—we’ll just call it all product in this article) is called
What the product does: what problem/pain point it solves or goal it helps achieve
Who it does it for
Who else it could serve
Competition analysis:
• Who else is in this market—why, how long they’ve been there, and how they’ve fared
• What you have that they don’t (your advantages)—and what they have that you don’t (theirs)
• How robust their customer base is
• How you have advantages in manufacturing, distribution, quality, speed, etc.
• How you might partner with them to grow both businesses
How this product has a competitive advantage (hint: what’s unique either as stand-alone benefits or by harnessing a particular combination of features to create a new benefit)—and how can you express this as a Unique Selling Proposition
How you will reach the primary and secondary markets. If advertising is a part of your plan, how much you’ll spend in which media
How you’ll measure the results
If it’s a manufactured product, how you’ve taken steps to lower the environmental footprint and boost the social responsibility
For any kind of product, how you will identify and market the social and environmental benefits
How you might repurpose the product to accomplish different things and/or reach different markets
How you will reach the same people with line extensions that meet additional needs
What angles and talking points you’ll use to get no-cost media exposure in print, online, radio and TV (including podcasts, blogs, webinars, and other newer media)
What no-cost and paid outreach techniques you’ll use to find and build your following
What energy and resources you will put into each of these avenues
How you will identify, reach out to, and partner with those people who can benefit by your success
What impact your success will have on the wider world: how it will be a better place because you birthed and nurtured it

Would you like to be quoted or featured in media like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, ABC TV News, Redbook, and Reader’s Digest? I do at least 30 interviews in a typical year, 50 or more if I’ve got a new book out.

My favorite way to get coverage is to respond to reporters who have posted that they’re actively looking for sources for a story they’re working on. It’s so much easier to get press by giving a journalist the exact information they need to write a story than to “spray and pray” by sending press releases or cold-calling.

Several services match journalists with story sources—and most of them don’t charge anything. There’s one called HARO, also known as Help A Reporter, that I’m particularly fond of. I put time aside three times every weekday to look over the queries and respond to the ones that could benefit me.

But here’s the thing: I’ve forwarded reporters’ source queries to friends many times. And when I see their responses, I often cringe. I got tired of cringing, so I wrote a 40-page quick-read ebook on how to answer those queries the right way. It includes seven actual queries (by me and four other people) that resulted in coverage in Reader’s Digest, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and elsewhere—with analysis of why they worked and how some of them could have been even better–as well as four failed queries and a look at why they didn’t work.

It also includes three bonus reports: How to Write Press Releases that Actually Get Media Coverage—and Your Prospects’ Attention (includes 10 full or partial actual “story-behind-the-story” press release examples); Ten Other Services That Get You in Front of Journalists and Show Producers; and How to Get Superstars to Endorse Your Book—discussing some of the ways I’ve gotten endorsements or guest essays from Chicken Soup for the Soul co-creator Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, Cynthia Kersey (author of Unstoppable and Unstoppable Women), Frances Moore Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet, and the founder of the Guerrilla Marketing concept, Jay Conrad Levinson (who later co-authored two books with me).

This very useful addition to YOUR marketing toolkit is just $7.95, delivered instantly as a PDF. Get your copy at https://shelhorowitz.com/product/generate-thousands-of-dollars-in-publicity-without-spending-a-cent/

Recent Media Coverage:

My article on how to stop a coup got picked up and reprinted by a local paper, the Amherst Indy. The original is on my blog: https://greenandprofitable.com/how-we-stop-the-coming-trump-coup/ Part 1 of the article is about the Barrett nomination and is obsolete, but Part II is about what happens if the sitting president attempts to maintain power now that he’s lost, and it may be alarmingly relevant. At press time, he had just dismissed his Secretary of Defense, who supports the Constitutional requirement for a fair election process.
Quoted along with AOC (I think that’s very cool) and others about the Biden climate plan: https://themilsource.com/2020/10/14/joe-bidens-green-policy-explained/
I got quoted with several other writers on how COVID is affecting our careers. Mine is the fifth one, and I used it to talk about doing a book on the opportunities COVID has created for deep change: https://www.eatlikeawriter.com/post/how-writers-have-been-affected-by-the-coronavirus-pandemic
Got to tell two pieces of the Save the Mountain success story on a new B2B social media platform and small business resource called Enterprise League https://enterpriseleague.com/blog/creative-guerrilla-marketing-ideas/ . I cited my daughter getting her entire sixth-grade class to write letters to the local paper, and why we referred to the real estate developer we were battling as our honorary fundraising chair. Mine is the second submission, with the subhead, “6th graders can do a better job than adults”. I liked the site enough to set up a free account.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.

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No-Harm Marketing Ethics

No-Harm Marketing Ethics by Marcia Yudkin

I’ve been following Marcia Yudkin for a long time. We met in the 1980s when I hired her to do some freelance editing. I watched her marketing career evolve, and we were two-thirds of a three-person mastermind group that met regularly for a couple of years. I was one of the presenters for her first No-Hype Copywriting summit.

I’ve always admired her for:

Authenticity
Willingness to buck the trends and stand up for integrity
Highlighting the introvert’s perspective that too many marketers ignore
Positive focus in her marketing copy
Intense study of the marketing world—so her many diversions from “the way marketers do things” are deliberate opposition to the wrongs she sees.

This brief ebook took me well under an hour to read—time well-spent.

She starts by noting that she had wrestled with the question of whether marketing is innately evil—but concluded that it’s not marketing itself that’s evil, but marketing that’s out of integrity with the marketer or the client—that represents the product, the marketer, or the prospect in inauthentic, condescending, or untruthful ways.

Then she moves into 12 no-harm marketing principles, which make up the bulk of the book. Her advice includes discouraging buyers whose needs won’t be met by the product (including those who want to buy something similar to what they’ve already bought but haven’t implemented yet), rejecting manipulative practices and sneaky return-discouraging tricks, marketing through positive benefit rather than fear or other negative emotions—and building personal customer/client relationships based on mutual trust. And of course, being scrupulously honest in your copy and all your client interactions.

I also appreciate the attention Yudkin puts into environmentally- and user-friendly packaging, promoting social justice values and common humanity, and encouraging diversity—areas that far too many marketers ignore.

From her introvert perspective, she has a fascinating insight into the much-ballyhooed concept of social proof—the idea that so many others have taken the step, so of course, you should too. She describes the unintended consequences when marketers’ social proof attempts caused her to back away from the purchase because she didn’t want her purchase displayed for others to see. Social proof has its place, but it’s certainly not a panacea. And it can be used in ways that don’t compromise privacy—such as my own use of testimonials or guest essays—with full permission—by credible experts like Seth Godin, Frances Moore Lappe, and Jack Canfield in my own 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

After admonishing marketers to know and follow the laws and best practices in their industry, she ends with a simple but brilliant 8-point checklist: if you can answer yes to the first four questions and no to the last four, chances are you’re good to go.

You can get your choice of PDF or Kindle format at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1044614

Connect with Shel

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing! http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

About Shel

Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.