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| Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, October 2019 |
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| This Month’s Tip: The Spammer/ Antispammer Arms Race: Why This Marketer Says Don’t Market This Way |
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Lately, my inbox is full of courses to market via Facebook Messenger.
I actually hit reply to one that began, “What if you could use FB Messenger to make up to $2,500 a week…in your spare time?”: |
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What if we could have ONE communication channel that doesn’t get polluted by marketers trying to hijack it? There is no refuge anymore! I remember when the only things in my inbox were things I wanted. I remember when I didn’t get blasted with texts from companies that don’t even know me. I am a marketer, and I understand the need to reach out. But damn it, we need some spaces where we’re not getting marketed to.
I do get it. Every time someone invents a great new communication tool, someone else invents a way to sneak marketing messages past the gatekeeper. And then someone else invents some protection. And usually, someone else invents a way to overcome that block.Postal mail begat bulk mail, which begat opening mail over the recycle bin (well, back then it was a trash can), which begat postcards and envelope teasers. Telephones begat outbound call centers, which begat caller ID, which begat robocalls with spoofed IDs. Email begat spam, which begat spam filters, which begat messages crafted to go around them, which begat Google’s Promotions and Social folders (which severely impacted legitimate newsletter publishers and didn’t seem to hurt the spammers much).
It’s an arms race. The Cold War in all your inboxes. Ads in toilet stalls. Digital ads on billboards changing every few seconds. Ads on the frame around the taxi rates placard on the divider between the front and back seats in a cab.
But here’s the thing: all of these intrusive methods are dinosaur-marketing. Seth Godin told us 20 years ago about permission marketing.
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 Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin. |
Seth has permission to be in MY mailbox. His daily blog shows up every day. I actually open and read every column for his useful information and fresh perspectives. Often, he offers a program or product—but it’s in context.
Seth walks his talk. And I buy from him occasionally. (I also sometimes share or email him comments. That, plus writing a great book, got him to endorse my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.)
You don’t win customers by shouting louder; you win them by being relevant and helpful, and using the technology intelligently:
- Instead of random texting, text your own customers who’ve given you their mobile numbers as they show up within a mile of you, with friendly, helpful information about today’s cool event (yes, geotexting exists)
- Instead of using robocalls to make deceptive offers, use them to notify your customer base of important news, like a weather-related school closing or a construction delay on a major artery
- If your Facebook page uses the automated FB Messenger feature, send links to your FAQ and three most popular or useful pages on your own website—but also make sure you have a human being reading the inbound messages and responding quickly. And figure out a way to only send that autoresponder the first time you get a PM from any specific person.
So here’s MY soft-sell pitch at the end of this useful (I hope) content: if you need help developing non-intrusive, welcomed marketing, drop me a line or give me a call. Especially if your business or product/service/idea contributes to environmental and social good.
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I wanted to let you know about a great book by David Newman titled “Do It! Speaking: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Market, Monetize, and Maximize Your Expertise.” David walks you step-by-step through beocming a successful speaker. His book is for C-suite executives, sales leaders, professionals, and entrepreneurs who want to use public speaking as the ultimate marketing strategy, personal brand builder and one-to-many sales platform. Pre-order the book to get a bunch of business-building bonuses right now (including one from me on how you as a speaker can be seen as a powerful ally to the meeting planner as you help green the places you speak) and a great book the moment it’s released. |
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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. |
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Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!
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| Another Recommended Book: A Short Course in Kindness |
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A Short Course in Kindness by Margot Silk Forrest
Being nice is not the same thing as being kind, says Forrest in this small but powerful book. Kindness is authentic, builds community and feels like a shot of adrenaline, while niceness is superficial and often builds stress—because being nice often means NOT speaking your truth, but suppressing it in a misguided desire to put others’ needs in front of your own (pp. 8-27).
Being nice can actually undermine being kind (p. 29)—because kindness has to start with being kind to oneself, and you can’t do that when you’re suppressing your own needs to do what you think others want you to. Forrest identifies 19 other barriers to kindness, too (p. 37). She also identifies kindness facilitators, including empathy (p. 41).
Even a small kindness can make a huge difference if it’s received at the right time—in part because—like negative emotions—kindness is often contagious (p. 9). Also like negative emotions, we choose to be kind (pp. 39-40, 58).Sometimes, we benefit from kindnesses we don’t even know have been offered. A poet reported a very easy time going through a difficult surgery, only finding out later that the doctor, knowing her love of poetry, read Shakespeare to her while she was under anesthesia (p. 67). But let’s remember that kindness benefits the giver as well as the receiver, requires both (p. 70)—but, because kindness requires not just thoughts but action (p. 76), it often involves significant risk, as she shows in many examples throughout the book.
For Forrest, emerging from a childhood lined with multiple serial sexual abusers, kindness was a conscious choice: “Was my small, suspicious self the one I wanted to make decisions in my life? Did I want to live as if I were a victim waiting to happen? Or did I want to reach for something higher?…As we choose which deeds we will do, so we choose our identity, the ground on which we stand. We come to know ourselves in the same way others come to know us: by our deeds. This is why choosing to do kind deeds helps us develop a strong and healthy sense of self” (pp. 59, 60). Kindness is also empowering (pp. 83-84).
Still, she cautions, “Be careful about this. While an increased sense of self-worth is the result of being kind, it is a disastrous reason for being kind. Doing the right thing for a selfish reason is likely to backfire. We may find our offer of help thrown back in our faces. We can only control the intentions of our kindness, never the results.” (footnote, p. 61).
But doing the right thing for the right reasons can change your life, as it changed hers: “Acting as if I am being guided…has shown me how much of my experience depends on what I do with it…We can create a story about being thwarted or taken advantage of, or…being showered with gifts…Believing I am here for a purpose has made me discover that purpose and achieve it…I think our purpose is to be God’s designated driver. God doesn’t have hands…God depends on us” (p. 100).
That last paragraph is from Chapter 11. Chapter 12 exhorts us not only to be kind, but also to be kindness’s PR agents, spreading the idea that kindness works. She offers ten tools to spread kindness. And then she wraps up the book by describing kindness itself as a change agent: “the only way you change the world—is one heart at a time”—and, like kindness, change is contagious (p. 120). The very last page declares, “We deserve to see how our culture changes when kind people are in charge” of our news, entertainment, and especially our education (p. 122).
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Accurate Writing & More
14 Barstow Lane
Hadley, MA 01035 USA
http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/contact/
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About Shel
How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).
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