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| Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, March 2016 |
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| Do you have five minutes to help me better understand and serve your green/social change business needs? Please fill out this quick survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9NHHMQ8 |
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| This Month’s Tip: What’s Really Involved in Launching a Book |
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Bad news for authors who think the work is done when they turn in the manuscript. That’s when the real work just begins. There’s always so much to do for a book launch.
As you know, my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World comes out April 19. I could keep five of me busy, full-time, between now and the launch date.
Here’s a bit of a window on what I’ve been up to with it. I post this both as a guideline for how to launch a book and as inspiration that even though I’m doing most of this myself, I’ve been able to get quite a bit done—even while doing numerous non-book-launch projects as well (including ghostwriting a book and helping my daughter plan her wedding). This is only a partial list:
Last summer:
- Secured endorsements from 22 well-known people including Jack Canfield, Seth Godin, Ivan Misner (founder of BNI), Joel Makower (founder of GreenBiz.com), and the author of The New Rules of Green Marketing (among others).
- Obtained four guest essays from marketers Yanik Silver and Ken McArthur, as well as Cynthia Kersey (author of Unstoppable/Unstoppable Women) and Frances Moore Lappé (Diet for a Small Planet)
- Began talking up the book and showing around the cover at live events and media interviews
- Put up https://goingbeyondsustainability.com for the corporate market and https://impactwithprofit.com for entrepreneurs/startups
- Secured cooperation from my charity partner Green America and support from Jeannie and Amy Levinson, wife and daughter of my late co-author Jay Conrad Levinson
December
- Wrote and posted several press releases with different angles
- Assembled and posted a full media kit: https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/media-center/
- Prepared sample reviews in three different word lengths
- Did the first of three bulk mailings to my list
- Began to actively tout the book in my newsletter and on social media
Jan-Feb
- FINALLY came up with the elusive brand I’d been trying to find for two years. I feel it accurately and interestingly describes the new work I’m doing showing business how to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance (this is what the new book is about)—and built a new website around this brand: https://transformpreneur.com
- Booked in-person launch events in NYC (4/16, at a major green festival), Western Massachusetts (3/8 at a prestigious college, 4/20 at our best local bookstore), and Brattleboro, VT, 4/30 (at Slow Living, a very well-regarded environmental conference)
- Booked about a dozen podcast and radio appearances and began to tape the first several
- Went through 1500 media and 3300 personal contacts, selecting several hundred people to reach out to, personalizing my letters to them (not just with name but with a line or two specific to each). Some I invited to be launch partners, some to cover me in their media, and some to attend the local book launch (I still have room for people in all those categories, BTW)
- Secured commitments to promote to their own lists and/or on social media from 85 people (as of March 1) with aggregate total list size of several hundred thousand
- Wrote a bunch of tweets, newsletter solo mailings, newsletter blurbs, and social media posts, tweaking them for three different audiences: guest essayists, endorsers, and supporters
- Hired a publicist, worked closely with him to shape a lengthy and unusual press release, and had him send out two blasts, to 5000 reporters each time—and answered each response individually
- Renewed contact with a VA who had sold me ten hours of time a few years ago and told her I’m ready to use it on a social media campaign
- Contacted a publisher where I had ad credits and arranged to use them
- Submitted several articles to various publications and had most of them accepted
March (except for a trip abroad with probably very little Internet) and April will be equally busy.
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Preorder your copy of Shel’s newest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World
Learn how the business world can profit while solving hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change (hint: they’re all based in resource conflicts). Endorsed by Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, business blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin, and many others. Release date is April 19, just in time for Earth Day, and you can now preorder from several major booksellers (or get autographed and inscribed copies from me). Learn all about this powerful book at https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/guerrilla-marketing-to-heal-the-world/
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About Shel & This Newsletter
As a green and social change business profitability/marketing consultant and copywriter…award-winning author of ten books…international speaker and trainer, blogger, syndicated columnist – Shel Horowitz shows how green, ethical, and socially conscious businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green, less-socially-aware competitors. His award-winning 8th book Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet was a category bestseller for at least 34 months (and is now available exclusively through Shel). Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.
Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.
He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way). |
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| “As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).” |
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| Privacy Policy: We Respect Your Privacy
We collect your information solely to let our mailing service send you the information you request. We do not share it with any outside party not involved in mailing our information to you. Of course, you may unsubscribe at any time—but we hope you’ll stick around to keep up with cool developments at the intersections of sustainability, social transformation, and keeping the planet in balance. Each issue of Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter has a how-to or thought-leadership article and a review of a recommended book. We’ve been doing an e-newsletter all the way back to 1997, and some of our readers have been with us the whole time. |
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| WARREN WHITLOCK HOSTS ME ON BLAB, Friday, March 25, noon ET/9 a.m. PT. This is an open conversation. You can turn your camera on and join in, or ask real-time questions in the chat, as long as you give your Twitter screenname. https://blab.im/y75eqa – this will be my very first time guesting on Blab.
GUEST ON THE BARRY MOLTZ SHOW, any time after Sunday, May 1, 6:30 a.m ET https://barrymoltz.com/business-insanity-talk-radio-with-barry-moltz/
GUEST FOR RONALD M. ALLEN’S MANAGING CHANGE SHOW, Monday, April 4, 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT https://www.blogtalkradio.com/managechange/2016/04/04/shel-horowitz–going-green-raises-revenues-and-lowers-costs
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GUEST FOR FRANKIE PICASSO ON THE GOOD RADIO NETWORK, Tuesday, April 5, 1 pm ET/10 a.m. PT. https://www.toginet.com/shows/MissionUnstoppable
GUEST FOR ADAM LERNER’S MARKETING PODCAST, Wednesday, April 13, 1 pm ET/10 a.m. PT (episode will be recorded and posted after production @ https://learnwithlerner.com)
NEW YORK BOOK LAUNCH EVENT for Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World: Green America’s Green Festival—New York, Saturday, April 16, Javits Center. Mainstage talk at 11:30 a.m. followed by book signing. This is a great event; I’ve attended several times and this will be my third time speaking. Not just terrific speakers but also great organic food samples and cool products like the wallet and purse vendor who makes stuff out of old tires (I use one of those wallets that I bought there a couple of years ago). |
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OFFICIAL PUBLICATION DATE FOR Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World is Tuesday, April 19—and Earth Day is Friday, April 22.
SECOND OF J.V. CRUM’S TWO INTERVIEWS ON CONSCIOUSMILLIONAIRE.COM, Tuesday, April 19 (almost no overlap between this and the earlier show listed at “recent interviews”)
An excerpt from Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, Brand Identity in a Global Economy, is scheduled to run Tuesday, April 19 at CarolRoth.com
Mid-April (air dates not set yet): Interviews with Todd Schnick, https://intrepidnow.com, and Leon Jay, SocialpreneurTV. I should have more complete information on these next month.
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WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS BOOK LAUNCH EVENT for Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, Wednesday, April 20, 7 p.m., Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley. Come early if you want a seat; I’m expecting to fill the room.
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SLOW LIVING SUMMIT, Brattleboro, VT, April 28-30 (theme: Food and Agriculture Entrepreneurship), https://www.slowlivingsummit.org/ My talk will be on the 30th @ 1:30 pm: “Impossible is a Dare: How Your Food Business Can Make a Difference on Hunger, Poverty, War, and Catastrophic Climate Change”
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| Another Recommended Book: Business in Blue Jeans |
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Business in Blue Jeans, by Susan Baroncini-Moe (Sound Wisdom, 2013)
With 34 years in business, I’m not really the market for another book on startup success. But many of my clients and readers are, and I often read books with that audience in mind (and wish I’d read a few in the very early days of my business).
This book is warm, approachable, and full of common sense, as well as a lot of Law Of Attraction and personal motivation material to get a new business up and running on solid footing. I found that many of the suggestions were clumped into certain sections of the book; I’d take a bunch of notes on successive pages and then go 10 or 15 pages without any notes. But even those less useful sections were still a good read.
The book contains several exercises. One I found especially useful is a new way of looking at brainstorming (p. 123). She also has a very small section on business helping the wider world, and I’m glad to see it there, even if it’s not very comprehensive. (My own next book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, goes into far more detail on this.)
Some of the wise nuggets I especially like:
- Learn how to find the love often hidden in negative messages from friends and family
- Understand that thinking Law Of Attraction thoughts isn’t enough; you also have to do the work
- Create a story that’s consistent with your reality AND with your customers’ experience of you
- Seek out not only the intersection of your skills and interests and a market, but also for the intersections of both fiery passion and the warm gentle glow (much like a successful long-term marriage)
- Develop great branding by first targeting your market as narrowly and carefully as possible (and recognize that if you’re in different markets, you probably need different branding and marketing even for the same product)
- Use “lean in marketing”: be interested, not just interesting, and create a positive user experience
- Recognize that search keywords, headlines, etc., should speak to the need (the hole your prospect wants to drill) rather than the tool you provide (the drill bit)
- Acknowledge that more isn’t always better
- Make sure all employees know that they are the customer service department
- See mistakes as opportunities to fix things
- Give value, even when you’re networking
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