The Clean and Green Club, September 2014

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, September 2014
This Month’s Tip: The Green Marketing Buffet

For several months, my business coach has been working with me to expand my service line, to allow people to find ways of hiring me that are in perfect alignment with whatever they need at the moment, and lead easily down a path to hire me longer-term.
We’ve looked at a lot of different models, but hadn’t come up with one that seemed to make sense. Then, a few weeks ago, I came up with an “umbrella” that it all fits under, and since then, our work together took a quantum leap.

The umbrella is the image of a buffet, where people can pick and choose from a wide assortment. For now I’m calling it “the Green/Conscious Business Marketing Buffet.” I’m hoping this term encompasses the work I want to do in helping business profitably address not just the environment, but also evils like hunger, poverty, and war. This larger work is what I’m feeling called to do.

—> If you have an idea for me about this, I’d love to hear it! Drop me a line at shel AT greenandprofitable.com (and tell me whether I have your permission to acknowledge you by name).

Meanwhile—both to give a demonstration of product development and, quite frankly, because YOU might need some of these services—let me tell you about some of the new services we’ve come up with. This is a partial list; a more complete version is at https://greenandprofitable.com/introducing-shel-horowitzs-greenconscious-business-marketing-buffet/

Low-End Entry Points (zero to $525)
30 no-charge minutes on the phone with me, but only after submitting a questionnaire that allows me to qualify the serious prospects. (I’ve been doing 30-minute consults on and off for a few years, but hadn’t formalized the qualification process).

Subscriptions to my monthly Green And Profitable column, which is syndicated internationally. This is the lowest-cost item of any of my paid offerings, at $10 or less per insertion, in one-year or two-year packages. On my end, I’m already doing the work, so additional markets increases revenue but not cost or time beyond some very minor recordkeeping.

One-hour marketing assessment, in depth, on a single marketing piece or aspect of your marketing ($195).

Doing a small first assignment like writing a get-noticed story-behind-the-story press release ($525) or book jacket (single panel, $425; 3-panel, $525). This has been very successful for me over many years in demonstrating opportunities to the client that lead to more work for me.

Marketing tune-up: once or twice a year, a quick review of up to five pieces/campaigns, and a few quick suggestions to tweak them ($350).

Mid-Range ($550 to $5000; most of these are open-ended and thus priced individually)
Full-fledged marketing assessment of your entire operation (this would typically take 8 to 10 hours or more, depending on how many methods and media are in use, and how deep the client wants to go).

Training a client’s in-house staff, interns, and/or freelancers in specific areas, such as social media, audience-specific message points, joint venture partnerships, or press releases. This could include review/critique of the trainees’ work.

A combination of training and copywriting, where a client can purchase a custom package that includes a certain amount of each.

Social change consulting, where the client brings me in to look for ways to harness a company’s core skills and best assets to create a business model for profiting while doing good in the world (i.e., addressing one of those big global challenges).

Some kind of group or community involving both ongoing training from me and the chance to network with and learn from other participants

High-End (above $3000)
Speaking, or a combination of speaking and training.

Having me on retainer for four, six, or 12 months, with a custom set of services and fee depending on each client’s needs.

Bulk-purchasing my services in advance, at a discount.

Which of these models can you adapt to your business?

Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help

Ryan Eliason is one of the true visionaries in the heart-centered business community, and one of the best people to learn from in creating a business that’s both socially/environmentally conscious and quite profitable. I’ve known him online for quite a few years, and I’m always impressed.

Ryan has two great (time-limited) gifts for you right now: 1. His wonderful report, “The 5 Best Heart-Centered Online Marketing Strategies: How to Heal the Planet, Grow Your List, Attract Clients, and Enjoy a Bigger Income.” An easy-to-read 26 pages crammed with useful principles and action steps. https://ow.ly/BnPCE

And 2. “Conscious Marketing for Visionary Changemakers,” a series of four no-charge webinars: #1 – Ten Vital Steps to Explode Your Positive Impact; #2 – The 11 Most Damaging Business and Marketing Myths; #3 – The Six Essential Pillars of Mastery; #4 – Visionary Business Mastery, https://ow.ly/BnQhs

Hear & Meet Shel

Largest rally on climate change in US history, Sunday, September 21, NYC. I am going to be in the city Saturday as well, and still have some time that afternoon for a couple more meetings. Please respond to me (shel at principledprofit.com) with the subject line Meet in NYC

September 26-28,Dover, Vermont: Scaling Change for Social Good is a fascinating “un-conference” with a keynote by Ami Dar, founder of Idealist.org, and an emphasis on getting your deep social change story sharp enough to present on video. This is a skill set that every marketer *and* every social change agent or environmental activist needs. I’ll be there as an advising mentor—but what happens there is really about the group, about a new way to collaborate for change. https://www.scalingchange.org/

I am participating because 1) I love the theme of achieving deep social change; it’s very much aligned with the direction I expect to be going for the next 15 years or so, and 2) I’m betting that this could be the start of something very big—kind of like being able to say you were at the first TED conference.

 
This just in as we go to press. The organizer adds,

Exciting news! John Raatz, partner with Jim Carrey and Eckart Tolle in GATE Transformational Entertainment, will participate in our Scaling Change event.

Here’s the press release: https://bit.ly/1pgB54t
And here is our website: https://www.scalingchange.org/

 

Monday, October 6, 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT: It’s been a while since I’ve done the Making Green Sexy talk as a webinar. I’m doing it once again for Green America—a much-improved version compared to the last time I presented it online. No charge. Details not set yet; please contact me for the signup link.
 

Remember: You can earn a generous commission if you book Shel into a paid speaking engagement.

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About Shel & This Newsletter

As a marketing consultant and copywriter… award-winning author of eight books… international speaker, blogger, syndicated columnist — Shel Horowitz shows how green and ethical businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

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 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).

“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).”
Another Recommended Book—80/20 Sales and Marketing

80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More, by Perry Marshall (Entrepreneur Press, 2013)

Wow! Rarely have I encountered a marketing book that packaged so many key insights into business success, or one that was so applicable to the environmental justice/social change lens that you and I bring to our businesses.

 
Right from the start, Richard Koch’s foreword reveals the biggest insight (which Marshall states on page 37 and explores in more depth throughout the book): the fabled 80/20 rule, a/k/a the Pareto Principle, is fractal. In plain English: If 20 % of your clientele spend at or above the average (and the rest are probably not even worth your time), then 20% of the first 20%—4% of your total customer base—will account for 16 times the average sale. Marshall represents this graphically in the “power curve,” which looks quite different from the typical bell curve that identifies medians and averages. He includes numerous examples of power curves, which crawl along the bottom left before escalating steeply—exponentially.
Now, turn this into strategy. After you identify the top-performing 20 % to focus on, rinse and repeat: take the top 20% of that 20%, and run it up several iterations. By the end, you’ll have identified a core group of buyers willing to spend thousands of times more with you than the average buyer. Then craft offerings for them. Sports teams understand this, and make half their revenue from the handful of wealthy fans willing to spring for season skyboxes and other very expensive perks.

—> Go read those two paragraphs just above one more time. They’re that important.

But don’t stop there. Read the rest of the book.

On page 87, I found out exactly why my attempts at affiliate marketing have been so poorly received—and how to fix it if I want to try again. On page 50, there’s a copywriting formula that I can’t wait to try, revolving around simple, elegant, and complete solutions to pain points. Page 89 offers a process of continuous tweaks that can multiply results by orders of magnitude, again and again. And then there’s the incredibly powerful lesson in split testing that fills Chapter 9; the chapter title, “It’s not Failure. It’s Testing,” takes my own insights about persisting with “impossible” goals to its enormously profitable mathematical/logical conclusion. Pages 93-100 explain why your most expensive offering should always be at least 100 times as expensive as your entry-level offering. And then there’s Marshall’s double-80/20 saddle curve (p. 155), which goes a long way toward explaining the polarization of politics (among many other things)—and the market opportunity (pp. 158-162) that may be waiting for you on both sides of that polarization.

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