The Clean and Green Club

Follow on Twitter
 

Facebook Profile
 

LinkedIn
 

Blog

Green & Ethical Marketing Facebook

Google+

I really enjoyed this article on traditional, marketer-driven outbound (“push”) marketing versus consumer-driven inbound (“pull”) marketing—and it had a really good insight I want to share with you:

Whereas outbound marketing often provided consumers with fantasies (think of Budweiser commercials or luxury car ads), inbound marketing provides consumers with facts. People aren’t researching and gathering information on what fantasy a company is trying to sell them on; they are researching the efficacy of their products, and (with ever-growing regularity) the social and environmental policies of specific brands.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I’m a huge believer in pull marketing, in putting the consumer in the driver’s seat to actively seek out solutions and find you. All the way back in 1985, when I published my first marketing book, I talked about effective Yellow Pages presence. Yellow Pages was the web browser of its time, a way to seek out and compare all the providers of a service and make a decision based on who could serve you best. By the time I did my most recent (sixth) marketing book, the award-winning and category-best-selling Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I devoted significant space to inbound/pull strategies, from social media to Internet discussion groups. This kind of marketing is not at all intrusive; in fact, prospects actually welcome it.

But the insight that the reason it works so well is that it’s based in fact rather than fantasy is something I’d never articulated.

Conventional marketing wisdom tells us that emotions do the selling, and intellect serves only to justify the purchase to others.

That may or may not be true for outbound marketing. I’ve always been quite skeptical of that claim; I have said for years that the best selling uses both emotion and rationality, complementing each other. To put it another way, selling is much easier when the buyer has both the need and the desire. Either one by itself is rarely enough to close a purchase.

But it’s certainly not true of inbound marketing. When a prospect comes to you, he or she is presold on the purchase, or at least seriously considering and actively researching how to solve the problem or meet the goal. But the prospect may not be sold on which vendor to use.

This is your opportunity with inbound marketing: to show how your company is the right solution for the already motivated prospect. And here, intellect is often going to trump emotion. That doesn’t mean you eliminate all the emotional appeals—but you make sure they are rooted in an informational approach, and assume that the prospect already knows why he or she wants what you sell.

In last month’s newsletter, I reviewed a book right now that says businesses don’t need to advertise—but it makes a huge exception for directory listings (including Yellow Pages and search engine ads). I was having trouble with that differentiation, until I read this article. Now I finally understand what the authors are getting at: outbound advertising = fantasy, while listings (inbound advertising and marketing) = fact.

I’m not sure I agree, but at least now I see where they’re coming from.

What do you think—and feel—about this? Please share in the Comments below

Recent Replays of my interviews by…

• Marsha Dean Walker and Jim Walker on the Marketing Made Easy show (I come on 30 minutes into the show). https://www.blogtalkradio.com/lwl-radio/2012/08/06/how-to-mind-your-own-business
• Patrick Walters and Elaine Chase on the Triangle Variety Radio show https://www.blogtalkradio.com/trianglevariety/2012/07/05/procast-with-shel-horowitz
• Michelle Vandepas on Talking Purpose radio https://www.blogtalkradio.com/talkingpurpose/2012/07/12/shel-horowitz-interview–ethics-green-and-frugal-business

Thursday, September 6, 1 pm ET/10 a.m. PT, Barbara Saunders interviews me on Solo Pro Radio https://www.iasecp.com/solo-pro-radio

Saturday, September 15 noon ET/9 a.m. PT, Kate Barton interviews me on Green marketing for PUNCH! Media & Marketing Made Easy

October 24-27, Association for Business Communication 77th Annual International Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii. I’m deeply honored to share the opening plenary panel with Jonas Haertle, head of the United Nations PRME initiative, widely published CSR author Nick Tolhurst, and a sustainability official from the Hawaiian government official. My wife, Dina Friedman, and I will be attending the entire conference. To register online: https://abchawaii2012.wordpress.com/registrationto-register-online-to-register-by-mail-or-scan-form-to-send-as-email-attachment-2012-annual-convention-registration-form-word-2012-annual-convention-registration-form-pdf/

Earn a Commission: Get Me a Speech in Hawaii in October

If your lead gets me a speech at my standard $5000 rate, you’d earn $1250 in commission. Drop me a note: shel ATprincipledprofit.com, subject line Hawaii Speech Possibility. NOTE: You can also earn commissions for getting me speaking other times and places—but for Hawaii, you can offer a big savings in airfare, since I’ll already be there. Email me at the same address, subject line Have Shel Speak. If your subject line is something like “Hi,” I’ll probably dump it unopened because I will think it’s spam. Processing hundreds of emails per day, I have to be kind of ruthless.

Planning Waaay Ahead

4th annual Amherst Sustainability Festival will be held on Saturday, April 27, 2013.

Book Expo America, June 4-6, 2013, NYC.

Green America is one of my favorite green business organizations. I’ve done a live event and a couple of teleseminars with them, and also chose them as the charity partner for the launch of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

Full-time, based in Washington DC, 60-85K.

If you know someone with very good administrative and management skills, plus a commitment to green principles, here’s the link: https://www.greenamerica.org/about/employment/jobs/executivedirector.cfm

Deadline: 9/7/12.

Up close and personal with my celebrated co-author, Jay Conrad Levinson, Father of Guerrilla Marketing
Jay is offering his famous intimate 21-hour intensive at his lovely Florida home, August 20-22nd. Only 10 people will be allowed in. https://3bl.me/ysqdva . Jay describes it as “a three-day face-to-face training personally conducted by me in our home here on a lake just northeast of Orlando, Florida. It’s intense because it’s from noon till 7 pm three days in a row—21 hours with lots of hands-on, devoted to making you a true guerrilla marketer.”
Oh—and this is new—students can get a discount!

Green Entrepreneurs in DC, SF, and LA: $5K Ford Foundation Grants
This is something I learned about via Green America, incidentally. Deadlines: 7/7, DC; 10/19, SF; 10/26, LA: https://greenbusinessnetwork.org/news/announcements/item/614-apply-for-the-$5000-ford-community-green-grant-in-dc-la-and-sf.html

Authors: This Show Wants to Interview You
I was recently a featured guest on the Triangle Variety Radio show, with excellent hosts Patrick Walters and Elaine Chase want to interview authors. You can listen to my segment at https://www.blogtalkradio.com/trianglevariety/2012/07/05/procast-with-shel-horowitz
Contact: Janneth Carson, carsonjanneth at gmail.com
You are welcome to say as the first line or subject line:
I read in Shel Horowitz’s newsletter that you’re looking for more authors to interview.

Robert Smith totally rocked the house on the call we did together August 2. Wow!
Here’s a guy with the guts to walk up to companies like FedEx or even government offices and say “I want to joint venture with you.” And they say yes! Because he frames it in such a way that their self-interest is obvious.
We learned how to:

• Approach super-famous and super-busy people with propositions that they listen to and accept
• Get other companies to not just subsidize your postal direct-mail campaign but let you make a profit before the first envelope is mailed
• Build credibility way up with a clever strategy for buying and using remnant ad space for pennies on the dollar
• Identify the best JV partners—by flipping through the phone book!

And so much more!
And I got to chime in with a few good stories—like how my very first business JV, in 1982, saved me thousands of dollars over 30 years—and the backstory of how I got to partner with Jay Conrad Levinson and become a Guerrilla Marketing author with Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

Plus Robert, and Marilyn Jenett, who was on the call as a participant, gave ME some great advice for marketing my monthly Green And Profitable column to people who will pay for it—which has been a stuck place for me.

If you were on the call, here’s your chance to listen again. If you couldn’t make it, you will definitely want to catch the replay. Yes, you will hear a dog barking, as there was a technical issue that prevented me from muting the call–but the open call also enabled a lot of stuff to come up for public discussion that we would have otherwise missed, so it turned out to be a good thing.

The replay link: https://shelhorowitz.com/robert-smiths-amazing-advice-on-jvs/
The password: marketingsuccess (all one word, lower case)

You have 48 hours to listen at no charge. After that, I plan to start charging for access and will change the password. So I suggest you listen to the call right away, and start putting these amazing ideas into practice before the rush.

As always, some of these earn me a commission. This particular batch, only the Guerrilla one.

Small Town Rules: How Big Brands and Small Businesses Can Prosper in a Connected Economy, by Barry J. Moltz and Becky McCray (Que, 2012)

Not so very long ago, many small companies from small towns tried to look big and urban. These days, big brands often try to look small and rural, and emphasize old-fashioned values like friendliness, quality, and integrity (perhaps the trend started with the “Pepperidge Farm remembers” commercials, which go at least as far back as 1981). Walk into a Cracker Barrel restaurant or look at 1990s-era print ads for Saturn (a General Motors brand) if you want examples.

Small Town Rules explains why: the convergence of a tough economy, online technology, and a public that expects to have input at every level have made small town business styles relevant again.

I grew up in the dense pressure cooker of New York City; for the last 14 years, I’ve lived in a village of about 200 where most families go back many generations (part of a town of 5,000), and before that, 17 years in a college town of 30,000 (next door to my current town). And for the past 17 years, the majority of my livelihood has been nonlocal, most of it coming over the Internet. My wife and I joke that we’re “bicultural,” because we can function both in megacities and tiny rural communities.

Moltz and McCray identify seven rules that provide a roadmap to function in this new and very different business environment (giving a chapter to each):

1. Plan for zero: just because you’ve had certain sources of income doesn’t mean they will continue. Outside factors from weather to fuel prices to technology will impact your business, and you must be prepared. In my own business, I’ve twice moved away from what had been my primary income stream, and both times, within a couple of years, those areas were pretty much dead—so I certainly recognize the truth of Rule 1.

2. Spend brainpower before dollars: in other words, be frugal, and use your creativity rather than your financial capital to accomplish tasks in cost-effective ways. This applies to financing, equipment, workforce, and more. In 1990, when laser printers were $5,000 and up, I organized a co-op to buy a remaindered one. I and three other entrepreneurs all kicked in $700, and because it was my idea, it lived at my office. This enabled a lot of growth in my business including a whole new profit center. I couldn’t have done it if I just went out and bought that very expensive piece of equipment.

3. Multiple lines of income to diversify your risk—but grow your business one opportunity at a time. We hear a lot about the first part of this rule—but the second is equally important. Don’t get too big too fast. Manage your growth so you control it and not the other way around.

4. Work anywhere, anywhen. Technology empowers you. I’ve had multiple clients as far away as Japan. I have a virtual assistant in Alaska, four timezones away from me. In seconds, I can research information that two decades ago required a trip to the library and a couple of hours work. Tools like Skype, e-mail, Google, and even Twitter make this possible—at least if you have access to broadband Internet (still in issue in many rural communities).

5. Treat customers like community. This may be the most important of the seven rules, because in a world where more than 11 million people will watch a video called “United [Airlines] Breaks Guitars,” your grip on customer loyalty depends on your own responsiveness.

6. Be proud of being small: smallness makes you nimble and agile, and gives you a human face. While the big dogs are having committee meetings and complicated approval processes before they even put in a bid, you get the job, do the work, and establish a relationship with your delighted customer.

7. Build your local connections. Can we say that global is the new local? For many of us small entrepreneurs, we are still very much based in community marketing; it’s just that our community might be defined by the 5,000 members of an Internet discussion group from around the world, rather than the 5,000 people who live in our town or neighborhood. This chapter explores the intersections of local and online marketing (look at the way the online business Groupon’s primary focus is exposing customers to local businesses in its area, or consider the way people use sites like Yelp on a mobile phone to pick out a restaurant as they’re walking around). This section also has some great information on working with and strengthening a truly local real-world economy.

While exploring these rules, Moltz and McCray go into some very interesting tangents, such as how to tell when brand extension is or isn’t a good idea, how to handle crises, and how big companies can incorporate the best of small-business management into their operations (example: Gore, maker of Goretex, caps its work teams at 150 people.)

While I did occasionally get frustrated with repetition and a bit of disorganization, I also took three pages of notes and starred an unusually high percentage. I’d say this book has relevance for green entrepreneurs, online entrepreneurs, and urban businesses who can gain a leg up by using small-town approaches—and is essential reading for anyone trying to run a business in a small town, especially if they are from a more urban culture.