Month: January 2010

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

Cooperate with others to open new markets. It’s one of the key principles of my brand new book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson), released this week by John Wiley & Sons. The book is a manual for thriving by doing the right thing, showing businesses that Green and ethical practices aren’t just a way to stay out of jail–they’re a success strategy–and cooperation is one of those practices.

So–do we practice what we preach? Here are some of the things we’re doing to launch the book:

  • We chose to partner with Green America for the launch. We are donating a portion of proceeds, and they have spread word of our book to their 94,000 members.
  • We solicited other partners who will tell their following about the book–and we gave them two powerful incentives: the chance to build their own lists by submitting a bonus, and to promote an upsell product that pays commissions.
  • With these partnerships, we’re able to offer anyone buying the book this month a package of extra worth well over $2750 (and still climbing)–AND to reach at least 702,000 people who are on the lists of these partners.

    So…adding Jay’s lists and mine together, we have about 94,000 subscribers. Adding Green America alone doubled that. Adding in the partners means we multiplied our original 94,000 by about eight times, to 890,000. Even chopping off ten percent for duplicates, that still means 801,000 people are hearing about this book, and that’s 703,000 people that Jay and I couldn’t have reached on our own. And that doesn’t even count Twitter, e-mail discussion lists, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

    Oh yes, and let’s talk about my bringing in Jay as a partner co-author. Leveraging the strength of his name definitely helped to build all these partner relationships, as well as strong partner relationships within the publishing house. So now, instead of reaching 10,000 of my own subscribers to inform them of my newest book, I’m reaching 801,000, of whom 791,000 are the result of our outreach efforts, outside of my own network.

    Cost to me? Only time. OK, quite a bit of time, including my assistant’s time, which I am paying for. But time well-spent.

    Is it resulting in sales? A week ago, the Amazon sales rank for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green was in the 575,000s. In other words, five hundred seventy five thousand books were outselling mine.There have been some wild swings, but at the moment, it’s at 28,793. In the environmentalism category, it’s #13 right now. And Amazon is only one of the five channels that we’re linking to from the books website, https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com. In other words, yes–people are BUYING the book, and in doing so, validating this key concept.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics, Protests and Crackdowns

    Oy, a few more like this and we’re really in trouble:

  • Death toll in Haiti climbed above 200,000, millions more injured and/or homeless.
  • Supreme Court removed restrictions on corporate campaign contributions, and this could have severe consequences for our democracy (I particularly like Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s commentary on this).
  • Not that they were using it anyway, but the Democrats not only lost their supermajority without passing very much important legislation, but they managed to lose it in my own state of Massachusetts. Since the Republicans have made very plain their policy of dragging almost every initiative into the swamp-of-no-return, this could cripple the already fading hopes that we’d make some progress, or at least back away from the tyrannical policies of the GWB-coup administration.
  • The renegade coup government in Honduras ran out the clock to the end of its predecessor Manuel Zelaya’s legitimate term, and Zelaya is leaving for exile as a private citizen. This makes at least three right-wing national coups that have succeeded in the Western Hemisphere in the first decade of the 21st century: Honduras, Haiti, and the non-military, non-violent election theft by GWB in the US.
  • Despite the popularity of outgoing President Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s newly elected president is a right-winger with some possible ties to the brutal Pinochet coup government of the 1970s

    At least there are bright spots in my own life, including the release this week of my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson).

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    By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , ,

    Following Martha Coakley’s loss in Massachusetts, Obama will no doubt get a lot of advice to move to the center, to compromise more, to give up any hope for the progressive agenda he was elected to deliver.

    But that advice is totally wrong-headed! If he wants to be remembered as anything other than an ineffectual one-term president, he and his weak-kneed party need to seize the debate, push the agenda, and present themselves once more as the party of change. Maybe they should even go back to Spiro Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativsim” and pin that label on the GOP.

    It is unconscionable that even the last few months when they’ve had their precious 60-vote supermajority, they’ve kowtowed to the right and let the party of intransigence frame and control the debate, and the votes. Now that they’ve lost that cushion, they’ve got only one hope of staying viable. Here’s the briefest outline:

  • Stop running crappy candidates! The Dems lost two governorships and for goodness sake Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat because they keep running candidates who don’t stand for anything, do little campaigning, and expect their money and connections to carry them to victory. Did they learn nothing from the John Kerry debacle? Or from Dukakis in 1988? I live in Massachusetts and can tell you that Coakley ran a terrible campaign.
  • Be the framers of the debate. Show the people how you proposed the change Obama ran on, and over and over again, the Republicans, the party of the failed policies of the past, have blocked your way no matter how many bipartisan overtures you make. Build momentum in the streets as well as in the boardrooms. Show that these Republicans, and the Blue Dog Democrats who vote with them, are blocking the way. Then mount effective campaigns by effective progressive candidates to get them OUT in November.
  • Refuse to tolerate the shenanigans of people like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. The Republicans managed to get a lot of their agenda through with a very close majority during the Bush years, because they held together. Make it clear that the party will support primary challenges(and general election challenges) from the Left.
  • Play hardball. When Nelson, Lieberman and Snowe threatened the health bill unless it dropped all its substance, the party’s progressive stalwarts should have been out there shouting very publicly that dropping the public option meant dropping THEIR vote. Even Bernie Sanders wasn’t willing to go there.

    THIS strategy will result in one year writing good laws that won’t get passed, throwing the bums out, consolidating power, and having an amazing third and fourth year. Franklin Roosevelt used this strategy successfully in his first term, showed the public that he wanted to make real change, and swept back into office not just for a second term but for a third and a fourth.

    Obama, as a former community organizer, knows how to do this. He did it effectively in his campaign. He did it in the first weeks of his administration, and built a culture of hope. And then he started back-door dealing, chipping away at the agenda, providing giveaways to Wall Street, maintaining the worst aspects of the Bush foreign policy…is it any wonder his constituency feels deserted and abandoned? And that hope crashed and burned, leaving people bitter, angry, and unmotivated to vote for weak-kneed scoundrels–which is how they are perceiving the Democrats.

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    By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

    Visiting my father in Florida, we treated him and his ladyfriend to lunch on fashionable Ocean Drive in Miami Beach’s South Beach deco district. Lots of lessons here on how to deal with a saturated market.

    First of all, almost every restaurant (and they are numerous), not only on Ocean Drive but on several of the surrounding streets, like Lincoln Mall and Española Way, hires shills: people to stand outside, engage anyone walking by, and try to get them to stop and eat. Most of the restaurants have at least one, some have several (for the most part, pretty young women, many with European accents. I guess it must be effective, but after a while, it feels like running the gauntlet.

    Second, recognizing that the consumer benefits from comparison shopping, many of the establishments print up postcards with their (for the most part very similar) offers. To us as consumers, this was very helpful, because after walking three or four blocks along the strip, we had a basis for remembering which ones had seemed like the best choices (and in fact returned to one to actually eat on the basis of the postcard).

    Third, when you’re doing popular loss-leaders, you make up the revenue in other ways. We were offered $4.95 breakfasts and $8.95 to $9.95 lunches all up and down the street. The food was actually quite good—but a simple cup of tea was $3.50!

    Finally, one to avoid: unpleasant surprises. When we were seated, the shill had told us she could to the advertised prices or 20 percent off the specials on display. My father asked the price of the steak special: $65! “I didn’t want to buy the cow,” he said, ordering instead one of the $4.95 breakfast deals: a huge omelet with meat, cheese, and vegetables.

    We saw this same strategy in some of the retail shops, where some items were really, really cheap, and others were wildly overpriced a shelf or two over.

    On the steak dinners, I imagine a fair number of people order one of the displayed specials without bothering to learn the price, and suffer major sticker shock when the bill arrives (or maybe after the drink specials, they’re too gone to notice). Considering that the same restaurant is using the same term to describe both its loss-leaders and its top-line offerings, I think this could be a disaster. It doesn’t strike me as a good way to make up revenue. In a crowded market, the last thing you want is a customer loudly arguing about the bill, especially in an open-air café that faces directly out on the street. Yes, of course, there are many places where you can pay $65 for a steak dinner and feel fine about it, but those are not restaurants that get you in the door on the basis of a $9.95 entrée. Different market, different clientele, different expectations, and no price resistance.

    Interestingly, our dinner choices for two of our three nights were restaurants with no shill. In both cases, we had excellent, reasonably priced food, and the place was certainly busy enough.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Customer Service as Marketing, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

    Rule Number One of my approach to marketing is to treat the customer right. As I say in my books, it’s far cheaper to bring back an existing customer than to have to go out and recruit a new one. And even in the following case, where there is no likelihood of a repeat purchase, it still would have made more sense to honor the request. A business owner never knows when a customer will tell a very large circle of people about either a good or a bad experience. And in this particular case, I’m prepared to escalate and the merchant may find itself with neither the money nor the merchandise, just for being stupid about customer service.

    For right now, I won’t name the company; we’ll see what kind of response I get. But here’s a letter I wrote that I should never have had to write:

    On January 12, 2010, we purchased two bags at your Lincoln Mall store in Miami Beach, a few minutes before closing time. We came into the store because my wife needed a replacement for her everyday purse. She found one that was a little larger and considerably heavier than her current purse, and I found a fanny pack, which I’d been looking for. It wasn’t ideal but she thought she could make it work. However, walking the few blocks back to where we were staying, it became obvious that the weight would be a problem. We actually took turns carrying it, and she decided we’d bring it back the next day.

    The purse never left the [name of store] plastic bag. It was exactly as it had been when we took it out of the store. But when we returned the next evening, the store refused to refund her purchase (we’re keeping the fanny pack). They pointed to the sales receipt, which stated that all returns would be for exchanges, not refunds.

    However, this information is not posted anywhere in the store. There is no way to know about the policy until after you’ve made the purchase and the store considers you bound by it.

    As it happens, I’ve written several books on marketing, and while not a lawyer, I have at least a basic understanding of consumer law. One of the requirements of a valid contract is that it’s entered into voluntarily by all parties. In this case, the terms of the contract were essentially changed by one party after purchase. The standard for American retail is to take back unused, salable merchandise within a reasonable time after purchase, and where the conditions are different, they need to be visibly posted so the customer is aware. Handing someone a sales receipt with different conditions is not something likely to hold up to scrutiny.

    However, the store did not accept this argument and refused to issue a refund; we spoke to four different people. We did look around to see if here was anything else we needed, but we had come to the store specifically to buy the purse, and couldn’t find anything else even remotely suitable.

    I am writing to you because I’d rather we work this out as reasonable people. We were only visiting Miami Beach and have left the area, so we can no longer bring the item back in person. However, we would be glad to return the bag if you refund our purchase price ($29.95 plus $2.10 sales tax, total $32.05) and issue a prepaid call tag from UPS or any other carrier. We will not pay to ship it back, since it was not our fault that the store refused to take it back when we went in person.

    I’m sure we’d both rather avoid a credit card chargeback, and therefore, a refund is the better path.

    Thank you,
    Shel Horowitz

    I’ll let you know what happens.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

    It must have been somewhere around 1986, in the early days of my business, that I first encountered the work of Paul and Sarah Edwards, gurus to the home-based business sector that was just beginning to take off back then. I’ve been home-based since I founded my company in 1981, so their message resonated.

    I’ve been corresponding with Paul recently, and am very excited by something they’re into now: Offering the “Elm Street” economy as an alternative to both Wall Street and Main Street.

    Elm Street, in most communities, is typically in a residential neighborhood. In Northampton, Massachusetts (the closest Elm Street to my house), it’s a graceful, tree-lined boulevard of large Victorian-era homes.

    As Paul and Sarah Edwards describe it, an Elm Street economy is also firmly rooted in sustainability, at multiple levels:

    It’s a local economy, composed of locally-owned and locally-financed enterprises, industries, and independent practitioners who are invested in bringing long-term well-being to all living there, including nature. It’s focus is on working together to create dependable, environmentally sustainable way of life that bring basic services, products, and resilience back to our local communities.

    Local Economy
    Be it in a city neighborhood, a suburban sub-division, a small town or rural community, the Elm Street Economy is coming to life. It may look a little different from locale to locale, with urban Elm Street communities growing food on rooftops instead of backyards, for example, but wherever they might be located, they can flourish due to values and characteristics symbolized in this logo.

    • Local production of food, renewable energy and goods.

    • Local development of commerce, government and culture.

    • Reduction of consumption while improving environmental and social
    concerns.

    • Being an exemplary working model for other communities when the effects
    of decline of the existing economy and our natural resources becomes more
    intense.

    In short, very much aligned with the values I’ve been espousing for years, in this blog, in my books, in my speeches, and elsewhere.
    The Edwards’ vision of the Elm Street economy, and their analysis, go far deeper than what I’ve quoted here. Go and read it.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

    An article with that headline appeared the other day in Firedog Lake and was reprinted in Common Dreams

    The writer, Cenk Uygur, believes Obama is good-hearted and sincerely wants change, but that he feels powerless.

    Why? Because not only doesn’t the left get out there and make noise, and push the discourse overwhelmingly toward real change (as the right has done so horribly effectively for a few decades now)—but we don’t even “have his back” for the moderate changes he could have fought for. Of course, he hasn’t fought very hard, and he was careful to appoint Cabinet members who for the most part were not visionaries, were not even change agents, but were part and parcel of the status quo, some of them the same people who brought the economy crashing down and got us into illegal and immoral wars in the first place.

    Here are a few (non-contiguous) paragraphs from the article:

    So, what Obama does by his nature is find the middle ground. As an excellent innate politician, he will find the political center of any field and rush to it. That’s where elections are won – the center.
    So, that’s why he sounded so progressive during the primaries, because that was the center of the left. And why he sounded like such a reformer during the general election because the great majority of Americans desperately wanted change…

    The center of Washington is very different than the center of the country. The Washington bubble leans far more to the right than the rest of the country (poll after poll indicates this). The corporate media in Washington are pros at protecting the status quo and view people who challenge the system as fringe players…

    So, our only hope is to move the island. We have to move his center. If we can move what he perceives to be the center, he will naturally flow to it. In Lost, when they move the island they move across time. In our case, when we move the island we need to move across the political spectrum.

    Right now, Obama perceives the center of the country to be somewhere between Dick Cheney and Harry Reid. Do you know where that leaves him? Joe Lieberman. That’s why we’re in the sorry shape we’re in now.

    Although it has a lot of gangster and violence metaphors that I don’t like and don’t agree with, the whole article is worth reading. And Uygur’s central thesis is absolutely on target: that it’s up to us to create a people’s movement that demands the change we elected Obama to bring, and that movement has to be loud and forceful and convincg—to the media, to the American people, and to the politicians.

    Change historically comes not from politicians, but by the people who demand it from them. The Civil Rights movement gave Lyndon Johnson (no progressive) room to push through several major pieces of Civil Rights legislation. Earth Day and the environmental movement of the early ’70s gave Richard Nixon (not a progressive bone in his body!) a mandate for the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency. yet we on the left (and I include myself in that) have largely stood by while Clinton negotiated away health care and the rights of gays in the military, while Bush and Cheney stole the election and hijacked the country, and while Obama rolls the ball ever-rightward to pass something he can pathetically call health care reform, or climate change objectives, or any of the rest of it. Let’s “have Obama’s back” for standing his ground against the right, and let’s push him further to the left with public pressure. Lots of it.

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