Category: Marketing Techniques and Philosophies

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, International Association of Green Marketers, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , ,

As noted in yesterday’s #blog30 posts, I’m using my participation in the seven-day subset of Jeannette Cates’ 30-day blog challenge to flesh out (and get feedback on) ideas for the trade association I am going to start, serving environmentally oriented marketers around the world: International Association of Earth-Conscious Marketers.

Today, I’d like to ask you what roles would be most important for members.

I’ve thought of a few possibilities—and I’d love to hear from you which you think are most important, whether I’ve left out anything crucial, whether any of them are just dumb..whatever you’d like to tell me:Read more »

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Ethics: General, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, propaganda, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , ,

I got a call tonight from a survey company asking me questions about my views on various candidates for Massachusetts Governor, and then about various energy alternatives, and then the obvious real purpose: questions about my views on the large-scale wood-burning biomass projects proposed around the state (including three locations fairly close to me: Russell, Greenfield, and even densely populated Springfield), and a proposed bill to count only solar, wind and hydro as Green projects, excluding nukes and biofuels.

I think this gets an “award” for the most biased survey I’ve ever taken. First, the questioner determined that I was strongly opposed to the biomass plants—which are very bad on carbon footprint, not only from the burning of wood but also the massive deforestation and the huge amount of truck traffic they will generate. Wood is, indeed, a renewable resource. But it sure isn’t a clean one!

Then he asked questions like

  • Would it change your vote if you knew that although the Sierra Club and [I think] the Massachusetts Medical Society support the bill, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Associated Industries of Massachusetts, and AFL-CIO oppose this bill? [Very clever of them to throw in the environmental groups on the other side; my suspicions were not yet aroused. Later, I Googled and could find no such endorsement from UCS, although their research is cited by another group, here]
  • Would it change your vote if you knew that wood-biofuel plants are carbon neutral? [absolutely NOT true!]
  • Would it change your vote if you knew that Massachusetts has more forested land now than it did 100 years ago?

    • After these three biased questions that were clearly tilted toward counting me as an opponent of the bill, I stopped the guy and said I thought this was a survey, and not a blatant attempt to feed misinformation to me in an attempt to change my opinion. He said, “hey, I’m just reading the questions!” I said I understood that, but I didn’t appreciate being manipulated like this, and I ended the interview. My caller ID told me he had a 609 area code (New Jersey), incidentally.

    I am totally sure this so-called survey will be used to trumpet the citizens of Massachusetts’ supposed stance in favor of biofuels and against the proposed law. While the law’s definitions could be sharpened, I actually feel that eliminating nuclear power and large-scale wood-burning biomass plants from being counted in the progress toward a Green economy is a GOOD thing. And I’ll be directing my friends who are active in the anti-biofuel campaigns to this blog, so they can see exactly what their opponents are up to—sleazy and easily discredited “surveys” like this.

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    By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Energy & Sustainability, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , , ,

    In the Great Advertising Debate, branding vs. direct response, I’ve always come down on the side of direct response. Every marketing message (not just ads) should have a call to action, a way of moving the reader/viewer/listener forward.

    With the Internet making it very easy to remove material from its original context and share it, I see a lost opportunity in this spoof ad by an environmental group attacking Royal Bank of Canada for its funding of highly polluting and environmentally destructive oil extraction from Canadian tar sands. Here is this stunning video, as flawlessly produced as anything from Madison Avenue.

    On the original page, the action is clear:

    Email RBC’s CEO Gordon Nixon and ask him to stop financing dirty tar sands oil and start funding a clean energy future.

    But inevitably, there will be versions of this video circulating by e-mail or posted on other websites. All they needed to do was have a slide at the end with the URL to take action. That chance will be lost. People will see this video, with no action step at the end, and they won’t know what to do about it. They’ll be a bit more educated on the issue, but will have no place to channel their new concern.

    Also, the letter text itself is another lost opportunity. Mired in passive language and bureaucratic tone, it takes some doing to extract (pun intentional) the actual message. Yes, there’s the opportunity to edit the letter, but the complete rewrite that’s called for will be too time consuming and most people won’t bother. I confess, I didn’t bother.

    Here’s the first paragraph; tar sands don’t even come up until paragraph 2:

    Amidst an unprecedented transformation in the banking sector, RBC clings to the outdated idea that social responsibility is separate from core banking activities. This letter is to encourage you to update its social and environmental practices to meet modern standards.

    This was probably a deliberate choice, to talk to a banker in banker’s language. But I think it’s a wrong choice. I’d have gone for a much more direct lead, like

    RBC’s continued funding of environmentally devastating tar sands oil extraction is not acceptable to stakeholders, and won’t be acceptable in the courts.

    I’m going to use the email contact on their website to send these suggestions, so the page may have been fixed by the time you see it. If so, more power to them. I think Rainforest Action Network does great work, and my goal is to educate, not to embarrass. I’m dong it publicly because I see many worthwhile messages and opportunities similarly lost in the inability to step out of the branding mindset. Next time you send out a political action message, I hope your call to action will be clear and thoroughly integrated.

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    By Posted on Posted in Entrepreneurship, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking Tagged with , , ,

    I read a lot of business books, and too many of them are so dry you could use them for sawdust.

    Last year, I happened to meet Kevin Daum at a dinner party Sam Horn threw in Washington, DC (where neither of us live) and we connected quickly and personally. Kevin is a sales and marketing guy who has a similar approach to mine, and he’s also someone who can write. He’s even working on a book about Green business!

    Kevin’s latest book, Roar! Get Heard in The Sales and Marketing Jungle, is a classic business parable of the sort popularized by Ken Blanchard. I’ve read a lot of these. What’s especially interesting about this one, in addition to the quality of the writing is what he calls the “3500-year-old sales process,” rooted in, of all things, the metaphor of the Four Sons from the Passover Seder.

    And it’s impossible NOT to get the message that every company employee needs to know how to highlight the company’s strengths and points of differentiation, both in general and to specific types of buyers with specific concerns.

    As a marketer, you can learn a lot just by watching this book launch. Kevin is doing something very smart: he’s building his preorder list months in advance. And he’s built in lots of try-before-you-buy (something else I recommend). He’s even managed to find a bcouple of independent bookshops to do discount coupons. So you can go visit https://www.awesomeroar.com/index.htmand see a brief video, grab a couple of sample chapters, and read dozens of blurbs (including one from me). and of course order your advance copy, if you’re so moved. You can also read Kevin’s wonderfully transparent blog about his “Quest for the Jewish Super Bowl Ring”: to launch as a New York Times bestseller (where he’s not afraid to discuss failures in the campaign as well as successes).

    Not a big surprise either that Kevin is a master networker who’s asked a lot of important people to help out. I’m glad to be in that category, and happy to alert you to what he’s doing.

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    By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Energy & Sustainability, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , ,

    Tonight I was reviewing the PowerPoint for the talk on Green Marketing I’m giving next week in Davos, Switzerland. And I was struck yet again by the big case study in my talk: a company that has been producing products from recycled paper for 60 years, but only bothered to tell anyone within the last decade.

    What a marketing advantage they would have had, if they had made this commitment the centerpiece of their marketing–especially in the old days, when it was hard to find recycled paper goods at any price, and their pricepoint was competitive with non-recycled brands.

    Instead, they actually went bankrupt before the turnaround management team rebranded the company and emphasized saving a million trees.

    The lesson: if you’re gong to do the right thing, harness the marketing leverage it gives you! This is something I discuss extensively in my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson), BTW.

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    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 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 Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , ,

    In a cutely titled post called “Six Degrees of Customer Separation,” my cyberfriend Sean D’Souza opined that it’s going to take six contacts before his prospects become customers. And that he actually doesn’t expect (or even particularly desire) a sale right away. Other experts use Jeffrey Lant’s “Rule of Seven” contacts.

    I take a heretical view of this. Here’s the comment I posted on Sean’s article.

    Actually, the answer is (like so many things) “it depends.” I actually talk in my book Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First about how to bring the six or seven impressions down to just one by laser targeting the intersections of prospect’s need/desire, frequency, and message. In other words, if you make exactly the right offer to the right person at the right time, you may only need one impression. If you have something that’s just not of interest, no amount of impression will shift. Example: as a 36-year vegetarian, I am not motivated to buy anyone’s burger by any amount of marketing. Only a sudden and very urgent need (like genuine starvation in a prison cell somewhere where meat was the only available alternative) would move me into the customer zone.

    But in truth, it works the opposite way, too. I have had people who were on my newsletter list or in a group I participate in for several years, or who saved a newspaper clipping and then two years later, contacted me—and became clients. In some cases, there may have been 100 or more contacts; in some cases, only one, but with a big time delay.

    No hard-and-fast rules, in other words–which is one more reason to…

  • Always put your best foot forward
  • Provide useful information AND conversation, not just sell-sell-sell
  • Assume that people are watching and judging you, so make a positive impression
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