Category: Marketing Techniques and Philosophies

By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business-general, Copywriting, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , ,
Business Book Photo by Jennifer Marr
Business Book Photo by Jennifer Marr
Business Book
Photo by Jennifer Marr

As a new subscriber to John Corcoran’s newsletter and a constant reader, I followed John’s link to his list of 20 influential business books. It was a terrific list (I’ve read quite a few of them). And he got quite a few additional suggestions from readers. (Side note: sign of a successful post: 40+ comments, most of them recommendations.)

He has never heard from me. As far as  know, he has no idea who I am. But I, of course, jumped in. I’d like you to read my comment in “learning mode,” think about what lessons you can pull from it, and post a comment on this page. THEN check out the lessons I think I’m imparting here, and comment again on that page. (You probably want to look at John’s list first.)

Hi, John, great list. I’m fairly new to your email tribe and this is the first time I’ve seen it. I’m a business book writer and an addicted reader (read about 70 books in the first 9 months of 2015) and was delighted to see how many I’ve read. I’ll look forward to listening to some of those podcasts. I’m listening to the interview with Dan Pink as I write this.

My own recommendations? Two in particular that no one else has mentioned:

1) The Success Principles by Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer. By far the best thing I’ve ever come across on personal motivation and the life hacks to build world-changing influence.

2) Cash Copy by Jeffrey Lant utterly changed the way I think about copywriting. Plenty of other books I’ve read since have a similar trajectory, but Cash Copy happened to be the one I read first–somewhere around 1988 or 1990. It turned me on to the whole idea of the you-focus of solving a pain point or helping the reader achieve a goal, rather than what I call “we we we all the way home copywriting” (e.g., “At _____ [company], we believe…”). That led me to develop “story-behind-the-story” marketing materials for my clients, such as a press release for a book on electronic privacy that used the headline, “It’s 10 O’Clock—Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is? (The book didn’t even get a mention until the third paragraph.)

I’ve been told by a number of people that my own Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green has opened them to the idea that green business is not just the right thing to do but can be quite profitable, thank you. I’m hoping my next book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, will broaden that discussion to show that turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. John, I’ll be in touch with you privately to see if you’d like an advance review copy.
—Shel Horowitz, https://impactwithprofit.com

Again, I invite you to post your immediate takeaways here. Then visit https://greenandprofitable.com/the-lessons-i-think-i-was-teaching to see if my intention matched your reaction, and post again over there. It may prove a fascinating and illuminating conversation—and give you lots of insight to use in your own marketing and customer relations.

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Entrepreneurship, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , ,
Business Book Photo by Jennifer Marr
"The Bystander Effect" Photo by Iwan Beijes
“The Bystander Effect”
Photo by Iwan Beijes

In part 1 of this post, I referred to the “story-behind-the-story” news releases I learned to write after reading Jeffrey Lant’s Cash Copy. So here’s the story behind the story of Part 1: the lessons I hope you come away with.

First, of course, are the obvious messages: John Corcoran and his readers prepared a good resource, and reading those books can provide you with new skills and insights. And the two books I added to the list provided ME with  important skills and insights.

But I’m a marketer. There’s a deeper psychology here. I believe in transparency, so I’ll step you through the goals I had in posting this, and the action steps I took to meet those goals—so perhaps it may influence the way you craft your own messages:

  • To introduce myself to—and build and nurture a relationship with—John Corcoran. I build relationships with many people who have a network I want to be part of, and who I’d like to see me as a colleague whose expertise complements theirs. This is my first communication to him. I got on his list a few weeks ago after listening to a webinar he did with one of his marketing partners. As far as I know, he doesn’t subscribe to my newsletter, doesn’t know me from any of the discussion lists I participate in, hasn’t heard me speak or read any of my books. Thus, I’m assuming it’s a cold contact.
  • To introduce myself to his community in ways that may spark interest in my books and/or consulting and copywriting services

Notice how I work toward those goals as I:

  1. Complement him on the resource he put together, right in the very first paragraph
  2. Mention that I’m a business book writer—thus positioning myself as someone it makes sense to pay attention to, since he pays attention to all these other business book writers—and an addicted reader who consumes business books, and thus a natural member of his community
  3. Show that I’ve taken the next action step: listening to his podcasts and naming the first one I played; I’m engaging with his material and psychologically rewarding him for making the resource available
  4. Add two new books that no one has mentioned, along with the reasons why I recommend them—and in those reasons why, I begin to reinforce, not just to John but to anyone else reading this page, the idea that I’m a creative, problem-solving marketing guy that people could turn to for new approaches to marketing (notice how I mention that the example was from work I did for a client)
  5. By citing the year I first read Lant’s book, show that I’ve been in this world for decades
  6. By using the “we we we all the way home” reference, show that I have a sense of humor and a knowledge of cultural references
  7. Provide direct value in the post, by suggesting (without selling and without hype) and giving an example of story-behind-the-story copywriting and mentioning that going green/solving the world’s biggest problems can be a formula for profitable, successful business
  8. Reference the relevant book I have out, and the one that’s coming out soon
  9. Make a direct offer to John: the gift of an advance copy (of course, I’m hoping he will recommend it to others)
  10. Tell him to expect a private email from me, so when he sees it, he’ll open it
  11. Finish with the most relevant of my website URLs, so anyone else whose attention I caught can easily track me down without having to do a search

Incidentally, this transparency extends to my outreach to John. When I send my private note, I will include the links to these two posts so he can see how I used my post on his site as a case study for you. 😉

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,
Shel made friends with these three Australians while traveling in Turkey
Shel made friends with these three Australians while traveling in Turkey

Pretty much every networking guru agrees: sending handwritten notes, especially thank-you notes, is one of the best ways to grow your importance in the minds of the people who receive them.

And I know that the hand-written thank-you notes I’ve received stay in my own mind for years, even decades.

But maybe, like me, you have terrible handwriting. And maybe you also get very bad writers cramp. So I hereby give you permission to build your network through other tools. Here are a few of the ways I do that:

  • If I don’t recognize the caller ID: “Good morning/afternoon/evening, this is Shel. How may I make your day special? This starts a lot of great conversations.
  • On the discussion lists I participate in, I do my best to answer people’s questions with friendly, helpful, useful advice—and to answer a lot more questions than I ask. For about ten years, this was the biggest source of new clients in my business, and all it cost was my time.
  • Of course, I add value when possible. On social media, this is so easy: retweet, Like, and share good posts, sometimes engaging in dialog or bringing others directly into the conversation (tagging them). But outside of social media, you can add lots more value without a whole lot of work. Make e-mail introductions to people who could benefit from knowing each other, even if you have nothing to gain from their connection. Send an article or video link you think will interest your contact. Be of service as a volunteer. Interview movers and shakers for your blog, your telesummit, or the book you’re writing.
  • Each year, I select a cool oddball birthday greeting (this year, it’s space aliens singing Happy Birthday). Whenever a Facebook connection’s birthday comes up, my assistant sends them the greeting. When they thank me, I often ask how they’re doing,w hat they’re up to, and when they respond to that, I fill them in on my own very exciting work turning hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. NOTE: since many of my FB friends know each other, I typically do these as private messages rather than wall posts.
  • I’m always ready to start or join conversations with strangers—such as the three young Australian women in the picture, whom I met while hiking in Turkey. I’ve actually formed lasting relationships on public transit, at conferences, and yes, even at business networking events.
  • Thank people publicly. When you make people look good in front of others, they remember.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,
Urban bicyclists taking a break
Urban bicyclists taking a break

What surprised me about Seth Godin’s blog post today on cars vs bicycles was the way he based his pro-bike arguments in classic liberal altruism: protect the underdog, ensure the safety of the less powerful. This is even more remarkable because he lives in New York City, whre bikes have clear superiority over cars for many purposes. (His tounge-in-cheek pro-car arguments, on the other hand, were like the modern Republican Party: I have more power than you, so get out of my way.)

I’m a big believer in convincing by harnessing the reader/listener/viewer’s enlightened self-interest. So I’d rewrite his pro-bike list with these eight positive reasons:

  • In dense urban areas, you’ll get there much faster on a bike than in a car, for trips of up to five and maybe as much as seven miles, especially in rush hour
  • You can park within a few feet of your destination (in big cities, I often start looking for a parking space half a mile/one kilometer ahead, and sometimes don’t find a space until a mile/2KM on the other side)
  • In less populated areas, the bike provides a healthy, fun workout
  • You notice more on a bike: stores and restaurants to check out, architectural details, big scenic vista, some ripe and yummy fruit to pick on a wild raspberry vine, that gorgeous hawk soaring above you
  • You enjoy that wonderful feeling of being outside with the breeze and sun
  • Your carbon footprint during your trip is reduced by orders of magnitude
  • You get to smile and be smiled upon by other people; positive human connection, no matter how fleeting, is a good thing, and hard to achieve encased in a ton or two of steel and plastic
  • Bikes are waaay cheaper—bike economics: outright purchase of something between $200 for a decent used street bike on up to, say, $600 for a new one of better quality, maintenance costs of $50-$100 per year, fuel cost of zero; car economics: at minimum, $5000 plus hundreds or thousands in annual maintenance for a functional used car with a remaining lifespan of three years or more, plus costs of fuel and insurance, on up to several tens of thousands for a new one.

Of course, Seth is using the bike vs. car argument as a metaphor for the caring vs. selfish economy. But as an avid biker (going back to commuting to high school in New York City, and continuing through my current rural lifestyle)—and a benefit-focused marketer, I had to point out that bikes do actually offer a number of real advantages.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Technology Tagged with , , , , ,
Phone (picture)
Dialing for dollars doesn’t always work. But dialing to convey important information does.

Most of the time, robocalls are used all wrong

I once wrote, “If you are trying to sell me something, or if you want my vote, I want contact with a human being who can answer my questions.” Yet I get robocalls all the time from clueless “marketers” who don’t understand this simple truth, or can’t be bothered with it. Worse, a lot of these calls are hangups, and far too many show up in the middle of the night. Would it be so difficult to program a function that blocks each area code between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m, local time? It won’t help cell-phone travelers but it will help a lot of home-based entrepreneurs who don’t always remember to turn the bedroom ringer off at night.

I have one message for these cretins:

–> Stop spamming me. I don’t buy from spammers.

I’ve spent years preaching the gospel of client-centered marketing. Marketing should be driven by the customer. You want to be found when the prospect is searching for great content about what you do. You want to be ready when that client calls or emails. But you don’t want to be spamming the prospect with canned, inflexible messages. It doesn’t work in social media, it doesn’t work in e-mail, and it doesn’t work on the phone.

But that doesn’t mean the technology should be tossed out. There are times I actually welcome a robocall, and other times when I tolerate them:

These robocalls are welcome:

  • From a school where I have a child enrolled, or the one where my wife works, announcing a closing or delay
  • From my town or state government, warning of a road closing, water service issue, etc., or giving polling hours for an election
  • From my utility company, updating me on a storm-related outage
  • From one of my credit card-issuing banks, flagging potentially fraudulent activity and offering to connect me with a human being if there is an issue

And these I’ll grit my teeth and tolerate:

  • A healthcare provider confirming an appointment
  • A business that I regularly patronize, announcing a special time-limited offer and giving me a reason why it can’t wait for me to check my e-mail
  • A reminder that an online or in-person event I’ve signed up—and especially one that I’ve paid for—is about to start

Notice a pattern? What do all of these have in common? I’ll skip a couple of lines so you can take a guess before I tell you.

Figure it out yet?

 

 

Here it is:

These are organizations with whom I have an existing relationship, using the tool to convey crucial information. They are not interrupting my day—or worse, my sleep—to sell me something. They are not horning on on me and forcing a relationship where none exists. The ones I welcome are telling me something I need to know; the ones I tolerate at least tell something they need me to know on the basis of our past interaction.

And that should be your guideline in using any intrusive marketing (or informational) method.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Branding, Copywriting, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,
Spanish-language fundrasiing letter
Seven reasons why this letter failed to raise money from me

What’s wrong with this picture? Plenty.

  1. The letter is in Spanish. Although I do happen to speak Spanish, I’m not great at reading big quantities of it. And I’m pretty sure that whatever charity rented them the list, it’s one that does business in English. Which means most of the people receiving it won’t be able to read it at all.
  2. They’ve enclosed six cents of real American money. Which probably upped the cost of the mailing by at least a dollar apiece, because of the technologies involved in mounting coins precisely on circles, facing the right direction, etc. If they can afford to spend a dollar to send me money, they don’t need me to send them money.
  3. If I understand the Spanish correctly, they actually request that I send them back the six cents along with my donation. If this is supposed to weigh on my psychology and pull on my heartstrings, it fails. It just gets me annoyed that their gift is false.
  4. It’s not a group I’ve heard of, and they don’t do enough to build my confidence in the organization. Other than telling me (on the back) that 95 percent of contributions go to programs, and logos (again on the back) from Ministry Watch and BBB, they do basically nothing to convince me that this is a legitimate organization. There’s no reference to checking them out on Charity Navigator, nothing about what they’ve actually done with the money they received. All they tell me (translating) is “Founded in 1982, Food For The Poor is an interdenominational Christian organization that works for ending the suffering of the poor in the Caribbean and Latin America.” It doesn’t say how they accomplish this.
  5. I’m not a Christian and prefer to contribute to good works through nondenominational or Jewish organizations. So I’m not in their target market.
  6. I respond much better to pictures of people being empowered through changemaking organizations than I do to 1970s-Biafra-style hunger photos. And I think a lot of other people do as well; in my own copywriting, I emphasize the positive change, not the desperation.
  7. It’s addressed to Señor Sheldon Horowitz. True, Sheldon Horowitz (generally without Señor attached) was my name until I was 15. But as a junior in high school, I shortened it to Shel, and started coming out from under a lot of negative emotional baggage tied up with my birth name. In 1983 when I got married, Shel became my legal name. I didn’t move to my current home until 1998. Thus, there has never been a Señor Sheldon Horowitz at this address. Call people what they want to be called, not by a name they rejected. Yeah, I know, they were just buying a list—but it must have been a nonresponsive list, because calling me Sheldon predisposes me to reject the request.

The sad thing is, it would have been easy for them to do so much better. I actually went to Charity Navigator and looked them up anyway. They score very well on both financial and organizational criteria. They took in over a billion dollars in 2013, and funded programs with almost $985 million that year.

Too, the Charity Navigator site gives me a description, obviously written by the charity itself, that would have done a lot to assuage my concerns, had it been in the letter:

Food For The Poor (FFP) ministers to spiritually renew impoverished people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Established in 1982, FFP’s goals are to improve the health, economic, social and spiritual conditions of the men, women and children we serve. Food For The Poor raises funds and provides direct relief assistance to the poor, usually by purchasing specifically requested materials and distributing them through the churches and charity organizations already operating in areas of need. Since its founding FFP has distributed more than 63,000 tractor-trailer loads of aid to the poor. We have also built more than 84,000 housing units for people desperately in need of adequate shelter, and completed more than 1,475 water projects that provide lifesaving water and sanitation to hundreds of thousands of people in need.

Nice and specific about what they do and how they do it–so why not include it in their mailings?

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

Guest post by Michelle Drucker, manager of marketing, BookPal (www.book-pal.com)

When was the last time you bought a book because you saw it in the window of a bookstore? Now, when was the last time you purchased a book because you read about it online? I’m guessing it was more recent than the last time you even stepped foot in a bookstore!

As stated by marketer David Meerman Scott, “The old rules of marketing and PR are ineffective in an online world” (The New Rules of Marketing & PR, p. 15). The Internet has transformed the world of book marketing just as it has for many other industries. Traditional book-marketing strategies, such as bookstore window placement and book signings, are dead. Sure, these strategies will result in a few small sales, but they are not nearly as cost-effective and efficient as online marketing.

Here are a few simple tricks to get your book noticed and boost sales without breaking the bank:

Create visuals and produce dynamic content.

Forget about the cover! Now people are judging a book by its trailer. The only type of media that outperforms images online is video. Visualize the reading experience by creating a compelling video. Book trailers don’t need to have high production value, but make sure they are professional and straightforward. Post them to YouTube and Vimeo — these sites allow others to share your video content all over the web.

In order to stay top-of-mind, dynamic content is key. Hundreds of thousands of books are published every year. What makes your book stand out? What information does your book contain that people need to know? This is content you should be sharing online.

A blog is a great place to share tidbits of content and direct consumers to buy the book. On a blog, you can share unique information that will help you connect with potential readers on a personal level. Consistent, focused blogging also helps improve keyword rankings if you optimize your blog for search engines.

Establish a strong social media presence.

Does your book have a Facebook page? Does it have a Twitter handle? Its own hashtag? If you answered “no” to any of these questions, then you have your work cut out for you. The best way to spread awareness for a new book is through word-of-mouth. In today’s modern era, social media is the perfect medium for spreading the word.

Now that you’ve created all this amazing content for your blog, use social media as a sharing tool. Link your posts back to your blog in order to boost traffic. With the right targeting and use of keywords, millions of people can potentially see your content.

Leverage industry influencers.

If you are a new author, you probably don’t have a gigantic following on social media or thousands of people viewing your blog every day. The good news is that there are plenty of people that do.

Before you start sending an advance reading copy (ARC) of your book to every blogger on the planet, identify influencers with followers who you can convert into readers. For example, if you are writing a book on leadership, you should send an ARC to business leaders with a significant online presence. Once you’ve found the right influencers, encourage them to review your book and provide their honest feedback. If they like your book, the word will spread like wildfire.

About Michelle Drucker: Michelle manages the Marketing department at BookPal, an e-commerce company that sells books to corporations, school districts, nonprofits and government agencies. Michelle brings strategic focus to the firm’s email, social media and lead generation campaigns. She also oversees paid advertising and website development initiatives.

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By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Demographics/Psychographics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Reviews, Uncategorized Tagged with , ,

The Four Intelligences of the Business Mind--Book Cover
The Four Intelligences of the Business Mind–Book Cover
The Four Intelligences of the Business Mind: How to Rewire Your Brain and Your Business for Success, by Valeh Nazemoff (CA Technologies, 2014), reviewed by Shel Horowitz, primary author, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green

According to the Nazemoff, any successful business needs to concentrate on four different types of intelligence.

The first is financial intelligence, which most people already think about when they think about business.

But we also have to think about customer intelligence, data intelligence, mastermind intelligence. Mastermind is really what we normally think of as brainstorming. It’s the idea that a group of people can be smarter than any one individual.

In data intelligence, she suggests marrying the “9 Cs”—Collaborate, Consolidate, Communicate, Collect, Connect, Coordinate, Change, Converse, and Convert—to the classic 5Ws and an H that every beginning journalist learns to ask: Who, What, Where, When, Why, How.

Combining these, we get what she calls neuro-economics. And sometimes, small incremental changes that create a big result.

To me, the most interesting chapter was on customer intelligence. She talks about how to develop a customer profile, personas, and markets. and how to use this information to create communities. But she also shed some fascinating light on data. Specifically, the importance of determining whether your data is good. And I love her statement that success is not about how much data you have, but whether you have the right data.

These intelligences have implications in decision-making; Nazemoff talks about using them to determine who is responsible to make the decision, who is accountable, who gets consulted, and who simply gets informed.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Today, I encountered a post from an Internet friend who lives in Israel, urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netenyahu to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.

The post made me feel queasy. My original response was a desire to scream and yell that this was racist. Fortunately, I had enough self-control not to give into that stupid and unproductive urge. I also didn’t want to start a firestorm of negative attacks on me because I had the temerity to disagree with a view that I felt was both racist and extremist. And yet I wanted to confront this way of thinking and not let it go unchallenged.

So instead, I thought for a couple of minutes about what type of response would actually be heard and not blocked out—what could actually advance a dialog. (I will confess that I haven’t always been skilled in that type of response, but I think I’ve gotten much better in the past several years.

And this is what I finally wrote—knowing that my friend is deeply religious, and that an appeal to his religious convictions might actually get through.

Even as poor a student of the Torah as I am knows that God does not want to see innocent blood shed. Your recipe for Bibi would leave hundreds of thousands dead and the Middle East–including Israel–in flames. Possibly the entire world. I urge you to think carefully about unintended consequences.

And amazingly enough, this actually did open a door for some mild and thoughtful dialog. Not a perfect outcome but one I could feel reasonably good about. I had used the marketing principles I teach, and given the right message for the audience.

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

Ooops! I’ve been reviewing my blog posts over the past several years, mining material for my next book. And I’m embarrassed to find this post, dated March 14, 2012, promising to report back on the results of a concentrated effort to get search engines to notice a particular page—in this case, the page for my resume writing services (once the mainstay of my commercial writing services, but now a considerably smaller percentage of my work).

So, better late than never, here are the results:

Whether it was the strategy I discussed in that post or something else, I’m pleased to report a definite uptick in inquiries (most of which come by phone, interestingly enough). Last year, for the first time in a long time, resume clients who found me by looking outnumbered those referred by past clients or colleagues—and virtually all of those were via Google or an online Yellow Pages (I think there were one or two who found me in the paper Yellow Pages). And while it’s still a very small part of my business, the overall number was significantly higher last year.

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