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

There’s a popular deli and bakery in my area that we’d been patronizing for about 25 years—but I’m not in a rush to go back right now.

Knowing that we were gong to have a series of small memorial gatherings for my late mother (according to the Jewish custom, “sitting shiva”), a friend of Dina’s ordered a bunch of pastries to be delivered to us Wednesday between 3-5 (the gathering started at 7). We were delighted, and made a point of rushing home to be here when the precious goodies showed up.

Except that they didn’t. And at 5:15 p.m., when Dina called to find out where they were, she got a clueless young man who said the delivery driver had already left for the day. “I see your order right here, and I don’t know why it didn’t go out” was about the extent of what he could think of. He implied that he could have the brownies delivered the following day, and Dina told him she expected fresh ones, not those getting stale after never being delivered when they were supposed to.

It didn’t occur to him that he could call somebody to come in and make the delivery. It didn’t occur to him that he could offer any kind of make-good (or even a credit to our friend who had ordered the undelivered merchandise). And it didn’t occur to him that it was the store’s responsibility to remedy the situation—even after some prompting. He told her to call back tomorrow. Dina suggested that it was more appropriate under the circumstances for the store to call us, and he took down our number (after some more prompting).

Thursday came and went with no call from the store. Slightly earlier in the day, Dina called again and was met with a slightly more intelligent person who said she’d been at the store when she’d called the previous day, and that she would make sure the owner took care of it the following morning. I didn’t understand why if there were two people working, one of them couldn’t have gotten the order out to us when we called the first day. And she also told Dina to call back the following day, which got Dina pretty irritated. She told the woman she’d already wasted a lot of time on this and it was the store’s responsibility to call back.

And in fact, the following morning (Friday), the owner called back personally with an appropriate, if tardy, apology and make-good: a full credit for our friend, and a gift certificate (unknown amount) for us. For this reason, I’m not naming the offender. Hopefully, the gift cert will show up in ample time to use for the large public memorial we’ll host in November.

But think about the cost to this store: a number of our friends in the area (plus of course, the out-of-towner who’d given the gift) know which store did this, and will will likely go elsewhere if they need anything delivered at a specific time. And we, quite frankly, will be much less likely to go there at all, despite a relationship of more than two decades. Meanwhile, the friend who placed the order left left a withering review on Yelp, which will haunt the store for a long time to come.

It wasn’t the mistake; mistakes happen. It was the shabby way we were treated once the mistake was acknowledged that left a bad impression, the more so because we are actively grieving the loss of my mother, and it was made clear that this delivery was for a memorial gathering.

Unfortunately, wretched customer service is all-too-common in our society. Business owners don’t realize that these experiences undo a lot of their marketing and a lot of their good will.

Here are three lessons you can take away and implement in your own business, so that you’re not the one getting bad word-of-mouth/word-of-mouse:

  • Make sure your front-line people have excellent customer service skills. It doesn’t take much to be empathic, sympathetic, and show that you’re trying to solve the problem, and failure to do so has negative impact on your business.
  • Train every employeeon how to respond to customer service issues. Our clueless guy should have had a written checklist of what to do, if he wasn’t bright enough to figure it out on his own.
  • Empower your employees to make things right. the cost of a credit and make-good is almost always far less than the cost of lost business and sullied reputation.
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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , ,

This is really exciting: Germany, already a leader in the safe energy space—in fact, my solar inverter, installed back in 2004, was built in Germany—has rejected nuclear power. Germany has pledged to permanently close the seven plants taken off-line following Fukushima, and shut all of its 17 n-plants by 2022.

Remember: Germany is a cloudy northern European country. If solar can work there, it can work just about anywhere—and Germany’s clean energy industry already employs an impressive 370,000 people.

Germany was also the birthplace of the modern safe-energy/anti-nuclear movement, back around 1975, and had a huge influence on the creation of Clamshell Alliance and the US safe energy movement in the next few years after that. And citizen action clearly played a role. As the AP story noted:

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets after Fukushima to urge the government to shut all reactors quickly.

Meanwhile, Switzerland’s cabinet is recommending to Parliament that the country phase out all its reactors by 2034. And Vermont, which is both defending itself against a lawsuit by Vermont Yankee nuclear plant owner Energy attacking its right to regulate the plant and suing the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission over an improper license extension, submitted legal documents pointing out that Entergy knew perfectly well in 2001 when it bought Vermont Yankee that the plant was scheduled to close in 2012, waited to the last minute to challenge it, and therefore has no right to a preliminary injunction forbidding the state from closing the plant at the end of the license period.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Uncategorized, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , ,

Last year, I set myself up with Cinchcast: a nifty free service that lets you record anything and post it. In the beginning, I was recording my blog posts.

But I’ve gotten lazy. I haven’t made a new Cinch since late November. Then, thanks to this page of tips on repurposing content (mine is #10, BTW), I discovered Odiogo.com, which automatically records every blog post (it even went back several weeks when I set it up). And then it feeds in to iTunes and other  good streams. Even offers a revenue share on ads.

Odiogo promises bloggers “’Near-human’ quality text-to-speech.” Well, maybe if your idea of human speech is some very nervous person reading a presentation in a near-monotone. It’s got a long way to go before it sounds human to me.

But then again, I know people who read books on their phones. So the quality isn’t great, but it’s there and I don’t have to do anything. I’ll still try to be better about Cinching, but at least those who prefer to consume my blog in audio don’t have to wait for me to remember to record.

I invite you to compare for yourself. Links to both my Cinchast page and my Odiogo page are in this blog post.

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By Posted on Posted in Green Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged with ,

Guest post by Cynthia Kocialski

It seems as though green is here, there and everywhere these days. Everyday customers encounter companies that are green. Preschools are now advertising themselves as green schools. Dry cleaners are marketing themselves are being green. Landscape and maid services are green too.
When every company, small or large, jumps on a trend, what happens? People ignore it. It becomes a common business practice. It is simply expected in the minds of the customers, and is no longer a competitive or marketing advantage.
But wait … perhaps there is still a way to use your company’s green and clean efforts to your advantage – an indirect way. Marketing is about creating demand and every business person knows that it’s important to be different. Every business wants to be top of mind for their customer. It doesn’t matter how they remember your business just that they do remember it.
Why not use your green efforts to promote your company? News and information organizations are all faced with the same problem each and every day. Their audience needs to read, hear, or view something tomorrow, but what? And along comes your company comes with a story about its green efforts – a hot topic these days.
Green is touted everywhere. Companies label themselves as “Green”. But what does it really mean? What is a green preschool? What does a green dry cleaner mean? Even an Internet security software company claimed they would be a ‘green’ company in their start-up business plan.
Public relations is most effective when it introduces audiences to your company and your product without trying to sell them. People want information. They like to be educated, rather than “sold.”
Take the opportunity to educate and inform your customers about the specifics of your green-ness. Engage in a little shameless self-promotion.
1) Contact the media about doing an article or an interview.
2) Offer to speak at a meeting, conference or tradeshow.
3) Write a guest post for a business or green or environmental blog.
4) Offer a limited time promotion on Earth Day or environment celebrations.
Many small businesses can benefit from the clean and green technology revolutions going on right now, even if your company does not directly use or offer products that are environmental-friendly.

About the Author
Cynthia Kocialski founded three tech companies and has been involved with dozens of other startups. She has written a book about her experiences in start-ups companies, “Startup from the Ground Up, Practical Insights for Transforming an Idea into a Business”. She also writes the popular Start-up Entrepreneurs’ Blog (www.cynthiakocialski.com) and has written many articles on emerging technologies. Cynthia can be reached at cynthia@cynthiakocialski.com

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Uncategorized Tagged with , ,

I’ve written a great roundup of the cool Green trends I discovered walking the floor of the Green America/Global Exchange Green Festival in Washington, DC this weekend. some amazing stuff in fashion, transportation, shelter, food, and more. They’re doing another one in San Francisco November 6-7.

This will be the lead article in November’s Clean and Green newsletter, which will be published next week. If you’re not a subscriber yet, visit https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/ to sign up, so that you’ll see this coverage (no charge–just put your e-mail in the space at the upper right). You’ll also get eight freebies: Seven Tips to Gain Marketing Traction as a Green Guerrilla–and a series of seven action tipsheets covering:

  • Green printing (eight specific steps)
  • Saving energy (six steps)
  • Reducing waste (ten ideas)
  • Conserving water (five ideas)
  • Green transportation (six steps)
  • Deep-Green measures (six steps)
  • Effective Green marketing (six ideas)

So what are you waiting for? Just visit <a href=”https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/”>https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/ and leave your e-mail in the form at the upper right.

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By Posted on Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Shannon Cherry posed an interesting question on her blog: how encouraging should she be of people who want to train with her and then essentially remarket her stuff? Should she be a thought leader, or build a brand?

I was perhaps a bit rambly in my response (even citing the Old Testament—Abraham as a persuasive marketer!), but I still think it’s worth sharing here, since the question touches on a number of concepts I’ve explored over the years:

  • How much should you cooperate with competitors?
  • Is the world grounded in abundance, or in scarcity?
  • How does it benefit you when you train a competitor?

Here’s what I wrote:

Shannon, I’ve experienced this tension many times. It’s easier to make my peace with other people getting wealthy (wealthier than I am) from my ideas, when I remember a few things:

1) As someone who describes myself as “in constant learning mode,” I have drawn from dozens of teachers and books over decades, synthesizing what works for me and putting my own imprint on the overall combination–which has quite a bit of original thought mixed in as well. But let’s face it: 80% of what I know and teach owes some debt to someone, somewhere—but not the same someone. So when someone borrows form me as part of their own larger mix, I’m OK with that (especially if they’re considerate enough to acknowledge me).

It would be a bit different if someone took and bottled everything I know as their own. I certainly get teed off when I see other people’s bylines on something I wrote—unless it went out as a press release, and then I see it as a supreme complement (I still remember the bylined NY Times article from maybe 10 years ago that lifted whole paragraphs from a press release I wrote for a client). But if someone takes one or two of my ideas and mixes it with some from others and some of their own, I think they are the legitimate owners of that “marketing salad.” I can’t think of any marketer whose ideas are 100% original; even Claude Hopkins studied his predecessors. Some, like Jay Abraham, Janet Switzer, and Dan Kennedy, may have more originality than most, but they are not working in a vaccuum. I suspect strongly that Dan Kennedy studied Jeffrey Lant, and that Lant studied Melvin Powers, and that Powers studied John Caples and Hopkins, and back it goes, past Lincoln, Jefferson, and Franklin, at least as far as the Biblical Abraham, who used his marketing skills to persuade God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if he could find ten righteous people. (Abraham won the argument, but couldn’t find the 10.)

2) I was so enchanted by Alex Mandossian’s concept of “the paradox of syndication” that I put it in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. This is kind of a bit like Godin’s Idea Virus: you get your stuff into as many places as possible, and it grows for you. A great example of this is Amazon: With the brilliant idea to offer a no-inventory, no-work bookstore to all sorts of mom-and-pop websites in the mid-90s, Amazon became a powerhouse. It was years later before so much of the action moved to Amazon’s own site; in the early days, it spread by offering this no-work profit center to anyone who wanted it. Again, when someone spreads your stuff around, it’s on some level a deep complement. Of course, it’s much more of a complement if they give you credit. I’m a big believer in this; my books typically have long lists of acknowledgments and lots of sources cited in the text. But if your plan is to be a thought leader, it kind of goes with the territory.

For myself, I’ve decided that spreading the idea virus, being the thought leader, is more important to me than getting the glory, since I am motivated by a strong desire to create social change. But the glory certainly feels good! I think Nancy Marmolejo may have said it best in her comment:

Thought leaders don’t ask permission, they go for it. Be the one who makes this a “both/and” story, not an “either/or”.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Uncategorized, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , ,

My latest article, 10 Ways to Make Your Message Resonate with Green Consumers, was published today on GreenBiz.com (Joel Makower’s very well-regarded enviro site).

For anyone into Green marketing, I recommend this. (Of course, my book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, goes into far more detail.)

Creating original articles is one among several marketing and visibility strategies I’ve been using regularly for many years. In the last several months, I’ve posted quite a bit of original content (articles and guest blogs) on major environmental and PR sites—part of a strategy to become a go-to person for commentary on Green business. This doesn’t count making comments on others’ blogs or being interviewed frequently not only by bloggers, but by traditional media as well. If you’re trying to get known in your own industry, these strategies can get you there, and they cost nothing but time. Here are a few places of the places where you can see my articles:

Triple Pundit:
Coffee Activist Dean’s Beans Brews the Perfect Blend for Change

GreenMarketing.tv
Why Green Consumers Make the BEST Customers

Fast Company
At least 77 articles, 2008–2010.

Bulldog Reporter (a trade journal for PR)
Green Consciousness Creates Fresh — Often Unexpected — Opportunities for Savvy PR Professionals (I can’t get this link to load so am not including it here)

Now, the next goal, is finding markets that will pay for content. That’s harder, but not impossible. When I was actively freelancing, I got paid for as many as 87 articles in a single year. The publications I was writing for back then didn’t pay much, but they didn’t pay. It wasn’t a living, but it was part of one.

–>This is post number 10 of the ten posts I committed to writing in the last third of August, as part of Michele Scism and Michelle Shaeffer’s #Blogboost Blog Challenge–and there are still several days left in the month. I may keep it going through the end of the month, or even beyond. It’s good discipline.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

If you think we in the Green movement tend to take ourselves waaaay too seriously, here’s a bit of comic relief.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams describes with excruciating humor all the missteps in building a Green home.

I can relate. In my own Greener home adventures, we’ve discovered…

  • Solar panels without hinges cost A LOT of money to take down and put back up again when you need a new roof.
  • Tax credits are available for new roofs that keep your house cooler in the summer, even if you don’t use an air conditioner. But they don’t apply to roofs that keep you nice and toasty warm in the winter, even if you live in COLD New England.
  • Because of stress from extreme temperature variations, solar water tanks wear out in about half the time of conventional tanks—but not so fast that they’re still under warranty. Right about the time that the savings had paid for the unit.
  • Just because you want to go Green doesn’t mean it will be easy. When our furnace went, we couldn’t justify the cost of geothermal, and ended up replacing our oil-burning furnace with…another, more efficient, oil-burning furnace. Sigh!

    In an ideal world, we’d be able to afford, and justify, the $50,000 superinsulated roof, the geothermal heater, jacking up the R value on our 1743 farmhouse to the point where we had essentially no heating bill…but that’s not the world we live in. We did put in both solar hot water and photovoltaic systems years ago, but we’re a long way from feeling or being energy self-sufficient, and the capital costs were high.

    Am I sorry we took these expensive Green initiatives? Not at all. Do I feel we could have been better shoppers if we’d been more informed? You betcha.

    And do I want incentives to bring the prices down and the reliability up throughout society, especially for those least able to afford a large capital investment with a sometimes dubious payback? Absolutely.

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    By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Uncategorized Tagged with ,

    A between-issues special edition of Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Newsletter.

    Contents:
    1. A Concentrated Dose of Marcia Yudkin, Marketing Genius
    2. Tobri: A New Social Network from Ken McArthur
    3. Communication is a Lot More Than Words: Sharon Sayler’s New Book
    4. PS – Say hi at Boston Greenfest

    Marcia Yudkin is proof that you can be an introvert and still be a very successful marketer. She’s also one of the most ethical people I know.

    Join Marcia and me on a Special Interview Just for My Readers: “Top Ten Must-Know Principles
    of Marketing Psychology.” You will NOT want to miss this one! This coming Monday, August 23, Noon Eastern/9 a.m. Pacific.

    Click here to register. I’ll send a replay link if you can’t be on the live call—but if you can, I suggest calling in.

    She and I go back a long time. In the 1980s, when she had recently left a teaching position at Smith College to go out on her own as a freelance writer and editor, and my business was still a typing and editing service, she used to freelance for me. And I knew any editing project I gave her would be done beautifully, turned in ahead of deadline, and add to my standing with my clients. I also knew any article with her byline in a local magazine was going to be a compelling read. Then she moved to Boston and I lost track of her for a few years.

    In the 1990s, both she and I independently turned our attention to marketing, and we independently discovered the Internet. I rediscovered her back in the days when I still used an AOL account, so that puts it in 1994 or 1995. By then, I believe she’d already released at least a few of her great books, like Six Steps to Free Publicity and Persuading on Paper. And had begun to build a reputation as a marketer’s marketer: someone who could see through what you were actually saying to what you were trying to say, and show you how to say it a whole lot better—without hype or exaggeration. Then she moved back to the area and our paths would cross again. A couple of years ago, I invited her to join with another friend and me in a Mastermind group, and since then, I’ve benefited enormously from her critiques and suggestions on my own projects.

    Marcia’s weekly Marketing Minute and occasional Name Tales (product and company naming stories) have been brightening my e-mail box all the way back to 1998. She was one of the first people with a folder in my Marketing Geniuses file, where I keep many of her back issues. And she’s one of a very few newsletter publishers who continue to provide value to me many years after I subscribed. (My typical tenure as a subscriber is somewhere between six months and two years).

    The point I’m making is that Marcia is someone well worth paying attention to. As a trend watcher, a copywriter, a marketing consultant, and one of the world’s leading experts on choosing great product and company names, Marcia has a tremendous reservoir of wisdom behind her shy, reclusive outer shell.

    Marcia just spent some serious time organizing the best of her Marketing Minute how-tos and think pieces into a series of five books and 10 audios called the Marketing Insight Guides: a book and two audios each on…

  • Book 1: Persuading People to Buy: Insights on Marketing Psychology That
    Pay Off for Your Company, Professional Practice, or Nonprofit Organization
  • Book 2: Meatier Marketing Copy: Insights on Copywriting That Generates
    Leads and Sparks Sales
  • Book 3: Strategic Marketing: Insights on Setting Smart Directions for
    Your Business
  • Book 4: Publicity Tactics: Insights on Creating Lucrative Media Buzz
  • Book 5: The Marketing Attitude: Insights That Help You Build a Worthy
    Business

    • The books average about 75 articles each, and each 2-CD pair averages 95. In other words, there are a bunch on the audio that you won’t find in the books. So you don’t feel overwhelmed, she’ll be delivering them once a month for five months.

    And even though I read all of these in the original as she wrote them, I intend to spend some serious time with them again, now that they’ve been thematically organized. That will be time very well spent!

    And Marcia asked me if I’d be one of only 12 affiliates selected to pre-announce this collection, ahead of her remaining affiliates. She’s also giving special pricing right now. Through the end of August, you can grab this treasure trove of marketing wisdom for just $99; the final price will be $199, so this is definitely a deal. It works out to about 21 cents an article. I dare you to find so much value anywhere else for 21 cents! Yes, this is an affiliate link.

    2. Tobri: A New Social Network from Ken McArthur

    Ken McArthur has a new beta social media site for making great connections. And because he’s Ken McArthur of JV Alert, author of a great book on impact, and he has a history of pulling together incredible people who need to know each other (and helping them consummate amazing partnership deals)—I’ve signed up because I know it’ll be good. Even though I can’t really keep up with the social media I’m already involved with; for Ken, I’ll make an exception. Check out the video and connect with
    me there. I’d love to have you in my network!

    https://shelhorowitz.com/go/tobri (This is an affiliate link.)

    It doesn’t cost a cent and there are some amazing people in there. Lots of buzz on this one!

    3. Communication is a Lot More Than Words: Sharon Sayler’s New Book

    You’ve probably heard that in face-to-face communication, the words only account for about 7 percent of the message received. Body language, tone of voice, facial expressions and the like account for the lion’s share. (This is why it’s so easy to have misunderstandings online; you don’t have all those nonverbal cues so it’s very easy to misinterpret the real message.)

    The good news is that my friend Sharon Sayler has an excellent roadmap for you, so you can navigate the unsaid meanings and get to the heart of things—making friends and making deals along the way. And the better news: she’ll give you a free chapter plus a special report, How to Avoid the 3 Biggest Body Language Mistakes – in Under 10 Minutes. (This is not an affiliate link.) The book is called What Your Body Says, and I found it full of great insights. If you actually buy the book, you get ten nice bonuses from some of the most respected people in self-help, including a whole year’s access to Sharon’s private membership site.

    4. P.S. Say Hi at Boston Greenfest

    If you’re attending Boston Greenfest on Friday (August 20), I’m speaking from 1-1:25 on “Communicate the Value in Your Values.” Come say hi while I’m signing books afterward, and get your very own autographed copy.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , ,

    The Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico shows a number of lessons. Taking them to heart, as individuals, as business people, and as a country, will be crucial. First, four specific lessons from this disaster. Points five and six address our long-term energy future.

    1. It is absolutely essential to have tested remedies in place in case of catastrophic failure. BP’s throw-a-bunch-of-stuff-and-see-what-sticks approach would have been laughable, except that it was sickening. It became clear very early on that the company had absolutely no clue how to contain a large oil rupture. You don’t make those experiments after the failure, but well in advance—before you ever deploy any potentially dangerous and highly disruptive technology—you’d darned well know how you’re going to deal with an emergency. And those solutions will have been tested and demonstrated to work. BP clearly had no clue that working a mile underwater was different than working on the surface, and should never have been allowed to operate.

    2. Don’t give the fox the keys to the henhouse. Government oversight was spotty, at best, and that led to a situation where BP was allowed to override the good judgment of its own engineers. Enforce the rules we’ve enacted to protect our people and our planet. BP so obviously neglected its responsibility to public safety and environmental responsibility that I wrote a post back in May wondering whether there was a good case to bring criminal charges agaisnt the oil giant.

    3. When you take massive shortcuts with safety, when you cut corners in the name of short-term profit, the financial consequences are often more severe than doing it right in the first place. BP will be spending tens of billions of dollars that it could have easily avoided, by spending a few hundred thousand dollars upfront on safety equipment, and by heeding the warnings of engineers who said before the accident that their path was unacceptably risky.

    4. Even redundant safety devices can fail. We saw this with the Titanic, with Three Mile Island, and with Deepwater Horizon. Engineers are not always skilled at anticipating how different systems interact, and what happens to a system downline from a system failure.

    And now, at the federal policy level…

    5. Deepwater Horizon is a wake-up call to move away from centralized, polluting energy technologies. The risk of gathering so much energy in one place is significant, and when catastrophes happen, they happen BIG. There are a dozen reasons why oil (and fossil fuels generally) cannot be the long-term answer. And there are a dozen reasons why nuclear should never have been deployed in the first place, of which catastrophic accident is certainly one. A major nuclear accident would make Deepwater Horizon seem like a leaky neighborhood sewer pipe. There are still parts of the Ukraine left uninhabitable by Chernobyl, 24 years ago—and even that was not as severe as the worst-case accident. We MUST change our economy over to non-polluting, renewable, decentralized technologies such as solar, wind, small-scale hydro, geothermal, and of course, conservation/deep-energy-efficiency retrofits.

    6. This should be obvious, but apparently it’s not. All deep-sea offshore drilling needs to be shut down until the appropriate safety measures are in place so that Deepwater Horizon is not repeated. It’s a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle than to keep it in to begin with.
    Long-time environmental activist and Green consultant’s latest book is Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

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