Interview with Author Shel Horowitz – Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green

Book Titles: Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve YourProfits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson), Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World

Website URL: http://shelhorowitz.com

Social Media Links:

Twitter: @shelhorowitz

Plaxo: http://pulse.plaxo.com/pulse/profile/show/128849525442/

Facebook Green and Ethical Marketing Fanpage: http://shelhorowitz.com/go/Q9gE

LinkedIn: http://shelhorowitz.com/go/UZWZ8

Zintro: http://www.zintro.com/expert/GreenEthicalShel

Plaxo: http://pulse.plaxo.com/pulse/profile/show/128849525442/

Groupsites: http://www.groupsite.com/network/show_profile/54661

Blog: http://principledprofit.com/good-business-blog/

Also the Green and Ethical Business group on LinkedIn, which doesn’t make it easy to track down a URL. Search for it under groups.

Directory of all my web sites and social media pages: http://shelhorowitz.com

What is your book about? Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green focuses on Green, ethical, and eco-friendly as business success strategies and marketing advantages: not only how to GO Green, but how to leverage that commitment to form marketing partnerships that open new markets, get new customers, and turn your existing customers into fans and ambassadors.

Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World shows how to make your book stand out in a very crowded marketplace, get free publicity, take full advantage of major websites that can promote your book, etc.

Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World is a step-by-step how-to in all forms of traditional marketing, emphasizing those that cost little or nothing (media publicity, Internet, self-made media) but also covering advertising, trade shows, etc.

What inspired you to write your book?

For more than a decade, I’ve been working to fuse the two major strands in my life: marketer/entrepreneur, and activist/environmentalist. Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, my eighth book, is a natural outgrowth of that synthesis.

How did you come to do what you’re doing today?

It’s been a gradual evolution. The first brand I built online was Frugal Fun, and part of my motivation was that frugality was a back-door way to build consciousness around environmental issues. And by then (1995), I already had two marketing books published, and became known fairly quickly in that world as well. Now, the world finally seems ready for a book on environmental-focused marketing. I’m hoping the world is also ready for a syndicated column on that topic, which I’m preparing to launch.

But writing books is only one part of a diversified career that also includes writing strategic marketing plans and marketing materials for other authors and publishers, shepherding unpublished writers through the publishing process so they emerge as published authors with a quality book, speaking on Green marketing, business ethics, and book publishing, the occasional Green consulting gig–and founding an international trade association for Green marketers.

Can you describe a typical day in your life?

Working in short bursts of half an hour to an hour and a half–a mix of actual writing, marketing activities, and trying to keep up with the flood of e-mail and social media. In between, reading, daily walk on the mountain with my wife (novelist D. Dina Friedman), and our Alaskan husky/German shepherd “personal trainer,” perhaps a bike ride as well. Harvesting veggies from our organic garden, cooking a great vegetarian dinner when it’s my turn, maybe take in a concert, play, or movie in the evening or visit with friends, family time…I feel very blessed.

What do you most enjoy about what you do?

I feel the work I do makes a difference in the world, and I absolutely love that. Helping to shape a better world has always been a much higher priority than making a lot of money. I make a good, comfortable living, and I can point to a number of ways the world is better because of my involvement, including saving a nearby mountain that was under threat by a large and grossly inappropriate housing development (we beat that back in just 13 months–and used everything I know about organizing AND marketing–I use this as a case study in Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green).

Are there any people and/or books that have inspired you along your journey?

Oh, there are hundreds! I read constantly. Here are a few:

• Natural Capitalism by Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins, and Paul Hawken
• The Responsibility Revolution by Jeffrey Hollander
• The Speed of Trust, by Stephen M.R. Covey with Rebecca Merril–and I thank Stephen publicly once again for writing the foreword to Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green
• The Success Principles by Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer
• Ethical Markets by Hazel Henderson and Simran Sethi
• The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by C.K. Prahalad
• More Power Than We Know by Dave Dellinger
• Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher
• Cash Copy by Jeffrey Lant
• Winning Without Intimidation by Bob Burg
• The Customer Delight Principle by Timothy Keiningham and Terry Varva
• Pretty much anything by Seth Godin or Saul Alinsky

Can you share some business tips for our readers?

• Go Green NOW! You’ll have to, sooner or later, so may as well get the cost savings and marketing advantages (the latter will go away within a few years, as Green becomes a basic criterion for being in business)
• Identify niche markets, which are much easier and cheaper to reach than broad markets–and become known as an expert in these areas.
• Use both social media and traditional media.
• Market from a place of providing helpful, friendly, and accurate expertise, rather than the old style (and very grating) push strategies–and encourage your customers/clients to sing your praises so that you don’t have to.
• Think strategically both short- and long-term.
• Join a mastermind group.

What’s next for you?

With the encouragement of my mastermind group, I’ve embarked on a plan to make real a dream I’ve held for more than 20 years: to be a syndicated columnist, a nationally known commentator, an in-demand international speaker. In a world where the airwaves are dominated by hate-mongers like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, we need more thinking progressive commentators like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. And I think my focus on Green business success gives me a good platform to be one of those progressive voices. Step 1 is the launch of the International Association of Earth-Conscious Marketers. Step 2 is to start querying publications that might run a monthly column and build that as a self-syndicator for a year or two. Step 3 is to go to the major syndicates and find one to take me on. This is a long-term process, and I’m hoping that between two and five years from now, I will have considerably more influence and can leverage that for deeper social/environmental change.