My eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson), was released just over a month ago, and I’ve been completely consumed with launch activities for several months leading up to the release.

Working with a major publisher for the first time in 18 years, I’m keenly aware of the publisher’s high expectations, and doing what I can to make waves. Here’s a bit of what I’ve done:

The partnership strategy

One of the most powerful marketing strategies I advocate in the book is to form alliances with others who are already reaching your key market. And taking my own advice, I put together several alliances in the project. First of all, I brought my co-author in: Jay Conrad Levinson, “the father of Guerrilla marketing,” is a marketing superstar with not only an extremely well-known brand but also a large and well-oiled marketing machine. From reading some of his other books, I had a feeling this concept of Green marketing would resonate with him. He was delighted to be part of this project. And that made it a much bigger book from the publisher’s point of view, and thus gave us considerably more leverage in negotiating a contract. Wiley has been great to work with, and I think part of the reason is that they see this as an important book. Oh yes, and when I asked them to do the book on recycled paper, they said, sure.

Next, I sought a charity partner for the launch. I brought in Green America, which is perfectly aligned with the philosophy of the book. It’s an organization that supports Green, local businesses.

And finally, I went out to my considerable network of bloggers, e-zine publishers, and such, and offered them the opportunity to benefit from promoting the launch: first, by submitting a bonus and getting exposure to everyone who registers as a buyer—resulting in a package of over $2600 worth of extra goodies that anyone who buys the book (no matter where they buy it) can get with a couple of clicks. And second, by launching a membership program in conjunction with the launch, and offering commissions on any sales of that program. So they had two incentives to participate, and these make it sweeter for  buyers of the book as well as for the marketing partners.

What are the results of these three partnerships? On my own, I have access to about 10-12,000 people (depending on how much overlap there is between my newsletter subscribers and my book buyers). Bringing Jay in added 84,000 people. Adding Green America added 94,000. And adding the bloggers/publishers reached another 800,000. So I went from the 10,000 people I could reach on my own to 988,000. In other words, I could reach almost a million people through partnerships. And those partners and their networks are spreading the word even further; as of February 23, exactly one month after the publication date,  hits on Google for “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green” (exact match) were an extraordinary 1,140,000. I don’t think I’ve ever been involved with anything that got a million hits on Google before.

What did these partner campaigns cost me? Almost nothing. The only things I had to pay out were to cover a few hours of my assistant’s time to set up the infrastructure (less than $200), and the results-based payment to the charity partner. All the rest was just time and creativity.

Partnering was only one strategy in this launch. Tune in next month for more takeaways from this campaign.

REMINDER: Unless you step forward, next month will be the last issue of this newsletter. If you want it to keep going, make your voluntary contribution via paypal: shel@frugalfun.com, specify Book Marketing Tips. You’ll get refunded if we don’t reach a critical mass of funding. Why not do it now, while you’re thinking about it?

-> Snacking Sensibly: Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Frugal Fun Tip, February 2010
Candy…gum…chips…soda…Twinkies (and similar)… Not only is that stuff not at all healthy, it’s amazingly expensive. Get your kids on the road to healthy eating with many healthier and cheaper alternatives. And the younger start, not only will it be easier, but you’ll develop a lifetime of healthy habits.  Click here to continue reading.

-> Hear & Meet Shel, January 2010

• I speak at the two-day Forum Davos conference in Davos, Switzerland, February 9: “Communicate the Value in Your Values and Turn it Into Sales: Effectively Marketing Your Social/Environmental Commitment” (this is the same hall and just after the world-famous Davos World Economic Forum, where people like Bill Clinton speak–I’m extremely excited).
• February 16, Smart Networking Radio, Liz Lynch
• Feburary 17, The Blog Squad, Denise Wakeman
• Feburary 21, WMUA-FM and CSR Wire, Francesca Rhiannon
• Monday, February 22nd at 9:00 pm ET, 6 pm PT, I’ll be leading another teleclass for Hilton Johnson’s organization (which means, once again, you’ll be getting notices about his health coaching and about the other speakers booked that month, which include T. Harv Ecker). This time, my topic is “Create Value from Your Values.”
• February 23, the incredible Sean D’Souza from Psychotactics will interview me about cracking the best-seller list without any kind of big dollar outlay.
• Wednesday, February 24, 5 pm, I’ll be exhibiting my new book and other goodies at the Amherst-Area Chamber’s Buy Local Expo. Somewhere within ten miles of Amherst, MA.
• I’m attending Ryan Lee’s Continuity Summit, March 4-6 in Stamford, CT, http://www.ryanlee.com/rsvp/. He’s not even charging for the seminar, though of course, you’re on your own with lodging. Last year’s conference was excellent, although a bit high-pressure for my taste.
• March 17, Be the Media, Dave Mathison
• March 24, I’m doing a teleseminar for Stacy Karacostas on Green and ethical business success: stacy (at) success-stream.com
• March 26, Passions and Possibilities Project, Sue Oliver
• April 25, I’ll be speaking on collaborating with a co-author at the American Society of Journalists and Authors conference in New York. http://asja.org/wc/2010/
• May 8, I’ll be speaking once again on book marketing at CAPA University in Hartford, CT (also in negotiation to speak at both IBPA-U and Book Expo America later that month)

You can also read several recent interviews with me:

• Willi Paul interviews me on sustainability and frugality: http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1455
• Dollar Days, on frugal/ethical marketing and the new Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green book: http://blog.dollardays.com/small-business-expert-interview-shel-horowitz-ethicalgreen-marketing-expert/
• The Examiner, on environmental advocacy, the Greening of my own life, and environmentalism’s intersection with marketing: http://www.examiner.com/x-14744-LA-Renewable-Energy-Examiner~y2010m1d4-Interview-with-Shel-Horowitz-of-Frugal-Marketing
• Dr. Dave Hale interviewing me and other experts on our social media predictions for 2010: http://drdavehaleonline.com/blog/social-media-predictions-for-2010/

-> Friends Who Want to Help

• If you follow me on Twitter, you might notice that some of my Tweets originate from “ShelHorowitzEthicalGreenMarketing”–and that if you click on that origination message, it takes you to the home page for my new book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. I think this is waay cool. If you’d like to get your own branded tweets, from whatever you want to be known for and pointing to the link of your choice, it costs nothing to sign up: http://su.pr/1vpxQN Thanks to Tammy Fennell for developing this, and telling me about it.
• Suzanne Evans is driven by a passion and desire to help business owners discover the key to success – being authentic in their business. In just two years she grew her business from zero to a quarter of a million dollars by helping more people. She thought this growth was normal and when she realized it was not, she wanted to find a way to share her journey with you. In retrospect, she realized that helping more people and making more money begins with finding your own authentic marketing blueprint. The coolest part? When she stopped traditional “salesy” marketing, she made over a half a million dollars. She’s sharing her story on a no-charge call on January 12: http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=1076845
• At the recommendation of both Mari Smith and my long-time Virtual Assistant Michelle Shaeffer, I just signed up for Backupify, the leading social media Backup provider. Backupify makes secure, automated, daily backups of your online accounts. Backupify supports backup of Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, WordPress, Basecamp, Flickr, and more… 15 services in total. Too new to know how well it does, but certainly worth trying. Best of all, Backupify is free if you sign up before Jan 31st. Click this link to register.

-> Media Coverage of Shel

Candy…gum…chips…soda…Twinkies (and similar)… Not only is that stuff not at all healthy, it’s amazingly expensive. Get your kids on the road to healthy eating with many healthier and cheaper alternatives. And the younger start, not only will it be easier, but you’ll develop a lifetime of healthy habits.

My kids are now 17 and 22, both seriously into food, and I think some of the reason is that we got them into stuff like the below at age 2 or 3:

• Celery sticks with peanut butter filling the curve (maybe a couple of raisins, for decoration)
• Cheap canned pitted black olives: let them put one on each finger and eat them off one at a time
• Thin slices of tofu, dipped in low-salt soy sauce or Bragg’s Amino sauce, rolled in nutritional yeast, and fried to a crisp
• Dried fruit (we find organic inexpensively at the remainder store or at Trader Joe’s
• Make-your-own whole grain cookies and even crackers–when kids participate in making them, they’re much more interested in eating them
• Darker, richer, less sweet chocolate (most kids will even eat a 55% cocoa bar, especially if it has nuts–and that’s far healthier than the 35% typical in even the better milk chocolates–though personally, I like it around 80%)
• Freshly toasted nuts (2-3 minutes in a toaster oven, and what a flavor and aroma!
• Apple slices with almond butter

Hundreds of others, but I’ll stop there.