Back from Green Marketing Seminar with Precision Web Marketing

Well, after a long and particularly insane ride home (I swear that I93 exists to make drivers REALLY HATE their cars) I have returned from co-presenting a seminar on Green Marketing with Michelle Girasole of Precision Web Marketing in Providence. The group was intimate, but attentive, and I had a great time chatting with them about more eco-friendly ways to promote their businesses, including green printing, blogging, and e-mail newsletters. I look forward to having the chance to do that again—public speaking is one of those things I truly love to do, and it gives me a chance to use that theatre training I never thought I'd use again!

After the seminar, I stopped by to visit a good friend and took a trip to Pawtuxet Village in Cranston—my old hangout, before I moved up to Somerville a year ago. It's a beautiful, quaint little village right by the Pawtuxet River, just up the street from where I grew up. While I was there, I stopped by Little Falls Bakery and Café (please don't pay too much attention to the aesthetics of their site—ack!) to pick up a couple of their Multigrain scones, which are one of my absolute favorite breakfast items ever, and one of the things I miss most about living in Cranston. Little Falls does it right—they're an institution in Pawtuxet Village, and I think that's mainly because they don't need to market themselves all that heavily to people—they're in a very convenient location just at the beginning of the main part of the Village, they provide great food (all their scones are amazing, and their low-carb bagels are good enough to convince even someone who loves carbs to give them a try. The coffee rocks too) and great, friendly service, and they try to give back to their community. Little by little, word of mouth leads to more customers, and those customers tell other people, and so on and so forth.

The fact is that, while all the other things that business owners do to market themselves is good and valuable, there is so much to be said about just being good at what you do, and about being good to other people. When you do something nice for someone, whether it's helping them with an issue they've been having, sending them a helpful article about something they'd be interested in, or even just smiling and saying hello—they remember that, and they remember you. And getting people to remember you is half of successful marketing. So, as you go along in your workday, take some time to be good to people—it'll always pay you back.