Tom Szaky likes to brag about his “negative cost marketing department.”
Szazky is one of the group of Ivy League drop-outs who started successful companies. He is no Mark Zuckerberg – he dropped out of Princeton, not Harvard — but his business, TerraCycle, is growing, profitable and a player in a new category called upcycling. TerraCycle collects materials that usually are not recycled, including things like potato chip bags and cigarette butts, and repurposes them into both industrial and consumer products. The company had earnings of $15 million last year and operates in 23 countries. It often employs school children and nonprofits to collect the raw materials, paying their school or organization by the pound.
Szaky got his start by selling plant fertilizer composed of, as he calls it, “worm poop.” He mixed it with water and packaged it in old soda bottles topped with spray attachments. When The Home Depot and Walmart placed large orders, TerraCycle was on its way. Szaky is the heart and soul of his company, and he combines an entrepreneurial spirit with a sense of art, community and a dash of drama.
That helps with his branding. And when Szaky says his marketing department is “negative cost,” he’s not saying he spends no money on it. In fact, it is quite robust. But, he contends, what he earns in media coverage is worth much more than he spends. A cable channel created a reality television show about TerraCycle, for instance, that ran on the Pivot Network cable channel. Szaky says journalists, bloggers and the like mention TerraCycle 21 times a day – a number eclipsed perhaps only by mega-brands like IBM, Facebook and Apple.
He is helped by the fact that TerraCycle is unusual and quirky. People in media like that because it helps them attract readers to their sites. You may not have that advantage, but Szaky is also a great example of what anyone can do: provide content – lots of it — to boost your marketing. In addition to the television show, Szaky works the lecture circuit, writes constantly about his successes, sponsors a community art show in TerraCycle’s hometown in New Jersey, and always – always – is available when a news reporter or blogger calls.
Even if your business won’t support a reality TV show, you can create plenty of content: blogs on your website, webinars based on your work, talks to groups at the local Chamber of Commerce, and short presentations at networking events. Like Tom Szaky, your marketing can be negative-cost.
To hear more from Szaky about TerraCycle, including details about his marketing approach, attend the lecture he is giving at Western Connecticut State University at 7 p.m. on March 24. You can sign up here for this free presentation.
Next week I will write about how to incorporate personal contact and persuasion to boost the power of your content.