Tag: green marketing

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

Marc Stoiber, in his article, “Seven Crazy Reasons Consumers Won’t Embrace Your Green Innovation,” argues that many green initiatives fail because humans (to make sweeping generalizations) are too inertial:

  1. we don’t like change
  2. we resist new facts that contradict our worldview
  3. we prefer the familiar
  4. we’re more scared of losing what we have than excited to gain something new
  5. we are biased toward what we already know
  6. we judge innovation based on comparison to what we’ve already experienced, rather than on its own merits
  7. we prefer immediate gratification to long-term benefit

Stoiber explores each of these a bit in his article, which I recommend reading. And I basically agree with him, at least when talking about the majority culture.

Which is why, in my work as a strategic marketer and copywriter working frequently in the green marketing world, I always do my best to:

  • include both emotional and rational benefits,
  • root my arguments in both self-interest and planetary interest,
  • match my message to its intended audience

Let’s make this concrete.

Say, for example, you want to market a “magic” all-natural enzyme that neutralizes the odor and stain of urine, and thus dramatically reduces the need to flush. The environmental benefit is saving water, a supercritical but very much underappreciated (and underpriced) natural resource. But to someone without a deep green consciousness, living in a place where water is close to free and appears to be inexhaustible, saving water is not a benefit they can wrap themselves around. A traditional green marketer would go to people in big cities and laboriously educate the audience on why it’s important to safe water (people in rural areas often already recognize the importance of water).

But an easier approach, based in appeals to self-interest, might take the marketing campaign to places that restrict water use—with arguments like “your bathroom can smell as clean as it did when you were allowed to flush”, “good-bye to icky yellow toilet stains”, or even an economic argument aimed at large-scale users (including landlords and property managers at large residential complexes—let THEM educate their residents, as hotels did with the towel-washing issue), like “cut your water and sewer bills in half.”

Those kinds of arguments open your product up to those who are caught in the kind of rigid thinking Stoiber describes.

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By Posted on Posted in Green Business, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Uncategorized Tagged with ,

Busy week of interviews. Catch me talking about green marketing:
November 15, 8:00 pm ET/5 pm PT, January Jones interviews me: 818-431-8506

November 16, 7 pm ET/4 pm PT: Interviewed on Your15Minutes Radio’s “Brand This” with Shaun Walker and Reid Stone, https://www.your15minutesradio.com

November 17, 11 a.m. ET/8 am PT: Interviewed by Susan Rich on “Get Noticed Now.” https://www.richwriting.com/2011/11/shel-horowitz-on-get-noticed-now-w4wn-com/

November 25, interview with Susan Davis on Good and Green Radio will become available at https://wgrnradio.com/archive-good-and-green-radio-with-susan-davis/ as well as at iTunes

 

Here’s a description that Susan Rich wrote. It’s pretty accurate for all four calls:

Join get-you-noticed expert and internet radio host Susan Rich as she talks marketing ideas that help you grab attention and drives sales.

This week she’ll be joined by the ultimate expert in Get-You-Noticed tactics: copywriter, marketing consultant, author, and speaker Shel Horowitz. He has published eight books on the topic, the latest is: Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

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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 Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , , ,

The latest research proves the need. In a wonderful article for Sustainable Life Media, “Measuring the Value of CSR Communications,” Perry Goldschein notes that “80% of consumers had no idea that sustainability leaders (e.g., HP, Intel, Cisco, Unilever) were participating in any sustainability practices at all.”

If the sustainability efforts of these leading companies are so under the general public’s radar, what does that say about the rest of us and our visibility?

This is why I wrote my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson), why I do Green marketing consulting and speaking, and why I’m starting an international trade association for Green marketers: to provide the tools businesses need to tell their Green story to the world, and to take full marketing advantage of the edge that gives them if told properly.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Energy & Sustainability, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , ,

Tonight I was reviewing the PowerPoint for the talk on Green Marketing I’m giving next week in Davos, Switzerland. And I was struck yet again by the big case study in my talk: a company that has been producing products from recycled paper for 60 years, but only bothered to tell anyone within the last decade.

What a marketing advantage they would have had, if they had made this commitment the centerpiece of their marketing–especially in the old days, when it was hard to find recycled paper goods at any price, and their pricepoint was competitive with non-recycled brands.

Instead, they actually went bankrupt before the turnaround management team rebranded the company and emphasized saving a million trees.

The lesson: if you’re gong to do the right thing, harness the marketing leverage it gives you! This is something I discuss extensively in my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson), BTW.

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