Businesses and consumers both want to do business with responsible companies. But eco-friendly companies are only just starting to embrace the concept of green marketing. Promoting your commitment to eco-friendliness will help you draw in new customers and improve your brand’s image.
If you’re just getting started on your green marketing journey, here are three tips to boost your results.
1. Make it Part of Your Company’s Culture
For green marketing to work in your favor, “being green” must be a part of your company’s identity. If your company isn’t truly eco-friendly, green marketing won’t work.
Here’s how to determine if your company is eco-friendly:
- Your products or services are designed to be reused.
- Your products or services are free of ozone-depleting properties and toxic materials.
- Your products come in packaging that is biodegradable, eco-friendly, recycled and/or recyclable.
- You manufacture your products using environmentally-friendly guidelines.
If your company meets the above criteria, it’s important to make sure that you are fully committed to being eco-friendly. This means practicing what you preach. If you say one thing and do another, your audience will find out and will lose faith in your brand.
Make sure that eco-friendly initiatives are at the heart of your company’s culture.
2. Be Transparent
Brands need to prove their commitment to being eco-friendly. There’s a major emphasis on social responsibility in the green marketing world, and this means being authentic and honest about your operations.
For example, this sewer repair company, which competes for government contracts, sells the environmental benefits of its trenchless repair methods, which do not require digging of landscaping and roads. The company is transparent about the process and what it entails.
Transparency is a highly effective way to establish your brand’s authority as an eco-friendly organization. Make sure that your green objectives and goals are made public, and follow-up by providing updates when your goals have been reached.
3. Build Goodwill in the Community
Hosting community support activities can help build goodwill in the community, boost your marketing efforts and aid in your quest of being transparent. These activities serve as proof of your commitment to being eco-friendly.
To succeed, you need to get the entire company involved in the community, and you need to promote your community involvement. Give incentive for employees to get involved. Support local charities. Make sure that you take photos and shoot videos of your involvement, and post these on your social media accounts. Use Facebook Live, Instagram Live and other social live features to stream these events to your audience as they happen.
Talking about your organization’s good deeds may feel uncomfortable at first (you may fear that you’re coming off as egotistical), but you’re simply demonstrating that you deliver on your promises and are committed to being eco-friendly.
Just like any other form of marketing, green marketing can be complex and tricky to navigate. But successful initiatives can drive sales, engage your customers and even energize your workforce. Ultimately, these results help grow your bottom line and your business.
