A Midstream Reveiw of 2010 Green Marketing

OK, We are halfway through the Green Marketing Plan for 2010. You should have a schedule that is becoming increasingly filled with marketing activities.  The key is organization, and planning.   I have created a simple worksheet to help you schedule, organize and evaluate how your marketing plan is shaping up.  For those of you who have subscribed to this blog you should have already received it via email. If you would like to get the worksheets but don’t want to subscribe you can contact us at contact@greenbizplan.com and request it.  But following the posts will help you to understand the worksheet and make better use of the schedule.

So far we have covered

1.) FREE STUFF – ON LINE CALENDAR, SOCIAL NETWORKING, BLOGGING, FREE LABOR (INTERNSHIPS) AND CONNECTING WITH MAJOR ONLINE GREEN WEBSITES WITHOUT PAYING FOR ADVERTISING

2.) FREE WAYS TO GET THE WORD OUT ON THE INTERNET AND TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE.

3.) SLOGAN, PACKAGING, AND LOGO

4.) EMPLOYEES AS PART OF YOUR MARKETING PLAN

5.) FIRST IMPRESSIONS

6.) BUSINESS 2 BUSINESS REFERRALS

All of this should be scheduled and worked on every week. Letting things go, even for a short time can reverse weeks of  dedication.  Making marketing a priority, evaluating the results of your efforts and always looking for ways to improve what you are currently doing is vital to success especially in a down economy!

Tracking results is also critical….don’t waste time on things that don’t work. Every business should have a marketing plan that is planned. Too many owners, use reactive marketing instead of proactive marketing. Sales are down….they run more ads…sales are up… they slack off.  Marketing needs to go on everyday without stop and needs to be designed to obtain the best results.  If you develop a plan and work on it throughout 2010; next year you will find that it has become part of your routine.  You will have sifted out the things that don’t work and built on those that do. Your business will become a brand that green consumers are familiar with and your commitment to green business will be obvious. All of the suggestions contained in this blog series focus on reduction of waste, higher efficiency, and reduced energy use. They are designed to help you use fewer consumable resources while boosting the incorporation of  a triple bottom line, being mindful of people and the planet while making a profit!

I am looking for feedback on these articles and would greatly appreciate any and all comments that can help the readers make the most of their green marketing plan in 2010! Thanks for joining us!  More tomorrow.

Useful and Usable Green Marketing Plan 7 of 14

Word of Mouth Marketing Through Reputable Green Businesses

There are few more powerful marketing tools than word of mouth. Getting people to recommend your business is the result of premium  customer service and high quality products and services. If people get what they expect, that is not enough to turn them into evangelical fans.  They need to be surprised, by the quality of service, the pricing, the shopping experience, the product  or (in the best case scenario) all of these.

Making it clear to employees that  the customer should be amazed by their courtesy, knowledge and helpfulness, is critical.

But if having customers as raving fans is good….having other green businesses as raving fans is even better!  If you connect and network with other green businesses that are none competitive and you can add a service or benefit to their customers shopping experience, then both businesses benefit!  For instance, if you make organic baby food, connect with a store that sells organic baby clothes, offer their customers a discount on your foods or leave samples in the shop that the owner can put into customers shopping bags.  Their customers get a special for shopping at the clothing store and you get a whole new customer base.You can also offer to refer your customers to the clothing store. (Word of caution: make sure the business you connect with treats customers to great service and have great products!) Do this with several businesses and watch your customer base explode!

So here is the next scheduled marketing task.  Do research on other green businesses, stop in and check out the businesses for yourself. Look at their products, check out their customer service, and get to know the owners. Join green business associations, sign up for Green America membership, get your business listed on internet green directories.  Schedule at least 2 networking efforts per week. Remember just 2 or 3 new customers bases can double or triple your business.

Here’s a short list to give you some ideas of co-marketing strategies, but the possibilities are endless.

Offer special internet deals on other green business sites.

Get other business owners to pass out your non competitive samples. (Agree to do the same in return if possible.)

Offer to share advertising costs. ( If you sell green cosmetics, help pay for a green salons ads when they include your company name and mention your product in the ad.)

Sponsor events at your store and invite non competitive businesses to market their products to your customers.  (If you have a kids recycled art workshop, a beach clean up, or other community project ask other green businesses to help you promote the activity and use their name in your advertising. Let them pass out samples or information at your event.)

Join a green business association and send out emails to members, suggesting cooperative marketing.

Be an expert resource. If you are a green building contractor work with green interior decorators, landscaping companies, on demand water heater companies and offer to help advise their customers on the best way to make building changes to incorporate these other products.  Then when they are too busy or don’t offer installation services you may pick up business.  If you have 10 businesses referring you as a source of information..it can only increase your business. A less time-consuming effort can be; simply writing articles to be posted on other green websites. Write a monthly column or a tip for the day on sites such as treehugger.com or green biz.com

But remember it is critical that the businesses you work with hold high standards…at least as high as yours! Working with a store that has lousy customer service and careless employees can actually be harmful. You have to personally check out the businesses you work with and continue to check them out as time goes by since management and employees can change.

Useful and Usable Green Marketing Plan 6 of 14

This post should have come first because it deals with first impressions. Americans are very skeptical people, (with good cause) when it comes to “green” claims by businesses. The rapid growth of the green market has thousands of businesses bragging about their green products while the business itself remains unchanged and continues to; waste, use toxic products and unsustainable business practices.

People understand how expensive switching to solar is and forgive you if you haven’t changed your energy source, but when they are given plastic bags with no alternative they will question your commitment to green.

Develop a plan to green your first impression.  Basically there are 4 business types, retail where they will visit your place of business, internet or home office where you will seldom have customers come to your office, manufacturing ( they only see your product), and some service industries that require you go to their office or home. Each type faces different challenges when it comes to making a green impression.

Sit down and evaluate your “green impression score”. On a scale of one to ten how does your business look to your clients or potential client  at first glance?

I will finish this post this evening but I want to give you some time to ponder on your own just what makes your business appear authentically green.  More later.

Employees: Useable & Useful Green Marketing Plan 2010

Whether you are currently a full-on green business or a traditional business moving toward green business practices, it is critical to have employees that are 100% on the green bandwagon or you may find that you will have sabatoge on your hands.  If your green restaurant only uses recycled paper napkins for take out orders, but your employees give out 10 napkins for a single sandwich; you will find that both your image and  any cost savings from going green will go out the take-out window with those napkins.

On your marketing calendar be sure to schedule information meetings with staff to help them better understand green business, and the important part they play in promoting your green program. Here are a few suggestions to help you develop a green staff that support and enhance your efforts.

1. Ask employees to suggest ways to reduce waste and to be more energy efficent. Then act on those suggestions when ever possible! When they feel they have a vested interest in going green they will do more to help!

2. Run green employee contests with prizes like a 2 hour lunch and put their picture on your internet marketing sites with recognition for their successful efforts. Nothing (not even money) motivates employees more than recognition! Contests can include best green suggestions, least waste generation, best recycler, etc.

3. Many times when waste reduction is part of your green business plan employees will confuse your efforts with just being cheap. Make sure that you communicate how waste at your company impacts their paychecks. That is easy to understand and a great motivator.

4. Set the example! They will be watching you!

5. Hire people who care, make green lifestyles a part of your hiring criteria and offer incentives to those who car pool or ride bikes to work.  Hire local residents and promote from within. Filling supervisory jobs from the outside will quickly build resentment..especially if your employees have to help train the supervisor!

6. As part of your 2010 green marketing plan schedule green contests (monthly or bi-monthly), employee recognition (weekly), and green meetings (quarterly) to review employee efforts, and evaluate your employment applications and job announcements to best communicate your desire to have green-activists as employees.

Okay, next post will deal with your business “face”.  What do customers get as a first impression of your business, is it green or just green washed?

Useful and Useable Green Marketing Plan 2010 Part 4

It has been 2 weeks since my last post on green marketing, hopefully during the past two weeks you have launched a strong presence on the internet using social media, and started up a blog or two.  You should have a calendar and schedule of updates, and should by now, be generating some followers on all of your sites. 

Todays post is going to examine your mind set, in relation to marketing your green business. What exactly does marketing your business entail? Is marketing just advertising?  

The answer is no……marketing is much, much more than advertising.  Advertising is only a very small component of marketing. To illustrate that I have made a list of ways we get people to buy our products and services. A truly successful 2010 marketing plan will address over 100 aspects of your business, in terms of how the public views your company.  A green marketing plan will take into consideration reduce, reuse and recycle every step of the way. In order to remind yourself and others about your commitment to green; a good place to start is with your company slogan, advertising taglines and business motto. These will be on all your communication from letterhead to package design and of course it will be on your advertising as well.

The slogan should tell people: 1. what you do 2. why you are unique 3. that you are commited to green business practices. Small businesses frequently neglect to invest the proper time and energy towards the development of a marketing slogan. Slogans can succinctly convey your company image, spirit and values in a memorable way. It is critical to include your commitment to green in your slogan for another reason. It tells your employees what they represent everyday when they go to work. That is another major part of marketing….hiring those who are committed to your values. (More about that  tomorrow.)

Spend time this week brain storming a company slogan. It can be as short as “Cleaner and Greener” for a maid service to something longer like  ” Eco-Landscaping; designing water saving, low maintenance gardens for less.” Think about how you will use it and who will be reading it. Language and length should reflect consideration for your clients and how they see themselves. “Old Fashioned Organic Cotton T Shirts” may not work well with teens. “Totally Organic Ts” might be better. Don’t forget that different lines of a product can have different packaging and slogans. If your product is for everyone you need to think that through too. “Organic Tees that Talk” could work across the board telling customers that their opinions are expressed by the shirts they wear.

Think about packaging as well, longer slogans don’t work well on small products. If you sell organic makeup, small items like eyebrow pencils, lip balm etc. , you will not want to use more than 3 words. Always remember shorter is better. Just what you do , why you are unique and what your values are. But for the purpose of green marketing, be sure to include green language; organic, eco, green, biodegradable,recycled, etc.

Ok see you tomorrow with a post on green marketing via your employees.

old slogan   

 

 

Success Stories of Social Networking

http://askanexpert.score.org/  This post on the score website might help you to understand the dynamics of social networking and how to be successful via on line posting.

Not Green: But Inspiring Start Up Story

Here is a truly inspiring story from the Wall Street Journal. This is a must read!
http://www.urltwit.com//l5

Sometimes we can learn from non green businesses and simply put a green twist to it.

Useful & Usable Green Marketing Part 3 of 14

Ok, you have an on-line calendar and to-do-list, you have set up pages on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and found other social media like groups on ning.com, and started a blog. You have started blogs on bigger sites some green and some not green, you have a few feeds on your home page so you can track posts on these bigger sites, and you have scheduled time to comment meaningfully on posts that are related to your industry, you have scheduled a time to update these internet marketing tools and now you are ready to optimize the visability to your sites.  You want to let the search engines know you are there, and get up near the top of search directories of Yahoo, Google, and MSN. (although Google is the primary search engine used and should be the one you concentrate on.) Yahoo charges for many things that are free on Google; another reason to focus on Google.

Here are 3 tools that are free.

1. Ping the search engines. pingomatic.com, (there are several free ping sites, this just happens to be a favorite) will tell the search engines you have updated your blogs. It’s an easy and simple tool. WordPress.com, will automatically do this if you have a blog on their site, and Blogger is connected to Google so that information automatically goes to Google whenever you publish or update a post, but you can also do it periodically yourself. 

2. Go to sitereportcard.com Here you can also submit your site to the search engines and it has a free tool to see how your site is ranking on the search engines. it will check your site for load time (too many pictures and videos and flash pages will slow load time. People generally will leave your site if it doesn’t load quickly.) and checks for broken links, and misspellings. It’s all free!

3. Also submit your site to stumbleupon.com, digg.com and readdit.com .  It’s  free! These are directories of “peoples choice” ratings for websites and articles found on the web. This should also be scheduled everytime you update your site. Call all your friends, family, and happy clients and ask them to stumble, digg and readdit your site. You can also ask them to repost your posts on twitter. It costs them nothing and they can do it casually when they are on-line.

All righty…that’s it for today. You can see that you have a lot of freeways (pun intended) to using the internet to market your business. No paper, direct mail, and very low cost. Green marketing canbe fun!

Useful and Usable Green Marketing Plan 2 of 14

The second step in setting up your green marketing plan is to connect to major well established websites. Many major websites invite unique input via blogs on their sites Fast Company and Greenopolis for example. Newspapers have editorial pages and business blogs, and journalists are always looking for current green news and events. Once you have at least 10 site connections, update those connections weekly. One way to do that and drive traffic to your site is to write a full post on your site; then cut and paste part of that post to your blog on the major sites. The part you post on other sites should build interest but not give away the most valable information.

An example might be; If you sell stuffed animals for babies made from organic materials you might post, 10 Toxic Chemicals in Stuffed Animals…write a post listing toxins found in most stuffed toys and then your last paragraph/sentence might be. To find a list of toxin free toys click here and link the words click here to your website where the full post is located. The rest of the post and the critical information, the list of organic toys you sell, is going to be found on your site and your site alone. But the first part of the article still gives valuable information that will attract readers to the major site. The beauty of this is that you only have to write one post but benefit from exposure on multiple sites. Not much work, tremendous exposure! In addition, search engines will pick up the link to your site from the major sites and that increases your ranking.

Ok, researching sites and setting up blogs, or creating logins on newspaper sites and/or 10 major sites might take 8 hours. Don’t forget to also follow those sites on twitter and facebook, if they pick you up as a friend, or follow you on twitter  it will also increase your exposure.  All of this is still free marketing! Your investment is just your time in setting it up; after that, it is easy to use this tool weekly (Remember to add this task to your on-line paperless calendar). It is green marketing because, so far, you haven’t used one single piece of paper, or created one ounce of waste product. Happy green Marketing! See you tomorrow with part 3 of the useful green marketing plan.

A Useful & Usable Green Marketing Plan

This will be a 14-part post; to help you develop a one year green marketing plan. A plan that will use very little paper, ink, or money. A plan, that will have you reaching thousands of potential customers with a minimum of pollution, waste, and cash. A plan that will keep you in touch with current customers, and attract new ones, while helping the planet. A green marketing plan that is not written for you to stick on a shelf next to your business plan; but rather a plan to be implemented in your daily routine at work. A plan that; once you set it up, should take less than 1 hour a day to run.

A marketing plan for a start up is always important but if it isn’t user friendly then it will just collect dust. Here’s an outline for a plan that has some concrete goals. measurable outcomes, and structure that will keep you on track all year long.

1. First get yourself an on-line calendar that also has a to-do list component.

Here are a couple of free ones...  calendar.google.com    www.Quasitime.com

2. The cheapest marketing tools should be worked in first.      

Free

Don’t go any further until you have started accounts on these social network sites.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,  and start a FREE blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com

Setting up your pages will take a couple of hours for each site. Make them look professional, unique and informative (not spammy), get a minimum of 100 friends, 20 photos, and list at least 5 events that you plan to host or attend within the next 6 months. Join at least 10 groups. If you already have pages on these sites ask cutomers, friends and other professionals to critique them, then update them.

Make a list of  40 tweets for twitter each month (more if you have the time.) Best results will come when you tweet at least 3 times a day, but you can start with 40 and work your way up to 90 a month. Make the list ahead of time then just cut and paste your tweets each day. (Don’t miss a day, tweet everyday!) Need inspiration? You can find quotes from famous people that relate to your industry on http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/  or many other sites. Also you can retweet other peoples tweets that you think are useful, funny, inspirational etc. (just keep it professional, related to your business and of interest to your clients.)

Now go to your calendar and put down a schedule for tweeting and posting to these sites. Post everyday on the internet without fail! OK…. that’s enough for a day and about 8 hours of work if you are starting from scratch. ( TIP: Get high school or college students to do this for you, by hiring them as unpaid interns. They are internet savy, and if you market to youth they will have great ideas to help you generate buzz on their campus.) More tomorrow……..