Imagine being in a room filled with other green-minded business owners and execs and tapping into their smarts for 3 hours on behalf of your business? That’s what our Green Marketing Labs are all about.  Our first one in Denver is happening in a few weeks. Think of it, you can saturate on Saturday in our lab and ski on Sunday on the slopes. 

Here’s what happening in our first lab. 

Green Marketing Lab 1: Developing Your Marketing GPS (Green Positioning Strategy) on March 27.

With over 1,500+ new products enter the market each year, how will you break through the clutter and position your product or service so it’s not another “me too”? In this green marketing lab, you will:

Obtain a clear understanding of the current green market – its obstacles and opportunities

Identify how meaningfully different you are from your competition

Uncover the advantages that result from using your product or service

Identify your key target audience(s) and the rational and emotional reasons they buy your product or service

Develop a strategy statement to effectively communicate your message to your target audience(s)

These interactive, real-life marketing laboratories will give you the insights and tangible solutions you need to make your marketing meaningful in the maturing green market. So bring your questions. Bring your challenges. Roll your sleeves up and have some fun.

PRICING: $40 per lab or $130 for all 4 labs (discounts available for CORE members).

Saturday March 27, 2010, 9:00am – 12 noon

Location: All 4 labs will be held in the CORE offices at 1801 California Street, Suite 4900, Denver, CO 80202.

Register for all 4 labs or any of them individually at: www.corecolorado.org or call (303) 894 6333

Presenters: Irv Weinberg and Carolyn Parrs of Mind Over Markets, a dedicated green marketing communications company in Santa Fe, NM. To learn more about our work, go to www.mindovermarkets.com.

Hope to see you there! Can you help us spread the word and Retweet this or share this with your community?

Many thanks!

Bookmark to:

Next up for our “TAKE THE GREEN MARKETING CHALLENGE” is Organic Bug. Thanks for stepping up, Peggy. You’re doing some great things but you need a little help.

Organic and healthy product websites are no longer unique. There are many of them —  including those endorsed by well known green organizations like the Sierra Club. There’s competition so you need to be competitive. Not in a negative way, but in a “having a unique position” way. Something you do, accomplish or offer – or even the way you do it, that will communicate to your customer why they should choose you. When we Googled “sustainable products”, there were over 14,000,000 hits. You have got to be unique. Don’t worry, we can help. 

BRANDING LINE

Let’s begin with your tag line, “Sustainable Products Promoting a Healthy Lifestyle”. Yes, it describes what you offer but that’s where it ends. Tag lines are not mission statements. They’re compelling statements that position your company, give it personality and a reason to be. It’s saying why you and not someone else.

Irv: Think about what your end benefit is. Are you bringing the green world down to earth for your customer? Are you making it more affordable, more accessible?  Have you sourced through all the green products and found those that offer ecology, efficacy and economy? What is your niche within this niche?  The answers to those questions will lead you to a tag line that says your unique position in a clever, compelling way. 

Let us give you an example. For a client of ours that manufactures zero VOC, non-toxic paints, we created the tag line “Beauty Without the Beast”.  That line acknowledged that people paint their homes first to to beautify them. So we had to tell them we were going to give them the beauty they wanted, without the toxins they didn’t want. See what we mean?

COMPANY NAME AND LOGO

You have a homespun name and logo so why not capitalize on it? But it does have a downside. There are a lot of green lawncare and pest control companies out there now. Organic Bug could be confused with one of them. All the more reason to make your name stand for something. Maybe it’s playing with the “bug” a little and being the site for people who are bugged by green products that cost too much, work too little, etc.?

Carolyn: Maybe there’s a cute “bug” visual that can become the personality of your company? Is the bug smart? Funny? Clever? A wisecracker? You can deliver your message through its “voice” and personality. Now you are starting to create a reason to be.     

WEBSITE

Your web copy is a very important part of your communications. You have to make sure its working as hard as it can. Web visitors move fast. You only have a few seconds to grab their interest. Your products display nicely but they don’t reach out to us. Feature some and tell me their story. Some of your suppliers might want to be part of this.  Remember the web is an experience. Check out what Patagonia is doing with their Footprint Chronicles.  In short, in their mini interactive website, they investigate the footprint of several of their garmets. They put right out there what they are doing right and wrong — and how they are working to make it better. They put their mission where their mouth is by telling on themselves. This builds trust and a deep brand message that people know and love. What is yours?     

Nicole: Regarding the visual look of your homepage, the fonts are clean and legitable. Your white background opens up the space. But your menu drop downs are too long and overwhelming. Create sub menus. There is little  visual hierarchy on your homepage. Other than the big green box that jumps out, where do you want my eyes to go? Back to Patagonia, check out their homepage heirarchy and you’ll see what I mean.   

Bringing the green world to everyone is a great thing to do. The better you do it, the better it gets done.

Thanks Peggy!

If  this blog post was helpful to you, would you retweet it and share it with your friends?

Bookmark to:

Issues relating to IT and energy are often the primary focus of sustainability efforts within a corporation.  Much has been documented and continues to be every day.  But what about the impact of a company’s communications, like advertising, direct mail, websites, blasts, webinars, tradeshows and more? 

One of our prime focuses is to keep abreast of this sector and inform our clients and the business world in general through speaking engagements, blogging, interviews, article writing and in other forms of communications about the movements being made to green the media supply chain. Walk your talk, right?   

Here are a few environmental wake-up calls for corporations to consider concerning their communications:

• Printing 10,000 bumper stickers equals 1.6 tons of CO2
• Printing a 10,000 piece mailing equals 2.1 tons of CO2
• Printing 10,000 yard signs equals 10.7 tons of CO2

The impact of these activities have been largely overlooked but websites such as SustainCommWorld.com are in the forefront of our industry providing research and awareness in this arena.  They found out the 10% of the companies they surveyed had not even considered reporting on the carbon footprint of the publications they advertise in.  In an effort to create meaningful change in the greening of the media supply chain, they publish articles, newsletters and produce tradeshows in order to move the needle for marketers and business owners towards true sustainability in the marketing field.

The challenges are certainly unique in the world of green marketing.  From the media carbon footprint to the lack of standards for determining what it means to be a green product to communicating a message truthfully, authentically and credibly.  This always brings us back to the Golden Rule.  Do to others as you would like them to do to you.  It can’t get any greener than that. 

(Exerpt from upcoming book, “Inside the Minds: Greening your Business” by Thompson Reuters. Green Marketing chapter written by Carolyn Parrs and Irv Weinberg)    

Bookmark to:

Scientific American magazine reported that a baby crawling on conventional carpet inhales the equivalent of four cigarettes a day.   When helping a natural floor covering company, we didn’t have to say much more than that to stop people in their tracks — especially mothers thinking of decorating their baby’s room.  

On our eco-podcast, America the Green, we started each show with an Eco Wake-up call such as, “If we recycled all of the newspapers printed in the U.S. on a typical Sunday, we would save 550,000 trees or about 26 million trees per year.  (Source:  California Department of Conversation).

What can you teach your potential customers about your green product or service that has stopping power?   One that lays out a solid “because” that’s not necessarily attached to a cause?   Hint:  Tell them something they don’t know.

For an organic winery, we helped spread the message about the heavy pesticide load of grapes found in conventional wines.  Here was their wake-up call, “The EPA considers that 60 percent of all herbicides, 90 percent of all fungicides and 30 percent of all insecticides are carcinogenic.   In California, where 90 percent of domestic wines are produced, grapes receive more pesticides than any other crop.” (Source:  Californians for Pesticide Reform). 

A green building store in Florida created shelf talkers, little signs strategically placed on the shelf underneath their products.  These signs conveyed the benefits and “green facts” of their environmental products versus the conventional choice.   This was her version of an Eco Wake-up call.

Tell your potential customers something they don’t know and tell it in a simple, effective way, backed up by reputable sources, and you’ve come a long way in making your green message reach not just preach. 

What’s worked for you?  We’d like to know.   Send us your views, stories or wins. 

Bookmark to: