Marketing products on their “green” benefits can be a very productive business strategy, with many opportunities and advantages over more traditional marketing programs. That said, when designing a green messaging platform it’s sometimes easy to get caught up in what the company believes are the product’s most obvious green advantages. Surprisingly, however, many times the most obvious benefits aren’t the ones that resonate loudest with potential customers.

So before you approach the potential customer, it is important to have a good understanding of the areas that can yield big benefits for them. Let’s take as an example a small start-up light-emitting diode (LED) lighting solutions company, Greenhouse Strategies (GHS), and see how an amazing 75 percent energy savings was not the benefit that sealed the deal with a mining company that deploys hundreds of lighting units daily.

GHS is a company that develops and manufactures industrial and municipal LED lighting solutions. Their proprietary technology gives GHS the ability to provide superior light quality – rendered to match the qualities of daylight – with outputs suitable for industrial purposes. Applications include: mobile light towers for construction, law-enforcement activities, and outdoor industrial applications; street lamps for roadways and parking facilities; and other specialty LED applications.

When GHS first approached the mining company with its portable lighting solution for that industry GHS was prepared to highlight its 75 percent energy savings compared with industry-standard metal halide lamps. While the energy cost savings were potentially large, a bigger cost savings with a larger environmental benefit was soon uncovered as discussions progressed towards a deal.

“Initially, we thought that energy cost savings were going to be a key point in closing the deal with the mining company,” said Michael Morris, one of GHS’ principals. “But as discussions continued it became apparent that one of the largest issues facing the mining company was the upwards of $30,000 per day in fines it was paying to the government for improper disposal of broken metal halide lamps.”

Metal halide lamps contain mercury and other elements that, if improperly disposed of, can cause harm to the surrounding environment. Given the dangerous nature of mining activities, however, broken metal halide bulbs and the resulting fines were an all-too-common (and expensive) cost of doing business.

“While the energy cost savings of LED lighting can pay for these units many times over during the lifespan of the product, the savings in fines and the benefits to the environment were much more significant than any energy savings for this application,” added Morris. “Our units are not only built to last, but in the event they should become broken, no heavy metals are released into the surrounding soil and air.”

As GHS continued to find markets and court customers for its products, a counterintuitive pattern began to emerge that now guides their marketing efforts.

Intuitively, given the active role government agencies are taking in developing and implementing regulations to protect the environment, one would think that green messages such as reduced pollution and easy, inexpensive disposal would resonate loudly among government entities than with corporations. But GHS found the opposite to be true.

“When we approached municipalities with our dark-sky-complaint LED street lights, the overwhelming emphasis was on short-term and long-term bottom lines,” expressed Morris. “This opened our eyes that we need to present municipalities with a very different argument than corporations, as interests and areas for potential savings vary greatly between the public and private sectors.”

The lesson that the GHS example teaches us is that when it comes to green marketing — one size does not fit all.

So before you begin designing a green marketing campaign that is focused on a single environmental or energy saving benefit, ask yourself the following questions:

What green advantages to my product are most relevant to my target market?
How can these advantages help the customer’s bottom line?
How can these advantages reduce fines or waste-handling costs?
What are the most significant regulations facing the industry you are trying to sell to?
What other non-monetary benefits can the customer gain from using your products?
By carefully highlighting your products’ green benefits and tailoring your messages to focus on the benefits most relevant to the target market, it is possible to overcome objections to the increased up-front costs of, and resistance to, adoption of new and greener technologies.

Bob Lipp is President of Marcomm Group, Inc. (www.marcommgroup.com) a B2B integrated marketing agency with a wide range of clients, some who have adopted the recommendations of the agency to market “green.”

Dan O’Shea July 22nd, 2010
In the past few years, environmentally-friendly manufacturing processes that once were difficult to even get approved at some companies have become something worth celebrating. The green movement has gone from being a niche cause to a popular trend to a whole new way of doing business.

For B-to-B marketers, the best advice is: If you are green, start talking about it.

That’s a lesson Marcomm Group, an integrated B2B marketing agency that now runs the site B2Bgreenmarketing.com, first learned four years ago when it started working with Miura Boilers, a client that manufactures industrial boilers. Miura had developed a technology that enabled industrial-grade steam boilers to boil water much faster than the traditional process, which in turn required less gas or oil to be used to generate the heat. There was a time when that would have been a footnote worth mentioning in the Miura marketing pitch, but Marcomm Group saw an opportunity to bring it front and center. Here’s a few things to remember so you can do the same:

1) How you create better efficiency is a story worth telling: “The green story was just emerging as a powerful category then,” said Bob Lipp, president of Marcomm Group. “Discussion of green benefits was just starting to emerge in the consumer market, and not yet in B2B. So, we saw something pretty interesting here, efficiency as a story and the opportunity to sell more boilers based on a high-efficiency process.”

2) Environmental friendliness can be a competitive edge: “Early on, there were competitors who could disagree with how important this was, but it’s an industry where the amount of energy you burn equals large sums of money, so that’s a pretty powerful message,” Lipp said.

3) Don’t say you’re green unless you can prove it: “You can’t trivialize these things. Don’t misrepresent,” Lipp said. “The B2B customer is a sophisticated customer. The carbon footprint message is like the miles-per-gallon message: You have to show what your standard is. It’s still early for some green processes, and if there is not an agreed-upon standard, you need to be careful.”

4) Your customers want you to go green: “More corporations are mandating the purchasing of green products,” Lipp said. “Companies like Pepsi Co, a Miura customer, want to be able to tell the world that they are buying green, so that’s a direct benefit of Miura’s own green marketing campaign.”

In another time, the ground rules for practically every B2B marketing message were “Cheaper, Better, Faster.” Now, according to Lipp, “It’s ‘Cheaper, better, Faster, Greener.”

Smart article by GreenBiz.com:

Marketing green can be a challenge for even the most seasoned professional. There are many reasons for this of course: consumer beliefs are still evolving; demand is not well established; and even where it is, purchase behavior tends to be inconsistent (e.g., the same consumer buys the hybrid and the SUV).

For green marketers to be successful, they must effectively and efficiently target their audience when and where consumers are most receptive to green messaging. For marketers, this is no easy task.

While green content sites or periodicals may seem like a natural fit, advertisers must remember that consumers come in all shades of green. As such, focused periodicals may only reach “deep greens” which today represent only a fraction of the total population that express some level of interest in green. Instead, marketers must target their audience in more mainstream channels.

Today, companies like earthsense are emerging to empower marketers to do just that.

At its core, earthsense is a market research company focused on green consumers. What differentiates earthsense, however, is the depth and breadth of it dataset regarding consumer attitudes, behaviors and demographics. This dataset is based on both proprietary research as well as partner data sources. For marketers, mining this dataset has the potential to uncover rich consumer insights that can help shape messaging, as well as guide marketing and media investments in a more targeted way.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Amy Hebard, Chief Research Officer and Founder of earthsense. We spoke about earthsense’s unique data set, consumer insights derived from the database and opportunities to leverage the data to more effectively target consumers, particularity via retail channels. Here is what she had to say:

MG: Earthsense fields one of the largest surveys in the green space. What makes your data unique?

AH: Targeting and finding the “green” consumer – whether we’re talking about “super greens” willing to pay a premium, mass market “greens” who want to be eco-friendly without an added charge, or “non-greens” who wouldn’t buy “green” products even if they cost less than standard prices – is an enormous challenge for many marketers today.

When we started earthsense, we knew that we needed to take a fresh look at the resources available to us to solve this problem. We decided to combine best-in-practice techniques of market research, database marketing and advanced geo-spatial analysis to provide new insights in this space.

First, our Eco-Insights survey is the largest by far in the US: we survey 60,000 US adults each year. This gives us unprecedented capabilities to slice and dice our data for almost any demographic group of interest (e.g., high income earners, newlyweds, parents, baby boomers, college students, expectant moms, etc).

Second, and even more important, is our ability to append almost any kind of data, because we have geocoded each record. While personal information remains anonymous to us, we supplement each record with additional data to complete our profiles. This includes neighborhood level demographics and “exographic” data (i.e., data about the community in which they live). This includes air quality in the community, data regarding traffic congestion, and nearness to a Wal-Mart or other major chains, for example.

In short, we believe there are a multitude of factors that shape consumers’ desires and ability to go green. And we think the answers can be found by fusing data from various sources to find patterns that are not easy to detect using the data available through the other providers.

MG: What types of data categories do you capture?
AH: In addition to the extensive demographics and exographics just mentioned, the survey covers several key modules:

Product Category Coverage: The backbone of Eco-Insights is our product category coverage. For each of more than 70 different categories in our most recent wave, we know how consumers define “green”, what categories they’ve bought recently, their primary reason or motivation for doing so and main deterrent when they do not.

Corporate Ratings: Another important module is the Earthsense Corporate Ratings. Between Fall 2007 and Spring 2008, we covered over 700 companies familiar to consumers from many of the largest Fortune 500 companies like Exxon Mobil, HP, and P&G to small but growing companies like Earthbound Farm, Eden Foods, and Stonyfield Farm. In addition, we include 73 supermarket market chains – nearly every major one in the US – and over 77 restaurants, including 39 Quick Service Restaurants such as Starbucks and Pizza Hut and their competitors.

We know which chains people shop in (primary and secondary). We also know how they perceive these companies including the extent they believe that the company is following sustainable business practices and the impact of the company’s products on the environment. We ask similar questions around their electrical utility.

Attitudes & Behaviors: A third key module covers environmental attitudes and behaviors. We ask: ‘Are consumers concerned about the quality of our environment five years from now?’; ‘Do they believe individuals can make a difference?’; and ‘Do they think “greenwashing” is a problem?’.

And for behaviors, in addition to their green purchasing we mentioned earlier, we want to understand how consumers act based on the three R’s [reduce, reduce and recycle].

MG: How frequently do you plan to refresh the data? When is the next survey set for release?
With the rapid change in the “green” marketplace, we know that much is changing – and fast. For that reason, we refresh the data twice a year, collecting 30,000 responses each spring and an additional 30,000 each fall. Our Spring 2008 data collection ended the first week in June, and we’ll be releasing data to our clients in August.

MG: You’ve indicated that a key concept behind how you designed your Eco-Insights survey is that the results be “actionable.” What do you have in place to make that happen?
AH: Several things. As of right now, companies can use our data and services for:

Brand / Marketing Strategy. E.g., Build a deep profile of the eco-friendly/health consumer or understand how consumers define green within specific categories.

Product Development. E.g., Understand attitudes that drive their purchase motivations and barriers by category or identify consumer-based related categories for portfolio expansion of a brand.

Category Management / Sales. E.g., Prioritize retail customers/prospects based on the category opportunity for products, and alignment of product and retailer customers. Support retail-level sales pitches and category management efforts with consumer-based attitudinal insights [in addition to transactional data]. Utilize data at a store trading area level to maximize ROI for in-store programs, promotion, distribution and merchandising initiatives

Marketing. E.g., Maximize ROI of marketing efforts with clear profiles of how to reach the target consumer. From online and offline media habit profiles, to scoring a geographical area’s propensity based on desired criteria, the data can assist efforts ranging from media planning to database marketing

Consumer Insights. E.g., Allow clients to get more from their consumer insights research budgets as we can use the responses from the Eco-Insights survey as a highly sophisticated screener to re-contact respondents for proprietary custom studies

Corporate Social Responsibility. E.g., Rate eco-friendliness of both the company and its products including ‘Likelihood to Recommend’ and ‘Likelihood to Invest’.

MG: How can CPGs and retailers use the data to target consumers interested in green products? How granular can you go? For example, can you target at the zip code level? How about by product or product category?

At a retail level, these data are extremely actionable. We capture consumers’ primary and secondary shopping chains which allow us to know what product categories people buy and where they are most likely to shop (and we can do cross-outlet analysis).

We have also asked if they were a customer of other retail chains (e.g., Home Depot, Lowes, Macy’s, Best Buy). So although we don’t have as specific information for these other outlets we can do, at minimum, analysis by these outlets. The link between category and outlet profile is very unique and actionable.

As for granularity, earthsense has partnered with Pitney Bowes MapInfo to project market potential at very low levels of geography including census block groups, tracts, and trade areas, and yes, ZIP Codes. Using the PSYTE Segmentation system, retailers can purchase mailing lists based on households living in specific neighborhood types with the highest proclivity to go green. It’s a soup-to -nuts solution.

Earthsense provides category level data, not brand-specific observations. One of the biggest benefits earthsense subscribers have is the ability to drill down further into the data using our Reconnect Service. So, say you are a manufacturer of frozen foods. You can learn quite a lot about consumers who buy this category from our main Eco-Insights survey.

But if you wanted to learn more about the types of frozen foods consumers buy and which brands they favor, you can create a customized survey whose results are appended back to the syndicated survey. This will give you the freedom to concentrate on just the details you need.

MG: Do you have attitudinal and psychographic data that can inform messaging by geography?

In addition to partnering with Pitney Bowes MapInfo, we have also formed a relationship with Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI). We’re working this summer to link our databases so that subscribers of both surveys will have unprecedented detail on consumers. And since MRI is PSYTE-encoded, all of these data are geographically actionable!

MG: How do local influencers (exographics) impact attitudes on green? Do you think these influencers impact attitudes toward green or conversely, attitudes toward exographic considerations?

Good question! There’s a lot of data to sift through and a lot to learn. While we are not looking for or trying to document causal relationships, we are finding patterns where several factors coexist. A marketer’s job is to maximize return on investment. And, we help accomplish that goal by pinpointing those areas where the patterns are the strongest.

Clearly, a person could wish to buy only organic food, ride a bicycle to work, and recycle everything But, factors such as the proximity to a store or farmer’s market with a good selection, the distance to a workplace, weather conditions and local waste management facilities can prevent or discourage even the most ardent “green” consumer.

With an economy that is sputtering, gas prices that are soaring, and issues surrounding safety in our food supply – consumers are weighing multiple factors before they put their put their money down on even the basics. Earthsense helps manufacturers and marketers by taking a common sense approach to understanding the motivations and barriers that directly affect the purchase of products – particularly those with environmental, health or wellness features.

via:: GreenBiz.com – By David Wigder

From A Green Footprint:

It seems like everyone is going green these days. Whether this movement is in response to recent studies showing the rise of the “green” consumer or because it’s the right thing to do, associations and nonprofits are getting on board too. In your efforts to go green, one critical area to examine closely is your marketing efforts. Marketing is the public face of your organization and the first area that your customers will notice when they’re measuring your sustainability. Below are some tips for greening your marketing efforts.

1. Re-Design Your Materials. One of the most effective ways to go green is to consider the potential environmental impact of your printed material at the design stage. That means taking into things like paper weight, item size, and mailing format at the beginning. A smaller, lighter piece will not only reduce the amount of paper you ultimately use, but also the emissions of the trucks delivering your pieces. Self-mailers eliminate the need for envelopes. And, of course, always use both sides of the paper. The official term for this process is known as Design for the Environment, or DfE. For more about it, see EPA’s website http://www.epa.gov/dfe/.
2. Choose the Right Paper. Re-design leads us to the importance of making the right paper choice. To produce a more sustainable printed piece, look for a minimum of 30% post-consumer content that is processed chlorine free. Ideally choose paper that has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council or the Sustainable Forest Initiative. And avoid using add-ons that might make it difficult for consumers to recycle your piece, such as coatings, metallic embossing, or inks containing heavy metals. You can also look for paper that is blended with other, more sustainable fibers, like hemp or kenaf.
3. Select the Right Printer. Select printers that practice sustainability. Look for providers that use Energy Star printers and copiers; soy- or vegetable-based or recycled, filtered inks; and solvents free of toluene and methylene chloride. Check to make sure they use alcohol-free printing processes. Ideally, look for printers that employ green practices throughout their plant, such as a comprehensive recycling program, energy and water efficiencies, and purchase of renewable fuels. You can also choose a printer that has received chain-of-custody certification from the Forest Stewardship Council.
4. Clean Up Your Mailing List. You can save money and reduce paper use and delivery impacts simply by cleaning up and reducing the size of your mailing list (PDF). Software and mailing services provide tools that remove undeliverable addresses, duplicates, or fix those with missing fields, thereby saving resources. Also regularly check with your customers for address changes and personnel updates. Finally make it easy for your customers to opt out of your mailing list or to receive notices electronically instead.
5. Use Electronic Savvy. Until this point, we have assumed that mailings compose a substantial part of your marketing efforts. And this fact remains true for the vast majority of businesses that aren’t effectively using the Internet to reach their target audience. Yet research has shown that organizations that micro-target their online efforts often see a high rate of return. To micro-target your customers, identify the most targeted online publishers, websites, blogs, and email newsletters. Many will offer advertising on their websites or in their email newsletters, which reach thousands of people at a fraction of the cost of traditional media. Or do it for free by writing articles or news items, or by posting comments to blogs or list serves.
6. Send Effective Emails. Despite spam, statistics show that email remains an excellent way to build relationships with your customers and promote events and products. Build a solid email list of your customers that you can also break down into specific audience segments to better target your message. Ensure that your list is permission-based and that any email you send out has a prominent opt-out link. Include only the highest quality content and provide value to your target audience with minimal self-promotion.
7. Leverage Your Website. Make sure to design the landing page of your website with your promotion in mind. Whatever Internet marketing strategy you use, be sure that the page that brings visitors to your website is designed specifically for them and clearly highlights what you are promoting. The page should be simple and easy to read. It should highlight the value to the customer of the product, service, or event and outline why your organization is the right one to deliver it to them. Also make sure it’s clear how visitors can gather additional information, including how to contact you. And don’t forget to post absolutely every document you can rather than mail it.
8. Use Online PR. Press releases aren’t just for the press anymore. With online distribution channels, like PR Web and PR Newswire, you can use news releases to reach your customers directly. But be sure to write press releases in a way that targets your customers, including making a compelling offer to get them to react in some way, such as by going to your website. Also make sure to optimize your news release for searching and browsing by including keyword-rich copy. And don’t wait to send out a press release only when you have big news, look for reasons to distribute them regularly.
9. Offset Your Impact. You can donate money to green initiatives to offset the environmental impact of producing and mailing hard-copy marketing pieces. You can buy renewable energy credits (RECs), in which you are purchasing the attributes of green power that have been separated from the power itself. Green-e provides a resource of certified providers in your area. Or purchase offsets from NativeEnergy.com or Cargonfund.org. In both cases, your investment supports development of alternative fuel sources, such as solar, wind, or biomass energy. To determine how much to purchase, you can calculate your impact using an online carbon calculator.
10. Have a Plan. In moving to a greener marketing plan, it’s important to put something in writing. It doesn’t need to be complicated or lengthy, but you should outline the steps you need to take to ensure effective execution of your overall marketing strategy. Overtime, you will add new tools and ideas to your plan and will remove those that don’t work for your organization.

Regardless of which marketing efforts you use, remember to track your success. For your e-marketing efforts, use free, online tracking tools, like those provided by Google, so that you know exactly what is working and what is not. By weeding out under-performing tactics and focusing your energy on those with the highest return, you will end up with a good mix of marketing strategies that will help you meet your organization’s goals while improving sustainability. A version of this article also appears on the website of ASAE & Center for Association Leadership.

Elizabeth Striano
Consultant and writer on sustainability and the environment
www.agreenfootprint.com

From La Lamaguerite:

McKinsey just released a must read for green marketers. ‘Helping Green Products Grow‘ outlines five steps businesses need to take to sell green products successfully. Most of it is common sense. Still there were a few surprises, most notably in the area of consumers’ awareness of most concrete actions to reduce global warming:

These findings present enormous educational opportunities, not just for green marketers, but also for environmental educators, hoping to make a difference in greenhouse gas emissions. Bloggers, journalists, teachers, environmentalists need to turn up the volume on eating less beef, improving home insulation, and driving more fuel-efficient car, less often. These are all concrete actions that citizens can understand, and that also can help them save money, particularly during these hard economic times.

Here are the five steps, with selected some highlights:

1. Educate consumers:

Because consumers are largely unaware of green products, a business that sells them must see itself first as an educator, not a sales machine. Our study shows that more than one-third of the consumers who want to help mitigate climate change don’t really know how . . .

2. Build better products:

Consumers will not think better of green products until companies make them equal to, or better than, their conventional alternatives. It’s no surprise: most people value performance, reliability, and durability much more than ecological soundness. . . .

3. Be honest:

To rebuild public trust, companies must come clean about the true environmental impact of their products and their attempts to reduce it, and many will need to address historical concerns about specific products or operations . . .

4. Offer more:

Companies must ensure that consumers understand the financial and environmental returns on their investment in green products, for they are more willing to try new ones-especially those that cost more-when they find it easy to track the savings . . .

5. Bring products to the people:

Having decided to buy green products, many consumers encounter a last hurdle-finding them-either because manufacturers don’t keep up with demand or advertise where they can be bought, or because wholesalers and retailers don’t stock them or display them prominently. Biofuel enthusiasts, for example, must often drive out of their way to fill up . . .

From Environmentalleader.com:

One could make the point that marketing is often about answering the question: “Why would someone buy your product?” In B2B (business-to-business) product marketing, that question is most often answered based on one or more of the following three variables: Cheaper, Faster, Better.

Volumes of research suggest that purchasing decisions are largely based on factors of cost, performance (cost-effectiveness), and quality. Today, however, with more major companies becoming environmentally-conscious — with some even mandating the purchase of “Green” products that save energy, conserve resources, reduce emissions, and are biodegradable or recyclable – and government agencies implementing Environmentally Preferred Purchasing (EPP) plans, there is a new variable in this age-old mix.

Green has become a category all to itself. The marketing paradigm has shifted to become: Cheaper, Faster, Better, Greener.

However, marketing strategies and messages — especially in the B2B marketplace — still need to make legitimate and credible claims about their products and services. While it may be in vogue to suggest a green attribute of your product, it is essential to avoid trivializing the subject with marginal or inconsequential claims. Instead, there should be an obvious green benefit. After all, major companies (such as PepsiCo), government agencies, and educational institutions (such as Duke) have expressed their commitment to buying green products for infrastructure and other processes.

For these companies, agencies, and institutions whom are mandating the purchase of green products, green has become a fundamental part of the decision making process. Where appropriate the variables have become cheaper, faster, better, and greener.

Consider the case of Miura Boiler — a global leader in the manufacture of industrial steam boilers — and their effort to become a market leader in the North American market.

Steam remains a primary source of energy in manufacturing and processing food, textiles, pharmaceuticals, automotive products, and others. It also is drives critical systems for large educational institutions and hospitals by supplying steam for not only heat, but hot water, sterilization, and other important systems.

The typical industrial steam boiler manufacturer uses oil and gas to boil large amounts of water and turn them into steam in about two hours. Miura, a Japanese company with experience working under strict water conservation and emissions regulations in the Japanese market, developed a technology that could actually turn water to steam in about five minutes prior to entering the North American market.

This technology, developed before being “green” meant something other than money or a popular frog on a children’s TV show, boils the same amount of water as its counterparts. However, instead of using “one large pot,” these boilers distribute a similar amount of water boiled in several smaller pots enabling faster boiling times and increased water usage efficiency.

In turn, this reduced the amount of fuel (oil and gas) required to run these systems — an advantage that, as the cost of oil and gas began to climb, increasingly caught the attention of North American industrial boiler buyers.

The reality is that while many businesses and institutions place a value on environmental responsibility, green products that come with a higher price tag, like hybrid cars, can sometimes face marketing obstacles.

While green marketing is an increasingly important way to attract B2B customers and deliver your message, cheaper, faster, and better remain cornerstones of attracting customers.

For Miura however, fuel savings, of an estimated at 18 to 20 percent, was another compelling reason to buy a product that conserves resources, reduces the facility’s carbon footprint, and was a socially responsible choice.

If your company is considering implementing a green marketing strategy, note the following:

1. Green is not just the color of money, it is the color of social-responsibility.
More and more companies and institutions want to be socially responsible and perceived as buying green.

2. Don’t trivialize the subject with unsubstantiated or marginal claims.
While there are no strict guidelines for green claims, energy savings, resource conservation, and reduced emissions are benchmarks of green B2B products. Other valid platforms include: biodegradable and/or easily recycled, reduced toxins, and engineering for increased efficiency and reduced maintenance.

3. Price will always be a factor considered in purchasing decisions.
Selling green products at price points higher than competitors can dampen sales, unless the cost of consumables, such as energy, is predicted to dramatically increase in the near-term. If you plan to sell an energy-consuming green product at a higher price than less-efficient competitors, you may want to provide customers with information about applicable utility rebate programs, and government incentives.

4. Present your green message proudly and boldly.
Don’t hide your green message. It deserves more than a simple bullet point.

5. Keep your message focused and answer the question: “Why would someone buy your product?” A focused message that answers this question is preferable to generalities that require the buyer to search for meaning.

6. Green marketing is an evolving discipline, but uses similar marketing tools to more established marketing areas.

Campaigns that leverage user commentary, case studies, thought leadership initiatives and other means attract potential buyers and establishes a comfort level with your company.

Bob Lipp is President of Marcomm Group, Inc., a B2B integrated marketing agency with a wide range of clients, some who have adopted the recommendations of the agency to market “green.”

From ecommercetimes.com

Social media strategies are not just for consumer-focused companies anymore. Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn and their ilk are finding their way into business-to-business firms. Solid waste service provider Waste Management, for example, has set up a Web 2.0 shop.

Interactivity is key, and social media are being used at Waste Management for educational and engagement purposes, said Lynn Brown, vice president of corporate communications.

“It is about being a part of a two-way conversation,” she told the E-Commerce Times. “People are talking about your company whether you know it or not.”

Through a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account, Waste Management is joining that conversation, Brown said. “I have found that everyone is interested in the environment, so we are growing our network.”

Building Brand Recognition

Facebook boasts more than 400 million users. Twitter claims more than 75 million users are now sending more than 50 million tweets a day. And LinkedIn reports 60 million users are networking on its platform. With these kinds of numbers, businesses are trying to find new ways to use social media to build brand recognition.

“We have found significant value in social media sites,” said Larry Caretsky, president of Commence, which provides customer relationship management software to small-to-medium-sized businesses. The company frequently utilizes social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to promote and present research and video focused on how customers can build business with Commence products and services.

Social media can be useful tools for lead generation and contacting executives responsible for purchasing, Caretsky told the E-Commerce Times.

“We have had inquiries and closed new business from contacts we have made on Twitter and LinkedIn,” he said, adding that it is getting harder to get in touch with key exectutives by phone and email.

E-commerce payments company eBillme uses social media tools “to engage consumers, prospects and partners, and to create brand awareness,” said Samer Forzley, vice president of marketing.

eBillme uses social media to promote deals on its website and to announce weekly prizes, for example.

“Facebook and Twitter have been integrated as part of our overall marketing strategy,” Forzley told the E-Commerce Times. “We integrate these platforms as part of our website and blog, as well as being active participants.”

Choosing Social Media Tools

All businesses could benefit from social media, said Kevin Hegebarth, vice president of marketing at GMT, which provides workforce management services. Businesses need to pick the types of social media tools used by their typical buyers, however. GMT therefore does not have a Facebook or Myspace presence.

“The buyers of our technology rarely use those channels to identify potential vendors,” Hegebarth told the E-Commerce Times. Instead, GMT uses Twitter to promote brand awareness and LinkedIn to monitor forums relevant to the markets it serves in order to identify prospective customers.

“We have been successful in securing at least one customer as a direct result of a LinkedIn introduction,” said Hegebarth.

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter aren’t the only social media outlets that can be useful for a business, noted Shel Horowitz, co-author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, who also uses Plaxo, Ning, MySpace and Ryze.

“This expands my network a great deal when I have something to tell people,” Horowitz told the E-Commerce Times, noting that she now gets more comments on the Facebook version of her blog, which is published simultaneously with identical content.

Using LinkedIn helped Horowitz to land a spot as an international speaker after an organizer posted a call for speakers for a conference in Davos, Switzerland. Twitter, meanwhile, helped her land a spot at a marketing conference in the U.S.

Return on Investment

All businesses will eventually need some sort of social media presence to survive and thrive, said Jenny DeVaugh, director of social strategy at Bernard Hodes Group. Devaugh trains companies on how to use social media tools for recruiting employees.

“We measure and monitor the analytics of our efforts in order to enhance our marketing,” DeVaugh told the E-Commerce Times, adding there are three ways to measure social media return on investment: awareness, engagement and conversion.

Awareness is the attention that the company’s social media presence attracts, including the number of followers, fans and traffic. Engagement refers to the interactions that a firm’s brand has with its audience — such as comments, retweets and searches. And conversions are highly sought-after results, such as an employee referring a candidate.

ROI varies by client needs, expectations and business objectives, said Ana Cano, senior vice president and director of digital and social media at Euro RSCG Worldwide PR. For a company that might not have been active with social media, measurements might include website impressions or a percentage increase in Twitter followers.

“The standardization of measurement is very much a work in progress for the entire industry and one we’ll continue to watch as it develops and formalizes in the coming months — and perhaps years,” Cano told the E-Commerce Times.

It is important to improve ROI measurement, said Larry Weintraub, chief executive officer of Fanscape, a social media marketing firm.

“We can sit here and say social media is difficult to measure and shouldn’t be held to the same standards as advertising,” he told the E-Commerce Times, “but that’s not good enough. We have to get better at measuring. The tools are there, and better ones are being created every day.”

It’s not just measuring social media ROI that’s getting better — social media tools themselves are improving for businesses, Weintraub said. “The opportunities for business owners to connect with their customers and ultimately drive more sales [are] tremendous. There are new technologies being created every day that will make this easier and cheaper.”

From PR.com:

Chicago, IL, May 26, 2010 –(PR.com)– With a six-month trial period coming to a close, Enviro-Solutions, (http://www.enviro-solution.com) a leading manufacturer of proven-Green cleaning products, is reevaluating its social media strategy to see if it is helping the company promote its products and point of view.

The company has been actively involved with Facebook and Twitter since the first of this year. Both sites are now considered the largest and most active social media sites on the Internet.

“We know they are proving valuable for business-to-consumer companies, but their value in the B-2-B (business-to-business) arena is not clear yet,” says Mike Sawchuk, vice president of Enviro-Solutions and Charlotte Products.

According to Sawchuk, the company views both sites as “brand awareness tools,” allowing the company to provide more information and more detailed information about its products as well as Green cleaning in general.

For instance, it uses Facebook almost as a second Web site, providing images and specific details on the company’s products.

“We know a lot of end customers research products online,” adds Sawchuk. “So now they have a number of [Internet] avenues to learn about our products other than just our company Web site.”

Sawchuk adds that he is aware of other companies in the professional cleaning industry that are now also getting involved with social media sites; however, just like Enviro-Solutions, many are doing this on an experimental basis.

“It may prove to be a very successful and [an] effective marketing tool,” he says. “At the very least, I’m glad we have jumped in the water and are giving it a try.”

From Seattle Today:

When research chemist Kevin Tibbs wants to demonstrate the safety of his St. Louis company’s home-cleaning products in person, he opens his mouth wide and sprays some inside.

On store shelves, Tibbs and his partner, Tim Barklage, rely on packaging to convince consumers their Better Life line of cleaning products is safe and eco-friendly.

The problem, they say, is that the marketplace for “green” kitchen, glass and floor cleaners is cluttered with products making dubious environmental claims.

That’s why the entrepreneurs favor something few business owners would support — federal regulation. Specifically, they want the government to stop companies from making bogus environmental claims.

“We know that, when a crackdown on green products eventually happens, it’s going to help us,” Tibbs said.

After nearly a decade of silence about exaggerated environmental claims by product marketers, that federal crackdown could be in the works. The Federal Trade Commission is rewriting its guidelines on how companies can market their goods to environmentally conscious consumers.

The FTC’s current “Green Guides,” as the commission’s “Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims” are known, date to 1992, and they haven’t been revised since 1998. The current Green Guides explain how companies ought to use terms like “recycled,” “recyclable” and “biodegradable,” but many other marketing phrases aren’t defined by the guides, the commission warned Congress last year.

An FTC spokesman said he couldn’t say when the new guides will be made public, other than sometime this year.

The guides won’t have the force of law; they will be more like a heads up to the industry on how companies can avoid lawsuits that, under President Barack Obama’s administration, the FTC seems more eager to file.

From 2001 through 2008, the FTC took no enforcement actions against marketers and manufacturers accused of making false environmental claims to consumers. That emboldened the industry to exaggerate environmental claims, said Scot Case, vice president of TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, a consulting firm for product marketers.

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Last year, TerraChoice studied 2,219 consumer products that made positive claims about their effect on the environment. The consulting firm found that 98 percent of the products were guilty of “green-washing” — or misleading consumers about a product’s ecological effects or a company’s environmental practices.

But Case said there seems to be a slight shift toward more honest marketing, thanks to fears of a consumer backlash and stepped-up enforcement by the FTC.

Last year, the commission filed several challenges to what it saw as false “green” claims. The commission accused makers of disposable wipes and plates of falsely claiming those products were biodegradable, even though they probably wouldn’t degrade if trashed in a landfill.

And a recent government crusade against bamboo textiles shows just how mainstream green products have become. The FTC sued marketers of bamboo-derived rayon for making false environmental claims about the material, and the commission threatened 78 retailers — including big chains such as Wal-Mart, Target and Macy’s — that they would be sued if they didn’t correct environmental claims on the labeling and advertising for bamboo-derived rayon.

Although there are no firm numbers on how much consumers spend on green products and services, some estimates top $200 billion annually. Yet there are few rules governing what marketers can say.

That’s because terms like natural, sustainable and green are largely meaningless. Products billed as “eco-friendly” might be harmful to the environment but slightly less so than some of the competition. When it comes to packaging, muted color palettes or pictures of flowers and unspoiled prairies might suggest Mother Nature’s blessing — even if the product is made from chemicals that poison the environment.

Case said green-washing was most common in the marketing of children’s toys, baby products, cosmetics and cleaning products, like those that compete with Better Life.

Those supposedly eco-friendly cleaning products seldom list their ingredients, as Better Life does, said Barklage, who heads up the company’s sales and marketing. If challenged, those companies sometimes insist their products are green even if they contain toxic chemicals.

“I’ve actually heard people in the industry say, ‘Our products are natural: Petroleum occurs naturally, so petrochemicals are natural products.’ That’s what we’re up against,” he said. “There’s almost no regulation, and a little would go a long way.”

Or, it could go too far, warned Ronald Urbach, a lawyer for advertising trade groups and a partner at the New York firm Davis & Gilbert.

Urbach said that the marketplace already is moving toward more honest green marketing, and that more regulations might be the answer to a problem that doesn’t exist.

“People are sometimes smarter than the government makes them out to be,” he said. “I don’t think there is nearly as much duping as some believe.”

From UTalk Marketing:

“Consumers are intrinsically unsure about climate change – the “is it” or “isn’t it” debate rages on and yet, whether or not we refuse to acknowledge climate change we are, without doubt, running out of resources.”
She added, “In this climate of uncertainty, consumers are looking for leadership from trusted brands.

Therefore, any brand that offers “hope” a way in which you can be helped to do “something” when many feel powerless is a powerful offering.”

A recent report from Ogilvy PR Worldwide, entitled, Communicating Corporate Responsibility: “Building Trust and Communicating CR Effectively” found that only a third of the general public trust companies to remain committed to their social and environmental promises, as they recover from the recession

“This ebbing away of trust matters as without trust the whole process of doing business becomes more difficult; brand value declines, it becomes harder to attract talent and transaction costs rise and in many sectors companies also expose themselves to increased regulatory and compliance pressures,” explained Ogilvy PR London’s senior director, Ross Cathcart.

“This means that if your engagement with CR is not credible, relevant and authentic, exploiting it for brand amplification purposes will cost your company its reputation, the trust and respect of your stakeholders, as well as the wrath of your shareholders over the long term.  That is why communicating CR and engaging in green marketing will only ever work in a company’s favour if it is based on serious endeavour rather than green wash.“

Lesson learned: You cannot overstate your companies green position. The best strategy is to either state your position conservatively or discover ways to make your company more energy efficient and green through your business practices, vendors or the equipment you use.