Green Options » green advertising

What Do Ecopreneurs Say Their Most Effective Marketing Is?

Scott Cooney — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:29:52 +0000

Perhaps the biggest challenge to any small business is how to effectively spend a limited advertising budget. Here’s what ecopreneurs say is the most effective use of their money.

I interviewed several hundred ecopreneurs about their business when writing a book about how to become an ecopreneur, and one of the questions I asked was, ‘Besides word-of-mouth, what is your most effective marketing?’ It is worth noting that if I hadn’t prefaced the question the way I did, each and every one of them would have said “word-of-mouth”.

The answers varied across industry, but there was some great information that emerged. Companies in the green building sector, including remodelers, new construction, and retail operations, all mentioned lunch & learn sessions with tradespeople. Several in this sector mentioned Educational Workshops with the general public and local green publications including directories.

Networking events turned out to be prime advertising for…

EcoZone - Advertising that Greens More than the Message

Paul Smith — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:07:10 +0000

Advertising. It’s a part of the scenery, just about anywhere you go these days. Like it or lump it, it’s here to stay. But what if it could do something more, or different then sell you things, end of story? What if it educated about the environment, and eco friendly behaviors? What if it went further than that and 50% of proceeds from advertising went to local community greening efforts, the use of which was advised by diverse, knowledgeable green organizations?

It can, and it does, via EcoMedia. The NY based company originally started by an LA surfer turned environmentalist to protect local watersheds from pollution has now expanded to find ways to improve and protect the air, energy, and green space of places across the US. This happens via partnerships with CBS and Worldwide Pants. Between the three of them, they cover national and local markets, online, and also produce original green oriented content such as the Daisy Fuentes hosted TV show The EcoZone Project.

It comes down to this -

How To Advertise Your Green Business

mcmilker — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:37:48 +0000

Like all entrepreneurs, those in the eco-sphere need to spend their ad dollars wisely. While big advertisers can afford to make big mistakes, small advertisers can only afford to make small ones. Green entrepreneurs can ruin their business without a carefully thought out campaign.

And so, as I mentioned in this post, Recession Proof Your Green Business, before you even consider embarking on an advertising campaign, you need:

….to ensure that you have a strong unique positioning and are promoting that differentiation at every opportunity.

Clorox Green Works, Greenwashers or Environment Stewards

roger2435 — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:13:02 +0000

I have been reading a lot of mixed reviews of Clorox’s new “green works” line of household cleaners. For those of you who do not know, greenwashing according to wikipedia “is a term that is used to describe the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.” Chester’s Clean House writes that even 1% unnatural ingredients is too much. They have a strong argument, but I still think the cleaners are better for the environment and they don’t really cost me any extra to use them. Joel Makower discusses how Clorox is trying to become a green company, after many years as the “Bleach” company. TreeHugger seems to like green works and talks a lot about it’s Sierra Club endorsement. This all gets more interesting as I researched it more because it seems that Joel Makower is a consultant for Clorox and the Conservation Director of the Sierra Club is a TreeHugger blogger. So I am starting to wonder, is Clorox trying to buy a more green name? That sure sounds like greenwashing to me. Let me know what you think of this product and in your comments tell us if you are going to buy it?

Catalog Wasteland

Philip C. Curtis — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:30:09 +0000

I own an e-commerce company and we do a lot of shipping and receiving. We work hard to minimize our packaging waste (in fact we don’t use any packaging material.) I see a lot of waste coming in from various vendors and to be fair some it simply seems hard to eliminate. In other cases, the waste is just ridiculous.

There is one example in particular I think warrants recognition. We occasionally purchase shipping supplies from Uline because they offer next day shipping. Every time we order from them they send us a 1 inch thick glossy print catalog with our order. And just in case we lost the catalogs they sent us with our orders they kindly send us another one in the mail. Over the course of 4 months we collected about 50 pounds worth of catalogs from them. We never ordered from the catalog–we always ordered online. (Its almost as bad–if not worse–than the AOL CDs that used to be everywhere.)

We are considering adding a print catalog to our business this year but we are only going to send the hard copy upon specific request and where the customer can not be convinced to accept an electronic version. I also got a lot of other good tips from Ecowriter’s post about green ad materials so we’ll try to minimize our impact there too.

We are going to do what we can to minimize the ad waste that we create but we are also going to look for suitable alternative vendors who make reasonable efforts to do the same.