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How To Green Up Your Small Business
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Article 6: Marketing Advice For Earth-Friendly Companies
Keep in mind that your growing concern for Mother Earth doesn’t need to become your brand.
“You don’t have to position yourself as ‘the green furniture manufacturer.’ There are plenty of people out there who are that already,” says John Rooks, president of Dwell Creative, a green ad agency in Portland, Maine. “You can be the quality manufacturer who does good things. It can be that simple, and it probably should be that simple.”
Just be sure you’re not overselling your greenness in marketing materials. You can still get credit for even your small efforts by stating your goals and letting customers know you’re making progress.
“I can’t think of a rational person who could argue with a business that is voluntarily striving to become a better company,” says Anna Clark, president of EarthPeople, a Dallas-based sustainability consultancy.
One problem is there’s no actual definition of a green business, says Joel Makower, the Oakland, Calif.-based executive editor of GreenBiz.com.
“It begs the question, ‘How good is good enough? How good do you have to be to call yourself green?’ There’s no answer for that,” he says. “If you’re going to promote, you might want to talk to a publicity professional to get a sense, is this really unique? Is this promote-able?”
Then there’s the irony of consuming vast amounts of materials for direct mail and print advertising to promote your small business as a consumption-conscious company. You can minimize your environmental impact by choosing paper with at least 30 percent post-consumer recycled fiber.
Other tips:
Rooks suggests using soy inks, paper with the logo of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) – which guarantees the wood came from a certified well-managed forest – and acid-free paper that hasn’t been bleached. (These may come with a higher price tag.)
And, make sure your direct mail list is the best you can find. “That’s just smart direct-mail tactics,” Rooks says.
Take advantage of online marketing opportunities as well.
Sustainability consultant Clark distributes her newsletter digitally now, which helps her reach a lot of people without having to put money and other resources into mailing out materials, she says.
“Don’t buy a bunch of marketing materials because you think you need to,” she says. “In the case of online marketing, it’s a great example of how something can be more energy efficient and more cost effective at the same time.”
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How To Green Up Your Small Business
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