The Strategic GreenSource^TM Program

Green Business News Center: <div style="background-color: none transparent;"><a href="http://www.rsspump.com/?web_widget/rss_widget/twitter_widget" title="web widget">Twitter Widget</a></div>

Sustainability in Business, Marketing & Innovation

Contents

... in the News

Helping Businesses Go Green

White Papers

Getting Your Business Engaged in Sustainability

Cost Reduction through Green Initiatives

Employee Engagement in Sustainable Business Practices

Green Business and Engaging Employees: Getting Started

Aligning Your Business with Sustainability Goals

Green Employee Engagement: Green Marketing That Targets Employees

Green Employee Engagement: The Best Ways to Establish Credibility

Going Green: The Best Ways to Engage Employees in Sustainability

Green Innovation & Strategy

Green Innovation: Driving Green Business Growth

Green Marketing Strategy: Green Innovation that Creates Breakthrough Opportunities

The Promise of Green Innovation: Some Opportunities in a Greener World

Green Marketing

Green 101

Green Marketing: How to Execute a Successful Green Marketing Campaign

Green Marketing and Innovation to Develop Green Products and Services

Green Business and Engaging Employees: Getting Started

Motivating employees on green or sustainable business practices is the basis for success in green marketing and innovation. To succeed you must align internal practices with green business objectives.

Quite possibly there may already be some informal green initiatives underway, started by environmentally conscious employees. So, start by informally investigating what is happening. It could span from small energy or paper-saving initiatives that are internal to customer promotions with a green component.

You will get better results if you collect this information informally so employees that have initiated green activities do not hide them out of fear of having done something wrong. In addition, in collecting the information subtly you can avoid giving any incentive to over-reporting or spin in an effort to get credit for something perceived to be important.

Now that you know what is really happening, you can publicize the results. Announce and celebrate the initiatives. And go beyond a one-time event. Develop a means that employees can share experiences and learning across the company.

The best way to talk about green initiatives is in a down-to-Earth tone and language without hype or promotional elements. There is a strong propensity among the green audience to view with suspicion any pronouncement that seems overly celebratory or effusive.

How you communicate is also important. For example, using a paper newsletter to talk about green initiatives will send an additional message: that you do not walk the talk. Be creative and use low impact methods, such as white boards, your Intranet, or send out the information on 100% recycled paper in the form of a desk blotter with useful tips on how to save energy.

Importantly, allow your employees to speak for themselves. Give them the opportunity to talk about what they have done and why they did it. Direct connections and engaging across the employee base can be powerful. Interview them as a way to help other employees relate and buy-in.

Also consider structural initiatives, including a green support group to facilitate communication and knowledge sharing. Assign champions for organizational units who can lead efforts and ensure coordination with other initiatives and with green business goals.

Moving forward, maintain some informality or community feel to green initiatives to foster a sense of partnership between the company and its employees. It will motivate others to become involved and provide a sense of control and involvement that helps build momentum.

Most important is ensuring there is an executive sponsor...ideally the CEO or President. That will establish the importance of focusing on green activities, and provide political cover for those that want to engage but are concerned about the reaction of middle managers who are not yet full bought-in to the idea.

As activities align across the company, and employees become aware of the breadth of initiatives occurring, you will build momentum. Better yet, you will be on your way to a green future with more satisfied employees and the potential to capture new and growing revenue streams.

Back to Top

Aligning Your Business with Sustainability Goals

1. Be Real

There are shades of green and you can start with easy, reasonable measures. Fundamentally, being green is about using less energy and resources per unit of output. Do it because it makes good business sense and talk about it that way.

2. Add a Face

An executive sponsor who is actively involved is critical to success. It provides the clear sense of importance and relevance that will facilitate engagement in the behavioral changes needed to reduce energy and resource consumption.

3. Establish a Baseline

Like other goals, green objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). First measure existing consumption per unit of output, then devise measurement, tracking, and reporting methods to ensure objectives are achieved.

4. Engage Your Employees

Start by researching their attitudes, perceptions, and existing behaviors. Knowing that will enable you to develop effective strategies for communicating and persuading, and modifying behavior in support of green objectives.

5. Make it a Process, Not an Event

Behavior cannot change without sustained focus and reinforcement. Celebrate small milestones early and often to build momentum. Facilitate employee feedback and involve them in the process to ensure unintended consequences are addressed or incorporated.

Back to Top

Green Employee Engagement: Green Marketing That Targets Employees

Employees can be viewed as a marketing audience. They have differing attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors that distinguish them in the work environment. Thus, if you want to engage them in achieving green business objectives (and you should), you will be much more successful if you find out how they think, feel, and act in the workplace.

Even with just 100 people in your employee base, you may find useful segments that can inform unique approaches to communicating, persuading, and engaging. What is more, identifying those segments is relatively easy by administering a survey.

A questionnaire can address attitudes and perceptions, in addition to behaviors. For example: "I believe it is very important to turn off the lights when I leave the room." to capture the attitude, and "I turn off the lights whenever I leave a room." to capture the behavior.

The survey questionnaire should be executed by a outside resource to alleviate concerns related to confidentiality, job security, and performance assessment. You may also be able to use a confidential code unique to each person, so you are able to target messages and actions based on the segments you identify.

After you have administered the survey, you can conduct group and individual discussions to better understand the results and what drives the attitudes and behaviors. In those discussions, you can use projective techniques to gain a deep understanding of your employees' motivations.

Evaluating the findings of your information gathering activities in the context of your green business objectives will inform the next steps. If employees in most segments seem prepared to support those objectives, you can begin to develop communications. If, however, there are segments that are unlikely to effectively support green business goals--either because attitudes or behaviors are not aligned--then your next step is to develop engagement programs.

An employee engagement program could be promotional and designed to motivate changes and habituate new behaviors. To generate ideas and concepts for potential promotions, conduct creative brainstorming with the employees who would be the target of the promotion and need it to get motivated. The creative problem-solving should address a barrier (i.e., what is the problem) and the output should be three or four well-thought-out concepts, not 100 ideas on a list. You can then pick one or all of the concepts to be finalized and incorporated into the engagement program.

With program concepts available you are ready to develop messages and communications. The messages should address attitudes and perceptions identified in the survey. You may segment the communications and target different messages to various groups of employees, or address all attitudinal, perceptual, and behavioral issues in one set of communications. The format should include all available means, including email, Intranet, large meetings, and cascaded messages. (Be wary of using paper to distribute a green message--it is the ultimate in a mixed message.)

Lastly, to successfully change existing behaviors while habituating new behaviors, do not structure the program as an event with a kickoff and little or no active follow-up. Rather, conduct daily activities and reporting on progress in the first weeks, then every other day, and subsequently on a weekly or monthly basis.

Using green marketing tactics to engaging your employees, you are likely to see a multiplying effect in the progress toward accomplishing your green business objectives.

Back to Top

Green Employee Engagement: The Best Ways to Establish Credibility

Engaging employees in a green initiative is the best way to get started tapping into the market potential of green. There are seven areas to focus on first: lighting, paper use, HVAC, LEED certification, desktop computing, data centers, and travel. Some may be more or less relevant depending on the size and structure of your business.

How you manage your facilities can have a substantive environmental impact. Lighting is more than just installing energy efficient fixtures. Yes, replacing incandescent and halogen lighting with fluorescent or LED fixtures will save energy. You can go farther though. If you have 24 hour facilities, consolidate night-time shifts in one location to reduce the area that must be lit. If your cleaning crews are spread out, bring them together to more quickly clean a smaller area, thereby reducing power consumption from off-hours lighting.

You can incorporate promotions, such as "Lights-out Lunch" for those who may have access to natural light when they eat (a great way for the executive team to show some commitment for those that have lunch in their office).

Involve your employees when adjusting the temperature in the work environment, and relax the dress code to allow appropriate warmer or cooler clothing. When you do adjust the heating and cooling settings, be sure to assess impact since there are often hot or cold spots in the work environment that may become unbearable if the overall change is too extreme. Promotions may be effective here too...such as having teams or sites compete on energy reduction.

Use of paper, while not the most significant environmental impact for most businesses, is generally perceived by the public as a big opportunity for using less resources in the conduct of business. Internally, make duplex printing and copies the default options. Morover, encourage employees not to print or copy in the first place.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design...LEED is a certification system administered by the US Green Building Council. The standards and certifications are for new or existing buildings or even just a floor of a building can be retrofitted to meet certification requirements. Primarily, this results in energy savings and a more attractive work environment for your employees.

Information technology is a huge resource consumer in your business, of both electricity and paper. Be sure to turn off computers, printers, fax machines, and copiers at night. Use a black desktop and your monitors will consume less energy. Encryption, screen savers, and other applications may prevent computers from properly sleeping. Also consider that the bigger a file is, the more electrical energy it requires to be transmitted or saved. Thus, teach employees--especially those who work with large files like graphics--to use file compression whenever possible.

Whether you operate data centers or outsource, your IT management can investigate efficiency options for the data center facility, and the servers used in your network. In addition, they can evaluate network efficiency and virtualization.

Finally, take a look at commuting and travel practices. If you can, make mass transit an option (including operating a shuttle to a transit hub). Implement or expand telecommuting so employees can avoid commuting all together. Limit travel and make use of video conferencing whenever possible. In taking these steps you have a substantive basis for engaging employees in support of green business objectives.

Back to Top

Going Green: The Best Ways to Engage Employees in Sustainability

With consumer spending down, everyone is focused on reducing expense to drive increased profitability--since doing it with revenue growth is a year or two away. Sustainable business practices are a great context in which to reduce expenses. Sustainability is about doing something with less...less energy or fewer resources. Since both have associated costs, using less is an automatic expense savings.

Engaging employees in sustainable business practices is a quick and efficient way to achieve those savings. While there will be some investment in communications, promotions, and incentives, it will likely be a lot less than infrastructure investments in IT, HVAC, and facilities (which can and should be part of a longer term strategy). Also, behavioral change can be implemented relatively quickly.

It is very likely that some of your employees are already engaging in green business practices on their own. It could be as simple as turning out lights, shutting down computers, or reusing paper when printing. Through a structured engagement program, you have the ability to focus that energy and use it to drive business results. Additionally, with a social network platform you can ensure that they help drive progress by encouraging each other.

The employee engagement program should be based on a clear understanding of your employees' attitudes and behaviors related to environmental concerns and green business practices. Use a survey to find segments composed of differing attitudes and behaviors. Then have moderated discussions with employees in each segment to get insight on their perceptions and motivations.

Once you understand each segment, you can conduct ideation--or creative problem-solving--to identify ways to most effectively implement green business goals and sustainable business practices. This process also has the effect of demonstrating your commitment to involving employees, valuing their ideas, and gaining their robust support. That is really important: nothing kills a green initiative faster than employee subversion tactics (like tricking a thermostat to run the air conditioning).

The engagement program should be structured to provide regular incentives and feedback for behavioral changes. It is a process, not an event. It is more effective to implement as a new routine rather than with a splashy kickoff that incorrectly sets expectations of quick and dramatic change. In fact, it will be the compounding of accumulated change over time that yields the most significant results.

Meanwhile, as previously noted, some of your employees have already taken the initiative to go green in some way. Providing a forum in which everyone can learn about the results a few are having can facilitate broader change. Sharing success stories can encourage others to be supportive or even re-align their behavior to reduce energy or resource consumption at work.

In person events are great for celebrating success and rewarding results, but an easily accessible technology platform will more effectively support the knowledge transfer that is the largest benefit of engaged employees. An easy way to establish this is to set up a Facebook page which employees can "fan" (beware: "friend" pages have a limited number of followers, so are impractical if you have more than 5,000 employees). If your Internet access policy precludes using this option, a SharePoint site or simple bulletin board may suffice.

Thus, with a structured engagement program to effect positive behavioral change, and a network platform to facilitate information sharing, you can quickly establish momentum on green business objectives and achieve material expense reductions. Go green, get your employees on board, and start counting the savings.

Back to Top

Green Innovation: Driving Green Business Growth

Green Innovation can be incremental, such as an effort to embed green attributes in existing products, services, or business practices. However, it can also be radical, developing entirely new markets based on being completely green or sustainable.

Regardless, the process to find the opportunity and understand how to capitalize on it is the same. Begin by understanding the market, looking for unmet needs or emerging trends...then identify solutions for problems engendered in either, test them in market, and refine/enhance them until ready for rollout.

Step one is in understanding the market. If your innovation is incremental, you can rely on tried and true market research methods. Note that if your intent is to be radical, the process itself must be innovative. Traditional inputs plus traditional methods yields incremental results, while creative inputs plus cutting-edge methods will yield transformative opportunities. Some examples of creative inputs include: conducting ethnographic studies across markets where your product or service is utilized very differently, or by looking at different industries and how they address analogous issues.

There are sophisticated insights techniques that get at root psychological issues, needs, and cognition. Thus, look to state of the art cognitive and behavioral psychological research techniques and apply them in business. Be careful who you employ to conduct the research to ensure the techniques are executed properly and the findings are valid.

Once you have identified unmet needs and emerging trends in your area of opportunity, you are ready to define problem statements around which you will conduct creative problem-solving sessions (generally referred to as ideation).

In this realm, traditional methods will yield incremental results. Approach this with the goal of generating lists of ideas and you will have lots of marginal ideas. Alternatively, if you approach this as a visualization exercise with the goal of producing finished concepts, you will be more likely to identify a potential breakthrough.

Subsequently, concepts must be tested for appeal, understanding, and relevance. In addition, concept attributes will be evaluated and you will gather data to better understand the target market. The data is both quantitative, such as overall appeal, and qualitative, including comments the test audience makes about concept.

If possible, you will then offer the new concept as a live product, service, or hybrid on a limited scale...a prototype or beta test. The interaction employees and customers have with a live prototype is invaluable. There are always unintended benefits and consequences which leads to consequent learning.

You can also use the prototypical product or service to engage your customers in the innovation process by providing forums or channels for them to give you insight on their experience. Profile your prototype customers and segment their behavior with the product or service to more fully understand where the larger-scale opportunity lies.

With all the knowledge you gain throughout the process, you are well positioned to succeed with your green innovation objectives. What is more, you can use this process to innovate not just with customers, but also with employees and suppliers to make your business practices and supply chain greener.

Green innovation can be successful in either adding green attributes to existing products or services, or developing revolutionary new green offers. Either way, there is opportunity to make green from green.

Back to Top

Green Marketing Strategy:
Green Innovation that Creates Breakthrough Opportunities

A component that is often missing from a green marketing strategy is segmentation based on green attributes--as opposed to base product or service needs/wants. Classic consumer insights driven marketing begins by identifying wants or needs in a particular opportunity space (for example, hunger, cleanliness, financial security). Those wants or needs are then addressed with a product or service "solution".

Many times green attributes are just bundled with the existing solution and without regard for whether the green attributes address a green want or a green need. Thus, a food product may be organic, when what the consumer really wants is recyclable packaging. A credit card may offer carbon offsets, when what a consumer really wants is discounts for green purchases.

Consequently, an effective green marketing strategy will include parallel insights activities: to identify wants and needs around the basic opportunity space, while separately identifying environmental or energy related wants and needs.

For the base opportunity space related to most consumer products and services, marketers have a deep and rich understanding of fundamental wants, needs, attitudes, perceptions, motivations, and behaviors. These insights have been developed through years of employing sophisticated techniques, like ethnographic studies, projective interviews, and mathematical analysis of attribute values. What is more, there are insights gathering and analytical tools in place to capture emerging trends and capitalize on nascent opportunities to develop new solutions for evolving wants and needs.

However, there is not a corollary knowledge base of fundamental wants and needs around use of energy and impact to the environment that encompasses attitudes, perceptions, motivations, and behaviors. Thus, in order to engage in true green innovation, we must first seek to understand the relative importance of all the different potential issues, solutions, and attributes related to energy and the environment. To complicate matters, this will all be set in the context of the particular opportunity space for which the innovation is targeted.

As those insights become available, then creative brainstorming can identify concepts that solve for those green wants and needs. In other words, the next level of innovation is rooted in green, not the core product or service opportunity space. To be truly innovative, to find the break-through green revenue or growth opportunities, will require a robust insights process focused on perceptual needs states related to green.

Using proven methodologies applied in an innovative way, you can identify transformative opportunities for your business that are rooted in a fundamental understanding of your target customer's green wants or needs. By providing solutions that address deep-seated wants or needs, you create the basis for a fruitful and durable relationship.

Also, by establishing a thorough understanding of the issues in the green opportunity space, you will also identify ways to effectively communicate with, engage, and persuade your audience to purchase your product or service.

That will drive the potential to create completely new revenue flows, and to enhance or reinvigorate the performance of existing products or services. It is a green world waiting to be explored.

Back to Top

The Promise of Green Innovation: Some Opportunities in a Greener World

Energy is a basic concept. We need it for ourselves and for our devices. And it is at the core of climate change. Yet how we produce and consume it is exceptionally complicated and the prospect of changing all our energy-related systems to be more climate-friendly is overwhelming.

Meanwhile, climate change impacts other elements of civilization, such as the availability of fresh water, public health, and biodiversity. That is a lot to consider.

With change comes risk and also opportunity. Let us consider some of the opportunities inherent in evolving our society to be more energy efficient and planet-friendly. While there are many, here we will look at three: electrical energy, healthcare, and financial services.

A lot of attention is being given to producing electrical energy using renewable sources but within the existing system. It is a good start. However, it relies on the concept of centralized production and distribution of electricity. Ultimately, producing electricity where and when it is needed will be more efficient and flexible.

Envision a future in which solar arrays on commercial buildings and small wind turbines produce electricity for local communities who are only part of a regional and national power grid in order to distribute excess power in times of need. Such a modular approach would limit risk and be more responsive to local needs.

Data about the local power situation would be shared with adjacent cells and loads distributed appropriately. It could reduce or eliminate the need for long distance transmission lines with their environmental and aesthetic impacts.

This system could potentially be managed very effectively in an energy market, where production and consumption information are used to freely trade energy units. It happens now on a limited scale with power utilities, and could dramatically transform how we produce, distribute, and price electrical energy.

Another realm where an existing centralized model could move to a distributed future is healthcare. It is already evolving in that direction with urgent care and HMO facilities supplementing full service hospitals. Establishing a way by which health information could be shared efficiently (while protecting individual identities) could make the overall system more efficient and responsive.

How is this related to climate change? As temperate zones warm, infectious diseases expand their range because without a winter freeze, vectors--like mosquitoes--remain alive. Thus, sharing public health information and transforming healthcare provision will assume greater urgency in the coming years.

Additionally, there is the time horizon associated with capital investments needed to adapt to or mitigate the changing environment. Addressing climate change is an inter-generational benefits transfer. We must take action for the benefit of our grandchildren.

Although there are rudimentary structures, like bond financing that allows expenditures today to be paid for across time and by those who benefit, significant opportunity lies ahead in this realm too. By developing financial and business models that effectively fund and support a long term perspective, we can take the steps necessary to reduce environmental impact while continuing economic growth.

Back to Top

Green 101

Alternative (or Renewable) energy – usually environmentally friendly, this is energy from sources such as wind power or solar energy, not fossil fuels (nuclear is carbon neutral, but not environmentally friendly because of the toxic waste produced).

Carbon footprint – a measure of impact on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Carbon neutral – a company, person or action either not producing any carbon emissions or if they do it has been offset elsewhere.

Climate change – a change in temperature and weather patterns due to human activity. Some areas will get colder, some will get drier (making water the next national security resource after oil).

LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Building standards to assess environmental impact of a structure, including internal environment, specialized in business, residential, and school applications.

LOHAS – Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability, a market segment focused on health and fitness, the environment, personal development, sustainable living, and social justice. 20% of all adults — or 40 million consumers with $250 Billion in spending power.

Offsetting – the process of reducing carbon emissions by ‘offsetting’ it. An example is by taking a flight and in compensation paying a company to plant trees to equal the carbon generated by the flight.

REC – Renewable Energy Certificate. When renewable energy is produced, the actual power is sold into the electric grid just like power from traditional generation methods. However, for each 1KwH produced, the green benefit is captured in a REC which can then be sold or traded (retail ~$5). Someone buying power from the grid can then offset their consumption of "brown" power by purchasing RECs.

Sustainability – the most widely quoted definition of sustainability and sustainable development, is that of the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” It is usually noted that this requires the reconciliation of environmental, social and economic demands - the "three pillars" of sustainability.

Back to Top

Green Marketing: How to Execute a Successful Green Marketing Campaign

The three elements to a successful green marketing campaign are: establishing credibility as being green, addressing a need, and communicating in an environmentally friendly way. We will explore each in more detail.

First: Establishing credibility. This dynamic is somewhat unique in the realm of marketing. Consider the scenario where Harley-Davidson had to certify that all employees ride motorcycles or Whole Foods had to attest to the good eating habits of its employees. Neither company does, of course.

However, if you plan to make green marketing claims, the first place your customers will look in assessing those claims is at you. Have you determined the environmental impact of your business, and are you taking steps to mitigate it? You need not have eliminated all environmentally unfriendly practices, but you should disclose them along with your plan to address them (sooner or later).

In establishing your green credibility, you should look to obtain valid third-party certification and you should demonstrate executive level (the higher the better) commitment to sustainable business practices. The third-party certification can come from any of array of private or non-governmental organizations with business practice evaluation programs. The executive level commitment should be on-going and incorporated into regular business oversight policies and procedures.

Second: Solve a Problem. This is the fundamental purpose of business overall, but often gets lost in the complexities and mythology inherent in green business. Products or services must solve for a need or leverage a trend in order to be successful. Green products and services do not get a pass just because they have environmentally friendly attributes.

In the US, consumers, for the most part, are unwilling to pay more for green or sustainably created products and services, or for green attributes added on to existing products and services. So address the need, just do it in a green way.

If you incorporate green attributes into an existing product or service, be sure to be clear and specific with your claims. Set the green benefits in context and communicate in a straight-forward way. Note that any hype or promotional tonality is likely to ensure your audience views the message with a high degree of cynicism.

If you develop completely new green products or services, then identify the need, and address it in an environmentally friendly or sustainable way. Thus, you may reformulate a product using environmentally friendly raw materials and manufacturing processes, but it still must perform as well as non-green competitors, and may only yield a modest price premium (if at all).

Third: Communicate using channels that limit resource impact. One example of a recent perceptual shift is in financial services. Until recently, solicitations were viewed negatively primarily because of concern around the security of personal information and the potential for identity theft. Now those solicitations are predominantly a bad thing because they kill trees. Imagine the reaction if a [paper] solicitation arrives in the mail offering a green product or service: instant credibility loss.

Exercise creativity about how you promote your green product or service. Investigate and leverage new channels, such as solar power billboards or street advertising. Go beyond soy inks and recycled paper to leveraging virtual channels and viral marketing. Both are lower impact methods of getting the message out. Green is becoming very popular. Doing it right by taking these fundamental steps and you will stand out; building a lasting, engaging relationship with your customers.

Back to Top

Green Marketing and Innovation to Develop Green Products and Services

A successful marketing campaign means getting prospects to choose your product or service. Further, the fundamental basis of all decision making is emotional. Thus, unless you make an emotional connection with your audience, you will significantly limit the effectiveness of your green marketing or innovation efforts.

People often believe decisions are based on logic, but that is not really the case. There is substantial cognitive psychology research indicating decisions are first processed in the emotional center of the brain, then migrate to the rational area after the decision is made. Studying people who have had brain injuries where they do not feel emotion but have retained full rational/cognitive ability has shown them to be not hyper-rational decision-making machines, but rather functionally incapable of making a decision.

Other studies in which people are asked to make a decision while they are in an MRI scanner, show that brain activity first occurs in the area where emotions are processed. It does not matter whether it is peas or carrots -or- life or death, the decision begins with an emotional reaction.

You can see this in effective advertising. For example, when a national laundry soap brand introduces a new, improved product, they do not announce how it now contains more effective surfactants and enzymes. The ads talk about getting "whites whiter" and "colors brighter" while showing smiling people in care giving roles. Doing laundry is not about getting clothes clean. It is about the gratitude you feel at being able to take care of yourself and the ones you love.

Thus, if you can get your target audience emotionally engaged with you, it is much more probable that they will believe your marketing claims. This is true for green marketing claims as well.

Meanwhile, the channels you use to communicate with your audience are important too. Everyone absorbs inputs using one of three cognitive styles: auditory/textual, visual/spatial, or kinesthetic. In order for them to feel that you understand them and their needs, you must convey information in their preferred manner. Since preferred cognitive style is not something you would know--and even if you did, is very unlikely to be a useful basis of segmentation--you should employ all three.

Covering your bases merely requires use of native phraseology, meaning a visual person will "see what you mean", an auditory person will "hear what you are saying", and a kinesthetic person will "get a good feeling". Certainly you can employ graphical communication methods with text to engage visual and auditory people, in addition to employing a mix of phrases. So now they are engaged with you, and--in addition--can more easily absorb your green marketing message.

Finally, you should structure your communications to address motivation and cognition issues. There are a few dimensions along which people skew and, as with cognitive style, you will have to address differing needs here too. Some people look for opportunities while others avoid risks. Ensure you frame the offer to address both by stating how it can fulfill potential and limit perceived peril. Some focus internally for validation while others look to external expertise. Make sure you reinforce the intuition in obtaining the product or service while offering supporting facts or data as well. Choice motivates some, while others are moved by necessity. Ensure you address both perspectives by offering a few options for the first group, and a default configuration for the second group.

Implementing these practices will maximize the success of your green business initiative, and provide the basis for effective green marketing.

Back to Top

The Strategic GreenSource^TM Program gives you expertise in
sustainability, marketing, and employee engagement:

Copyright © 2011 Strategic Communications Group Inc. All Rights Reserved. "Strategic GreenSource" is a trademark of Strategic Communications Group Inc. All other trademarks which may appear on this site are the property of the respective trademark owners.

Green, sustainable, go green, green products, green business, green marketing, green consultant, green energy ...

Green business starts with motivated employees engaged in green business practices. Green Sight LLC has the expertise help you successfully go green.

Sustainability, going green, marketing green, green innovation, eco friendly business strategy ...

Green and Sustainability are different: green generally involves reduced impact to the environment, while sustainability requires eliminating impact--a much higher standard.

Environmentally friendly, green design, green companies, eco products, green product, sustainable green ...

Strategic GreenSource can help you effectively align employees and customers with your green business objectives.