Eco Marketing

20/05/2007 by blog.

How Green is your marketing? This was a question from a recent customer. This led on to a discussion about eco marketing as a whole. Most organisations now prefer a green alternative where it is possible, but does eco marketing have to be more expensive to meet the criteria?

At ECO1 we are always striving to be as eco as possible in our marketing and the way we work and try to keep our prices in-line with non Green alternatives. Only last week, we managed to find an eco printing and design supplier that ran an off-grid facility. The suppliers use a mix of micro-hydro, Photovoltaics and wind turbines to power their eco marketing facility. So does that mean they are more expensive?

Well, the funny thing was this, that after a lot of hard work by the ECO1 team in shopping around, we found that eco marketing does NOT always have to be more expensive than conventional marketing. The eco printing and design facility we found had invested in green energy. Yet despite all the capital investment, their prices were still on a par with the non greens. Certainly, if a customer wanted a very small run on printing using an obscure paper, then the price would be more, just as it would be with none green printing. But the key point is that green printing and eco marketing as a whole does not have to cost more.

I took a good look at ECO1 to think are we as green in our eco marketing as we could be? I mean 80% of our eco marketing is eco telemarketing. So is telemarketing green? Well our competition all jump in to their cars everyday, to race round the country burning up fossil fuels. I don’t just mean their sales reps, but the call centres who draw their staff from up to 50 miles away and encourage their staff to drive in by offering car parks. In contrast, the ECO1 team are all home based, using their legs to get to work. So is telemarketing green? I guess if you choose Eco1 Telemarketing it is.

The customer asked whether eco telemarketing really worked though? Surely, a representative from their company had to go and see a customer? That was an interesting point. The answer is yes and no. It really depends on the type of business someone is in, who their customers are and how sales are made.

We have a current customer at ECO1 who uses eco telemarketing.All our work for this customer has been carried out by telephone or internet. Our customer has closed 100% of their eco sales without ever leaving their office.

I agree that in some cases, you will have to meet a customer for your eco marketing. But if you take the time to think about the eco sales cycle for a moment, could you adapt to greener measures too? It is all too easy for everyone to lose sight of the way the world is changing and not realise that eco marketing is not just an idea but is totally feasible.

The globe is now covered in fibre optic cables wrapping the planet with speed of light communications. I am not pointing to Microsoft as the greenest company on the planet (yet), but do you think all their international meetings take place face-to-face? Take a green leaf out of their book for a moment, and consider how eco online demos, eco video conferencing, and eco tele conferencing is changing the way we all work.

Think for a moment, whether your eco product or service could be explained and sold better by telephone and internet. Last year ECO1 worked on a project that left many green people confused as to the benefits. It was all about “paper to digital migration” using cross-platform technologies to integrate communication systems. So how was that green? Talking to the key directors in UK and Global corporations, we managed to help pursuade these people to start saving tons and tons of paper communications. In fact, just as we have minimised or removed the need for carbon-usage in travel at ECO1, we helped minimise or remove the need for paper at numerous major corporations.

Of course, us ECO bods are never satisfied. Is the change from paper to digital simply greenwash, because of all the electricity being used by computers now storing the data? Well, to be fair, that really comes down to how the companies produce/use energy? More and more organisations are implementing green energy strategies as part of their eco marketing. It is now possible to use an internet provider powered by eco energy. Wind turbines are starting to pop up outside offices on commercial estates. The shift is beginning to happen right now.

So what about eco public relations or eco direct mail, we were asked? Is this really eco marketing? In regards to eco public relations, it is not that dissimilar to eco telemarketing. Certainly paper is involved in the process, but much of this can be reduced to electronic bytes rather than hard copy. Wherever possible, all paper products are recycled. So the impact of paper can be minimised or removed using eco recycled papers. Travel once again can be minimised. In fact, at ECO1 we recently discussed a new form of eco streaming media with a customer that will relay their message to millions at a much lower price to the environment and their pocket. Take a quick look at how Greenpeace are using this technology.

As for eco direct mail forming part of an eco marketing strategy, that is a different kettle of fish. Let’s be honest with ourselves, direct mail is not what it used to be. ECO1 deal with Business2Business in the main, so let us leave the consumer direct mail discussion for another topic. Any eco direct mail campaign is only likely to produce somewhere between 0.4% and 4.0% return. That does not sound great does it? Take a look at the statistics on email marketing and it just gets worse. Once you get over the statistics, and stop thinking about mailing the planet, the picture does begin to clear on eco direct mail. In a nutshell, it is all about focus.

Too many mediocre marketing people will tell you that marketing is marketing, and eco marketing is nothing different. Well personally this sounds like bunkum. Most people who recieve badly targeted mail are not keen on unsolicited mail whether it be via snailmail or electronic. That said, if the project is handled with care and the right people are targeted in the right way, eco direct mail can work well.

Ignore the fact that some people don’t like eco direct mail. You cannot please everyone (some people would moan if you tried to offer them free cash). The key is to focus on the right market segment who DO want you to contact them with something worthwhile. This is when eco marketing using eco direct mail suddenly starts to work.

In essence, eco marketing can be green and as cost effective, as any other form of marketing. It is a question of choosing the right eco marketing agency, such as ECO1. I suppose we like to believe that we are greening the world one customer at a time.

Regards,

The Green Sales Generator

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