How to successfully use green marketing

One of the newest and most popular trends is green marketing. Market experts are enthusiastic about his new trend, and feel that businesses can reap substantial benefits, if they use green marketing correctly. If you show potential customers that you follow green business practices, and you could reap more green on your bottom line. Green marketing is no longer just a catchphrase; it's a marketing strategy that can help you get more customers and make more money. But only if you do it right. Experts advise that are three steps that you must take in order for green marketing to be effective. These steps are-

• Be genuine-This means that you are actually doing what you claim to be doing, in your green marketing campaign. And even more importantly the rest of your business policies are consistent, with whatever you are doing that's environmentally friendly. You need to keep in mind that both these conditions have to be met, for your business to establish the kind of environmental credentials that will allow a green marketing campaign to succeed.
• Educate your customers-It is important to remember that educating your customers, isn't just a matter of letting people know, you're doing whatever you're doing to protect the environment, but also a matter of letting them know why it matters. If you don't do this then a major part of your target market may not even care and your green marketing campaign goes nowhere.
• Give your customers an opportunity to participate-This means that you must personalize the benefits of your environmentally friendly actions. This can be done by letting the customer take part in positive environmental action.
• There are several practical steps that must be considered when putting these three factors into practice. To begin with you must determine what steps would be appropriate and effective, for your business to take in its efforts toward green marketing. You want to decide on things that you feel would be the kind of environmental action that will be popular with potential customers, and a good opportunity to do some green marketing. Once you have made the decision then you can move forward with the above factors.

To be genuine, you will have to ensure that none of your business practices contradict your decision to use or not use something. For example: if you choose not to use plastic bags,what if customers who happen to walk behind your store, see an overflowing trash bin filled with paper, cardboard, and plastic bottles? Your customer may then decide that you don't care as much about recycling, as you say you do in your green marketing.

Your next step will be to educate your target market. Make sure that they understand why you have made the green decisions that you have. If your target market does not understand the ramifications, of not using plastic bags, chemicals, or Styrofoam (or whatever else you have decided against), then part of your green marketing campaign must tell them why you are not, in a clear and concise way.

Finally you must let your customer know that by shopping at your store or site, they are
taking action to protect the environment.Your customers are much more likely to sit up and take notice of your green marketing, if they feel some ownership of it.It may not sound like much, but he or she gets the satisfaction of physically doing something that fulfills their beliefs. You can also reinforce your customers' green decisions and increase their participation by offering them additional related actions, (such as buying cloth bags to use for future purchases).