For sustainable organizations, the website is even more critical to your business; it holds the key to your reputation.

Take for example the company running an advertising campaign that touts their green product line. In an effort to get more information about the company and products you visit their website. There is little or no information to support their ad campaign. Your conclusion could easily be that the company is greenwashing. This may not in fact be the case, but the perception of greenwash or even just a suspicion, can be as damaging to your reputation as the act of intentionally misleading the public.

Take the “Good Green Website Survey” and let us know if this has happened to you.

The good green website has to do better than most companies are doing. Even those businesses with firm environmental or 3BL commitments, policies and products fail to provide appropriate supporting information online. Or if it is online, it is not easy to find. I think of it as the great green scavenger hunt. Most visitors are going to leave your site before finding the information they are seeking, never to return.

Here are the keys to a “good green website”:

• Easy to find information
• Multiple ways to find the information [home page, about us, product pages….]
• Varying degrees of detail – appropriate for specific audience [architects and consumers may need different levels of information]
• Data supporting claims
• Contact information for further details [human answered is best]
• 3rd party verification wherever possible

The Green Challenges concurs that companies are falling short on their websites and need to do better stating: “There is a breakdown in communication of sustainability programs and policies from leadership to employees, stakeholders and consumers.”

A large part of the success of sustainability programs is in the corporate communications both internally and externally. The website, therefore is the perfect and necessary tool to be the epicenter of company’s sustainability programs and success.
Note: our StandForGreen™ marketing tool makes is easy for your website to communicate your green message.

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This post originally appeared as a Guest Blog on The Green Challenges http://www.thegreenchallenges.com

I tried the following exercise out.

Think of a color in the green palette. Think of what comes to mind when a company’s marketing says ‘green’.

Now consider this scenario:  You hire a painting contractor to paint your living room. The only instructions you give him are that you want it painted green.

What color does he paint it? According to color service company Pantone, there are millions of shades of green.

The responses ranged from ‘Toothpaste’ to “Pistachio” to “Forest” to “Mint”  to “Apple” etc

When it comes to eco or sustainable marketing, there aren’t a million shades but there are many possible variations.

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“It’s striking how rich and varied these descriptions are, often differing both by product as well as by people’s different perspectives, and also what aspect of the product’s lifecycle is often most salient for different products. The appetite is there, but the message needs to be more effective.”

Amy Hebard,  “Speaking Green: an Earthsense Report” which polled and summarized how 30,000 consumers define green for over 80 different product categories.

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The class offered a variety of responses as to what it means if a company says they are green:

•    Environmentally Friendly
•    Reducing Carbon Footprint
•    Having good corporate citizen policies [triple bottom line – including
environmental and social responsibility]
•    Having recycled products

And the definitions went on…. What did you think of?

Here are a few real world examples:

As the founder and manager of the green marketing group on linked in, I hear from a lot of people wanting to join the group. In their introduction email they tell me about their companies and what makes them green.  Here are two examples of the descriptions I get which illustrates the range of what people think of as green:

•    Our ad specialty company recently went green: we added a line of bamboo products.

•    We have just begun the process to become FSC [Forest Stewardship Council] Certified, and are undergoing an energy audit for our facility.  Our small printing company isn’t yet as green as we would like be we are committed to becoming more sustainable. We also have some give back programs in our community that we are seeking to expand.

When you say green do they hear only environmental attributes or are they thinking you mean triple bottom line?

It gets pretty confusing trying to figure out what a company means, especially if you are committed to buying from responsible companies.

Its time for a new language for green. Until then, let them know exactly what you mean when you say ‘green’.

Becoming official and being added to the dictionary doesn’t’ mean a word or phrase isn’t commonly used and recognized. It just reminded me that as marketers we often forget that we are not necessarily our customers, and need to keep that in mind with every communication.

The best marketing resonates with customers and makes them feel we are speaking directly to them. Miss the mark with language that seems foreign to them or like jargon and you can alienate them.

Its easy to lose perspective of whether a term or phrase is jargon or has moved into common usage with our audience, particularly if you live, breath and work in a niche. It’s your job to be up to date on trends, news…and you are probably a bit ahead of most of your audience, making it hard to keep it all in perspective. That is not to say there aren’t very savvy audiences out there on the cutting edge. The key is to really know your audience.

Social media such as blogs and twitter give us an incredible opportunity to have ongoing conversations in real time with our audience and read exactly what words and terms they speak/write in.

The real question for marketers is not when does a term become official, but when is it commonly used and accepted into the familiar language our target audience speaks.

gdniftu8ah

Tools of the Trade - Go Green Series

Please join me…I will be presenting on Green Marketing on 7/12 at:  Tools of the Trade – Go Green at FIT in NYC.

This dynamic seminar series at FIT hosts some of the preeminent thought leaders in sustainability, entrepreneurship and design. Scheduled speakers include Danny Bitran, founder and president of EthixPeople; Neil Chambers, founder of Green Ground Zero; Beto Lopez, sustainability thought leader and IDEO designerand sustainability expert and marketer Jane Tabachnick.

Tix can be ordered: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaID=186308

I will be attending the entire series… so stop by and say hello!

Jane

“Recently, Kevin Owsley went searching for a reputable organization that could validate the eco-friendly traits of his company’s carpet-cleaning fluid. But after canvassing a dozen competing groups hawking so-called “green certification” services — including one online outfit that awarded him an instant green diploma, no questions asked — he grew disillusioned about how meaningful any endorsement would be to his customers.

Mr. Owsley goes on to  say ‘I joke and say, ‘I could buy some of these companies a case of beer, and they’d give us a certification.’ I’m very frustrated by that. ”

To certify or not to certify. For small to medium size companies, the price alone may inform this decision. Whichever route you decide to go, good marketing for your sustainable business doesn’t rely on a certification. It’s really about telling your story and providing credible information to stakeholders. read my article  5 top tips for responsible green marketing…

how it differs in green marketing:

• the engagement and input needs to be company wide
• the skills needed cross numerous departments – r & d, technical, production, shipping… as well as marketing
• product and company data such as energy usage, materials sourcing and composition… needs to be tracked, measured  and available to supply chain, stakeholders and consumers
• transparency and honesty are necessary – even when results are less then planned targets