Green Messaging: Consumers Are Really Going Online To Check Up On Your Brand
You can’t just say “it is so” and have consumers believe it. Today’s shoppers are looking under the hood and behind the scenes to see if your brand’s environmental claims, for one, are true.
It’s an awful lot like the process of committing to marketing to women - you can do lots of PR and add a “for women” tagline to your ad campaigns all you want, but the consumers you really want to impress will need to see some serious back-up for all that you proclaim.
Web sites are a great place to demonstrate that you are doing both: investing in the women’s market, and working on your environmental responsibility. Particularly for the green business practice/green messaging realm, having that sort of information posted online makes it a lot harder for your brand NOT to live up to its marketing pitch.
Recent research from a Burst Media survey found that green-aware consumers notice the environmental claims that brands are making in full force these days, but they remain skeptical. And - this should be no surprise - they do go online to investigate those claims. Yet, consumers are finding that many sites lack in this regard.
Talk about a missed and easy-to-remedy opportunity!
Here’s an excerpt from a MediaPost ResearchBrief about the findings:
The survey found that four out of five (79.6%) respondents use the Internet to conduct personal research on green initiatives and products, and many respondents find the availability of corporate information on green and environmentally safe products and services lacking. Burst’s survey showed that:
- 41.6% would rate corporate information as only average
- 20.8% rate the information as fair
- 17.2% rate it as poor
If you are waiting until you can say that everything your brand is doing is perfectly “green” before putting information on your site - don’t. You will likely never reach perfection. But, women will give you points, and more chances to become their brand of choice, if/when they see steps and plans in the right direction. (Of course, if, two years from now consumers see no further developments from those initial steps, they’ll see right through those claims too.)
“Transparency” is already the buzzword for a brand’s social, environmental and corporate responsibility issues. Many people are heading online and to your site to explore your brand - to see how transparent you are willing to be. So, if your site isn’t mentioning or addressing those concerns at all, it could be more than a little suspicious to green-savvy shoppers.
Instead, try this: Commit only to what you can do, but keep it coming. Publicly share your brand’s environmentally sustainable developments as they increase and improve.
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Andrea,
Right on! Companies consistently overpromise and under deliver when it comes to marketing their green goods. I’d like to see more manufacturers and retailers saying “we’re getting better” — and be able to prove it - than say “we’re so green” and have it mean nothing. Thanks for your continued invaluable insights.