As the world keeps evolving by paving way for modern technology, it has also become more conscious about its actions. A large number of organizations worldwide have developed an eco-consciousness of sorts in order to tackle the ills done to the environment.
Everything from recycling programs to usage of eco-friendly materials in office buildings are part of this new outlook. Going green seems to be the future, and marketing too has become a part of this eco-friendly outlook.
What is Green Marketing?
Simply speaking, Green Marketing or eco-marketing is the marketing of products or services that promote the company's product/services in an environment friend way. The term promoting the environment encompasses anything from employing sustainable means of production for a certain product to reduce a company’s carbon emissions to selling environmentally safe products or services.
If a product or service is environmentally friendly, then it is green marketing. Such marketing promotes and actively discusses their company’s sustainable and eco-friendly policy.
If you’re a product-based company then you will be consuming energy and producing waste during the process of production. But, if you start reducing your energy consumption and started conserving it, then you could potentially turn your marketing green.
Companies started with reducing energy costs and preserving the environment. They moved on to create products with non-toxic waste and reusable materials.
Now these tenets have become a part of the core elements of marketing itself. The very fact that most organizations are moving away from traditional methods of marketing to more sophisticated, digital methods of marketing is a proof that green marketing is catching on and soon it will become a norm.
The Big Shift in Marketing
The world of marketing has been evolving ever since the advent of technology. In fact, technology has ushered in a new era for consumers as well.
Consumers have all the information they need just a click away. However, it would be wrong to say that the role of a marketer has diminished as a result.
The role of the marketer has merely evolved in the process. That means that the traditional methods of marketing that were part and parcel of marketers for such a long time has become obsolete. It has paved way for more modern and sophisticated methods of digital marketing.
Earlier on, marketers had to rely on large quantities of printed material. One had to depend on printed material for in-house communications, exchanging information amongst departments, storing information on new leads and customers, you name it.
Everything had to be done in paper, whether written or printed. And this would be done on a large scale across the world with files and files of information tucked away, not only occupying space but also using large quantities of paper, product sourced directly from trees.
Not only that, traditional marketing methods relied on large quantities of printed material for customer communication as well. Everything from flyers and brochures for trade shows to direct mails consumed an enormous amount of paper as well as ink.
With cutting-edge digital marketing technology, there is no need for either paper or ink. Software takes care of everything from communication to promotion. One such extremely popular piece of marketing technology is marketing automation.
Marketing automation is a software that takes care of your day-to-day marketing needs. Since traditional methods of marketing do not work anymore, it has all come down to emails, social media channels, videos, blogs and newsletters when it comes to communication and promotion.
Marketing automation is a green solution because it consumes no paper or ink. It stores all relevant information in the cloud servers instead of paper-files in file cabinets. It helps you conduct trade shows online, where people all over the world can drop by to check out your products.
Every flyer and brochure have now transformed into a PDF or an eBook. Marketing itself has become an eco-friendly process thanks to technology.
Room for Disagreement
Marketing technologies like marketing automation usually stores large amounts of data in cloud servers that are housed by datacenters. One might argue that these datacenters itself are not green enough. However, one of the primary things about housing data is that it is much cleaner than traditional storage of paper-based documents.
No matter the argument, no one can deny this fact. Along with that datacenters now come with ratings that will let you know whether they are green or not.
The Platinum rating is the highest possible rating that can be attained by datacenters under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). It is overseen by the US Green Building Council and it rates energy efficient buildings accordingly.
Some of the well-known datacenters that carry a Platinum LEED rating would be Apple’s data facility in Maiden, North Carolina, Citigroup’s Citi Data Center in Frankfurt, Germany, Digital Realty Trust’s datacenter in Santa Clara, California and so on and so forth.
Each and every one of these datacenters have used recycled materials for their construction, reduced or recycled the waste produced during the construction and eradicated all sorts of negative environmental impact as a result.
The Bottom Line
Consumers too have become conscious about the products and services they are consuming. Some consumers actually prefer a greener product because it has a positive impact on the environment. Green seems to be a promising path for marketers as consumers have started taking note of it.
There are innumerable ways to make your company’s marketing greener and eco-friendly in nature. Using eco-friendly materials, reducing energy consumption, reducing waste products, anything that helps you reduce the pressure on the environment and create a positive effect on it will help you take a greener step towards a cleaner world.
Technology like marketing automation will help you take this leap of faith, as green marketing seems to be the future of marketing. Take your first step here.