3 Reasons to Become a Green Retail Business
Today green is becoming a necessity in business. For any company to ensure their longevity and continued profitability they need to become a green retail business. This can mean a variety of things, from using sustainable business practices as far as transportation and materials, to greening the company’s new construction and existing facilities to selling environmentally friendly products. Whatever way you slice it, going green is the right decision now and into the future. By going green your retail business can spend less, earn more and become more profitable, while also becoming a positive part of the environment.
There are three main reasons for any company to become a green retail business. First, customers are increasingly demanding green from the businesses they shop in. Second, this consumer demand means that other businesses are going green. Thus, you need to go green simply to keep up. And third, going green simply makes business sense as it increases long term profits. Let’s look at these three items in detail in a moment, but first we will look at a few examples of the retail world making the move to green.
A Few Big Names Go Green As if to emphasize the value of going green today, a number of big names in retail have been focusing their efforts on green recently. These companies are seeking to reduce, reuse and recycle, and also provide green options for their customers.
Wal-Mart is one company starting to make some eco-conscious changes to their business. Specifically, Wal-Mart is focusing on three main goals. First, they are seeking to make a move to sustainable energy, in fact their goal is that all their stores use 100% renewable energy in the near future. Additionally, Wal-Mart is trying to reduce waste, hoping to achieve zero waste in their operations. Finally, Wal-Mart is looking to increase the availability of green products in their stores, making it easier for consumers to take their own green steps.
The department store Kohls is similarly seeking to green their operations. Renewable energy is on their radar as they seek to reduce the carbon footprints of their stores and corporate offices. Part of this will be accomplished through LEED certification of new stores that Kohls builds. While working on their own waste reduction and recycling, Kohls is also working with suppliers to reduce packaging and waste.
The large Swedish retailer Ikea is also trying to reduce their environmental footprint. One of Ikea’s biggest green strategies has always been, and continues to be, reducing transportation costs. This is done largely through packaging as they seek to package their products as efficiently as possible to allow more product to be shipped in fewer shipments. Ikea is also looking into the materials that their products are made from, specifically looking to eliminate their uses of non-sustainable wood.
Customers Demand Green While not every company is as large as Wal-Mart, Kohls or Ikea and cannot embark on such large initiatives or lofty goals, each company must decide what their green policy is and work towards some level of green retail business. Consumers are demanding it. Any company who fails to embrace sustainable business will see a loss in consumers over the coming years.
The Competition is Going Green And where will these lost customers go? Well, they will go off to patronize the competition, who IS going green. As our examples above show, every avenue of retail business is starting to look at sustainability. Even these huge commercial icons have recognized that green is the color of the future, and the future’s money. Going green will be necessary to simply keep up in an ultra competitive consumer marketplace. To truly excel and stand out in that market companies need to be among the first to go green and they need to be sure and spread the word.
Green Makes Business Sense Green makes ethical sense, as we are all stewards of our planet and should want to make a difference. But it also makes economic sense. Not only do sustainable business practices meet growing consumer demand and help a green retailer to keep up with their competition, but eco-friendly actions can also save money now and in the future. For example, by simply reducing the brightness of lights in a store a retailer can save 30-40% off their electricity bill. Some grocery stores are taking the steps of adding motion detectors to the lights in their refrigerators and aisles, so that the lights only come on as customers approach the aisle – what a great proactive solution that looks good and saves money in the here and now. Of course larger changes such as energy efficient buildings and energy systems can save even more over the long run.
Bring it around Town The simple truth is that green is the color of the future. It is not a matter of if a company will have to go green, but rather of when they will institute sustainable business strategies, becoming a green retail business out of necessity. Think of it as the right thing to do. Think of it as the economically smart thing to do. Think of it as a potential government mandate (more are coming every day). Or think of it as peer pressure from the competition. Whatever way you slice it up, going green is an absolute necessity for any business to survive deeper into the 21st Century.
10 Tips for Increasing Your Email Reach and Effectiveness
Email has become one of the biggest marketing tools in the SMB arsenal. However, just shipping out thousands of email with no plan is not any more effective than misplaced advertising. To be effective an email needs to be attractive, informative and well designed. It also has to have credibility. To increase your email reach consider the following three things.
Provide Value to Your Potential CustomerPeople are more likely to read, act on, and even pass along to others messages that offer value. This means that you should use emails to advertise a special sale, offer coupons or discounts and other things that add specific value only to the people receiving that email.
Encourage Referrals As noted above, a huge goal of a good email is to get the recipient to pass the message along to a friend or family member who might be interested in the product or message. People are most likely to pass something on to their friends if it offers value in the form of necessary information or cost savings. A great way to get a double whammy for your email is to send a “bring a friend” coupon or “referral bonus.” Here, you offer an additional savings to both the original recipient and the friend that they refer to you.
Cross Promote to Expand Your List Of course, effective email marketing is only as good as your starting list of email addresses. It is important that you build a solid email list. This does not mean getting your hands on any address you can – sending plumbing repair emails to an apartment renter or mommy and me classes to a retiree makes little sense.
What you want is a list of viable customers – people who may actually need and want your services. You can do this in a variety of ways, three of which are quite easy. First, get email addresses from all your customers. Also, ask current customers if they would like to receive a coupon in return for referring a friend. Another way to increase your email list is to work with another business that has a similar customer base. For example, if you own a child’s clothing store in a high end shopping strip and further down the strip is a baby gym, cross promote. Ask the gym owner to add a link for you to the bottom of their next email mailing; in return, you do the same for them. In this way clients of both businesses get value, receiving only emails that apply to them, and both businesses can potentially double their address list.
Quick Tips The above are all valuable tips for increasing your email reach. There are also some quick tips to prepare the best email, so remember the following:
- Add an “unsubscribe” link to the bottom of your email; in most areas, it is the law and it is also good customer service. You don’t want to get a bad reputation by sending messages to people who don’t want them.
- Include a link to your company’s privacy policy, so potential customers can feel safe giving you their information. If you intend to trade emails with a similar business near you, be sure your policy states this clearly.
- Use a solid subject line that tells the reader, at a glance, what value this message holds for them. Similarly, ensure that your company’s name is in the “from” box.
- Put your full contact information, including phone number and email address, in your message.
- Keep your messages brief and within a single theme; suggest the reader go to your website for information on your other offers or products.
- Target your market; do not just send messages out to every email address you can get your hands on. Try to target your markets properly and send out information to people who want to receive it.
- Use specific call to action buttons. This means that instead of just putting a button that says, “click here” at the bottom of your message write WHY you want them to click here. Perhaps, “Click here for a video of this product in action,” or “click here for a comparison between product A and B.” Be specific – tell the email read WHY to “click here.”
Inbound Marketing VS. Traditional Marketing: The Advantages and Disadvantages
Traditional marketing has always consisted primarily of outbound marketing; that is to say that marketers have focused on going out and actively soliciting new customers for their business. With this type of marketing business owners usually employed relatively invasive techniques including cold-calling, print advertising in magazines, newspapers and mailings, and television advertising. All of these types of traditional marketing have one thing in common – they are designed to interrupt what a person is doing and force them to think about the company, product or service that is being advertised. While traditional marketing has some advantages, many companies today find a new type of marketing – inbound marketing – to be more effective.
Inbound marketing works by creating content that people actually want to see, encouraging potential clients to seek out the company being marketed, rather than the company seeking out people. Much of this is done online through social networking sites. Good examples of inbound marketing includes creating videos for free online consumption, posting informational articles on a company website, and creating a blog that people subscribe to because they want the information it contains. In this way businesses can often spend less money and end up attracting a more appropriate potential customer base.
Let’s look at some specific advantages and disadvantages of both traditional outbound marketing and inbound marketing.
The Advantages of Traditional Marketing Traditional outbound marketing, including television and print ads, presence at trade shows, cold calling centers and email marketing, provides a number of advantages. First, outbound marketing can be relatively easy, if expensive. That is, a company can put their message in front of thousands – even millions – of people in an instant with TV, or in a week with magazines, and so forth. Traditional marketing gives a SMB the chance to deliver a direct sales pitch to customers. Some forms of outbound marketing, such as cold-calling and trade show exhibitions, can allow immediate interaction with customers and answering of questions, which can be very effective.
The Disadvantages of Traditional Marketing Traditional marketing also has a number of disadvantages. Foremost, technology such as caller ID, call blocking, digital video recorders and spam filters are all making it more difficult for companies to get their advertising in front of people’s eyes. Large scale advertising (print or TV) also spends a lot of money to send a message to people who may not be part of the target audience – it simply casts too wide a net in many cases. Finally, people are becoming adverse to the idea of the “hard sell” and are simply not as open to direct outbound marketing as they used to be.
The Advantages of Inbound Marketing Inbound marketing, which involves technology and information that draws people to a company out of curiosity or interest including blogs, e-books, YouTube videos, white papers, articles and the like, can provide a number of advantages for you, as a small or medium business. Inbound marketing allows for better targeting of the desired market, without so much marketing to those who do not fit the desired demographic. This means that you may reach fewer people, but those people will be more likely to have an interest in your product. Inbound marketing can cost less; note we wrote “can” as this will also be covered in disadvantages. But generally inbound marketing costs less than TV ads, print ads or hiring a call center. Inbound marketing is considered by many to be an investment; with inbound marketing you put information into cyberspace that can attract new customers continually, rather than just running a single brief ad on TV or in print that comes and goes.
The Disadvantages of Inbound Marketing While it has many advantages, inbound marketing does have some negatives as well. The biggest one is that there is a lot of competition not only for people’s money but for their attention; it can be challenging to get people to visit and linger on your website, Facebook page, YouTube site and so on. Also, while inbound marketing can be less expensive than traditional marketing, it can also be expensive in that you may need to hire technologically savvy people to make your marketing work. Furthermore, while inbound marketing is an investment it also takes time and does not necessarily produce the immediate returns that some outbound marketing can.
5 Tips for Search Engine Optimization
We all know that technology is everywhere, but what’s more is that today every company – no matter how small – is really expected to have a website. Your website is a great way for your customers (and potential customers) to learn about you including reading a list of services you provide, learning some of your company history, and finding your hours and location. But if you use your website correctly you can really take advantage of it to pull in new customers from across the world wide web. How? By effectively using search engine optimization (SEO).
With SEO you use keywords and other methods to ensure that your website ranks high in all the major search engines. Of course this is important as most web surfers only look at the first page of search results before clicking on a website – you want to do your best to ensure that your company shows up in that first page of results. Sure, you can do this by paying to be a sponsor on Google, Yahoo and all the major search engines, but you can also do it with your SEO. Following are 5 tips for improving your SEO and helping your business to rate higher.
Tip #1: Use New and Unique Content in Your Website Most search engines rank websites by the content, not just by headers and titles. Web crawlers are always looking for new, relevant information – words that are original. This is why websites such as copyspace.com have become so popular – they provide a way to judge how original articles are. Thus, to rank as high as possible in search results your website needs to have information that is unique to just your website, with pages that are unique from each other. This means a number of things – even when you are stating information that is similar to other companies, you need to ensure that it reads very differently, that it is unique.
Similarly, your own web pages need to be written in a way that each is totally original. And, if you cross promote with another site, put out advertisements online or post press releases, these need to be worded so that each is original. In addition to originality, relevance of information is paramount – most search engines assume that more updated information is more relevant. So, it is important that you update your pages frequently both so they are fresh and accurate for your viewers but also so that the search engines read them as newly modified. At the absolute least update every page each year.
Tip #2: Add a Blog Part of keeping your website fresh can involve blogging. Adding a blog helps ensure that you have continuous, fresh content constantly appearing on your website. Allowing replies to the blog also provides a method of letting your customers feel involved. In this way a blog can help you with SEO (ensure that your blog writer understands SEO and works keywords into their blogging) and can also help you provide general customer satisfaction by providing customers a platform to voice their thoughts or ask questions. If you do allow for customers to post to the blog ensure that you are monitoring it to answer questions; when a customer takes the time to post a question and no one bothers to answer they will feel unwanted and are likely to take their business elsewhere.
Tip #3: Flesh out Your Site with Informative Articles Yet another way to keep your site original and interesting, while also filling it with dozens (even hundreds) of opportunities to use SEO to advance your rankings is by posting informative articles on your website. Let’s say you own a plumbing company. You have your standard “About Us” and “Services” pages, “FAQs” and a few others. That’s all fine. But, what if a customer in your area thinks they can fix their leaking bathtub faucet on their own? They won’t be searching for anything that appears in any of these pages. They may be searching for “Do it yourself tub repair.” So, put some articles like this on your website. Then, end the article with a call to action – the action of calling your company.
Tip #4: Create New Pages for Each Keyword This idea of filling your site with articles fits in with another well known SEO marketing tool – create new pages for every keyword that is important to your business. Your site will rank highest in search engine results if every possible keyword that your clients are likely to search for is represented a number of times throughout your site. The best way to do this is to have a single keyword or phrase represented on each page of your site. You can accomplish this on all the basic site pages (About Us, Contact Us, etc.), but posting blogs or articles is another great way to do this right.
Tip #5: Use Keywords and Key Phrases Carefully So, we’ve talked a lot about how important it is to have your keywords all over your website, but it is also important to evaluate your keywords themselves. First, remember that there are likely thousands of sites like yours, so key “words” are so overused that they will often not really get your site the attention you want. Instead, use keyword “phrases” of two or three words that are phrases likely to be searched for by your potential customers. Remember that these key phrases should be placed in your title and also in the first paragraph of all web pages. Finally, ensure that the key phrases appear in your meta description, headers and alt tags.
5 Marketing Tips for Small Business
We have all heard that 80% of small businesses fail in their first year. Most of the rest fail within the next four years. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one is that small business managers simply do not take proper advantage of marketing as a method of growing sales. Part of this is because they think that they need a lot of money to have a marketing budget; this is not necessarily the case. Following are five easy tips that you can implement in any small business today to start growing your company and increasing revenue with little money out of pocket.
1) Advertise to get sales now This one may sound obvious, but the truth is that too many small businesses advertise in a way that is fit only for large business. Specifically, a large business can afford to do general brand advertising; that is, they can spend time and money advertising their name, with the idea that customers will know their name when they are finally in the market for the company’s particular type of product. They can afford to invest now for potential future returns. By contrast, your small business probably needs to get sales right now. Thus, you need to advertise more directly, in an attempt to earn current sales, not future potential sales.
2) Cross promote with other businesses One of the most overlooked areas of marketing in small business is the cross promotion. Say you own a pottery shop in a high end area; down the street is a high end candy store. You have your customer list and they have theirs, and the lists are probably quite a bit different. Cross promote. Work together to advertise some of your upcoming pottery specials on the chocolate shop’s next email, and vice versa. Also, you can each give out coupons for the other business to all customers in your shop. In this way you each grab a slightly different customer base, but one that is still geographically desirable.
3) Use technology Gone are the days when the only sales tool available to small business, besides word of mouth, was door to door salespeople or expensive print advertisements and mailings. Today, technology brings the small business owner myriad methods for marketing a small business in ways that are inexpensive and environmentally friendly. Every company today must have a web presence, so if you do not have a website then have one built immediately. You do not need to sell things on your site, but you need to have at least a basic informational website where people can go to see your hours, location and what services or products you offer. Direct mailings may seem a bit old school, but technology makes them less expensive than ever before. There are many websites, such as VistaPrint.com where you can create your own eye catching mailings online and purchase them for just pennies a postcard. Even better are email mailings. One tip, when using email be sure to use a good subject line that lets the customer know that you are a legitimate business whom they signed up with before, not some SPAM to be deleted.
4) Offer referral benefits and frequent flyer cards We have all heard that it is easier to keep an existing customer than to create a new one. But why not do both at the same time?! By offering excellent customer service and products you encourage others to spread the word about you. Give them points every time they come back and let them accumulate those points to use towards a discount or special offer and you encourage their continued patronage. Then, take it a step further and give your valued customer incentives for bringing in new customers. For example, if you own a message parlor, send your existing customers a coupon that offers themselves and a guest a certain percentage off if they come in with a new client.
5) Offer at least two levels of products or service Remember that products and service are rarely one size fits all. Some clients are looking for value and low cost. Others are willing to pay for a higher end product. Whether you sell a product or a service, always offer at least two levels – a value level and a premier level. This way you satisfy everyone, no matter their budget and goals.
Highlights from the 2011 World Climate Summit
Durban, South African played host to the second annual World Climate Summit this past December 3rd and 4th. The summit’s website and initiatives brings together literally thousands of companies from business, finance and multiple governments to discuss how various initiatives could be developed to make sustainable business profitable. The event itself was attended by over 800 representatives of these various companies, organizations and governments.
The two day summit offered an opportunity for various leaders around the world to discuss business-focused climate solutions. They looked at ways that global companies and governments can work to make business economically feasible and environmentally sustainable at the same time, and how these businesses can have a positive impact on the environment overall.
It Takes a Village The first World Climate Summit was held in 2010 in Cancun. That meeting focused on starting a dialog among business people to recognize the value of sustainable business and the positive impact that it could have on the world as a whole. That first summit garnered support for the concept that businesses could be a part of a successful environmental solution – that it takes a village to raise a healthy environment.
The second World Climate Summit this year took this a step further; this summit looked at how businesses could actually profit not just from their own sustainable practices but also from supporting various sustainability and environmentally beneficial initiatives in other companies. According to the chair of the summit committee, the goal of this second summit was to learn and share by collaborating on strategies and new initiatives that could address global climate change and help improve the global economy, from a green perspective.
Supporting a Dedicated Community All year around, the World Climate Summit organization works to support interaction between its members, brainstorming ideas for climate improvement. During the Summit itself it was recognized that companies, according to the Summit Chair, need to speak loudly and clearly, announcing the need to go green in a voice that can be heard around the world.
Among the highlights of what the Summit discussed are the following:
- The need to develop a sound plan for phasing out the use of HFC’s (the most damaging greenhouse gasses) and striving for a planet wide “net zero” deforestation policy by 2020.
- Leaders talked about thinking about our true values, as far as valuing the environment. Experts spoke about revolutionary green initiatives being implemented by power house companies such as Coca Cola, Dow Chemicals and Puma.
- Carbon capture and storage was discussed, with Zero Emissions Platform talking in depth on the C02 challenge we face. The focus was on waste reduction, recovery and recycling, as well as bettering our energy efficiency.
- The European Investment Bank ran a conversational session about how to reduce carbon footprints in business and finance.
- Siemens hosted a variety of conversations about how city infrastructure and mobility impact the environment.
- Some companies showcased examples of how sustainability can work, including a networking lounge constructed by Nedbank; the lounge, used by many speakers, representatives and VIPs, was built entirely out of sustainable building materials.
Among the other things discussed at the conference was the progress made on certain initiatives that were suggested at the 2010 conference. Reported progress included the following:
- In 2010, OPIC committed $300 million in renewable energy financing. This year they tripled their commitment to $1.1 billion.
- In 2010, the Carbon War Room announced they were creating a universal energy index for the shipping industry to use, to rank shippers by their energy use. This year they are growing and plan to add airline shipping to their tracking.
Special Recognition One aspect of the conference is to recognize those who are making great strides towards sustainable business. This is done by awarding the Gigaton Prize for contributions in the field of green. This year two prizes were awarded. The main Gigaton Prize was given to a Chinese solar company, SunTech; this company has contributed the most to reducing carbon emissions worldwide. A second Gigaton Prize was awarded to the country that has invested the most in renewable energy; this award went to Germany, a country known for their abundant eco-friendly green roofs and for current serious investments into renewable energy sources.
Moving Forward The goal of the annual World Climate Summit is to raise awareness, of course, but more so to promote action. By bringing together hundreds of industry leaders each year, the Summit promises to increase awareness and cooperation, working steadily towards a better sustainable future for business.
