Is Your Green Marketing Misleading?

By Rieva Lesonsky

If you’re marketing your business’s products or services as environmentally friendly, you’d better watch out. According to the latest Cone Green Gap Trend Tracker survey, Americans strongly disapprove of companies whose green marketing efforts are less than honest. Some 71 percent who will stop buying a product if they feel misled by an environmental claim, and more than a third (37 percent) will boycott the company’s products altogether.

According to Cone, part of the problem isn’t companies misleading marketing claims—it’s consumers who don’t understand what various “green” claims mean. While 97 percent of consumers surveyed say they know what common environmental marketing claims such as “green” or “environmentally friendly” mean, they’re often wrong. For instance, 41 percent of respondents believe these terms mean a product has a positive impact on the environment. Only 29 percent understand that in reality, these terms just mean the products are less harmful to the environment than others.

Most consumers are suspicious of companies’ environmental claims (57 percent) and overwhelmed by the amount of environmental messages out there (51 percent). What do customers want to see from your green marketing efforts? More than three-fourths (79 percent) would like detailed information on product packaging, and 75 percent wish companies would do a better job helping them understand the environmental terms they use.

The good news for small businesses: It’s more important to be honest than to be totally green. Three-fourths of respondents said it’s OK if a company is not environmentally perfect; what matters is to be honest and transparent about your green efforts.

What can you do to help your green marketing succeed?

• Avoid vague environmental claims on packaging. Fifty-nine percent of respondents felt vague claims were misleading.
• More than half of customers in a mock purchasing situation bought a product based solely on a certification on the label, showing that certification is an effective marketing tool. However, if you use certification, make sure it’s meaningful and comes from a reputable organization.
• Be honest. Consider labeling or packaging that explains your green efforts in simple language. This is easier than obtaining certification and, as the survey shows, may be more likely to influence purchasing behavior in your favor.

Image by Flickr user Corey Harmon (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Monday, April 11th, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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