The Impact of Green Marketing Strategies on Consumer Behavior

In today’s omnichannel marketplace, you need more than just an innovative product or service to ensure business success. Thanks largely to online activity, consumers are now armed with more information than at any other time in the history of retail.

According to an American Lifestyle Survey by Mintel, at least 70% of consumers seek opinions and reviews before purchasing any product or service. More than ever before, successful marketing needs the power of persuasion. It’s a precise science that uses current trends to seriously influence consumer behavior.

Green Marketing Strategies

Without a doubt, the most significant trend from a consumer’s point of view is the green movement. Influenced by dire, multi-media warnings of increased carbon emissions and climate change, 55% are deliberately purchasing green products. Organic food, produced without harmful pesticides, is a prime example.

Statista revealed that in 2020, it generated at least $56.5 billion compared to just £35 billion in 2014. Green marketing strategies could have ruthlessly capitalized on consumers’ fears of environmental catastrophe to increase sales.

What is Green Marketing?

If you’re embarking on a career in sales, you have to learn techniques designed to manipulate the consumer’s thoughts. Concentrating on a particular theme gives your campaign its focus. Green marketing is perhaps one of the most clearly defined themes you can get. It relies on emotive environmental issues, consumer guilt and herd mentality.

Your sales team has to persuade potential customers that they could do more for the environment. Saving the planet is the consumer’s responsibility, but by purchasing green product ‘x’ everyone can immediately make an impact. Provoking guilt through ignoring this innovative product is another essential element in the art of persuasion.

Green marketing emphasizes procedures such as using water-based ink for environmentally-friendly packaging, using sustainable energy and instigating a recycling initiative for worn-out appliances. By demonstrating how green a business has become, sales executives hope to encourage customers to join their crusade and remain loyal.

Improved Customer Services

Sympathetic, persuasive customer services are essential for green marketing strategies in any business. A highly trained, virtual call center should have enough expertise to combat the negativity that finds up to 80% of consumers abandoning a brand through poor services.

Your customer service team is on the front line of your business, dealing with customer negativity. They have to be highly trained to gauge customer disillusionment and their motive for making contact. Is it monetary compensation, product replacement or do they have a valid point about your product’s apparent inefficiency? Your team needs to use impromptu psychological tactics to win the argument through expert knowledge combined with charm and understanding. 

Honesty versus Greenwashing

Regardless of how emotive your green message might be, your sales team cannot be seen to be exploiting consumers. Honesty is now a key attribute in the art of consumer persuasion, particularly where green marketing is your theme. Online facilities enable consumers to instantly check the claims of your business. A Science Daily report noted that consumers aged up to thirty years, the definitive Millennials and Generation Z, cared most about sustainability, prompting them to frequently verify green claims.

Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing technique that is deliberately used by businesses to mislead the consumer. They largely center around making false sustainability or green claims about a product or service. Unethical green claims could involve implying a product is environmentally friendly simply by using green ink on the packaging.

Other greenwashing claims could be highlighting the abandonment of plastic straws in favor of paper versions, even though these too are made of an ecologically incompatible material. However, regardless of how convincing your product or message appears to be, if it’s not absolutely honest, your potential customers are sure to find you out.

How Marketing Influences Consumer Behavior

In general, marketing techniques have always utilized emotive imagery and words to make a psychological impact. Choosing the most effective presentation is likely to be more successful if you are aware of your target audience. Market research analysts help in this respect, identifying factors such as the age group your product may best appeal to. Your green marketing campaigns may need to be much broader than you ever anticipated.

According to data collated by FirstInsight, the young Generation Z is set to form 40% of the consumer market However, to suit their finely tuned tastes in green sustainability, it’s not enough to simply purchase a green product. 

Generation Z also wants to be reassured of behind the scenes issues such as how fairly a company treats its employees. However, defining sustainability is often not so easily identified. 22% believe sustainability refers to ethical practices, while 25% cite waste of resources. It’s an example of how complex sustainability and green marketing are becoming.

Developing Green Marketing Strategies

Learning how to establish a successful green marketing campaign is vital if you want improved customer engagement and increased sales. You now have to address the entire lifespan of your product as consumers worry about multiple sustainability issues. Green marketing includes the working conditions of where your product was manufactured, and how it’s packaged and shipped.

Consumers also want reassurance on how their product may one day be recycled or refurbished to prevent it from adding to a mountainous landfill site. Mastering the basics of marketing techniques is crucial to the development of your skills in sales. They provide the initial building blocks of your green marketing expertise.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that green marketing makes an impact on consumer behavior. However, persuading an increasingly knowledgeable consumer is a difficult marketing technique to perfect. You need to tailor your brand’s green message with the utmost honesty and care.

Green marketing strategies must be compatible with the integrity and conscience of today’s consumers. Learning how to make the most of psychology can help influence your potential customers. However, if your campaign ever displays elements of greenwashing, consumers will quickly go elsewhere.

You can discover more about what you need to know about influencing consumer behavior. Effective marketing techniques should lead to future success in your sales career.