Green products are seen on the Internet and in stores and go by multiple names, like eco-friendly, all-natural and organic, but these terms are not always meaningful.  Most so-called "green" products are not as virtuous as we believe.  To ride the wave of sustainable development, some companies claim to be ethical and sustainable, while it is not.

Green products

Greenwashing is a strategy to deceive consumers who are looking to buy ethical products. Even though a company claims that its products, its components or its practices are environmentally friendly, they are not. The only thing that they've changed is their marketing strategy. The goal of greenwashing is only to make a profit. They are taking advantage of collective awareness linked to global warming.

Greenwashing

<ul><li>Image power. This strategy gives the impression that the product is eco-friendly by associating them with images related to ecology: nature, animals, etc. </li><li>Misleading labels. Some brands develop their own "sustainable" label that has not been verified by a third party authorised to judge the quality of the products.</li><li>Irrelevant claims. Brands may claim their products do not contain this or that substance when it is legally prohibited and not used anyway.</li><li>Vague claims. Products which are stamped to be “environmentally friendly” is hard to confirm or deny.</li></ul>

Examples of greenwashing

<ul><li>Give evidence. To cut off any hint of greenwashing, provide appropriate documentation and make it easily accessible.</li><li>Tell the truth. Not having any environmental or ethical certification doesn’t mean you have to hide your product. If you need to review the composition of your product, don't expect to be able to make all the desired changes overnight.</li><li>Carry out your carbon footprint assessment. Be transparent with consumers while adopting a constructive approach to your carbon footprint.</li></ul>

How to avoid the greenwash trap as a company

Greenwashing is not a trend. It is a strategy to deceive consumers, who are looking to buy ethical products. How? Follow the guide.

Stashed ideas

What is greenwashing: all you need to know in 2022

Most companies are not great at executing complex goals. Many leaders think their strategy is good but complain that implementation is the problem. One study showed that three out of five companies rate their organisation as weak on strategy execution. This is because of a general lack of understanding of the various factors at play. Three steps can build the right execution system.<ol><li>Achieving strategic clarity</li><li>Achieving organisational clarity</li><li>Building a management system</li></ol>

Building the Right Execution System

It's vital to have a strategy that can and should be executed. A well-executed strategy will match your aspirations and your capabilities. <ul><li>Is your strategy set at the right level of ambition? Two problems exist: Inaccurate optimism "How can this possibly work?" and irrational pessimism.</li><li>Do you know what capabilities are essential for your strategy? First, identify the essential organizational capabilities the new strategy will require, and then know if these capabilities are something you can build.</li></ul>

 Achieving Strategic Clarity 

Once you select the right level of ambition and understand the key capabilities required to achieve it, you can align your organization towards the key challenges for executing it. <ul><li>Have you specified which unit owns which part of your strategy? Group key choices around two axes: Find the key subset of strategic goals, and consider the strategic capabilities to cut across these groups.</li><li>Have you built the right interactions between these key units?  </li><li>Have you assigned the right talent to the right roles? Build the right roles, then map the executive talent onto the key roles.</li></ul>

Achieving Organizational Clarity

The key custodians of the execution become the managers. The approach combines management hierarchy with two key conditions to allow for the successful adaptation of strategy. <ul><li>How have you empowered your staff? How can they be supported to achieve what they need?</li><li>How have you built self-corrective feedback into your system? It should allow executives to quickly understand what is working well and what is not in the fastest and clearest way possible.</li></ul>

Building A Management System

Three out of every five companies rate their organization as weak on strategy execution. When you dig into the potential barriers to implementation, there is a general lack of understanding of the various factors at play, resulting in the inevitable managerial justifications — “poor leadership,” “inadequate talent,” “lack of process excellence,” etc. This article suggests three key steps to build the right execution system: 1) a good strategy, 2) the right organization, and 3) effective management. With these three ingredients in place, human ingenuity can be unleashed, and employees can collectively deliver on the company’s strategic goals.

How to Move from Strategy to Execution

<ul><li>Combine experience with enthusiasm to tell your story.</li><li>In exchange for the loss of naive enthusiasm, seasoned entrepreneurs gain skins that are thicker than steel, powerful enough to weather any storm or any situation.</li><li>The impact on the bottom line is transformative.</li><li>Nurture naivety and pursue idealism to create momentum.</li></ul>

Creating A Powerful narrative

<ul><li>Experience exchanges enthusiasm for measured action.</li><li>The older we get, the less willing we are to expend the energy to go through those periods.</li><li>Experience gives you the ability to seamlessly overcome obstacles and challenges, but it also makes you act more conservatively or become skeptical about what can and cannot work.</li></ul>

Enthusiasm Vs Experience

<ul><li>All businesses begin life with a vision that declares the world can be better in some way.</li><li>Experience has a way of making us lose sight of that power.</li><li>You must constantly remind yourself of the purpose that made you start the company in the first place.</li><li>People begin to get attracted to you because you operate from a place of passion.</li><li>You attract better customers because they buy into your vision and feel like they're a part of it.</li><li>Narrative is the most powerful form of long term connection.</li></ul>

Create a Manifesto and Your Company Becomes a Powerful Narrative

Combine experience with enthusiasm to tell your story

How to Create a Powerful Narrative for Your Company

Exercise is good for you. Virtually all medical professionals would sign off on that proposition, and so would most of the rest of us, even at a time when some portion of the population rejects plenty of other health-related expertise, like calls for vaccinations. Being physically active has been shown to decrease the risks of developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some cancers. It is known to combat anxiety and depression; strengthen bones and muscles; sharpen cognition; improve sleep and extend longevity.

Exercise: What We Know

<ul><li>Modern fitness is shaped by neoliberal ideas of the optimizable self, by consumer capitalism, by race and class privilege, and by gender norms.</li><li>The fitness industry has a history of exclusion, catering to middle- and upper-class white people with disposable income</li></ul>Just as the rich get richer, the fit tend to get fitter and too often, the poor get sicker. And then there’s the problematic fact that exercising has, for several decades, been linked to virtue, creating stigmas against people who can’t or don’t want to or even don’t look like they work out.

The Truth About The Fitness Industry

Amid the marketing of unattainable physical ideals, it’s easy to forget what made fitness fun.

Exercise Is Good for You. The Exercise Industry May Not Be

Criticism can certainly discourage you from writing in the first place, and it also can disguise itself as perfectionism when it comes to your content marketing.If you delay publishing your writing — while you try to improve your content before anyone else reads it — you are likely trying to avoid criticism.

Content Marketing: Avoiding Criticism

Writing a blog for your business helps prospects get to know, like, and trust you while you educate them on what they need to know to do business with you.You naturally want readers to get a positive impression of your products or services. Anything less would be disappointing or downright devastating. The false belief associated with perfectionism is that if everything is “perfect,” you’ll protect yourself from someone pointing out something you did wrong or something they don’t like (which is impossible to control).

The Push To Be Perfect

Let’s imagine a scenario where no one criticizes your writing.It’s not that far-fetched of a concept because it happens on many blogs every single day … blogs no one reads.The downside of a lack of criticism is that your blog probably doesn’t have a substantial number of readers yet or your content doesn’t meaningfully impact the people it does reach.Criticism can be unpleasant, but it’s not the most harmful thing for your blog. Obscurity is.

Face Your True Challenge 

When you create content that isn’t boring and forgettable, there will always be someone who doesn’t like what you do.Keep creating anyway. A lot of people say “there’s no such thing as ‘perfect.’”When you’re passionate about your work, aiming for “perfect” may be necessary. But what you end up with is even better than “perfect” … because it’s a creation you’ve made that no one can take away from you.You can care about quality and produce meaningful work without driving yourself crazy.

Be Good Enough In Your Business Blogging

By now, we’re starting to get comfortable with inevitable things that will happen when you publish your writing:<ul><li>People will disagree with you.</li><li>A typo will occasionally appear in your final draft, even though you proofread carefully.</li><li>You’ll change your mind and cringe at something you wrote a year ago.</li></ul>

Building Confidence

And as you continue to get comfortable with the uncomfortable aspects of publishing, you strengthen your resilience and build your confidence.Confidence is vital for content marketers. It’s what enables you to stand for something that matters, think of remarkable content ideas, and attract prospects who identify with your brand.The more you produce, the less afraid you are of mistakes. Your confidence takes their power away.

Publish Regularly To Refine Your Mistakes

Your best writing that connects with the right prospects emerges when you’re actually doing the work.Since you start to reveal more about your point of view over time, will the wrong people also decide that you’re not for them? Sure.Keep creating anyway.

Both Ends Of The Spectrum

If a good idea fits into a blogger’s strategy, why would they wait to publish a post about it?It’s typically a desire to wait until they have a bigger audience. Avoid that attitude and remember that everyone starts by serving the audience they currently have (or, when you don’t have any readers yet, the audience you aim to attract to your business).Follow through with your idea, rather than hold off until a seemingly more ideal time.You’ll always have a chance to write about the topic again in the future — and with new insights.

Don't Hold Back Your Best Ideas

It’s smart to use ideas that fit into your content marketing strategy right away, even if you wish you were already a bigger influencer.When you use one of your best ideas and recognize the content is special, repurpose it in different formats to reach more people.A blog post will attract readers, but your target audience might also search for videos on YouTube. A version of that blog post that leads viewers back to your website can be put on YouTube so more people can discover and connect with your story.

Spread Your Most Outstanding Work

Even though it may be your goal to build your audience, it can be scary to expose your work to more people.Content is your chance to creatively position information in a new way — a way that your prospects want to hear it.Aren’t you more interested in finding the information you need from people you know, like, and trust? Those noteworthy bloggers write despite their perfectionist tendencies or fears of criticism.So, keep creating the work that gets people to know, like, and trust you.And publish it regularly on your website.

Noteworthy Business Bloggers Overcome Perfectionism

Business blogging and the fear of criticism go hand in hand, so it's time to learn the art of remarkable writing without perfectionism.

Business Blogging Pro Guide (Get Results Without Perfectionism)

Retailers give a lot of thought to where they display products in their stores. Research shows that customers prefer premium brands when their logos are positioned above the customer. For example, customers value premium watches kept deep inside a glass cabinet more than those kept at eye level. But the question is if it is the distance or the height that has this effect on customers.

Understanding customer preference

Research found that consumers are more likely to favour premium brands associated with luxury, high price, and prestige when viewed from a distance. In contrast, common brands associated with accessibility, value, and warmth are desired when viewed from up close.  There is not an ideal distance. The research shows that the proper distance between consumers and products depends on the image the brand conveys.

Close and popular, far and luxurious

When we see something from a distance, we view it as luxurious, and by the same association, when we see something luxurious, we think it is further away. <ul><li>In one experiment, participants who viewed a premium leather backpack from a distance thought it was more prestigious. </li><li>In a second experiment, participants viewed a trendy canvas backpack as more popular when viewing it from a distance of three feet compared to five feet.</li></ul>

The association between image and distance

In a final real-world test, researchers found that ads that showed a premium diffuser further from the model outperformed ads that showed the premium diffuser closer to the model. The popular/close ad beat the popular/far ad. Marketers can leverage the relationship between distance and brand image in ads, window displays or store designs by putting distance between customers and luxury brands and less space between customers and popular brands.

Match the strategy of the brand

New research finds that how far we are from a product influences what we think of it.

New research finds that how far we’re standing from a product changes what we think of it.

Does Distance Make the Consumer’s Heart Grow Fonder?

Products, like people, have personalities. For example, Patagonia is outdoors, adventurous, and environmentally conscious. When you think of this brand, you think about the mountains and a thirst for adventure, not so much about jackets or ski pants. If you want your brand to sell, it needs a personality. Personality can be shaped by advertisements, social media presence and pricing to reach your target audience.

Brand personality sells

Know your audience inside and out. Know which social media platforms they frequent and maintain a presence on those sites. Create content your audience wants to see. <ul><li>Engage your audience. Start conversations, hold contests, and ask for input and feedback.</li><li>Remember to test everything. Something minor like the copy on your ad or website can influence customers to visit your site or buy your product. Therefore, ensure it is optimised for the most efficient message. </li></ul>

Engage your followers

Producing content is a form of advertising.Get creative with your content. Curate photos that represent your brand's personality on Instagram. Create videos and post them on Facebook. You should have fun with your content. You most likely started your business because it interests you. Allow that enthusiasm to catch on.

Take charge of content

By practising what your brand preaches, you show that you really believe in its message. This helps establish trust and brand loyalty.

Practice what your brand preaches

Social media allows brands to engage with their audience and listen to their feedback.  Unhappy customers are a great source of learning. Personal communication can turn a poor customer experience into a positive experience. Look through reviews and address every complaint personally.

Unhappy customers are a learning opportunity

Brands that post once a day or multiple times a week have a better audience engagement than those that do not post regularly.  Ensure to produce content regularly and post it to different social media sites. You can do this manually or use one of the many tools for scheduling posts.

Keep a regular schedule

Don't stay with the conventional social media sites or to what everyone else is doing. Try out new ideas. Shake up the content of your blog or create a Snapchat account. Measure the impact to see what works best.

Get creative

If you want your brand to really sell, it needs to have a unique brand personality. Follow these seven tips to get started.

7 Tips to Become a Marketing Pro: Brand Personality Still Wins

Email marketing frequency requires a delicate balance, as your audience will quickly unsubscribe if they don’t find your emails valuable. Striking the right cadence is crucial to email marketing success. Read on to learn email marketing frequency best practices and how to optimize your email calendar.

Email Marketing Frequency Best Practices

Email marketing has some impressive statistics, such as the famous ROI of $44 for every dollar spent. Also, the majority of consumers across generational lines consider email the most personal marketing channel. Clearly, there’s a lot of potential to connect with your audience.Considering these benefits, many digital marketers assume more is better when it comes to email marketing. And indeed, according to the Digital Marketing Association’s 2020 report (PDF), brands send an average of 26.8 emails per week, including automated emails and segmented campaigns.

A Dollar Of Email Spending Gives Back 44 Dollars

A higher email frequency doesn’t necessarily lead to higher unsubscribe rates, even though multiple studies have shown that “too many emails” is consistently the #1 reason for unsubscribes. Some people take that as further proof that more = better. However, keep in mind that unsubscribing takes time. And with today’s email clients, it’s usually easier to simply delete emails than unsubscribe. As a marketer, your frequency shouldn’t be based on open rates — or even on low unsubscribe rates.

More Isn't Better

To determine your ideal email marketing frequency, you must consider how many and what <a href="https://staging-sharpspringcom.kinsta.cloud/email/5-types-of-emails-to-improve-customer-retention-in-2021/">types of emails</a> your audience is receiving. Consumers are much more likely to open transactional emails than marketing ones. Other automated emails, such as Happy Birthday messages and abandoned cart reminders, add to the volume. And if you send your list both “blasts” and targeted campaigns, you could easily take up a lot of inbox space.

Types Of Email

Targeted campaigns perform much better than email blasts, because they resonate with subscribers’ interests. Indeed, segmented emails for B2C industries, especially retail, can boost sales when the frequency is increased. That dovetails with DMA’s finding that <a href="https://dma.org.uk/uploads/misc/marketer-email-tracker-2020.pdf">65% of consumers prefer emails with discounts and special offers</a>.It’s still important to <a href="https://fabrikbrands.com/email-marketing-frequency-how-often-should-you-send-marketing-emails/">consider diminishing returns from higher email frequency</a>. As the volume grows, fewer recipients will open your emails, and those who do become less likely to click.

No Blasting Of Emails

Pros: Stay top-of-mind and give your audience more opportunities to interact with your brand. Ideal for retailers, content creators, and other businesses that capitalize on impulse consumption.Cons: Greater risk of brand fatigue or annoying your audience. Can be challenging to constantly develop fresh content for all segments.

High Frequency Of Emails

Pros: Send highly customized and creative content that may be of greater value to your audience. Easier to manage. Great for service-based businesses that need to build trust with their audience.Cons: Lower recognizability can cause recipients to unsubscribe or mark as spam. (Brand recognition is the #1 reason consumers open a marketing email.) Smaller inbox presence compared to other brands.

A Low Frequency Of Emails

Too many email marketers consider a consumer’s opt-in as a green light to send any and all promotional content. That’s a costly mistake. While “too many emails” is usually the top reason for unsubscribes, “irrelevant information” is a close second.If you’ve obtained your list from a lead magnet, such as a free e-book, your emails should follow from that content

Reference Your Email

The way to create a balance is to segment your list, then deliver content at the frequency it makes sense for each segment. Those who give their email in exchange for a discount probably won’t want daily promotional emails, while leads you generate from high-value freebies may prefer weekly content that continues to provide value to them.

Striking The Right Balance

consumers usually don’t know the legal details of CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and other regulations. They don’t care if your emails aren’t technically spam because they opted in. As far as they’re concerned, any unwanted email is spam. If they don’t recognize your brand name (a risk of low email frequency), they may mark it as spam. However, they may also regard excessive emails as spam — even if they know they subscribed to the list.

The Law Of The Land

Taken together, your frequency, mix of types, and timing of emails compose your email marketing cadence. The right cadence will keep your brand recognizable, provide value to your recipients, and prevent the dreaded unsubscribe — or worse, the spam report. And of course, it will support your <a href="https://staging-sharpspringcom.kinsta.cloud/blog/5-tips-for-effective-email-marketing-campaigns/">email marketing campaign’s goals</a>.

Planning Your Email Marketing Cadence

keep an eye on your <a href="https://staging-sharpspringcom.kinsta.cloud/email-marketing/tips-on-email-marketing-terms-trends-for-2021/">metrics</a>. Look at how your open rate and clickthrough rates vary over the month. If your metrics decline after the first couple of campaigns, you’re probably sending too many emails. If they improve, your audience is getting more engaged and you may be able to send more emails…until the point that responses decline.

Click And Read Data

There’s no magic number for email marketing frequency. The optimal number of emails varies by brand, audience segment, and each campaign itself. Your best strategy is to lead with research and great content. Know your target audience and what they want to see.Then, use email marketing automation to optimize your campaign’s timing and ensure that the right leads receive emails that resonate with them. Test and tweak until you’ve hit your stride.

Wrapping Up

Get everything you need to know about best practices for email marketing frequency and tactics for campaign success.

Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing Frequency - SharpSpring

Never without a drink in hand, mouthing words to every song on the DJ’s playlist, interspersed with loud whooting. Sound familiar? No? Well, here’s another striking clue — they’re every introvert’s walking nightmare, pulling them out from the shadows and onto the dance floor. Beware, for even bosses aren’t spared.
If you really want to look out for them, be the hero who waters down their drinks every now and then. You’ll be doing the whole office a big favour!

The Party Animal

And now we’re onto the opposite end of the party animal spectrum where our workaholic is, hunched in the darkness, face illuminated from the light of their monitor, typing furiously. These are the (possibly unfortunate) beings who are saddled with meeting delivery deadlines in the holiday season.
They can be handled by unleashing the above-mentioned party animal upon them!

The Workaholic

The nervous newbie is your office’s typical newcomer, someone who is new to your office dynamics. They’re trying to figure out what to say and how to behave, and this can worsen if they happen to be of a shy disposition themselves. That said, you can also find the odd enthusiastic party person in this category as well. But despite their exuberance, they still remain new and probably lower down in the pecking order, which makes their needs common.
So, make them feel included! Strike a conversation, ask them about their favorite music and food, just do your bit to bring some holiday cheer.

The Nervous Newbie

Always going around armed with a (DSLR) camera, this person takes their social media duties a bit too seriously. Indulge them and you’ll see yourself featured on the company’s social pages in the best lighting, holding a sparkly drink strategically, in a very flattering pose. Rub them the wrong way and your pictures would be a meme template on the team’s Slack group for ages to come.
You may want to attempt to separate them from their camera and probably get them to enjoy the actual party for a bit.

The Social Marketeer

Now on to the final persona of the party, the Influencer. As a sign of the times we’re in, every office, and therefore, every party is bound to have an influencer or two. This person is at the party with a mission in tow — that of leveraging the event on their social media accounts. To them, the world’s a stage and they’re the one and only star of the show.
Slickly ask them to put their phone away for just a bit and ask them to be present in the moment. You might get a glazed stare in return, but it’s definitely worth a try!

The Influenzaaa

It is the season for office parties, so here is a compilation of 5 UX-styled personas you meet at these events to help you navigate these tricky waters.

5 Personas You Meet At Every Office Party (And How to Meet Their Needs!)

Permission marketing is the opposite of spam. It is messages people desire to get. The messages are anticipated and relevant. A simple test is: If you didn't show up on Instagram or send out that email, would people reach out and ask where you are? If they're not missing you, you are not doing permission marketing.

Permission marketing

The internet is not a mass medium. Television could reach 40 million people at once, but the internet doesn't reach 40 million people at the same time. The internet may have 40 million channels that each reaches 100 people. It's micro, not mass.  Finding people who are interested in what you're doing isn't that hard since they are already gathered by interest.

How to get people interested in what you're doing

We have been conditioned into believing that we're not able to speak to people who are smarter or wiser or richer than we are. But we can remedy this by making small promises and keeping them. Show up to small groups of people, known as the smallest viable audience and consistently offer them something, so that they learn to expect it from you.

How to earn trust, not attention

We believe that the only way to win is to have the biggest possible audience. But it actually never works like that. The way it works is to find the smallest group of people who trust you enough. When you overwhelm them with delight, they will tell others. Any brand starts that way. Facebook started serving 100 Harvard students who needed a date. That was Facebook.

The smallest viable audience

Hear from the GOAT of marketing, Seth Godin! Learn all about permission marketing, content marketing, content strategy, and his other top marketing tips and strategies of 2020! These content tips by Seth Godin will teach you how to market your business for 2020 and 2021 and give you ideas for viral content creation. For more Seth Godin marketing tips, check out the full Young and Profiting episode below. Link for full video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_WI54sbR0g Subscribe to YAP: https://www.youtube.com/c/youngandprofiting/?sub_confirmation=1 ✩Follow YAP✩ Website: https://youngandprofiting.com/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/yap_podcast ✩Follow Hala✩ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yapwithhala ✩Follow Seth Godin✩ Website: https://www.sethgodin.com/ New Book, The Practice: https://seths.blog/thepractice Blog: https://seths.blog/ Podcast, Akimbo: https://www.akimbo.link/ Workshops: https://www.akimbo.com/

What is greenwashing: all you need to know in 2022

How to Move from Strategy to Execution

How to Create a Powerful Narrative for Your Company

Exercise Is Good for You. The Exercise Industry May Not Be

Business Blogging Pro Guide (Get Results Without Perfectionism)

David Garcia