As we cover the last 5 points of my ten-point system on how to spot LOHAS and green consumers a mile away, I want you to think about how you can incorporate some of these points into your daily operations to achieve these positive effects of green marketing. Knowing them is one thing, but incorporating them is what makes the difference.

• Purchasing behavior – What do they ask for before purchasing a product? What about point-of-purchase (during the actual purchase) or post-purchase? During a purchase they are going to re-examine a product and service to ensure it meets their values and ideals. If you don’t fully understand these, then you’ll want to re-read some of my previous blog postings. Post-purchase, they’ll want to make sure your company’s money is being used for ethical purchases as well as that you support worthy causes thought requiring them to make a purchase first.

You cannot turn on the TV or read the paper or most any publication without noticing someone mentioning something green—a product, service or even just referencing a so-called green brand. Many believe that merely referencing the green features will influence consumers to spend their dollars on their product or service. This cannot be further from the truth. It takes much more than that to really influence them to spend their dollars with you and achieve positive effects of green marketing.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, green consumers think carefully through where they want to spend their dollars, and your brand has to meet up with their values and ideals pre-purchase, point-of-purchase and post-purchase. If it doesn’t, you may lose them without even realizing it to a green brand that truly fully understands these consumers’ needs.

As in many of my previous blog postings, I have titled them “knowing…” Although many of you may not have thought twice about this, I did this intentionally. Knowing—the act of being in the know—is really the only way to attract and retain the green and LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) consumer and achieve positive effects of green marketing. That is why this discussion is focused around “knowing” how to reach these consumer groups offline.

If you know, you’re one step closer than other companies who base everything on an assumption—the underlying one being that this consumer group acts, behaves, thinks and makes purchases exactly the same or similar to the general, or mainstream, consumer. This is not the case, as I’ve mentioned previously. Once you read the series of my blog postings, you’ll have a little more knowledge and understand that these green and health-focused consumer groups couldn’t be more different than the mass-market consumer group.

In fact, you don’t even reach them the same way in order to achieve positive effects of green marketing.

Here are some things to consider when reaching them offline:

We’re continuing our discussion on reaching green and LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) consumers offline. I’ve made this into two blog posts as it is such a critical part of the process to securing positive effects of green marketing.

With “green” marketing being popular, I often see numerous mistakes being made by companies “assuming” (there is that word again) that they understand this consumer. Also, that they understand how to achieve positive effects of green marketing.

Here is a great example of “not knowing” the correct way to reach these consumers.

In my previous thread I mentioned that we would be discussing the positive effects of green marketing and knowing how to reach consumers online. I’ll be tabling that discussion until the next blog posting so that we can dive further into the last topic—achieving positive effects of green marketing—offline. It’s a topic that I believe deserves more time as there are so many vehicles that you can use to reach green and LOHAS consumers offline.

Two of the things that I discussed last time was focusing on your message and talking about benefits to achieve positive effects of green marketing while advertising.

What we also need to discuss are the vehicles that you should consider:

We’re actually nearing the end of our discussion on the positive effects of green marketing. This is one of only four more blog topics left. I try to write these blogs as more of sound bytes so that the information is easier to digest.

Since we discussed how to achieve positive effects of green marketing and knowing how to reach consumers offline, it only makes sense that we discuss how to reach them online. One of the first ways to effectively reach them online (and achieve positive effects of green marketing) is to get involved with things of importance to both you and these consumers.

One particular organization, Co-op America, is an online community of like-minded, eco-friendly and socially responsible companies. The organization offers memberships and publishes offline vehicles such as the National Green Pages that helps you learn about and locate all of their members. If you want to reach these green and LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) consumers and achieve really positive effects of green marketing, think about cross promoting your products or services by partnering with other members. Often times if your product is a real benefit to their clients, green companies will agree to mention your product or service in their newsletter or other promotional vehicle.

Achieving positive effects of green marketing is a multi-step process as you can see from my numerous blog discussions, yet I have barely scratched the surface. It’s why I speak, write and consult about it regularly. It takes a lot of due diligence to achieve positive effects of green marketing. I’ve included an example of an initiative that a grocery story rolled out:

A grocery story decided to join the trend of grocery stories offering recycled shopping bags for sale—obviously, a good trend worth pursuing the right way.

Here is what they did—they designed a reusable shopping bag (so-far so good, right), they then sold it at the store with the proceeds going back to cancer research (okay, they are still on the right track), here is where they messed up. Their messaging was lacking important information to really achieve positive effects of green marketing.

Selling to green and LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) consumers starts from the beginning by gaining knowledge about what these consumers want before they ever make a purchase. If you are not familiar with this, you may want to read my previous threads. This is one of the first steps to achieving positive effects of green marketing.

Let’s start by looking at how your product was produced or manufactured.

Was it produced in an environmentally friendly manner? If so, what was the process and how was it environmentally friendly?

If you are unsure, do your homework. These consumers sure will and it’s the only way you can achieve positive effects of green marketing.

In order to achieve positive effects of green and LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) marketing, you need to know these consumers inside and out. We discussed your manufacturing and production process, next we'll discuss your messaging.

Although we discussed in Part 14 of my blog posts (I know…this series is getting long), it’s still an important part of your sales process in order to achieve positive effects of green marketing.

Here are some things to consider:

Although many of you may be wondering why I am discussing marketing issues in my blog postings related to sales. Really these issues are interrelated and need to be addressed together. Without the correct marketing, the sales will not happen and vice versa, so it’s important to understand these elements when trying to achieve positive effects of green marketing to reach green and LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) consumers.

In my last two blog postings, we discussed four of the more important aspects to achieving positive effects of green marketing and sales.

We’ll be covering the final aspects of this process in this thread:

The holidays are a perfect time of year for consumers to focus their buying on products that meet their values. There are many recent green articles on marketing, especially with green considered so “in.”

This recent article on green I reference below speaks to the presence of green products and services and who is actually buying. It is something not often enough addressed in some of the more recent articles on green marketing. I try to address this regularly.

Jeff Siegel at Green Chip Stocks talks about the buying of green products and services. I have no alliance to this individual, but came across his green article and thought it had some good information to report back to you.

Deloitte & Touche commissioned a holiday spending study that suggested close to one in five consumers will purchase more eco-friendly goods this year. They also indicated were willing to pay more. This is a newer study that you many not have heard about in recent articles on green marketing. It really doesn’t surprise me, though, because the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) and green consumer are willing to pay 20% more for products and services that meet their lifestyle values. He references the LOHAS consumer in this green article and I address this same consumer in my most recent articles on green marketing.

What is also mentioned is the fact that he found the following items in mainstream stores:

•Fair trade chocolate, coffee and apparel

• Solar-powered laptop chargers

• Organic cotton sheets and towels

• Conflict-free diamonds

• Sweatshop-free labels on t-shirts

• Organic sugar

• Yoga mats, books & DVDs

• Natural and organic cosmetics

• Compact fluorescent light bulbs

This is not something you would have seen even a year ago. I was surprised today when I saw Fair Trade chocolates in Target. Although the article goes on to talk further about his experiences looking for green goods, I just wanted to highlight the overall essence of this green article.

It addresses the fact that green goods and services are more readily available, but the core green consumers (LOHAS, etc.) are still the ones buying most of them. At some juncture we’ll reach a tipping point with mainstream consumers, but we’re just not there yet. This is why more green and LOHAS education and awareness is still needed. It’s something I’ll address in future green articles. In my previous blog postings, you can read my most recent articles on green marketing.

Helping You Understand and Profit from Consumer Health and Green Trends

Colette Chandler

The green and LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) consumer are ones that definitely recognize the brand and the company to be inseparable. Many of my recent articles on green marketing focus on the buying behavior of these consumers.

Their decision to buy focuses on three critical points:

 Pre-purchase (Is this a company and brand whose mission and values I support?)

 Point of purchase (Does this product or service meet my needs for the right price?)

 Post-purchase (Is this packaging recycled or recyclable? Are the profits from my purchase going to be used ethically and responsibly?)

In many of the recent articles on green marketing, they address some basic strategies, often not known, for appealing to the green consumer. One of the more recent articles by on green marketing (Forrester Research) addresses the fact that in the electronics category there is room for some to create the “Prius” product. It’s an interesting leadership position to occupy.

While many recent articles on green marketing suggest just focus on a being one step ahead of your competitor, this one suggests taking it one step further to being the leader in your category. In most product categories there will be three major positions once everything shakes out—the first position, the second and the third. So to have the leadership position open in any category is quite amazing. With green being rather new in regard to its appeal to mainstream consumers, it doesn’t surprise that this leadership position in consumer electronics is still available.