There are a number of reasons for why this failure rate  is so high. It is often due to common marketing mistakes like selecting the wrong product or market, or failing to match the message to the target audience. More often than not , it is down to poor execution of a strategy such as sending out a weak email or a poor quality landing page.

The basics of online marketing are simple and straightforward, yet time after time green business marketers ignore them or try to take short cuts. One of the biggest mistakes that green marketing professionals make is over-reliance on the creative aspects of their work, and paying insufficient attention to measuring and evaluating their results.

In simple terms, successful internet marketing needs both our creative side to come up with the great ideas, and our logical side to implement these great ideas in a logical, measurable and achievable process. Here are five strategies to help you increase your odds of success.

Check the Concept First

Before you even launch a new campaign evaluate the concept with friends and colleagues who you know you will give you honest feedback. You could even go a step further, and assess your idea with a more formal group of ten to twenty users.

Copy a successful campaign

If you are planning a campaign to market your green business consulting firm, look at what has worked for you in the past and copy parts of it. Then, make a list of 10 other green consulting competitors and check their website to see how they promote their services. You can even look at non-green consulting businesses to discover innovative ideas.

Planning

I  recommend that you plan every aspect of your internet marketing campaign very carefully and test each part separately and also in conjunction with each other part. Set a schedule of tasks and events leading up to the launch, and then the milestones afterwards. Deadlines work extremely well.

Leave your Ego at Home

Please do not fall in love with your idea, as it will prevent you from accurately assessing the quality and impact of the initiative. We do not like to see our big ideas collapse in front of us, and this is sometimes worse in the world of green marketing as we also believe that everyone else should be as passionate as we are. Unfortunately, passion is a double-edged sword and only the market will decide if your flash of genius has any substance.

Test, Measure and Optimize everything

Probably the number one skill needed for internet marketing is the ability to test, measure and optimize everything you do.

Using Google Analytics you can track all online activity including number of visitors, where they come from, how long they stay and what they do on your site. You can set up goals and test, measure and improve the process step by step until you get it right. Then you will join the elite 5% of successful internet marketers

I remember when I used to teach a case study about how BP tried to change their brand from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum. This seemed like an excellent green marketing strategy and, as a Brit myself, I was quite proud to contrast BP’s green efforts with those of Exxon who have always been the number one enemy of  environmentalists in Europe. Today, however, Greenpeace are demonstrating against BP in London not Exxon. Activists have shut down some of their gas stations in a highly visible and popular protest against this corporate “villain”‘s negligence.

So how has it all gone so horribly wrong? Is it simply that BP  had the misfortune to be the corporation associated with this tragedy, rather than their competitors? Quite possibly, as all the major Oil corporations are vulnerable –  especially those engaged in deep sea production. The loss of life and appalling consequences to the economy and environment of the Gulf communities has dominated the news for the last 3 months, and destroyed BP’s carefully cultivated image in one terrible stroke.

All the beautiful ads and branding mean nothing now. As Jason Daley writes on the  Entrepreneur website “when the company’s Deepwater Horizon offshore well began blowing tens of thousands of barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico each day, no outlay of advertising dollars could change the cold, hard facts: The company that had cultivated the greenest image in the oil industry still derived more than 99 percent of its revenues from gas and petroleum. For consumers who had been fed the image of the company out tending windmills, the revelation was almost as shocking as the images of oil-soaked pelicans.”

These “cold,hard facts” are relevant to all green marketing and green branding campaigns. They are the ultimate criteria for evaluating the substance and impact of so-called green products. So maybe it is time for green marketing professionals to focus more of their attention on being authentic and honest, and spend less time on the “smoke and mirrors” that characterizes so much of their work. Maybe it is time to get real, to act responsibly and redefine what green marketing is. We cannot continue with the illusion that green marketing is OK if it’s primary purpose is to sell more products for businesses that are doing so much damage to the environment in all their other activities.

Multiple Touch Points

The different marketing channels are already merging and overlapping today. Consumers watch TV commercials on their laptops and listen to radio Ads on their iPhones. TV and Radio ads send listeners to company websites for special offers, and the optimal  campaigns use multiple touch points including print, website, social media, telemarketing and mobile.

Leverage the strength of each Marketing Tool

Each online and offline tool has its own role in the overall marketing process. For example, TV is great for reaching a mass audience while Social Media is the perfect medium for gaining access to a younger, digital savvy and mobile audience. It is also ideal for engaging and communicating with your market.  Social Media allows unprecedented openness and authenticity, and enables powerful two way conversations with your prospects and customers.

You can promote a new green campaign or products to your Facebook Fans and Twitter followers, and, in return, also get honest feedback and advice from them.   Look at Patagonia’s Facebook Fan Page for a great example.  They are honest about everything that is good and bad about their products. In addition, you can always add your Facebook Fan page to your Advertising, Packaging and Brochures with a special offer, like a coupon, to become a Fan

One of the best examples of successful online and offline integration is found at Method, the Green Cleaning products company. They sell their products in over 25,000 retail outlets including Target and Whole Foods and, as described in Jacquie Ottman’s upcoming book , The New Rules of Green Marketing, they creatively use traditional marketing including “Cleaning Tours in Chicago, Boston, New York and other cities, setting up “pop-up shops” on street corners where customers can swap an old toxic cleaning product for a free Method one.“

Their inspiring brand is strengthened by their online marketing. Their excellent website features their engaging People against Dirty Campaign and they fully leverage the power of social marketing.  When you join the campaign you become an “advocate” and then  participate in their mission to promote green cleaning, while interacting with many other advocates through their Facebook, Twitter and Flickr communities.

Method are also in a highly competitive market where they compete against major players like Procter & Gamble, and also use paid media for their laundry detergent. Again, the goal is to integrate online and offline marketing in order to increase your reach, strengthen your brand and grow sales.

So consider how you can do the same in your organization and boost the impact of your marketing.  Start by setting up a Facebook Page, Twitter and YouTube account and connect them to your website so you have more online points of contact with your consumers. Use Facebook for dialogue, Twitter for Tweets and YouTube to showcase your products. Also, ensure your Website, Facebook and Twitter addresses are on all your marketing materials, stationery, business cards and every form of communication.

Then offer an incentive to encourage people to give you their email address. Maybe offer a coupon or discount, or a free newsletter. Or hold a contest and promote a  live event or a store promotion. Coordinate the distribution of all your news and content to every channel.

The more you connect your marketing channels and the more you re-purpose your message for offline and online the better.  When you create a virtuous cycle you establish the foundations for leveraging all your marketing initiatives and achieving long-term growth in Sales. As new technologies emerge you can integrate them into this cycle, and stay at the cutting edge of Green Marketing.ge-490″ />

It is evident that conscious consumers are shifting over to the web rapidly, and probably faster than many other market segments. According to a report in 2010 from Burst Media, the web is the primary source of product information for green consumers. Almost 40% of this audience prefer the internet  as opposed  to the TV, in second place, at only 18%.  Every business and organization that wants to engage with these consumers needs to have an online strategy and find a way of reaching its target market.

Marketing professionals  are adapting to a significant shift in budgets towards “online marketing” including Pay per Click Advertising, Video, Social Media and Mobile. At the same time, we can witness an overall decline in traditional “offline” marketing such as Print, Direct Mail,  radio  and TV Ads.   A recent forecast from E Marketer confirms this transition, predicting a nearly 11% growth in online advertising during 2010. In addition,  a Forrester  Research study predicts that interactive marketing budgets, as a share of overall budgets, will rise from 13 to 21% by 2014.

This is due to many reasons including lower costs, highly focused targeting, and more predictable returns on investment.  With Google Adwords, for example,  you can create an ad campaign on Monday for a small budget, test it on Tuesday to your target market, evaluate the results on Wednesday, re-launch an “optimized” version of  the campaign on Thursday, evaluate again and then scale up your campaign on Friday based on the results from your testing and measurement. In terms of tracking, measuring and fine tuning  interactive online marketing wins hands down!

On the other hand, this does not mean that offline marketing is dead.Far from it in fact. Most successful green branding would never have worked, or green marketing efforts reached their consumers without traditional media. Take Clorox Green Works for example and how their availability in retail outlets like Wal-Mart or Walgreens have increased sales more than the best green marketing campaign or green branding online could ever do. Moreover, green marketing is also geared towards local and community promotion such as local-owned stores and Farmers Markets

Balance is critical and green marketing professionals need to integrate both online and offline, and establish a “virtuous cycle” where they both will enhance each other. This means establishing a sales and marketing process that takes advantage of the best that each can medium can offer.

One of the major problems I find time and time again in the world of  green marketing is the absence of a proper lead capture system online. Effective  internet marketing require a robust email “opt-in process”. Generally I recommend that you set up a   “landing page”  dedicated to acquiring new email addresses of visitors. An email address is a lead,  and email “list building” is a powerful strategy.  Every email address represents a prospective customer in green marketing, someone that you can promote your products to with a newsletter.

For example, if you are a supplier of green gifts, every new email address could be converted to a lifetime customer who will purchase  many gifts from your online store for years to come. Each customer could potentially represent a lifetime value of $500 or more. Let’s say you convert 20% of leads, or email subscribers to customers. Then each new email address is worth $100 in sales value.

With this formula in mind, you can see the huge  value of email addresses to green marketing professionals. The problem is that virtually no green business is practicing this. When I searched on “green gifts” almost every ad led  to a home page with no effective  lead capture process.   These companies  are leaving lots of  money on the table by not having an opt-in process.

The fastest and most effective way for a company to double their leads is to transform their website from a static, online brochures to a dynamic lead generation machine. Advertising is surely a waste of money if only 1-2% of your visitors subscribe with their emails. So create an opt-in process to  convert 5% or more  of your visitors to email subscribers. I believe that doubling your email addresses should double your sales since you have doubled the amount of your prospects. This is simply one of the smartest strategies that a green marketing professional can mplement!

Every organization wants more website visitors and green marketing professionals know  this is the first essential stage of their “sales funnel” . We all need to get visitors into the funnel before we can convert them to email subscribers and later on to customers.

The primary method to ensure you generate many more visitors to your website is to create multiple streams of traffic. Then you will not have to rely on only one method which is risky. Next, you can measure and evaluate which stream is most successful.   Establishing your own  Traffic Plan is a good start.

Your plan should include a minimum of 4 streams of  different traffic sources and meet these criteria

• Attract a high quantity and quality of Visitors from your Targeted Market
• Is built on your primary keywords
• It can be tracked and measures so you may evaluate stream is most effective
• Scalable so you are able to invest more time and resources into increasing the best stream

Let’s use the example of green furniture business that markets tables and chairs  made from recycled materials. Where would you start?

If you have an Advertising budget, start with a test campaign as it is the most rapid and predictable method. Google Adwords is a good place to start  and, if  your keyword is green furniture,  your new campaign will ensure that anyone searching on that term on Google will see your ad . You can repeat this on Yahoo and Bing too, and also look at Facebook advertising.

Secondly, you will need to an SEO strategy.The main goal of all websites is to be on page one on Google and preferably the top 3 positions for their primary keywords. So if users search for “green furniture” you want your to appear right at the top of organic search. More visitors will come to your site from  “organic search” than  will come from  “paid search” or Adwords. Typically the ratio is 70% to 3o% in favor of organic search. Users believe you are more trustworthy and credible if you are top of the search rankings.

You should also implement traditional Offline Marketing to drive visitors to your site.  Effective green marketing needs to integrate online and offline marketing. If you own a retail store, offer a coupon in return for a customer’s email address.If you sell products add your website  and Facebook URLs to your packaging . And if you advertise on TV and Radio try work redirecting the viewers and listeners to your website with a special offer.

Other traffic sources include email, video and article marketing, press releases, webinars and social media. I have outlined twenty potenital traffic strategies on our green marketing Resource Page to help you make the best choice

We go through a step by step process to evaluate the idea, decide whether it’s worth it, and then refine it to boost our chances of success. We have developed a marketing strategy based on rigorous research so I recommend you go through the following process too. I’ll use the example of a new marketing campaign for a solar system for residential customers in California.

1. Define Your Target Market

First,  define your specific target market. What are the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your ideal customer? What problems do they want to solve? Where are potential customers more likely to live?

2. Identify the keywords your target market?

What are the keywords that your potential customers are looking for in your market? You can look at your competitors and check what keywords they are using. Just use one of the keyword tools free on my resources page. I recommend selecting around 5 keywords. One of them should be a general keyword such as “solar panels” and other “long tail” keywords like “San Diego solar energy”

3. Determine if there is a market for your product?

It’s a robust market  if there is a reasonably high volume of monthly local searches on Google for your keywords, but not too high as that will make it very competitive. For most companies a volume of between 1,000 and 2,000 is ideal. Use the free tool from Google for this analysis. Then do a search for the keyword and see if there are  Google ads, which shows that their are competitors that are selling similar products and that people are buying the product online.

4. Market Test

Ultimately, the best research comes from testing the market before making a big  investment. You can create a limited ad campaign and measure and evaluate the results. I recommend that you set up 3 or 4 landing pages on your website. These pages are designed to get e-mail addresses and then put a different message on each. You can test different  ads for different keywords and different target markets to see if the campaign attracts interest, and which particular combination of messaging and keywords works better.

If you go through this four-step process I am sure you will improve your results, as you have developed a marketing strategy based on facts and your instincts.

So I want to explain the significance of the name. Firstly, Bright Green means a positive vision of the future when sustainable technology and practices are at the heart of our personal and professional lives. And leadership means taking action and mobilizing business to provide solutions to our most urgent environmental challenges.

Only Business can provides the finance,  technology, talent and energy to bring about large scale and  rapid change.  A Bright Green Future needs the  commitment of CEOs, senior executives, entrepreneurs, investors and other leaders. Otherwise it is difficult to envisage how we can make progress.

Bright Green leaders provide promote  sustainability and profitability – the classic triple bottom line. I think that both outcomes are essential and, with this in mind, I have decided to focus my efforts on helping build responsible businesses. In particular, I want to help organizations with their green marketing and internet strategies. I believe that all green marketing would benefit tremendously from leveraging the full power of web platforms like social media and video. So, Bright Green leadership is a place where professionals can learn best practices for green marketing online and acquire the tools they need to grow.

Over the coming months we will be introducing a range of new services that will help you achieve your business goals, and please contact me at paul@brightgreenleadership.com if you would like to join our community and become a bright green leader yourself. I have spent the last 10 years working with green leaders and I hoe you will join me in our mission!

Then I considered that there were deeper lessons that I had learned along the way, and personal skills I had acquired without being aware I was learning them.  In my current work in green marketing I now accept how invaluable they are. And I also accept that most of the mistakes I have made have been personal, not business ones.  These mistakes include the following

Lack of Commitment - starting a green marketing campaign without a commitment to doing what it takes to succeed

Poor Planning – Failure to to plan my time effectively

Insufficient Focus – not sticking to the plan, inconsistency

Poor follow through – Inability to follow through and complete critical tasks

Distraction – wasting time on non-essential activities, doing what is easy

Doubt and Fear – giving up when the going gets tough or when you face rejection.

I firmly believe that the key to successful green marketing is overcoming these challenges and developing self-awareness, self-discipline, self-motivation and other vital strategies that will boost your professional and your personal growth. When you start work in green marketing  you are embarking on a personal journey  that will reveal your strengths and your weaknesses  and give you the chance to transform your life in many exciting ways.

You are also starting that process of personal  transformation that could help to make a positive difference to you and the world around you. If you are ready to promote sustainability, then we at Bright Green Leadership are here to support you every step of the way!