Another way of Green Marketing

Green marketing. “Greenwashing.” Green is the hot color for marketers these days, but there’s an old-fashioned kind of green that most of us overlook: no, not money… trees. There’s evidence that viewing trees and similar greenery can have physiological and behavioral effects:

“Visual exposure” to settings with trees produced significant recovery from stress in five minutes, evidenced by changes in blood pressure and muscle tension…

Desk workers without views of nature claimed 23 percent more incidents of illness in the previous six months than those with views of nature.

Hospital patients who had views of trees needed less medication and had faster recovery times after surgery than those without such views.

While this research (I was able to track most of these brief bullet points back to actual published studies) may seem more relevant to human resource managers and office planners than marketers, there are certainly situations where a physical environment is part of the marketing mix. For example, many sales efforts occur in a place of the salesperson’s choosing, either an office or neutral meeting place.

One setting that comes to mind is the auto dealership. I recall one brand which began by requiring dealerships to have some kind of a stream or water feature in their showroom, though I don’t know if any plants were involved. (Readers, help me out - was that Infiniti? It seems consistent with their initial Zen commercials, but I couldn’t track this down.) Buying a car can certainly be stressful. If viewing trees for a few minutes cuts stress, having customers spend time in a location with a nice view of trees and greenery might be just the ticket to take some of the tension out of the process. A closing room with a view, anyone?

Similarly, salespeople who meet clients in restaurants might opt for venues with more exposure to nature to relax their customers.

As with much neuromarketing research, these findings raise more questions. Particularly in the urban environments where many of us work, views of real trees may be elusive. While it seems unlikely that a dusty artificial ficus tree would have much of an effect, what about an office area with lush, living greenery? Would a burbling waterfall have any impact? Recorded nature sounds? What about a high-definition display in the event that no window overlooking Central Park is available? My guess is that the more natural an environment looks, the greater any effect will be. Minimal nods in the direction of greenery may satisfy the interior designer, but won’t have much effect on either employees or customers.

Original Post: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/green-marketing-trees.htm

Related article: Green Marketing, Green Products

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is hosting links, banners, and product information on a website or blog and then getting paid a flat fee or percentage of a sale whenever visitors click through on these links and make a purchase. In essence, affiliate marketing is selling products or services offered by others and then getting paid for each sale.

It is a cooperative effort between the merchants and online publishers or affiliates, whereby an affiliate is rewarded by paying commisions. This compensation, otherwise known as affiliate commission may be based on a fixed value for each visit (pay-per-click), registration (pay-per-lead), or a commission for every purchaser (pay-per-sale).

Affiliate marketing is often termed as one of the best online marketing programs that are available to small business. Why?  There is no risk when it comes to affiliate marketing, you only pay after the results are delivered. Using an affiliate marketing program you agree to pay your affiliate partners a referral fee for each lead or sale that is generated. 

Affiliate marketing has contributed to the rise of many leading online companies. Amazon.com, one of the first significant adopters, now has hundreds of thousands of affiliate relationships. It is not uncommon to see industries where the major players have affiliate programs--often structured in a similar manner and making similar competitive changes over time.

Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of Internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies, and in-house affiliate managers, specialized third party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners.

An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between publishers (affiliates) and merchant affiliate programs. Affiliate networks offer tracking technology, reporting tools, payment processing, and access to a large base of affiliates. Affiliate networks offer such services as one-click application to new merchants, reporting tools, and payment aggregation to affiliates. It allows website publishers to more easily find and participate in affiliate programs which are suitable for their website 

An affiliate manager manages affiliate programs by helping affiliates generate sales, track purchases and send commission, among other activities.

Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing:

Let's start with the pros

• A merchant can get more and more customers without spending valuable time in searching out for them.
  
• Affiliate marketing offers the merchant a wider place to sell their product and services.
  
• Different consumers coming from various websites can provide the merchant a good idea regarding consumer trends and demands.
  
• To the Affiliate Marketer. This kind of business has proved to be an easy way to create additional income for their website.
  

Here in affiliate marketing, the merchant handles it all. The affiliate just needs to promote and resell the product.

This online business also have some disadvantages. Just like any other businesses, this one also involves shady and even illegal practices.

• Some affiliates sometimes make claims and promises regarding the product and services which are completely wrong or they extremely exaggerate it. When this happen, the merchant usually suffers complaints and they definitely lose potential consumer.
  
• Sometimes unscrupulous and dishonest merchants just close down programs without informing the affiliates. And worse, they leave without paying commissions.
  
• There are also some merchants who attract new affiliates by promising high commissions then after a week or two, they dramatically drop those commission rates.
  
• When hijackers interfere, affiliates typically don't get just commission, it goes to the hijacker instead.
  

The shady and illegal practices involved in this kind of business include false advertising, unlawful use of trade names, logos, or other branding, spamming and hijacking.

More Article to read : 

• Behind the scene of Digital/Internet Advertising
  
• India Most Powerfull CEO's

Wanna be an Affiliate Marketer, just try out the link or banner given below:

http://tuepaid.com/pages/index.php?refid=nik

Green Marketing

What is green marketing? Green marketing refers to the process of selling products and/or services based on their environmental benefits. Such a product or service may be environmentally friendly in itself or produced and/or packaged in an environmentally friendly way.

Green marketing is defined as "Green or Environmental Marketing consists of all activities designed to generate and facilitate any exchanges intended to satisfy human needs or wants, such that the satisfaction of these needs and wants occurs, with minimal detrimental impact on the natural environment."

Many people believe that green marketing refers solely to the promotion or advertising of products with environmental characteristics. Generally terms like Phosphate Free, Recyclable, Refillable, Ozone Friendly, and Environmentally Friendly are some of the things consumers most often associate with green marketing. In general green marketing is a much broader concept, one that can be applied to consumer goods, industrial goods and even services. For example, around the world there are resorts that are beginning to promote themselves as "ecotourism" facilities, i.e., facilities that specialize in experiencing nature or operating in a fashion that minimizes their environmental impact .Thus green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well as modifying advertising.

The terminology used in this area has varied, it includes: Green Marketing, Environmental Marketing and Ecological Marketing.

The term Green Marketing came into prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The American Marketing Association (AMA) held the first workshop on "Ecological Marketing" in 1975. The proceedings of this workshop resulted in one of the first books on green marketing entitled "Ecological Marketing". The first wave of Green Marketing occurred in the 1980s. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reports started with the ice cream seller Ben & Jerry's where the financial report was supplemented by a greater view on the company's environmental impact. Two tangible milestones for wave 1 of green marketing came in the form of published books, both of which were called Green Marketing. They were by Ken Peattie (1992) in the United Kingdom and by Jacquelyn Ottman (1993) in the United States of America.

When looking through the literature there are several suggested reasons for firms increased use of Green Marketing. Four possible reasons are as follows:

1.Organizations perceive environmental marketing to be an opportunity that can be used to achieve its objectives.
2. Organizations believe they have a moral obligation to be more socially responsible. Governmental bodies are forcing firms to become more responsible.
3. Competitors' environmental activities pressure firms to change their environmental marketing activities.
4. Cost factors associated with waste disposal, or reductions in material usage forces firms to modify their behavior.

Many firms are beginning to realize that they are members of the wider community and therefore must behave in an environmentally responsible fashion. This translates into firms that believe they must achieve environmental objectives as well as profit related objectives. This results in environmental issues being integrated into the firm's corporate culture. Firms in this situation can take two perspectives; (1) they can use the fact that they are environmentally responsible as a marketing tool; or (2) they can become responsible without promoting this fact. There are examples of firms adopting both strategies. Organizations like the Body Shop heavily promote the fact that they are environmentally responsible. While this behavior is a competitive advantage, the firm was established specifically to offer consumers environmentally responsible alternatives to conventional cosmetic products. This philosophy is directly tied to the overall corporate culture, rather than simply being a competitive tool. An example of a firm that does not promote its environmental initiatives is Coca-Cola. They have invested large sums of money in various recycling activities, as well as having modified their packaging to minimize its environmental impact. While being concerned about the environment, Coke has not used this concern as a marketing tool. Thus many consumers may not realize that Coke is a very environmentally committed organization. Another firm who is very environmentally responsible but does not promote this fact, at least outside the organization, is Walt Disney World (WDW). WDW has an extensive waste management program and infrastructure in place, yet these facilities are not highlighted in their general tourist promotional activities.

A major force in the environmental marketing area has been firms' desire to maintain their competitive position. In many cases firms observe competitors promoting their environmental behaviors and attempt to emulate this behavior. In some instances this competitive pressure has caused an entire industry to modify and thus reduce its detrimental environmental behavior. For example, it could be argued that Xerox's "Revive 100% Recycled paper" was introduced a few years ago in an attempt to address the introduction of recycled photocopier paper by other manufacturers.

One challenge green marketers -- old and new -- are likely to face as green products and messages become more common is confusion in the marketplace. "Consumers do not really understand a lot about these issues, and there's a lot of confusion out there," says Jacquelyn Ottman. Marketers sometimes take advantage of this confusion, and purposely make false or exaggerated "green" claims.

While green marketing is growing greatly as increasing numbers of consumers are willing to back their environmental consciousnesses with their dollars, it can be dangerous. The public tends to be skeptical of green claims to begin with and companies can seriously damage their brands and their sales if a green claim is discovered to be false or contradicted by a company's other products or practices.

Green marketing covers more than a firm's marketing claims. While firms must bear much of the responsibility for environmental degradation, ultimately it is consumers who demand goods, and thus create environmental problems. It must be remembered that it is the uncaring consumer who chooses to disposes of their waste in an inappropriate fashion. While firms can have a great impact on the natural environment, the responsibility should not be theirs alone. It appears that consumers are not overly committed to improving their environment and may be looking to lay too much responsibility on industry and government. Ultimately green marketing requires that consumers want a cleaner environment and are willing to "pay" for it, possibly through higher priced goods, modified individual lifestyles, or even governmental intervention. Until this occurs it will be difficult for firms alone to lead the green marketing revolution.

Realated Article : Green Products

Top 10 Fortune 500 Companies

The Fortune Global 500 companies list includes the top 500 corporations in the world. The list is being made taking the revenues as the parameter. The list is published by the Fortune's Magazine annually. The list includes publicly and privately-held companies for which revenues are publicly available.

This year's Top Ten Fortune 500 Companies are:

1. Exxon Mobil
2. Wal-Mart Stores
3. Chevron
4. ConocoPhillips
5. General Electric
6. General Motors
7. Ford Motors
8. AT&T
9. Hewlett-Packard
10. Valero Energy

(Source)

What is Recency?

Recency isn’t about radio or television or reach and frequency. It’s the simple idea that advertising influences the brand-choice of consumers who are in the market for the product. It’s about how we think advertising works. That’s why it has been able to transform our thinking about how to plan advertising media. It's about how we think advertising operates in mature consumer markets. It’s relevance, not repetition that makes the message work.

Recency has become the buzz word of big agencies all over the world, and it's on the lips of marketing VIPs at mega-marketing Motors Recency such as is timing your advertising message to reach people at the moment they're actually in the buying cycle for your product or service.

The accent on Recency Planning is on reach, not frequency.

For 30 years planners had assumes that advertising worked by repetition leaving "tiny footprints on the mind." In the 1960s, advertising seemed so effective that public policy debated whether it "makes people buy things they don't need." The issue wasn't deception; it was power. We now understand advertising is a relatively weak marketing force, among many forces that affect consumers. Its strength is it can be applied continuously, because it does what it does at a very small cost compared to the major alternative, which is price promotion.

We have also gone through a revaluation of what makes consumers buy. We now appreciate it is the empty cereal box, the broken dishwasher, the expiring car lease, a bad hair day that gets people to make a purchase, not advertising.

Recency planning grows from the sound idea that consumer needs drive advertising effects. The critical variable is whether a consumer is "in the market," which means the timing as well as the targeting of the message is important. Visualize a window of advertising opportunity in front of each purchase. Advertising's job is to influence the purchase. Recency planning's job is to place the message in that window.

Recency is now a planning principle at major advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Kraft and Coca-Cola, because brand-sales tracking studies show it is cost-effective. But the ideas are new and uncomfortable: reach, not frequency; continuity, not flighting; one week, not four weeks; cost-per-reach-point, not just CPM. As a result, objections to recency have been swift and articulate.

Various studies show that one advertising exposure does most of the work when the viewer is in the market and that advertisement would be the most effective one.

There are various objections to recency.

1."How can one exposure be enough?" There is the fear that with all of the competing messages and clutter on television, a single-exposure strategy is likely to be ineffective.
Recency planning never claims that one exposure is enough. It argues that, in the short term, additional exposures are wasteful because the average viewer is not likely to be in the market. Scanner- panel data bear this out. They show that reaching more consumers less often will result in greater total sales than reaching fewer consumers more often, and the costs are about the same. The simple idea of attending to the easiest sales is the essence of recency planning. It is a skimming strategy. The idea is to "spend the money to make the most sales," not "spend the money to make every sale."

2.Recency planning will be an excuse for advertisers to spend less. After all, if a brand needs few exposures, it can cut the media budget.
Recency planning doesn't cut budgets. It reallocates them, reducing frequency to add weeks. Since most brands don't run 52 weeks of advertising, recency simply spreads the budget to spend it more effectively. Mega-brands running 52-weeks already (e.g., McDonald’s, Coke, AT&T) increase the number of planning periods to 104 half-weeks or even 365 days, because closer to the purchase is better and purchases occur constantly.

3. A low level of weekly frequency can’t work for a product that is purchased every four or five years.
Recency planning ignores purchase interval, because it targets the purchase not the purchaser. As long as there are purchases each week, it doesn’t matter how often, or seldom, the average consumer buys. When a consumer has not been in the market for the product in several years, as with cars, there is the idea that frequency is needed to jump-start awareness. The counter-argument is when a consumer is in the market, ads have greater relevance and are more likely to be attended to. Automobiles advertise continuously, but you see more car advertising when you’re thinking about buying one.

4. Recency may be fine for established brands, but isn’t frequency needed to maintain brands, and launch new products?
Recency planning does not eliminate frequency. Frequency is produced by the audience duplication between successive weeks of reach. Brand maintenance is not ignored. It is enhanced by more continuous advertising. This creates a kind of frequency called "presence." An appropriate word, because when advertising works, it's by being there. Product launches are a special case. They argue for greater frequency, but only because the goals are different from those of established-brand campaigns.

Advertising does many things. It influences the next purchase and, over time, builds brand awareness and saliency in the larger market, which in turn makes it easier to influence the next purchase. But recency's real contribution to advertising is to focus us on the next purchase, whether the brand is new or established--cornflakes or cars. Because if you don't get enough next purchase, the rest doesn't matter.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the Internet, it's called "viral marketing.

Viral Marketing and Viral Advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.

Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.

The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create Viral Messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being passed along.

The term Viral Marketing was coined by a Harvard Business School graduate, Tim Draper. The term was later popularized by Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's e-mail practice of appending advertising for itself in outgoing mail from their users.

Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services applied this strategy, which is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,

2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,

3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,

4. Who see the message,

5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then

6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Viral marketing is popular because of the ease of executing the marketing campaign, relative low-cost (compared to direct mail), good targeting, and the high and rapid response rate. The main strength of viral marketing is its ability to obtain a large number of interested people at a low cost.

Viral advertising refers to the idea that people will pass on and share interesting and entertaining content; this is often sponsored by a brand, which is looking to build awareness of a product or service.

These are few types of Viral Marketing–

Ø Pass-along: A message which encourages the user to send the message to others. The crudest form of this is chain letters where a message at the bottom of the e-mail prompts the reader to forward the message.

Ø Incentivised viral: A reward is offered for either passing a message along or providing someone else's address. This can dramatically increase referrals. However, this is most effective when the offer requires another person to take action.

Ø Edgy Gossip/Buzz marketing" ads or messages that create controversy by challenging the borders of taste or appropriateness. Discussion of the resulting controversy can be considered to generate buzz and word of mouth advertising. Prior to releasing a movie, some Hollywood movie stars get married, get divorced, or get arrested, or become involved in some controversy that directs conversational attention to them.

Ø User-managed database: Users create and manage their own lists of contacts using a database provided by an online service provider. By inviting other members to participate in their community, users create a viral, self-propagating chain of contacts that naturally grows and encourages others to sign up as well.

The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user will become "infected" (i.e., accept the idea) and will then go on to share the idea with others "infecting them," in the viral analogy's terms.

Related article: Guerilla Marketing