82% of Firms Plan to Boost Green Marketing Spending

Businesses increasingly are finding distinct additional marketing and advertising advantages in green messages, according to a new survey.

In fact, 82 percent of survey respondents said they planned to use more green messaging in their marketing, according to the report, “Green Marketing: What Works & What Doesn’t – A Marketing Study of Practitioners.”

More than 370 marketing and advertising executives responded to the survey, which was sponsored by Environmental Leader and marketing trade publications including MarketingCharts, MarketingVOX and MediaBuyerPlanner.

About 74 percent of respondents said they are conducting marketing of green messages on the Internet, which proved the most popular medium. About half are using print and another 40 percent are relying on direct mail, among other methods.

Marketers are finding that consumers will spend more on green products, and they are putting their marketing dollars behind the notion, said study co-authoer Jennifer Nastu.

“This was generally seen as a nice opportunity, as most firms perceived that they were – in reality – greener than their customers initially thought they were,” Nastu said.

In a sort of repudiation of the notion of greenwashing, marketing executives seemed to be cognizant of their company’s standing in relation to environmental stewardship. Respondents who noted that their firms were less green were less likely than others to use green marketing messages.

Another finding was that companies tend to make environmentally friendly operational changes before moving into green messaging in their marketing.

Still, 28 percent of respondents said they thought green marketing was more effective than other marketing messages, compared to just 6 percent who saw it as less effective.

The report offers detailed analysis of habits by firms with a range of marketing budgets, from less than $250,000 to in excess of $50 million.

The higher the budget, the more likely a firm was to use mobile phone advertising, a burgeoning trend in marketing. About 16 percent of firms spending more than $50 million used mobile advertising, compared to just 6 percent for all marketers, according to the report, which is available here.

In a recent example of consumer marketing, via the iPhone, an application from SAP and the Carbon Disclosure Project shows a visualized breakdown of a variety of corporate emissions data. It was released ahead of the Copenhagen climate talks as a means of communicating to world leaders and the public about climate change and corporate emissions.

T-Mobile has issued its own mobile application that promotes coupons for green products and services.