Green Marketing for Small Businesses

Green marketing is the new "in" thing.

Celebrities like Cameron Diaz and Leonardo di Caprio prefer to drive hybrid cars. HGTV channel is giving away a "green" home. Ikea has done away with the free plastic bags. Crate and Barrel is marketing ecofriendly furnitures. Name it -- from baby clothes to appliances to home furnishings to food -- "green" is the main thing.

According to Good and Green http://www.goodandgreen.biz/, which sponsors the Green Marketing Conference, an increasing number of consumers are embracing green marketing:

• In the US, the Green Marketplace is conservatively pegged at $250 million - and growing!
• Over 66% of Americans believe "Doing well by doing good is a savvy business strategy."
• Over the past five years the sales of organic and all natural products have increased 18% to 25% year over year.
• 30% of American consumers are willing to pay up to a 20% premium on clean, green products over non-sustainable alternatives ... and that number grows each year.

So how can small businesses ride this growing crest of green marketing?

According to Jacqueline Ottman, author of Green Marketing: Opportunity for Innovation , there are five rules for green marketing :

• Customers should know and care about the environmental issues your products address
• Make customers feel empowered that they can help address the environmental issues when they buy your products
• Ensure credibility and legitimacy of your claims by being transparent
• Reassure the buyer that your products work, in addition to being environmentally friendly
• Given that environmentally-friendly products are often priced at a premium, consider whether your price range is something customers are still willing to pay

Business.gov offers additional resources and information on how to start an eco-friendly business.

Basics of Factoring

If you are trying to raise cash for your existing business, one way is through factoring or accounts receivable financing. With factoring, a business can receive immediate cash for its accounts receivable. This option works best if you cannot get secured commercial debt or if you are not willing to give up shares of your company.

If this is a financing option you'd like to consider for your business, read the article "Basics of Factoring: What Every Business Owner Needs to Know About Factoring." The article discusses when a business is right for factoring, how factoring works, pros and cons of this financing strategy, and how factoring compares to other financing options.

AddThis: Helping Your Content Go Viral

We have tested several widgets at PowerHomeBiz.com to make it easy for users to share our content, and tap Web 2.0 sites to increase our traffic. And the tool we love the most -- and using more extensively is AddThis http://www.addthis.com/

AddThis is a simple widget that you put into your site or blog, and visitors can bookmark, share or email your content. If you're looking at a way to get your content into MySpace, Digg, Stumbleupon and other Web 2.0 sites, AddThis is a tool that can help you

What we liked about AddThis is its ease of use. Setting an account is very easy, and grabbing the widget is a breeze. You don't have to be a techie to actually understand how it works, and grab the code to be put to your site.

The reports are also done almost in real time, and you can find out the URL of your content that has been shared by a user, and what service did the user shared it to.

But of course, it's not without its kinks:

• You can't know and track the URLs that have been emailed by users. You also won't know the email addresses of the sender and the recipient that some email share-to-a-friend scripts can show you.
• There's tendency to show false positives, and therefore inflated reports (just hope that it's not 100% inflated reports). A user can click on share to Stumbleupon, but for some reason, the user failed to login to his Stumbleupon account thereby failing to share the content in Stumbleupon. But AddThis will already read the fact that the buttom was clickd on as a success and report that the URL was shared in Stumbleupon
• Sharing blog posts can be a bit screwy. Sometimes the URL will not be reported in your account and instead will show this data:post.title/. This is also the URL automatically posted into the user form, so unless the user removed this message and replaced it with the actual URL then it becomes a worthless share

But even with the above kinks, AddThis is a great tool for sharing your site and helping it go viral

Grandparents: How to Reach this Market for Your Business

Grandparents are a huge market to tap, whether you are directly targeting them for your seniors travel business or indirectly for your children's toys business.

Estimates from different surveys show that there are anywhere from 30 to over 70 million of grandparents in the United States alone, and a sizeable portion of these grandparents take care of their grandkids for various reasons. The National Mail Order Association has collected a great deal of data on grandparents

According to GRAND magazine , the demographic characteristics of grandparents are:

• average age of first time grandparents is 47
• over 70 million grandparents
• 4,000 baby boomers become grandparents every day
• over 75% of the 50+ market are grandparents
• 77% of the nation's wealth and 50% discretionary spending come from this group
• annual spending on grandchildren alone top $70 billion

Given the above numbers, grandparents are a great market for children's products. They buy cribs, baby clothes, strollers, and other baby items as gifts to their grandkids. Others buy these items for the use of their grandkids when they visit the grandparents' homes, so the parents don't have to carry all these things. There are also others who buy baby items because the babies and kids live with the grandparents.

According to The Grandparent Study 2002 Report from AARP , the top reasons grandparents spend money on their children are birthday gifts (97%), holiday gifts such as Christmas, Hanukah, or Kwanzaa (96%), because they enjoy buying things for grandchildren (93%) and to entertain or have fun with their grandchildren (90%).

Aside from spending for their grandchildren, grandparents also spend on cars, vacation homes, travel, insurance products, financial products, and others. They are also concerned with their health and ensuring quality lifestyles -- and that means they are a good market for organic foods, vitamins, exercise equipment.

To reach this huge market, here are suggestions from the experts:

• Target Magazine (July 2007) says that grandparents do not want to be told how to be a good grandparent as they have already raised families. They respond to messages "about enriching their relationships with their grandchildren."
• According to Focalyst in their study "Meet the Grandparents", grandparents are plugged and are online. About 60% of grandparents surveyed cited the Internet as their top source for information and advice, and they are emailing their friends and families at least three to five times a week. Marketing to this group should be done online.
• Many of the buying decisions are done by women, so it is a good idea to target grandmothers in your campaigns.

How to Start a Bookstore Business

The book selling business is a very competitive business. The intense competition from online giant Amazon.com plus the big bookstore chains such as Barnes and Noble and Borders has put huge pressures on profit margin and made it difficult for independent booksellers to thrive.

But if you have been dreaming of starting a bookstore, I suggest you start by getting a copy of the book FabJob Guide to Become a Bookstore Owner and other books on the topic. These books are comprehensive and will guide you to some critical decision making needed when starting a bookstore

Then make sure you attend the Book Expo America, which will be held in LA this year on May 29 - June 1 http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/ -- this is the PERFECT place to meet publishers big and small, and start setting up accounts with these publishing houses. I've attended several of these in recent years, and it is one big event where both big publishers to independent publishers gather. It is a must-attend for every bookseller.

Also be sure to check out the resources provided by the following organizations:

• American Booksellers Association http://www.bookweb.org/index.html
• Book Industry Study Group http://www.bisg.org/
• Bowker's Bookwire (for book industry statistics and news) http://www.bookwire.com/

One important aspect of starting a bookstore is developing relationships with book wholesalers and distributors. Determine the major and minor book suppliers that you want to purchase from. Then inquire how you can become a customer, and if you need to go through a credit approval process. They will give you their catalogs from which you can order your inventory. The largest book wholesalers are Ingram Book Group and Baker & Taylor, but if you want to specialize in children's books, contact the Children's Book Council .