By Tasha Cunningham
Small businesses can gain an edge by promoting environmentally sustainable products and services.
For small-business owners, creating and implementing effective marketing strategies can be an uphill battle. The question always becomes: What kind of strategies should you employ to grow your business and are they going to work?
So when a Miami Herald reader recently asked BizBytes whether green marketing strategies could help grow their small business, I turned to D. Steven White, professor of marketing at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and interim director of its Sustainability Studies Program.
What is green marketing anyway?
According to American Marketing Association, it's defined as ``the marketing and promotion of products and services that are environmentally safe.'' But what does that mean exactly and how does it pertain to your small business?
"Green marketing for small businesses is really about introducing green products and adopting sustainable practices to differentiate yourself from your competitors,'' White said. "Will that lead to more sales for a small business that creates innovative green strategies? Absolutely, it will. It's a wide open, emerging area of marketing that small, nimble businesses can take advantage of much quicker than larger, bureaucracy-heavy corporations can.''
Continue Reading Green marketing can help your business sprout
