Green marketing might be the car wash industry’s biggest opportunity since we swapped out brushes for cloth. To date however, few operators have been willing or able to make environmental issues a core part of their business strategy. This is despite the fact that car washes are intrinsically “green”.
Green Marketing History
The term Green Marketing grew in popularity in the late eighties and early nineties, as environmental issues became a growing concern and topic of conversation for many Americans. While there had always been a handful of companies with owners that were public advocates for certain environmental causes, few companies had thought of environmental issues as being an opportunity to increase the value of their products or services. However, as the issues became a regular feature of news coverage, consumers began looking for companies that took steps to reduce their impact on the planet. Increasingly, over the past twenty years, everyone from GE to Domino’s Pizza have tried to include “green” in their marketing plan. The problem however, is that there has been a lot of confusion over what it means to be “green” and too much focus on jumping on the green bandwagon instead of focusing on implementing real environmentally friendly measures. This has resulted in many companies touting themselves as “green” but not making clear what that means. If you do a search for “green marketing” on amazon.com you’ll find over 4,000 books to guide the way, but many business still fail to find the balance between real and merely superficial green efforts.
So before we talk further about Green Marketing we need to agree on a definition. We can define Green Marketing as communicating with your community about the measures you have taken to reduce the negative impact of your services (or the alternative) on Earth’s ecosystem.
Why You Should Care About Green Marketing
Aside from the altruistic benefits that come being a better steward of the planet, Green Marketing represents a real business opportunity. Green Marketing demonstrates that you are a responsible local business that cares about the community. For most carwashes, 80% of their business comes from within a 3-mile radius. Therefore, showing that you care about the local water supply and local environment creates goodwill and increases the perceived value of your car wash. In a world where we are inundated with marketing messages, goodwill is the stuff that cuts though the noise and proves that you care about more than just profit. It builds trust and creates a more loyal customer.
For this reason, demonstrating that you are concerned about the environment helps build a strong brand that resonates with the community- whether you have one car wash or a hundred. All great retail brands are based on values. In his book, “Pour Your Heart Into It”, Howard Shultz, creator of the Starbucks brand, wrote, “the most powerful and enduring brands are built from the heart. Their foundations are strong because they are built with the strength of the human spirit, not an ad campaign.” Communicating values has always been a difficult thing to do in car washing because it’s perceived as a commodity. However, car washes are naturally environmentally friendly when compared to driveway washing. This environmental benefit provides a built-in path to a values-based brand.
If you want to explore the possibility of utilizing Green Marketing, the most important question about Green Marketing is not how you implement it, but why. Authenticity is the most important aspect of succeeding with Green Marketing and companies that try to appear environmentally conscious by slapping a label on a product or to their website do not understand what Green Marketing is all about. For example, the ICA has recently created the WaterSaversTM program to help car wash owners “promote their environmentally friendly business practices and educate consumers about the environmental benefits of professional car washing.” While this is a valuable service and a commendable effort, impact from Green Marketing can only come from an operator that makes environmental concerns one of the values his or her business is built on. Marketing is about listening, learning and reacting to your customers. So Green Marketing means you have to be concerned about what your customers are concerned about.
Therefore, if you want to succeed with Green Marketing you have to personally care about what’s happening to the environment. That personal concern can then translate into real action and an authentic tone that will resonate with customers. Of course, this doesn’t mean you are required to handcuff yourself to a tree about to be chopped down or adopt a whale. What it does mean is that you should educate yourself about the facts behind the environmental concerns. Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is required if you want to tell your community that you care about the environment. Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth is a great place to start to accumulate facts about the impact humans are having on the environment. Besides that there are plenty of books and articles on the Internet to help you determine what your personal commitment level is to environmental issues. And while there is debate about global warming, no scientific body of national or international standing has said that global warming is not real. The debate is more about how severe the impact will be, not whether it exists. In addition, our growing impact on local water sources and animal habitats is an unfortunate fact. So before you say that this is all a conspiracy and that you don’t think it is worth reacting to, make sure you understand the facts.
Once you’ve decided that environmental issues should be part of your business, take a Green Inventory to determine what you are doing that is environmentally friendly. This includes water management (i.e. reclaim systems, reducing nozzle size, etc.), power management (i.e. VFDs, less motors, more efficient motors, fluorescent bulbs, etc.) and conservation (recycling, biodegradable chemicals, using recycled paper, etc.). Green Marketing makes the claim that your business takes measures to reduce the negative impact of your services on Earth’s ecosystem. Your Green Inventory is going to be how you back that claim up and prove that it’s more than just advertising.
The next step is to communicate these efforts to the community. To begin with there should be signage describing some or all of your efforts. Signage is best kept simple so don’t try to say too much. Just make it clear that the environment is important to you and that you have taken concrete steps to make sure your business is environmentally responsible. From the signage you can direct their attention to your website where more information can be made available. On the website you have more room to explain exactly what you are doing. This should be its own page or pages with an obvious blurb and link on the homepage. You can also create a simple logo signifying your Green efforts that you can include on the footer of the website, signage, letterhead and everywhere else. In addition, green practices are the perfect topic for posts on social media networks like Twitter and Facebook since it’s non-promotional but increases your perceived value.
Besides lowering your car washes negative impact on the environment, you can also get involved with a local or regional environmental group through involvement, donations or both. This is another way to back up your claims and it connects you to people that share your values.
Another important part of Green Marketing is training your employees to make sure they understand how and why you are committed to environmental issues. This ensures that you won’t be the only one finding ways to be greener and helps prevent employees from circumventing environmental policies because they thought it was just lip service.
Between the current economy and the new consumer behavior it has yielded, car wash operators have to do more than ever to attract customers. It’s imperative that you stand for something and do everything you can to increase your perceived value. Being environmentally conscious and making it an integral part of your strategy is a great way to do just that. The important part is that it’s authentic and more than just a label.
Hopefully, one day professional car washes will be known far and wide for their environmental benefits. This heightened awareness could lead to a nationwide ban on driveway washing and the market for professional car washing could explode. However, that day will never come unless more operators take a sincere interest in the environment and build their strategy around being green.
This article was written for the February, 2010 issue of Modern Car Care.
