Green brands are thriving. But why? Well, when it comes to customers, they consider many variables when they decide to shop from a company or not. And lately, as environmental concerns increased in importance and mediatization, they try to find more products and services coming from companies with strong green values.

In this day and time, the general awareness of environmental issues and the continuous search of the wide audience for better, less polluting and less damaging products and services forces companies to shift their policies and internal processes to find solutions to age-old problems. The customer today is leaning towards sustainable, green and organic products. And if you are a manufacturer with nothing green about their business, well, you might be on a tight grip here and you might see your business endangered by the new consumer.

While being more conscious of your business and how does it impact the environment is important, greening your establishment will also bring you some unexpected rewards. Let’s analyse below how and why all businesses should start their green measure implementation as soon as possible.

Start Small

Simple measures (for the beginning) like ditching plastic bags are a good starting point to make your business more appealing in your customer’s eyes. Only think of priding yourself on being an eco-friendly business and handing your customers plastic bags. This will spoil the whole eco business image that you want to build. Instead, make sure to adapt your packaging strategy and switch from plastic bags to paper ones. Small retailers can even invest in cloth branded bags. The eco-conscious customer loves not only to recycle but also to reuse. Offer them this opportunity and make sure that you make this change visible. You can even send a newsletter to all your customers and informing them that your shop will no longer retail plastic bags. This will turn out to be a piece of information that most customers will love.

Include Several Green Products into Your Portfolio

While consumers today have bigger expectations from manufacturers and retailers when it comes to their environmental measures, they aren’t absurd enough to demand completely green products. This is something that may never be achieved. However, a little effort on your business part will come as a pleasant surprise and your customers will become more engaged with your brand and will end up supporting you more than your not-so-green competitors. This is an advantage that you can start to exploit quite easily.

Having a few environmental-conscious products in your offer will positively and efficiently showcase your tendency to support the environment and your customers are more likely to engage with your business. Set up a green product corner, supply local products and try to rethink your supply chain for long-term perspectives.

Slowly transitioning to eco-friendly products is not impossible at all, but it will take some time to approach this matter and adapt it to your company’s products and services.

Work on Internal Processes

Becoming a completely eco-friendly business takes a lot of work and dedication. For shop owners, including some eco-friendly products is only one part of the whole transition, for instance. They also have to work on their behind-the-scene processes and adapt those to make them more environmentally friendly. While this is a complex process, businesses who have changed their internal processes gained new customers and increased their retention rates.

Switch to energy efficient light bulbs. This is one easy step to a greener establishment. Plus, you can always encourage those entities part of your supply chain to reduce the volume of packaging when delivering goods. Waste management is another variable that you must pay extra attention to, especially as a grocery shop owner. Make sure that you put on discount all products that come close to their expiration dates. This will encourage your customers to shop for those and will make them realise that you treat with extra care the food waste matter.

Market All Your Changes

Invest in marketing campaigns that put on display all these changes, if you want to increase brand awareness and gain more customers. If you keep those only for your company you cut your business the chance to thrive. Trade show displays make amazing choices when you want to raise awareness in the shop when it comes to bio products or locally-sourced products. A “green” corner will be easily marked by these display’s presence. Make sure to include information on other similar measures that your company prides itself on. For instance, include the fact that you are now sourcing some of your products from local, bio farms, that you changed all your light bulbs with energy-efficient ones and so on. The representatives at UK Exhibition Stands claim that their clients are becoming increasingly creative when it comes to their products and lately, they began to use those to display efficiently similar changes in their shops.

“Green” Your Building

Green buildings bring the immense advantage of lowering the overall costs associated with running a business of any type. To make your building more environmentally-friendly, you have a few effective tools and actions to implement. Invest in proper insulation systems to lower your energy expenses and consumption rates. Solar panels are a great investment for those businesses why also want to become known on the market for the care and attention to the environment. Running an Energy Efficiency Audit will offer you a better idea on what your company lacks when it comes to building efficiency and what measures they can implement to achieve higher “green” standards.

These are only some of the changes that businesses today can make to make their establishments “greener” and more appealing for today’s consumer. Keep in mind that the consumer today is more attentive when it comes to such issues and concerns and not aligning your business to today’s requirements might prove a fatal error for you.