You grow faster than your competitors and success comes seemingly effortlessly

Let's take a closer look at the field of sustainable green products and services. We will find out what the best green brands have in common and we will discover what differentiates them from other competitors.Our research is based on our own experiences and content that is available to everyone online. Information from the internet makes it easier to research "best practices" and learn from competitors who have already acquired a certain virtue or mastered a certain task.Still, you should be cautious. There is so much false information circulating on the internet that it can be difficult to filter the right information.

In this blog post, we have compiled for you the 5 key trends we have identified among the best and most successful emerging ethical & sustainable green brands or service companies.

• Occupy & dominate a niche!

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The Swedish jeans brand Nudie dominates the eco-jeans niche. The German brand Armed Angels dominates the organic cotton T-shirt sector. The French brand Veja brand is the epitome of ethically produced sneakers, while Warby Parker is considered to be the e-commerce shop for eyewear. I bet that a buyer who is thinking about expanding his product range in this field will most likely choose one of these brands.

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Does your brand have what it takes to dominate a category of your market? Think about it for a moment. If there is already a clear frontrunner in your field, you should refrain from entering the race with them. Smart brand strategists pick the niche of a niche, so to speak, and aim to conquer that tiny area.Consider the hierarchy of the Google listing: 90% of the traffic is to the top 3 listed companies.

For this reason, SEO specialists do everything they can to appear in the first 3 Google search results with a few, but relevant keywords. So they don't go broad by focusing on a larger number of keywords. The magic word is. FOCUS! Align yourself once again and see what is left. This strategy seems very simple, yet many companies fail to implement it. It usually fails because of one simple thing: there are too many possibilities that open up.

It often happens that brands have successfully mastered the first stage of growth. Suddenly, however, new opportunities seem to pop up everywhere. They hop from one thing to the next until the focus is finally lost. They overestimate themselves and the staff suddenly feel overwhelmed. No one knows what he/she should focus on. If you are at the beginning of developing your brand, you should focus and limit yourself to the niche of your choice.

• Innovations:

Wow, your product is just as good as your conventional competitor's, with the only difference that yours is also organic. Sorry, but most likely that is not enough! Do you know the saying:

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it's easy to put a new idea in the client's head, but it's very difficult to get an old idea out of him.

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Most customers are attached to the things, products and brands they already know and use. If you want to get them to use something new, you have to offer them added value. Think about your customer's needs. What can you offer them in addition to their ethical, fair or sustainable values? Look at the brands, the products and the services you offer. Hardgraft, Reformation, Pozu or Abury or. Try to find out what makes these brands so unique.

• Business model

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Sometimes it is difficult to establish their product only through the factors of design or product specifications. For this reason, brands like Everlane and Warby Parker have turned their backs on conventional business models by doing away with sales agencies and middlemen and relying entirely on e-commerce and direct sales. This allows them to offer consumers the lower wholesale prices and undercut their competitors' prices by up to 50%.

Chance:

See you Business Model Generation or BMfiddle and learn about different business models. Greenblut also offers workshops on "How to develop your business model". Contact us.

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• Integration of sales & marketing

Have you hired agencies and sales representatives for different markets to distribute your product or service and also employed marketing staff? Perhaps you have missed an important opportunity

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Market leaders often manage to integrate marketing and sales. Modern CRM systems are often strongly integrated with marketing. If they use the opportunities that arise from this new constellation, they can achieve significant additional sales. Because of the availability of digital information, customers do research before they come into contact with sales.The opportunity: Market leaders know how to integrate sales and marketing channels. They use the most effective tools to make all data available to the entire team. At the beginning, the marketing team usually launches a social media activity or publishes interesting text content that is made freely available to potential customers online, then as the process continues, the sales team makes personal contact.

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• Use Inbound Marketing

Customers have radically changed their buying behaviour. No longer are they waiting to be contacted by their sales staff to learn how they can do their job better. Maybe their potential customers won't even visit their website during the buying process. They may be more likely to look for social media and other content to guide them in the decision-making process.

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Learn about the inbound marketing method and start designing a customer funnel for your company. If you are in doubt whether inbound marketing is the right strategy for your company, simply contact us and we will give you a detailed free assessment .