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Taking advantage of corporate sustainability as a marketing tool

Sophia Young — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 05:04:47 +0000

In a world where profits trump life on earth as we know it, how do businesses stand out from the crowd? And will they still stay true to their word?

Organizations can take advantage of any aspect that will help their image. It’s this very kind of marketing that helps them thrive. When a company’s values align with their beliefs, consumers are more loyal to that brand.

We’ve seen SMEs do this, telling stories about their grassroots beginnings. Larger organizations take pride in industry awards to look more credible in the eyes of the people.

Every day, more and more consumers are shifting to greener purchases. Because of this, businesses are looking to create strategies that reflect their care for the world.

According to Harvard Business Review, organizations with sustainable business practices have better risk management, innovation, and financial performance, including higher earnings, cost reductions, and enhanced efficiency and logistics. On top of this, long-term enterprises also enjoy increased client loyalty.

If your company has corporate sustainability management strategies in place, it’s time to take a closer look at how you can market it. It might just be what you need to give your business an edge.

What is sustainable marketing?

Sustainable marketing is a marketing strategy that promotes an organization’s environmentally, socially, and economically responsible products, practices, and brand values.

Companies use this to combat negative publicity from waste, price markups, and deceptive marketing. It is a great strategy for establishing relationships with customers while giving importance to the future.

This marketing strategy is not as simple as tying your products to a hot topic and then going about your business as usual. You need to first check the context of the issue you are addressing and how and why your brand fits as a solution in the customer’s thinking. From there, you can create goals that your company can assess and celebrate.

Getting started with marketing your corporate sustainability

1. Have A Wider Goal In Mind

The success of a brand is typically measured by numbers—usually how much money they have or will have in any particular period.

Sustainability alters this viewpoint by asking brands to re-evaluate themselves in terms other than profit. As a brand, you have to think on a wider or deeper scale. You need to promote something larger than your products and services that transcends any industry.

If you already have a clear social mission statement, now’s the best time to review it. If you have yet to draft one, spend some time figuring out what that goal is and how your brand fits into it.

Take a look at Patagonia, for example. Its products are simple—outdoor clothing and gear for all ages. What makes it stand out is its commitment to the planet, which is shown everywhere from its website to its socials.

2. Consider The Future

If you’re looking for a short-term strategy that’s easy to develop, sustainable marketing is not the answer. Its goal is to create long-term benefits for both your company and your consumers.

Brands are preoccupied with maximizing immediate profits. Many marketing strategies, such as Google Ads and blogging, are excellent lead generators. But what happens when your lead makes a purchase and becomes a customer? How will you cultivate enthusiasts and build loyalty?

This is where sustainable marketing comes in. It’s a great way to nurture customers throughout their entire buying journey. At the very start of this funnel, you can use education as a way to establish loyalty with your audience.

A great example of this is when a food business uses social media to educate its audience about the importance of ethical farming. They then follow this up with package recycling recommendations after the sale.

3. Be More Transparent

While marketing might seem like it’s always consumer-oriented, the truth is that that’s not usually the case. Not all brands are transparent, especially with their supply chain practices.

In traditional marketing, a company tries to persuade a customer to buy a product or service. Consumer-oriented marketing flips this over its head. You’ll first have to understand your consumers’ needs and demands and then adapt your marketing to them.

If your audience wants you to be more transparent about your sourcing practices or more vocal about social issues, give them the proper information. You could even use this in your next campaign.

Nike, for example, signals transparency by sharing its manufacturing map. This gives consumers insight into their factories.

4. Include Your Sustainable Marketing Strategies In Everything You Do

Authenticity is a huge part of sustainability marketing. Trust us, your audience will know when they’re being deceived.

Imagine learning that a company you support claims to be sustainable but has failed to put any procedures in place to support those goals. Consumers would begin to be more cautious about that brand, and regaining their trust would be tough. Some might even refuse to ever do business with this brand again.

You need to make sure that your company has a holistic approach to sustainability. Ask yourself the following:

Do you speak about sustainability but develop your product with non-sustainable resources?
Are you cooperating with companies whose missions are at odds with yours?
Is your team a good reflection of the future you want to foster?

If any areas need work, go back to the drawing board to devise solutions that are in line with your mission.

Remember that your audience doesn’t expect perfection, but they will respect your transparency. If you have any existing shortcomings, it’s fine and even encouraged to discuss them. Just keep in mind how you will address them.

5. Create a Community and Leverage It

Building a community is an important aspect of implementing long-term marketing tactics. This is especially true in sustainable marketing.

If you want to gain a strong following, you can look at linking yourself with local events, activities, and communities. Make every effort to gain publicity for your company and the causes you support. You can also use your social media profiles to share photos and videos that show what your firm is doing differently.

This will aid in the growth of your website, email list, and social media following. Once you’ve built up a sizable following, you can use your audience to spread the word about your company. Encourage them to share what you’re doing to make the world a better place.

Sustainable marketing isn’t easy, but it is worth it

Compared to traditional marketing strategies, sustainable marketing is a little more complicated. Its goals are for the long term.

While it is difficult, it’s well worth the effort in the end. With this strategy, you’ll get to create a company that you can be proud of while having a beneficial impact on the world.

Image Source

About the Author

Sophia Young recently quit a non-writing job to finally be able to tell stories and paint the world through her words. She loves talking about fashion and weddings and travel, but she can also easily kick ass with a thousand-word article about the latest marketing and business trends, finance-related topics, and can probably even whip up a nice heart-warming article about family life. She can totally go from fashion guru to your friendly neighborhood cat lady with mean budgeting skills and home tips real quick.

The post Taking advantage of corporate sustainability as a marketing tool appeared first on SEAN KIRBY.

Marketing Advice You Can Ignore

Sean Kirby — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 04:07:28 +0000

Here’s a scary thought.

The advice guiding your marketing decisions could be causing those efforts to fail. And the worst part is, you probably don’t even realize it.

This dangerous marketing advice is so widely stated that it’s accepted by most without question.

Put yourself in the customers’ shoes

It seems like good advice. And, indeed, changing your perspective can be a good thing. There’s only one problem.

Your readers’ perspectives may differ from your own.

Suppose, for instance, Apple hired marketers who are price-conscious consumers themselves. Would switching to value-focused messaging resonate with company’s loyal customer base?

Probably not. They gladly pay the premium prices because they are motivated by what the brand represents.

Yet marketers make this mistake all the time. Changing a color scheme or wording choice based on personal preference may not seem like a big deal. But even small changes can have a big impact.

If you act on your personal preferences rather than your target audience’s, then you’re likely to make the wrong decisions. Instead of putting yourself in their shoes, get into their heads.

For better #marketing results, get into your target audiences' heads, not their shoes.
Click To Tweet

Don’t use jargon

I’m sure you’ve heard time and again to cut jargon or replace it with simpler words and phrases. This advice is meant to make your marketing more conversational. And in some cases it does.

However, jargon is conversational to specific audiences.

Car enthusiasts love talking about torque, horsepower, drivetrains and dozens of other specialized terms. This jargon makes what they are reading more compelling to them.

IT professionals are another example of an audience that uses their own vocabulary. In fact, the technical terms they use are so commonplace to them, that they often speak that way to people outside of their industry.

In these cases, taking the jargon out weakens your marketing. It sends your target audience the message that you don’t them or the topic. It could even be insulting if you dumb it down too much.

So how do you decide what jargon to cut and what to keep?

Follow the advice in the first section. Get into your prospects’ heads instead of their shoes. Don’t worry whether a term has meaning to you. Find out if it means something to your audience. Keep the terms that do and get rid of the ones that don’t.

Test everything

The idealist in me loves this advice. Why leave anything up to guesswork when you can get definitive proof of what works and what doesn’t? There are a couple of reasons.

It’s not feasible for most marketers.

Accurate testing requires time and volume. You need to let them run long enough to account for market fluctuations and reach a large enough sample size for statistical significance.

Optimizely has a calculator you can use to determine the sample size you need.

Don’t underestimate the sample size you need to run an accurate A/B test.

Simply plug in the expected conversion rate of your control, the minimum difference in conversion rate you are seeking and the acceptable statistical significance. The tool will automatically show the calculations every time you adjust one of the variables.

Not all hypotheses are worth the investment.

Knowing that you can only run a certain number of tests each year, you want to focus on the big stuff.

We’ve all seen articles about big wins by swapping a single word or changing the color of a button. But these types of tweaks won’t usually provide the same impact as a test involving the offer or psychological appeal.

Plus, if you’ve played with the sample size calculator, you know that as your change in conversion increases, the sample size needed decreases. That means testing the big things also gives you insights faster.

Content is king

As a content creator, I’d love to say that this is true. But as much as I’d like to toot the value of my profession, content is not king. Context is.

In the early days of content marketing, you could get ahead simply by feeding the machine. Quantity mattered more than quality. Those days are long gone.

Content without context is just noise. And there’s a lot of noise you need to rise above. Every minute:

Facebook users share nearly 2.5 million pieces of content
Twitter users tweet nearly 300,000 times
Instagram users post nearly 220,000 new photos
YouTube users upload 72 hours of new video content
Apple users download nearly 50,000 apps
Email users send over 200 million messages

Source

Content without context is just noise. #blogging #contentmarketing
Click To Tweet

If your content doesn’t give me the information I need, at the time I need it, then it’s worthless to me.

Conversely, if your content gives me exactly what I need at that moment in time, then I’m likely to pay attention, even if it’s not Pulitzer-worthy prose.

Always consider the context first.

Start with your target audience. Learn about their pain points and motivations. Think about what they already know and identify knowledge gaps. Consider where they are in your sales funnel and what it will take to get them to the next stage. Then craft your message specifically for them.

You need to be doing _____________

Some marketing techniques and formats are so ubiquitous that they’ve become de facto requirements.

Every company needs a Facebook page, right? And if you have an online product, you have to run PPC ads. Or do you?

Groove, an online helpdesk software company, got rid of their Facebook page a while back, and they continue to grow steadily. At the time of this writing, their monthly revenue is over $341,000. And Dropbox learned the hard way that Adwords were not a good strategy for them. It didn’t prevent them from gaining millions of users.

These are just two examples of why you shouldn’t blindly accept any marketing advice. No two products or services are alike. What works for one won’t necessarily work for another. That goes for other blanket statements as well, such as _______ works better than ______ or long (or short) copy is best.

It takes guts to fly in the face of best practices, and you don’t want to give up on anything prematurely, but you’ll never get ahead if you’re always following the pack.

Conclusion

You may have noticed that I mentioned understanding your target audience throughout this post. That’s one of the most important takeaways.

The better you know your audience, the easier it will be to use their language, hit on their hot buttons, and make smart marketing decisions.

The second thing I want you to come away with is how the intent differs from the actual advice I’m telling you to ignore. It’s more important to understand why people advise these things than what they say.

Go ahead and take a look at any marketing you currently have in the works with a fresh perspective to make sure you’re not sabotaging yourself with any flawed thinking.

Feature image by gemsling.

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New Blog Coming Soon

Sean Kirby — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 04:06:18 +0000

Stay turned for the first post, which should be published in the next few days.

Subscribe or leave a comment with your information to be alerted when it’s ready.

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