Businesses are putting an ever-greater focus on building their brand’s credibility as a sustainable product or service. Sustainability of brand and environment are now firmly joined at the hip. Regardless of whether our view is as a business owner or consumer, we’ve come to accept that it’s our collective responsibility to act before it’s too late.
However, while businesses are going the extra mile to increase sustainability, from the products they produce to the packaging that they get delivered in, many struggle to promote their sustainability effort as an influential voice within their overall marketing strategy.
Let’s take a look at how you can ensure your sustainability efforts don’t go unnoticed.
If your brand hasn’t been specifically created as an eco product or service with the sustainability message at the core of the brand’s DNA, developing a sustainability message that is received positively by consumers and influences their buying choices can be challenging.
For many businesses finding a progressive path to sustainability that can then be readily communicated to consumers isn’t easy. At the same time, there’s no real option to step back from the challenge of getting your message across in a positive light.
Failure to communicate your sustainability path successfully can leave your brand exposed. Wrongly or rightly, consumers may perceive your lack of messaging as an indication of indifference to sustainability.
From a marketing perspective, a brand’s sustainability messaging has to resonate positively to reap real rewards for the work, effort and investment undertaken during the business’s transition towards greater sustainability.
The following steps will help you to get your messaging on the right track.
Step 1: Understand the attitude of your customer towards your brand
It’s fair to say that the majority of us care about the environment, however, that doesn’t necessarily translate to your customers being massively interested in hearing about your company’s sustainability path.
Regardless of your hard work and effort creating paperless offices and launching ambitious tree planting schemes, your efforts may be more or less easy to promote depending on the receptivity of your market audience.
Understanding the demographics of your typical customer helps to understand where you should position your sustainability messaging within your overall marketing flow.
Position your sustainability messaging correctly
Understanding your typical customer enables you to better place your sustainability messaging at the right position within your marketing flow path.
For example:
If your typical customer is a university-educated female on a high income in the 25-34 age bracket, it’s likely that your customers will be very receptive to your sustainability credentials and your messaging will have a significant influence on their buying choice. In this case, your sustainability messaging can sit proudly at the front of your overall marketing flow path.
On the other hand, if your typical customer is less educated, much older and male, sustainability messaging will have a lesser influence on their buying choices. In this case, your sustainability messaging should be positioned further down in the marketing flow, still able to nudge a buying decision rather than drive it.
It’s not that some people don’t care about sustainability, it’s the acknowledgement that your product or service buying choice is less influenced by sustainability. If you lead any marketing campaign with anything less than the strongest motivators for purchase you’ll lose sales as well as any chance to promote your sustainability efforts.
Effective marketing campaigns need messaging priorities to be in the order that best engages a potential customer.
You’ll need to gauge where sustainability fits within your typical customers’ priorities in order to understand where your sustainability messaging can be best positioned.
Regardless of demographics, most consumers would prefer to buy products and services that have less impact on the environment. Correct placement of sustainability messaging within your marketing flow will help to influence buying decisions.
Step 2: Identify your sustainability USPs
Having researched your audience, use the information and your brand knowledge to identify five unique (or prime) selling points that can be linked to your company’s eco-credentials.
For example:
- Products made in the UK
- Components used in manufacture derived from sustainable sources
- Privately owned business
- Always use the highest quality sustainable materials
- Multiple awards received for eco innovation
You can develop your USPs to reinforce your environmental focus.
For example:
Privately owned business – We have full control of our materials and manufacturing processes. All of the components we use are sourced from the UK and EU, we’re on track to be fully carbon neutral by 2030.
Products made in the UK – Reduce your carbon footprint by purchasing products that are manufactured locally.
Only use the highest quality sustainable materials – Our products last longer and the materials used can be recycled more easily.
You may find that existing USPs your business has used for many years can be adapted to better emphasise your sustainability credentials.
Don’t be tempted to overstate anything. Businesses that get accused of greenwashing do more harm than good to their eco-credentials and brand reputation.
You may for very good reason use components or materials from another country, that may be of better quality than anything available locally. There’s no need to hide from that, explain your choices so that consumers are able to understand you always work with environmental considerations at the fore.
Step 3: Understand where to place your sustainability messaging
Follow your typical customer’s journey to the point of purchase. It’s common for brands to create a single ‘Sustainability’ web page that qualifies the brand’s eco-credentials. Website analytics often show that these pages receive very little traffic, therefore the sustainability messaging may only be reaching a tiny percentage of your market.
If you believe your sustainability messaging is positive enough to influence a purchasing decision you need to get it out there. Make sure your messaging is an integral part of your marketing media flow.
Advertising
Depending on your brand type, sustainability messaging can be more or less challenging to incorporate into advertising campaigns. Your goal should be to develop advertising media that showcases your sustainability in a manner that matters most to your audience.
Develop robust sustainability USPs for your brand, use creative media to promote your messaging within your advertising campaigns.
Product Information Pages
When potential customers engage in your product information pages, they are at their most receptive. Here’s where you have the greatest opportunity to communicate your sustainability credentials.
Always strive to get your message across in the simplest manner possible. Creative use of icons and images with minimal supporting text may prove far more effective than long wordy statements.
Social Media
With skill and creativity, social media can be a highly effective medium for any brand to deliver its environmental and sustainability messaging.
There is a great deal of opportunity producing creative sustainability posts about your products and services that illustrate the steps that your business has taken to reduce its environmental impact to promoting events, tasks or challenges running within your business to create a greener and more sustainable business environment.
Make the content engaging, demonstrate your passion for your businesses engagement in sustainability.
Step 4: Consider producing dedicated customer and investor sustainability media
Having a few pages on your business website dedicated to your sustainability messaging is minimal and can’t be relied upon in terms of broadly impacting purchasing decisions.
By pushing above and beyond your competitor brands with standalone sustainability media you’ll be promoting a genuine commitment to leading the way forward with environmental challenges rather than simply tagging along.
Recruitment Media
Include sustainability in your recruitment media. Potential employees are just as keen as investors to be part of a company with excellent sustainability credentials.
Step 5: Be a voice for sustainability
If you’ve made a significant commitment to making your business more sustainable, your investment and time shouldn’t go unrewarded. You have every right to be proud of the effort you’ve gone to and you should share that messaging with the broadest audience possible.
Look for creative ways to promote your brand’s eco agenda become a brand leader and a voice for progressive development.
Step 6: Get help from an experienced sustainability strategy team.
Having access to expertise is key to creating and running a positive sustainability messaging program. At Energy Cell, we’ve helped businesses from large corporates to small businesses to develop progressive sustainability messaging strategies.
We can help you to promote your brand’s sustainability credentials, why not call us for a chat.
