Sustainable marketing strategies - what are they?
You may have heard of sustainable marketing strategies, but be unsure of what they are.
It’s one of two parts, and can be broken down like this:
- The way you operate in a sustainable way to help and protect the environment
- How you market your business in a greener, more eco-friendly way
- Sharing through your marketing the way that your business helps the environment (without overdoing it)
Whether you’re a small business offering an eco-friendly product or not, telling customers how your business is sustainable is becoming more important. Customers know that they can help their environment through the purchases they make. As a result, they’re actively seeking to buy from businesses that are sustainable in the way they run their business, according to research.
That’s why coming up with sustainable marketing to show that you’re working to help the environment plays a big part of this and can be worked into your sustainability policy.
So, when people land on your website, that’s what they’re going to be looking for. Finding out about your business for eco-friendly practices inside and out.
Let’s start by talking about what sustainability is.
Exactly what is sustainability?
Sustainability is all about the way that your business in a way that helps the environment, gives back to a community or runs efficiently using sustainable resources. It’s abut running a business while being mindful of the environment and the wider global goals of climate change and working towards being zero carbon.
Some examples may include:
- Using green or renewable energy sources
- Using renewable or biodegradable packaging
- Working with local suppliers to minimise transportation
- Recycling all materials used
What are the benefits of being sustainable?
Being more sustainable in the way you run your business provides great advantages. You can attract more consumers interested in helping the environment and raise your brand’s reputation putting the environment as one of its priorities.
Some of the key benefits of being sustainable include:
- Limiting use of resources to save money
- Improving business reputation
- Getting access to grants and funding
- Giving back to the environment
- Gaining tax-relief for certain practices
- Minimising impact on the environment
- Using sustainable or reusable packaging to help the planet
- Using renewable energy to help zero carbon goals
Essential Sustainable Marketing Strategies
Sharing with potential customers how your business is sustainable is essential to do in an authentic and genuine way. It’s not about marketing how sustainable your product is just for the sake of it to try and get more customers, a term known as ‘green washing’. Genuine efforts to build sustainability into your business will not go unnoticed.
Here are some sustainable marketing strategies and ways that you can share with your audience the sustainable and eco-friendly practices of your business:
Share Products and Business Practices With Customers
Educate and share information about your products through the content on your website pages. This includes on your ‘about us’ and your ‘services’ pages. The ‘about us’ page is a great opportunity prpvideFrom looking at the about us pages, I’m amazed at how little information there is about a business’ operations: who their suppliers are, how they make their products or how they give back to the environment. Including these elements will really help readers get a bigger picture of your business.
Sharing with your consumers your business’ story about where it gets resources, energy use and the values behind this can really help a reader get an understanding of your business values.
Explain the Story Behind Your Brand
Finding the story will help with adding the emotion and the feeling behind your product or service. Sharing a great story about how the business started, what motivated you to start and your core values will make readers feel something.
It will also make your business more memorable.
Sharing parts of your story through your social media channels, short YouTube or Facebook videos will help your audience get to know you.
Educate Your Audience
Use news sources, share facts and recent statistics related to your sustainability to educate visitors. Research shows that, when people learn more about how many resources it takes to make a product, they will change their purchasing decisions based on this. Having a strong sustainability policy in place can providee essential content that tells people exactly what you do in your business
Going digital
Flyers and printed materials to market your business can use resources that you don’t need to. And, a lot of these hard copies simply end up in the bin. So, that’s why more businesses are turning to social media, recycled paper and other eco-friendly ways of marketing their businesses that don’t use up resources.
Partner Up With Local Businesses or Suppliers
Another way you can build your business’ reputation and brand is by teaming up with local businesses.
Get to know other businesses locally who provide a product or service complimentary to what you do.
You can team up with a local, sustainable supplier who provides you an eco-friendly supply.
Promote their services on your website and they, in turn, can promote yours through their channels.
Sustainability Marketing is Worth Adding to Your Business
Whether your business already has an eco-friendly product or not, it can take some consideration to decide the ways that your business can run more sustainably.
You can find some more information here about why it’s worth adding some elements of green marketing to share with customers and build your brand awareness.
Other posts you may like
