Staying competitive in the modern marketplace requires companies to adopt a more sustainable business model. Consumers want to purchase from firms that embrace eco-friendly practices, like sustainable packaging, and support responsible environmental stewardship. If your company does not support these ideas, they may leave to find a company that does.
Create a more sustainable brand by enacting changes that build a corporate culture of environmental responsibility. But it’s not enough to make changes; you must also effectively communicate these new measures with sound marketing techniques.
What do you need to know about your potential consumers and their desire for conscious consumerism?
How Sustainability Impacts Your Customers and Prospects
It’s critical to understand how much modern consumers value sustainability, especially younger generations. Research tells us that over 40% of Gen Z and Millennials would quit a job due to climate concerns. If this is your primary market, avoiding sustainability will cost your business sales. It also hurts your business by increasing employee turnover rates.
The first step is to have a clear idea of what environmental issues your customers and audience are the most concerned about so that you can prioritize your sustainability efforts. Accomplish this by sending surveys and feedback forms to your email list. Include general questions about what environmental issues matter the most to them. Then, ask about sustainability challenges that directly impact your business, such as product packaging.
Once you identify these questions, you can also create an engaging social media campaign around these topics. Doing so helps you to further gauge interest while providing compelling content for your online audience.
Their responses may surprise you, but they will guide you in setting goals for your business. Pay close attention to anyone on your email list or social media who has not yet made a purchase. Marketing your sustainability efforts may be the piece that helps convert them from a follower to a customer.
However, even if enthusiasm for these subjects is low among your current audience, marketing sustainability can still help grow your business. It provides a competitive edge, especially in fields that typically ignore this topic. Emphasizing your company’s environmentally friendly practices will set the stage for building your firm into an industry leader.
But before you can do that, you must build your business into a more sustainable brand.
Building a Sustainable Brand
Even if you already embrace some environmentally friendly practices, being a leader in this area requires a comprehensive approach to these practices. There are ways to make sustainability more simple in your organization by making effective and practical changes.
Right now, there isn’t a single standard definition or set of guidelines for sustainability. There are hundreds of areas you can tackle. Without clear organization, your efforts may stall and eventually fizzle out.
However, your audience surveys have now made it clear what areas matter the most to them. Create a list of how to address these challenges and review these with the stakeholders in your company, such as your board and your staff, to ensure that any proposals for change are realistic and attainable.
Now that you have a starting point, remember these changes are ongoing. You are not just creating green projects to impress your clients. Instead, you are adding a core value to your mission that will redefine and reshape corporate objectives. This shift creates a sustainable workplace culture that better retains and supports your employees while also attracting top talent.
To get all these projects off on the right foot, start by taking internal measures.
Internal Sustainability Efforts
When changing the DNA of your company to achieve green goals, the best place to start is in-house. Corporate office adjustments include such items as:
- Energy conservation. Create policies to improve energy usage in the office by using energy-efficient appliances, considering solar energy options, and shutting off lights and devices nightly.
- Document digitization. Digitize your paperwork to reduce your carbon footprint, reduce storage requirements, and make documents more accessible.
- Commuting initiatives. Offer perks like public transportation incentives, bike racks, and a carpool connection program to encourage employees to use sustainable commuting options.
- Staff training. Offer workshops, training programs, online resources, and expert talks to get everyone on the same page with new policies and procedures.
These steps provide a simple starting point toward improving your environmental policies and lowering your carbon footprint. External policies may be similar, and some are simple to market.
External Sustainability Efforts
Your customer- and vendor-facing processes must also change. A simple action that practically markets itself is improving sustainable packaging strategies for eco-friendly packaging. This is an easy and visual way for product companies to announce their launch of green initiatives. You can use email and social marketing to build excitement for these changes and highlight your position on the importance of the environment.
Share information about the steps you are taking to improve packaging, such as using plant-based compostable materials, recycled packaging, and kraft paper. Customers will notice if you start using smaller boxes for delivery to cut down on other packaging waste. You can even add marketing collateral in your first few shipments, to make sure customers notice the change. Environmentally-friendly product packaging shows them that your company cares for the environment with every delivery they get.
Sustainable Marketing Lessons
Approaching sustainability as a whole company issue is easier to market when you coordinate activities around a unifying theme. Furthermore, customers, communities, and employees can work together to secure a common goal, a fact clever companies take advantage of. For example, DBS bank relied on community support when going zero waste. First, they asked customers and employees to pledge to recycle and waste less and successfully got 50,000 sign-ups.
Next, they implemented their strategy:
- DBS changed procurement policies, shifting away from plastic water bottles as a gift, and worked with tech vendors to reduce and reuse packaging.
- They gave employees reusable bags, sporks, and metal straws to encourage zero-waste living.
- DBS gifted customers with reusable water bottles and sporks to replace single-use plastics.
- They worked with grocery store business partners to encourage reusable grocery bags to replace plastic bags.
DBS Bank also launched a community-based location for gatherings, events, and networking. These marketing initiatives were simple yet effective. Other companies can leverage this company’s innovative strategy and harness the power of environment-oriented marketing.
Marketing sustainability is crucial for businesses that want to stay competitive because customers want to build relationships with brands that care about the environment. Leveraging green policies helps you develop a reputation as an environmentally conscious brand. These actions build customer loyalty and employee retention, helping you become a leader in your industry.
Charlie Fletcher is a freelance writer from the lovely “city of trees”- Boise, Idaho. Her love of writing pairs with her passion for social activism and search for the truth. When not writing she spends her time doodling and embroidering. And yes, she does love all kinds of potatoes!
