Sustainability Marketing: The next step to unlock competitive advantage

“Sustainability” and “ESG” are in the news since COP 26 put napalm into the fire. But these are not just buzz words, rather they are proven to add value to businesses. 63% of consumers surveyed in an Accenture study revealed that they preferred to shop from purpose-driven brands. Even in the B2B markets, the sustainability sentiment is growing rapidly. Businesses want to work more with clients & partners who share similar sustainability sentiments. In a nutshell, the populace wants not only to know how you do business but also to understand why you do business. Sustainability marketing is meant to promote environmental and socially responsible products, practices, and brand values.

In this blog, you’ll learn key principles of sustainability marketing that can help you gain a competitive advantage.

Embrace your purpose

Business performance can no more be judged only on how much revenue you are able to generate. Sustainability is a valuable addition to business performance metrics.

Do you have a clear social and environmental mission? If not, discuss internally to put together your sustainability mission and integrate it with your business processes, employee mindset, and brand.

For instance, wellness brand Vahdam sells tea, drinkware, and superfoods. However, its mission is to bring the best of India’s bountiful soil, straight to you and to put people and the planet first, always. It does so by handpicking Indian teas and superfoods and shipping straight to you with no unnecessary middlemen. It is a CERTIFIED CLIMATE NEUTRAL and CERTIFIED PLASTIC NEUTRAL brand that measures and offsets its carbon footprint and contributes 1% of revenue towards the education of its farmers.

Rise above your typical marketing goals

First, let’s clear the air. Marketing is not about building customer loyalty. Loyalty is a function of a customer’s experience of a product or service and marketing doesn’t have many levers to play with. For example, if you subscribe to Netflix and didn’t like any shows and had a poor experience, would a marketing reach-out to get 20% off on renewing your subscription have any effect on you? No, right! Therefore, expecting sustainability marketing to build brand loyalty is an incorrect notion. Rather it helps to improve mindshare.

The market is very competitive, no matter what your business does. Everyone is investing in Ads, blogs, lead generation tactics, etc. Although sustainability marketing takes longer to realize benefits it can unlock competitive advantage for your business. IBM ran a study in 2020 on consumer behavior and found that 57% of consumers are willing to change their shopping habits to be more environmentally conscious.

Content is King

Having a clear mission and investing in sustainability initiatives without promotion is like using Spider-Man’s skills for cleaning glass buildings – underutilized. Content is the king of promotions. To reap the high dividends of sustainability marketing, the right content needs to be promoted to the right audience at right time.

One can categorize sustainability audience in two ways – in-market; Those exploring a product or a service for immediate requirements and out-of-market; Those who have no immediate requirement but might need a product or a service in the future. The goal should be to share tangible insights with the in-market audience, so that they can make informed decisions, and to maintain mindshare for the out-of-market audience so that they should think of your company whenever a need emerges in the future.

If your business is directly involved in ESG/Sustainability products and services, you’ll have both in-market and out-of-market audience split for sustainability marketing and if your business is not directly involved in ESG/Sustainability products and services, you can mostly consider the entire audience as out-of-market.

The messaging for the out-of-market audience should have an emotional and out-of-box content theme since you want to be rememberable. And the messaging for the in-market audience should be provocative and analytical because they are looking for the cheapest yet most effective solutions.

Integrate sustainability everywhere

Sustainability should be engrained in every process, product, and service your company has. While investments are key for any sustainability initiative, you don’t necessarily need to wait to start and promote your mission. Even small yet impactful initiatives such as “Cycle to work Wednesdays 🚴🏻” could do the trick for you. Sustainability marketing doesn’t work if the content is not authentic. So, there is a fine line between initiatives that are closer to your mission and initiatives that may sound as publicity stunts.