With what’s going on in our world right now, a lot of businesses have dedicated some effort and energy to subjects like climate change, clean energy, and overall ecological awareness. It’s a good way to make it clear to the public that your brand acknowledges the issues within our ecosystem and is doing at least the bare minimum to reduce these negative effects.

By doing so, you’ll be actively increasing awareness of sustainability and environmental preservation, which can compel more customers to pursue your products/ services in favor of other brands that don’t do the same.

If you want to start with this, this article contains some tips that can be very helpful.

• How can we promote Ecological Awareness?
• What is an Ecological Awareness?
• Why is Ecological Awareness Important?
• What is Ecological Environment in Marketing?
• How to Raise Ecological Awareness Through Your Brand
• What are the 5 Ecological Services?
• How does Ecological Factors Affect Marketing?
• What is Ecological or Green Marketing?
• How Ecological Factors Affect Business?
• What is an Example of Ecological Approach?
• What is an Example of Ecological Sustainability?
• What are the Environmental Factors that Affect Advertising?

How can we promote Ecological Awareness?

There’s no denying the fact that industrialization has changed the way we live our lives. However, despite all the good things we have developed over the years, we have damaged our environment a lot.

Usage of fossil fuels and wasting the essential products we have has destroyed the world’s natural cycle. We can only reverse the changes made to our planet by fixing environmental issues. 

Read Also: Is Pharmaceutical Marketing Ethical?

A single activist cannot fight the battle against environmental issues. You have to gather people who will stand with you to make changes. We have provided you with four proven ways you can raise awareness about environmental issues! 

Playing your part

The only way to make the world a better place is by placing our rules. No matter how skilled you are at convincing people, if you don’t want to change the wrongdoings you’ve done yourself, you will not have the chance of saving the environment. 

You have to find out how you can play your part for a better future. For example, if you have a company, you have to contact industrial recycling services to recycle all the products used more than once. 

Campaigns on social media

One of the most amazing things about today’s world is the presence of social media. Instead of waiting for months before getting news from a place, we can connect through social channels. 

You can use the power of social media for the worthy cause of environmental protection. If you start a campaign on social media, you will have the chance to raise awareness without spending a lot of money. The best part of social media awareness campaigns is getting excellent results in no time. 

Meeting with government officials

We have to agree that governments worldwide have the proper authority to bring about positive change. However, the problem is that most government officials are caught up with building things instead of analyzing what we have done in the past. 

It’s the job of us, the common residents, to divert the attention of governments from basic tasks to environmental issues. You can start by contacting the local government in your area. And after that, if you get desired results, you can enhance your influence by contacting the higher-ups in your country. 

Holding peaceful protests

Gone are the days when the “Royals ruled us,” and nobody had the chance to raise awareness. In this day and age, people can stand up for their rights and have the right power to make changes that matter the most. 

You can exercise your right to liberty by holding peaceful protests in your area. Remember that the necessary changes needed for saving the world cannot be taken in a single day. You have to raise awareness peacefully so everyone can gather under one banner to protect our ecosystem. 

What is an Ecological Awareness?

Ecological awareness tends to refer to education and knowledge. To become ecologically aware means to learn about and become better informed, and therefore more knowledgeable, about how our actions impact the environment and the associated ecosystems.

By developing greater ecological awareness, we are thus able to understand not only the impact of our decisions and actions, but learn how to anticipate these changes before they occur and act in such a way as to protect our natural environment.

Through greater ecological awareness, we can deepen our understanding and learn to find alternative approaches and ways of behaving which promote the natural environment and which allow us to live in harmony with Nature.

Yet, ecological consciousness, refers to something slightly different and more nuanced. Ecological consciousness instead refers to a way of being. It is not only about becoming better educated in the field of ecology and sustainability, but instead, the term refers to an entirely different way of approaching, perceiving, experiencing and interacting with the natural world.

Ecological consciousness requires a deep respect for the natural world and all things within it. It’s generally understood to be a term which reflects the psyche of an individual in relationship to and with Nature. In such cases, the cognitive, ethical and emotional aspects of an individual are all regulated through the lens of ecological consciousness. For such individuals, there is a deep connection to and engagement with all aspects of the Natural world.

Why is Ecological Awareness Important?

Environmentalism is an ideology that evokes the necessity and responsibility of humans to respect, protect, and preserve the natural world from its anthropogenic (caused by humans) afflictions.

Environmental awareness is an integral part of the movement’s success. By spreading awareness to others that the physical environment is fragile and indispensable, we can begin fixing the issues that threaten it.

Before you can begin promoting environmental awareness in your community, you must first make sure that you have a thorough understanding of environmental issues. Stay up to date on environmental news, read books and other materials, and learn about the issues affecting your own community. It’s much easier to talk to others about the environment if you’ve already taken the time to educate yourself.

Numerous resources are available to promote environmental awareness and education: group learning (inside or outside of the classroom), informational and inspirational seminars, online courses, books, articles, videos, and brochures. These are just a few of the tools that can get you started in raising awareness about the environment.

Environmental awareness provides the people of the world with opportunities to acquire the required knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values needed to protect, conserve and improve the environment for its present and future generations. It also develop and encourage new patterns of positive environmentally sensitive behaviour among people to achieve environmental sustainability.

What is Ecological Environment in Marketing?

Relevance of ecological environment on the business is very similar to it relevance to individual. After all, business can be considered as the activities of people organized in bigger group. The business and ecological environment influence each other in much bigger way than individuals.

The ecological environment is changing due to human activities during the course of utilization of resources of natural, social, and economic systems eventually lead to a longer period of interaction between the regional eco-environment in time and space to generate the cumulative environmental effects.

International study on the eco- environmental changes attributable to the focus on the natural eco- environmental changes, especially since the industrial revolution in modern times because of concern about global warming, greenhouse effect, acid rain, ozone hole, and other major environmental changes in global and regional in-depth Research .

The natural environment is often a critical factor, for “ultimately it is the source and support of everything used by businesses (and almost any other human activity) – every raw material, every energy source, every life-sustaining factor, even every waste disposal site. The natural environment determines what can be done in a society and how institutions can function. Resource availability is the fundamental factor in the development of business in societies”.

How to Raise Ecological Awareness Through Your Brand

Make Your Products Green

The one obvious method that you can increase environmental awareness with is through your products. You must offer green and environmental-friendly products/services to encourage your customers to get them. By showing the public how your green products and supply chain has little to no negative impact on the environment, your brand awareness and outlook will become increasingly positive.

In addition to that, greener supplies and products will help you reduce your carbon footprint immeasurably, so make sure that you minimize international source materials. This will reduce transportation and emissions costs, which can also have a huge impact on the environment.

Energy Efficiency

The way your facilities, employees, or workers operate can also have an impact on the environment, so be sure to prevent any harmful operations within your facilities. Business owners essentially have at least one office, which can easily be energy efficient by applying the right practices. However, if your business encompasses other facilities like a manufacturing plant, for example, you’re bound to apply more efficient methods that will help preserve energy.

You can start by doing an energy audit, for instance, which will help you identify your energy usage in your facilities. Let’s say that conditioned air often escapes the premise of your building, an energy audit will help you patch the leaks, which will effectively reduce heating and cooling bills.

Halo-Lit Signs

Every business, company, or corporation is looking for effective means to promote their brands. There is no better way to do so visually than with using attractive halo-lit signs, as they have proven time and time again their efficiency in this regard. In addition to being able to customize it to your specifics, these signs are made of high-quality material, like aluminum, lexan, and acrylic, all of which are environmentally-friendly material, given the proper usage.

Add to that halo-lit signs are illuminated using LED bulbs, which are the most environmentally-friendly option of illumination out there, so you won’t have any doubts if you’re looking for a sign that provides energy-sufficient illumination at all times.

Adopt a Positive Tone of Voice

The fact that everyone acknowledges the importance of sustainability and energy efficiency is great. Unfortunately, there is little effort done to encourage environmental awareness, especially among corporates and businesses. One way you can adhere to the dictations of energy efficiency and sustainability is by adopting a positive tone of voice.

Most business owners avoid uncomfortable or distressing subjects when designing marketing campaigns, but you’d be surprised by how responsive people would be when you add a positive tone. Make sure that your sustainability-focused message is empowering and encouraging to people of all ages and fields. It is important to be inclusive to gain the favor of your audience.

Be authentic, honest, and transparent. You should also provide proof that your brand is energy-efficient and that the energy you use is sustainable. You can also express that positive tone on social media accounts, seeing that most businesses can earn the favor of hundreds of people from social media alone.

Clean Transportation

Transportation constitutes most of your environmental footprint, so if your transportation means are unclean, you can’t say that your work endeavors are environmentally friendly, even if you’re using all the environment-friendly materials in the world.

Thus, it is imperative that you provide your employees with clean transport and also try to minimize the amount of traveling your employees have to do, as this can have a negative impact on the environment. Consider adding bike racks that will protect your employee’s bikes from elements. Electric car chargers at the office are also indispensable.

Environmental Health Training

One way you can start raising your company’s environmental awareness is by starting from within. Your employees might understand the gist of your marketing campaign’s general message, but they won’t really have a full conception of your ideas without proper training.

Therefore, you must start providing training programs, particularly in environmental, health, and safety disciplines to elevate their knowledge and enhance your brand’s view of the public. The more your employees are knowledgeable about sustainability, the greener your company will be.

Go Paperless

This step might seem a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by how business owners are unwilling to do it. Paper-based work can indeed be difficult to transfer to offline or cloud storage, and even if you find a way, it will take a lot of time, which will halt the process of going paperless.

When the paper is so integrated into the nooks and crannies of your business, you can go paperless bit by bit through printing less and providing more substitutes, like laptops or computers. You should also start digitizing important company documents as soon as possible. Paper-based data can be easily lost due to how easy paper can be damaged, as opposed to cloud-stored data, which can be safely stored online and accessed at any time.

Donations

Many people now go through the pains of volunteering and donating to help those in need and preserve the environment. In your case, donations for environmental charities will help improve your brand’s image to the public and increase environmental awareness.

Encouraging employees to volunteer for these charities or other causes can also be a great way to go about this. Make sure that you provide rewards for whomever volunteers. You should also organize an after-work event featuring your employee’s contributions and achievements to lift their spirits up.

What are the 5 Ecological Services?

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), a major UN-sponsored effort to analyze the impact of human actions on ecosystems and human well-being, identified four major categories of ecosystem services: provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services.

1. Provisioning Services
When people are asked to identify a service provided by nature, most think of food. Fruits, vegetables, trees, fish, and livestock are available to us as direct products of ecosystems. A provisioning service is any type of benefit to people that can be extracted from nature. Along with food, other types of provisioning services include drinking water, timber, wood fuel, natural gas, oils, plants that can be made into clothes and other materials, and medicinal benefits.

2. Regulating Services
Ecosystems provide many of the basic services that make life possible for people. Plants clean air and filter water, bacteria decompose wastes, bees pollinate flowers, and tree roots hold soil in place to prevent erosion. All these processes work together to make ecosystems clean, sustainable, functional, and resilient to change.

A regulating service is the benefit provided by ecosystem processes that moderate natural phenomena. Regulating services include pollination, decomposition, water purification, erosion and flood control, and carbon storage and climate regulation.

3. Cultural Services
As we interact and alter nature, the natural world has in turn altered us. It has guided our cultural, intellectual, and social development by being a constant force present in our lives. The importance of ecosystems to the human mind can be traced back to the beginning of mankind with ancient civilizations drawing pictures of animals, plants, and weather patterns on cave walls.

A cultural service is a non-material benefit that contributes to the development and cultural advancement of people, including how ecosystems play a role in local, national, and global cultures; the building of knowledge and the spreading of ideas; creativity born from interactions with nature (music, art, architecture); and recreation.

4. Supporting Services
The natural world provides so many services, sometimes we overlook the most fundamental. Ecosystems themselves couldn’t be sustained without the consistency of underlying natural processes, such as photosynthesis, nutrient cycling, the creation of soils, and the water cycle. These processes allow the Earth to sustain basic life forms, let alone whole ecosystems and people. Without supporting services, provisional, regulating, and cultural services wouldn’t exist.

How does Ecological Factors Affect Marketing?

A firm has no control over these factors. These factors constitute macro-marketing environment. For a firm, the only option is to accept and respect these factors, and adopt and adjust with them. Management must respond favorably to such environment in order to exploit the emerging opportunities.

These factors include:

1. Demographic Factors:

Demographic factors are related to population. Marketer must study these factors due to the fact that the market is made of people, and people constitute the population. Demographic study provides customer profile that is basic need for market segmentation as well as selecting target market.

Therefore, demographic variables have direct and notable impact on firm’s operations. A marketer must analyze demographic factors to get idea about number and type of people to be served as customers.

2. Ecological Factors:

These factors primarily concern with ecological (natural) environment. They are closely related to protection of ecological environment and pollutions – air, water, noise, and land pollutions. At present, the global-level efforts are made to protect environment.

Such efforts can lay down certain restrictions in terms of use of natural resources, cost of raw material, quality of products, production process and technology, disposal of wastes, pollution control measures, and so on. These factors affect to the several aspects of production, distribution, and disposal of products. A firm must understand that people want better quality products at low price, but not at a cost of quality of life.

3. Economic Factors:

Economic environment consists of economic forces that affect company’s costs, revenues, and profits on one hand, and customers’ purchasing powers and willingness to spend on the other hand.

Economic forces include a large number of variables, such as:

i. Economic growth rate

ii. Interest rates

iii. Inflation rate

iv. Functioning of stock markets and commodity markets

v. Industrial and agricultural policies

vi. Fiscal and monetary policies

vii. Export-import policies

viii. Liberalization, globalization and privatization processes

ix. Government’s long-term planning and investment in infrastructural facilities

x. Quality and availability of basic facilities/services like transportation, banking, warehousing, insurance, communication, etc.

4. Socio-cultural Factors:

Social and cultural factors affect consumers’ tastes and preferences. People buy or favour those products which suit or complement their social and cultural norms, values, traditions, and habits. Knowing these factors of the target market, a manager can effectively design product- mix and promotional programme.

Social-cultural environment is ever-changing and requires the manager to undergo adjustment and readjustment in his marketing mix to balance between what consumers want and what company offers. Ignoring or underestimating this environment can harm severely the company’s interest.

5. Political and Legal Factors:

A firm has to operate within the present political system and legal framework. Political factors affect economic policies. Every marketing decision is subject to be affected by political and legal factors. Governments have formulated a series of legislations to regulate business operations to restrict unfair trade practices and protect consumer and social interests.

These laws may create new opportunities or challenges for businessmen. A manager must know business philosophy and approach of the current governments, and legal provisions that he has to observe while dealing with other parties.

6. International Environment:

The world had become a global village. Most countries have permitted free trade (with little restrictions). A marketer has to deal with and satisfy cosmopolitan customers. Liberalization, globalization, and privatization promoted multinational companies that carry their operations in many countries.

A businessman is required to follow global business theory – act locally, but think globally. Every firm, whether large or small, is, directly or indirectly, influenced by international economic and political forces.

7. Technological Factors:

Technological factors affect the firm’s production process, product quality, cost effectiveness, and, hence, competitive ability. A wise manager must know the latest technology in the relevant field. Technology has released wonders in fields of business transactions, communication, entertainment, medical science, agriculture, and manufacturing systems.

At the same time, it has released horrors in fields of hydrogen bombs, horrible chemical weapons, crime styles, deterioration of ecological environment, and so forth. Every new technology is a force for creative destruction. New technology compels old one to exit. New technology brings superior products having more capacity to satisfy consumer needs.

What is Ecological or Green Marketing?

Green marketing (or environmental marketing) is the promotion of environmentally friendly products, services, and initiatives. More specifically, green marketing refers a broad range of environmentally friendly practices and strategies. Some green marketing examples include:

• Creating eco-friendly products
• Using eco-friendly product packaging made from recycled materials
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from production processes
• Adopting sustainable business practices
• Marketing efforts communicating a product’s environmental benefits
• Investing profits in renewable energy or carbon offset efforts

Green marketing is becoming more popular as more people become concerned with environmental issues. Indeed, in 2020, more than three quarters of consumers (77%) cited a brand’s sustainability and environmental responsibility as very important or moderately important in their choice of brands.

While green marketing can be more expensive than traditional marketing messages and practices, but it can also be profitable due to increasing demand. For example, products made locally in North America tend to be more expensive than those made overseas using cheap labor, but local sourcing and supply chain means they have a much smaller carbon footprint than goods flown in from overseas. For some consumers and business owners, the environmental benefit outweighs the price difference.

Beyond making an environmentally friendly product, business owners can implement other tactics to create a business strategy that capitalizes on the benefits of green marketing. The following can all be part of a green marketing strategy:

• Using eco-friendly paper and inks for print marketing materials
• Skipping printed materials altogether in favor of electronic marketing
• Adopting responsible waste disposal practices 
• Using eco-friendly or recycled materials for product packaging
• Seeking official certifications for sustainability and
• Using efficient packing and shipping methods
• Using renewable energy and sustainable agriculture practices
• Taking steps to offset carbon emissions via investment

Green companies take a long view of their businesses, prioritizing the well-being of the planet and future generations over short-term profits.

How Ecological Factors Affect Business?

General environment forces have the ability to shape the task environment and a company’s abilities to resource needed materials and export goods. They also can affect important aspects of their business, such as their customer’s willingness to purchase their product. Take, for instance, how the sociocultural force of individuals switching to streaming movies is making movie theaters and movie rental services become less popular.

These forces also affect the planning and overall performance of an organization. When making big decisions about what to sell and how to market their items, a it’s helpful for a business to consider all the forces influencing their success so they are proactive at identifying opportunities and potential setbacks.

While these forces affect organizations differently than internal factors, such as turnover rates, managers consider them when planning, organizing, leading and controlling their projects. Executives use the PESTEL analysis tool, which stands for political, economic, sociocultural, technology, environment and legal, to understand how factors affect their industry:

1. Political factors

Changes in politics and regulations may determine how freely a business can operate. Political factors include government influences such as changes in trade tariffs and tax policies that may impact a business.

For example, a nation with a stable government and consistent trade regulations often attracts more international business, as international companies know that these factors will ensure that the nation conducts business effectively. Those same companies may be less likely to do business within nations that lack this infrastructure.

2. Economic conditions

Economic conditions can affect how well an organization performs in the marketplace. Economic conditions and factors can include things such as unemployment rates, consumers’ disposable income, interest rates and gross domestic product.

An example of this factor in action is an economic recession. When the overall economy suffers, there tends to be a decrease in discretionary income, or the amount of money individuals have left over after paying for their necessities. When the discretionary income is low, nonessential vendors like toy and luxury item companies are less successful than companies with essential products like grocery stores and pharmacies.

3. Sociocultural factors

Another factor affecting organizations is social demographics and socioculturalism, or a combination of social and cultural contributors. Some sociocultural factors include population size and cultural trends as well as demographics like age, gender and race. When advertising to consumers, businesses keep their target demographics in mind to find ways to best reach their audience.

One example of a sociocultural factor that impacts businesses is the rise in health consciousness in the general population, leading companies to market some products differently. As a result of this new awareness among consumers, some soda companies now offer more diet soda options and natural fruit flavors to attract health-conscious consumers.

4. Technology

Technology often helps businesses improve their own internal processes, but technological developments that occur in the general environment also shape how businesses operate. Depending on the organization, these improvements can negatively or positively affect their operations.

For example, cameras are becoming less common household items as more people use their cell phones to take similar quality images. The technological advancement of cell phones changed the camera industry. Another advancement in technology is the switch to online ordering for restaurants and coffee shops.

Though food service is not the only industry that uses online ordering, this technological change in the general environment allows food service businesses to offer an additional service to their customers.

5. Environment

The physical conditions in the environment also have an impact on how businesses conduct themselves. Environmental factors like climate change, natural disasters and pollution levels can affect the supply chain or increase costs for raw materials. This is clear in the recent trend of energy companies creating clean energy alternatives for their consumers, such as solar and wind energy.

A specific example of environmental factors in the general environment impacting businesses is when some plastic water bottle companies switched to using recycled plastic to manufacture their bottles in response to used bottles ending up in landfills.

6. Legal

The legal system also influences business activity. Some legal factors include health and safety regulations, employment laws, antitrust laws and discrimination laws. These also could include industry-specific regulators, which create rules that shape the competition in a specific industry. The Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration are some examples of regulatory agencies.

An example of legal factors impacting businesses would be the law in the U.S. that protects intellectual property rights. This ensures that piracy doesn’t occur, which could cause a movie company to lose profits for their latest film if it were being sold illegally on other streaming platforms. Additionally, the Sherman Antitrust Act, which bans monopolistic business practices, is an example of a legal general environment factor that directly relates to businesses.

What is an Example of Ecological Approach?

The term ecological perspective is a concept from the science of ecology that refers the study of organisms and how they interact with their environments. In 1973, Carel Germain borrowed the term and used it to explain the way sociologists and social workers should study the interactions of people and groups within social and cultural environments.

The ecosystems theory of social work encourages those in the field to look at the environment surrounding a person or group when attempting to provide support. Researchers use many categories to collect social data, including habitat, niche, adaptation, goodness-of-fit, self-esteem and self-direction.

Habitat and Niche

Habitat is the social and physical environment where people live, work, shop or spend time. These individuals often share similar values and perspectives. Niche is a person’s or ethnic group’s place in society as determined by their immediate environment.

People have similar influences and shared relationships when they belong to the same habitat or niche. For example, people who live in rural environments or public housing have specific types of influences from the spaces they inhabit, and also share certain types of influences and relationships depending on how they earn a living.

Adaptation

The ecosystem perspective studies how adaptation occurs by looking at environmental, social and cultural factors that lead to changes. New technologies provide more comfortable and effective ways of functioning in certain environments. For instance, many people now use the Internet to shop and work, to save money and resources.

Social researchers and those who use the ecological perspective in social work use what they learn about these changes to identify, understand and provide solutions to social issues through social services, such as when someone needs help learning new technology skills to find a job.

Goodness-of-Fit

Goodness-of-fit refers to how well a person fits into a historical, social and cultural context. Social workers call this the life model approach and use it to help determine factors that keep people from fitting into a context. For example, social workers use this category to develop sensitivity to diverse backgrounds and issues of bias and social prejudice. Thus, instead of blaming the individual, they can recognize when clients’ needs are not met by the resources available.

Self-Esteem and Self-Direction

Social researchers also study psychological factors that make it difficult for someone to adapt or fit into a social or cultural environment. Low self-esteem causes a person to feel unloved, unworthy or inferior. Self-direction refers to how much control a person feels he has over what happens in life, and the ability to take responsibility for decisions. The ecological perspective studies how these emotional skills develop in early childhood and evolve in adulthood.

What is an Example of Ecological Sustainability?

The United Nations (UN) defines sustainability simply as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

“I like this definition,” said Mike Weinstein, director of sustainability at SNHU. “It asks us to consider two things; first, what are ‘needs?’ And secondly, what is life beyond ourselves?”.

Weinstein describes “needs” as clean water, healthy food and stable housing and points out that billions of people still lack access to some combination of those needs. According to Water, a global nonprofit organization, about one in 10 people, or 771 million people, do not have access to safe water.

When looking at life beyond the present, it becomes clear that environmental sustainability involves a level of selflessness to ensure that the people of the future are also being considered.

Environmental sustainability is important to preserve resources like clean air, water and wildlife for future generations.

Another important sustainability definition that Weinstein likes is: “Ensuring that human society operates with ecological borders.” This definition is known as the planetary boundary (PB) concept. It was introduced in 2009 to define where humans can operate safely within the environment’s constraints, according to Science, an online research organization. It’s important to understand that humans do have boundaries, and it’s important to understand where those are to maintain sustainability.

Although, most of the world is very disconnected from the basic functioning of the planet and it’s easy to lose sight of essential factors, according to Weinstein. For example, humans are members of Earth and live in the same spaces as the rest of the living beings on the planet. “Our current economic activity ignores these boundaries,” Weinstein said.

One thing is clear: environmental sustainability is vital because human survival depends on it.

There are many different ways to use the environment sustainably. Some of these are:

• Renewable energy, such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, and biomass
• Recycling of metals, such as iron and steel, and minerals
• Crop rotation
• Cover crops
• Selective logging

Renewable energy is a major point of sustainability. Energy use is a large contributor to pollution and resource misuse. Renewables can produce energy indefinitely, unlike non-renewable energy sources, which are eventually used up. Renewable energy also typically produces less pollution than non-renewable energy.

Mining can cause significant environmental damage and pollution. Recycling metals and minerals instead of discarding them reduces the amount that needs to be mined. More efficient use of resources can also help them last longer.

Two examples of sustainability in agriculture are crop rotation and cover crops. When one crop is grown in a field year after year, it depletes the soil of nutrients. The practice of crop rotation involves a cycle of crops, usually including legumes, which maintain soil quality.

This can increase crop yield and ensure a farm will be productive for many years to come. Cover crops are planted outside the growing season to reduce soil erosion. Their roots keep the soil in place, protecting the field until the next growing season begins.

In forestry, the process of selective logging improves sustainability. A few trees are chosen for logging while the rest of the forest is left alone. This reduces environmental impact and allows the forest to recover after logging.

What are the Environmental Factors that Affect Advertising?

Kotler and Keller define the marketing environment as all the actors and initiatives that influence business decisions and outcomes. The marketing environment comprises the internal and external factors related to marketing activities.

While an organization has control over the internal factors, the external factors such as socioeconomic and technological changes, political and competitive forces fall outside organizational control. Firms exist and operate in an environment.

As a result, knowledge of the marketing environment profoundly influences marketing strategy’s effectiveness and efficiency. Market conditions and relationships have become increasingly dynamic in today’s society. Therefore, businesses have to operate within an ever-changing marketing environment.

The resulting uncertainty provides companies with opportunities and threats, thus demanding that a firm undertakes a thorough and continuous analysis of the environment and alters the marketing mix to reflect the prevailing trends within the marketing environment.

Knowledge of the external environment is crucial for making intelligent future marketing strategies and plans. On most occasions, marketing managers have significant control over the four P’s of marketing. However, they cannot influence the forces external to the firm, which present immense opportunities and threats to their business.

The external environmental factors require marketing managers to continually monitor and evaluate the marketing environment to spot trends and other essential signals for enhancing business growth and development. Since business organizations cannot influence changes within the external environment, they can only adapt to these changes through transforming their marketing strategies.

For instance, even companies with significant sizes such as Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Walmart cannot influence political patterns in the countries where they operate. Thus, they continually tailor their marketing strategies to adapt to the prevailing changes.

Economic Factors

Local, national and global economies are perhaps the greatest environmental factor to be dealt with for any small business. When times are good, sales are up. When times are bad, the focus on your marketing strategies and promotional methods should multiply many times over. Both local and national economies can influence marketing decisions by determining how much expendable income your consumer base has to spend and how much fear they may have about spending it.

Businesses that deal with necessities are less likely to be seriously affected by downswings, although a reassessment of the product line and its price point may be in order. Businesses who cater to an industry driven by elective purchases can see far more serious negative effects from an economic downturn.

Laws and Government

Changing laws affect all aspects of business, marketing included. New taxes on business can affect your bottom line and require a reduction in the amount of marketing you produce. New restrictions on purchases can affect your customers’ ability to shop for your brand.

Read Also: Cultural Differences Affecting Advertising

New laws governing consumer age limits, licensing requirements or any number of other factors can place limits on the consumer and hinder your opportunities to sell. In some cases, new laws can be directed at controlling your marketing efforts directly. For example, privacy laws may remove valuable access to consumers and cause a change in marketing strategy altogether.

Supply Lines

Product supply lines are affected by factors such as weather, natural disasters and the cost of fuel. When your product supply is affected, so is the way you market your products. If supply costs suddenly double due to political issues abroad, you may have to change your marketing from a price-focused approach.

You also may have to put major marketing initiatives on hold until the supply becomes more reliable or costs level out. On the other hand, if supply costs suddenly drop due to cheaper labor and a struggling job market, your marketing may be able to shift focus to the great deals to be had.

Consumer Trends

Market trends can change the entire direction of your businesses marketing with very little notice and to great effect. Trends can be the result of endorsements, fads or any sudden change in consumer preference or buying habits on a large scale. When trends change, your marketing must respond to position products and the brand itself in a new light to remain a valid option for the consumer and not fall out of favor.

For example, you have been touting your brand of widgets as the most stylish available for the past 10 years but the market suddenly trends strongly toward high-tech over style when it comes to widgets. It is up to your marketing to reposition your widgets as technologically advanced and viable in the new market climate.