Consumers are more loyal to and engaged with brands that share their moral convictions. Enter long-term marketing tactics. As more consumers become interested in environmental, social, and governance sustainability, the practice of sustainable marketing has gained in popularity. Organizations must address the environmental and social ramifications of their business models in order to be sustainable.

Pollution, such as carbon dioxide emissions and the usage of toxic plastics, are examples of environmental concerns, whereas consumer requirements, values, laws, ethics, and public safety are examples of social and corporate governance elements.

At their core, sustainability initiatives aim to address major ecological and social problems. Organizations that prioritize sustainable marketing practices can do the following:

• Reduce their environmental footprint.
• Source materials from sustainable suppliers and create eco-friendly products.
• Donate to sustainable causes.
• Invest in environmentally-friendly work environments and office buildings.
• Incentivize employees to carpool or ride a bike to work.

Marketing teams can use campaigns to promote these practices in order to rally consumers behind their company’s sustainable products and fundamental beliefs. Investigate five critical best practices for marketing teams to follow as they develop a long-term marketing plan.

1. Commit to an environmental or social cause

Business leaders should link their company mission to a sustainable cause, as these initiatives can lead to long-term benefits, such as brand recognition, customer loyalty, innovation and cost savings. Organizations that commit to a larger purpose can help create a lasting culture of sustainability as they find ways to make a difference in their local communities.

With this commitment to sustainability, organizations can find innovative solutions to global challenges such as climate change and resource depletion. Sustainability initiatives can also help to build trust with environmentally conscious consumers.

These strategies can offer organizations an edge over their competitors that may not view sustainability as an important aspect of business.

2. Take a long-term approach

Business and marketing leaders should not view sustainable marketing as a short-term way to boost sales. Instead, they should view it as a long-term commitment. Organizations that want immediate benefits from a sustainability initiative often abandon these practices after they achieve some business benefits, such as increased brand recognition or sales. This type of thinking runs counter to core sustainability principles — which often require long-term dedication — and could lead to greenwashing.

Long-term sustainability efforts involve changes in production processes and product designs. These transformations require an organization’s time, capital investment and personnel expertise. Also, these businesses must continuously monitor, measure and evaluate their initiatives’ effectiveness to ensure long-lasting sustainability.

3. Educate consumers

Organizations with sustainable marketing strategies should educate consumers on their company’s mission. These businesses should explain their mission’s importance and demonstrate specific steps they’ve taken to support that mission. With education, consumers are more likely to understand the organization’s goals and values, which could lead to increased customer engagement and loyalty.

Customer education can also increase sales as customers learn more about environmental and social issues. Educational content can engage potential customers, which can help organizations further develop brand recognition.

4. Apply sustainable practices across the whole organization

An organization should integrate its sustainable marketing strategy across the whole organization to create a unified, consistent message regarding its commitment to sustainability. If organizations make sustainability an internal priority, they can ensure all activities and initiatives throughout the organization align with this core value.

Organizations can also enhance collaboration between departments if they inform employees about and include them in the sustainability initiative. Interdepartmental collaboration can lead to faster implementation of sustainability strategies and more meaningful business outcomes. This type of collaboration can also improve organizational resilience, as it lets teams quickly react to external pressures while they maintain their commitment to sustainability.

Additionally, organizations can ensure transparency and trustworthiness — both internally and externally — if they integrate sustainable practices into every aspect of the business. An integrated strategy helps customers and employees feel confident that the organization is dedicated to environmental or social sustainability. A successful sustainability initiative also requires everyone in the organization to understand and participate in the mission.

5. Be consistent

Organizations need consistent messaging to communicate their sustainability commitments to customers. Clear and consistent messaging can help customers understand a company’s core values.

Read Also: How do You Market an Eco-Friendly Product?

Consistency can also ensure that employees remain engaged and focused on sustainability. If organizations offer a consistent message across all operations, everyone in the company can know what they are working toward and how employees’ individual contributions fit in to the bigger picture.

What Does It Mean to Be Eco-Friendly?

The sale of products or services based on their environmental benefits is referred to as eco-friendly advertising or marketing. These offerings may be environmentally friendly in and of themselves, or their manufacturing method may be environmentally responsible in some way. Eco-friendly advertising efforts highlight and share these benefits with your customers.

Here are a few pointers to help you develop an effective, environmentally friendly advertising and marketing strategy.

Focus on the Benefits

Think about what aspect of your product or service is eco-friendly. Are your materials locally sourced? Are they chemical-free? If your business has a “green” product or service, design your eco-friendly advertising campaigns around that aspect of your product. If your company manufactures sustainably, make sure to highlight that in your eco-friendly ads.

Think Locally

We are all busy, so it can be hard to find extra time to do more than work, spend time with loved ones, and fit in some rest.

While it’s said the more you volunteer, the more you’ll experience its benefits, volunteering doesn’t require a long-term commitment or take a considerable amount of time. Getting involved is an excellent opportunity to support local businesses and reduce your carbon footprint. Plus, you can cross promote your products or services, which is essentially a “free” public relations and eco-friendly advertising campaign in itself.

Support Environmental Initiatives

Donating to environmental organizations and communicating these efforts to your audience can go a long way in showing your belief in ecological causes. Environmental charities work to preserve and protect the environment and to promote ecological research, conservation, and appreciation.

Select charities that your business aligns with and collaborate in such a way to create eco-friendly advertising campaigns that will benefit both your business and the charity that you are looking to help. The charity may even have eco-friendly ads that you can co-brand and help bolster the legitimacy of your marketing efforts.

Always Be Transparent

With the environment being at the forefront of plenty of news stories, businesses are meeting more demand by regulators and consumers (especially millennials!) to be transparent in their environmental governance. It is essential that companies are environmentally transparent about both the good and the bad business practices they employ.

Get out in front of your competition and let your audience know about your green initiatives, but don’t exaggerate or hide negative news. If you are smart and honest with your eco-friendly ads, that transparency will foster consumer trust and recognition for your brand.

Look at Environmental Labels

Eco-labels like Energy Star and USDA’s Certified Organic are a recognizable way to let your audience know that your product is eco-friendly. Energy Star is a trusted symbol backed by the United States government that recognizes products for their energy efficiency, which helps consumers save money and protect the environment. Products that don the Energy Star logo have shown that they reduce pollutants and greenhouse gases caused by the inefficient use of energy.

USDA Certified Organic products have stringent production and labeling requirements. An example requirement is that organic products must not use genetic engineering or ionizing radiation. Organizations must also make products following the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances.

How do You Promote Sustainability in a Product?

Marketing to the “green” or sustainability market is not the same as marketing to the mainstream market. The products are held to higher standards and are judged not just on their efficacy, but also on their ability to fulfill societal and environmental duties. When marketing sustainability, it is critical to commit to environmental responsibilities from the beginning of product development to the conclusion of product life while also achieving financial performance.

The following are guidelines on how to market sustainable products effectively:

• Make sure your product works. Ensure the product competitively delivers on both traditional and sustainability benefits. If the product doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter how “green” it is.
• Be genuine in sustainability efforts. Fulfill the sustainability message throughout the entire product’s lifecycle—from sourcing of ingredients to the recycling process.
• Market transparently. Consumers have come to develop a strong relationship with sustainable companies and brands. They demand transparency. Seventh Generation got into trouble with their baby wipes product when they changed the size of the packaging to have less wipes per package and did not effectively communicate the change to their consumers. Consumers felt “cheated” and lost faith in the company, which took some time to rebuild.
• Strengthen your core. Corporate social responsibility needs to be at the core of your company’s business philosophy permeating the supply chain all the way through to treating employees fairly. Take, for example, Walmart, who has pledged to reduce their carbon footprint yet is getting sued for employee discrimination.
• Manage any sustainable pricing gap. The high price of many of the sustainable products discourages consumers from purchasing and actually can be perceived as a sustainability tax or surcharge. Eliminating or reducing the price barrier helps to dispel the notion that green products are not just for the elite and will encourage more people to consume better-for-the-environment products.
• Don’t force the consumer to make big tradeoffs—whether it is price, performance, convenience, or a noisy package. Most consumers have not proven that they are willing to make significant sacrifices.
• Have patience. Most environmentally friendly consumer behavior requires behavioral changes, and behavioral change takes time. Generation Y and millennial consumers are more apt to embrace this change faster. As more and more companies are jumping on the green bandwagon and eliminating some of the barriers, change will evolve quicker to help shape this shift toward a more sustainable future.

Here are some other factors to put into consideration:

1. Assess All Raw Material Sources

Let’s start with one of the easiest and most influential factors in product sustainability. Sustainable products should use raw materials that come from as environmentally social or harmless sources as possible.

The materials used at the start will highly influence the overall sustainability of the product throughout the life cycle. Are organic or otherwise harmless options available? If we use limited resources like plastic, are we using post-industrial grade materials? Products that fail to consider these criteria will simply never be sustainable.

2. Check It’s Recyclability

Alongside the choice of raw materials, we also need to consider the environmental impact that happens at the end of life of the product. By undertaking an entire life cycle assessment, we can better determine the overall product sustainability. We must remember that the consumer’s actions form part of the product life cycle.

In this case, using recyclable and environmentally friendly materials will make a big change. Such materials ensure consumers are able to make more eco-friendly choices to protect natural resources. Question every non-recyclable material and not only ensure it is unavoidable, but that it is used at an absolute minimum.

3. Inspect the Manufacturing Process

How a product is created also has both environmental and social factors that need to be considered. This includes, for instance, the power sources used in manufacturing, as well the other materials that may be used during this process.

When using water in large amounts, for example, this can have numerous consequences on the surrounding area, thanks to the displacement of natural resources. A sustainable product would seek to minimize such impacts through controllable means, whether it’s limited manufacturing or creating additional actions to counter the damage. This often requires inspecting production sites and improving their own internal processes to reduce the company’s environmental impact.

4. Assess The Supply Chain

Alongside the materials used in production, we must also consider the wider environmental impact of any product’s value chain, including supply chain, as the latter nonetheless forms a vital part of the product’s life cycle impacts.

Often, this is where businesses need to make key considerations throughout their delivery and manufacturing processes. They need to look at the environmental impacts of every additional company or service used. In today’s world, even just working with unsustainable companies during production is viewed very poorly on the market.

On the other hand, limiting product’s life cycle costs – meaning reducing negative environmental impacts in the entire life cycle of the product, including its very beginning – may bring certain economic benefits to the company. Especially in developing countries, signs of undertaking sustainability efforts, such as reducing contribution to climate change, making constant, significant improvements to the products and ensuring sustainable development of the company are very often awarded by receiving global level third party certification, such as World Fair Trade Organisation certificate.

5. Measure It’s Transportability

Near the end of the manufacturing process, the product still needs to reach the consumer. Whether it’s sold directly or sent to stores, how easy something is to transport will help make it a more sustainable product.

For example, how many items can fit on a pallet? Can the packaging be reduced to make this even more efficient? Can we use more eco-friendly transport options? More than just material, excess wasted transport capabilities simply add to the more greenhouse gas emissions which your business will need to offset to ensure product sustainability.