Driving Sustainability

The Role of Your Marketing Team

Marketing plays a crucial role in helping businesses achieve their sustainability and net zero goals. But it’s not always about messaging and channel choice. Often, it’s about modelling best practice and walking the talk for the sustainability philosophy of the organisation as an exemplar for grass roots change. Here are some ways marketing teams can contribute...

       Leading on sustainability thinking

1. Promoting sustainable products and services is great – but the input of marketing teams may have to press for early involvement in innovation processes in order to bring customer desires for sustainable products to the table.  Decent customer research is the order of the day here. Since Covid, markets have been subject to intense volatility from multiple sources – meaning customer priorities and behaviours can be much more fluid than previously.  It’s the job of the marketing team to keep finger on the pulse, with tangible evidence of customers’ sustainability mindsets playing out in their buying choices. Step 1 – To design sustainable products and services that win customers' hearts and minds comes way before: Step 2 – Creating the stories and campaigns that secure profile and market share for low carbon products and solutions.
   
   

   Being defined by action

2. Implement sustainable marketing practices. Marketing teams can lead by example by adopting sustainable practices in their own work. This may involve reducing print collateral, using recycled paper, sourcing carbon offsets for events and travel, and using digital and social media channels instead of direct mail. Essentially, sustainable marketing practices are all about demonstrating the company's sustainability practices – so it’s not all about do as we say… but more about do as we do.
   
   
3. Make measurement a must-have. Marketing can track key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect a company's sustainability progress and fold this into communications. This may include metrics like the percentage of sustainable products sold, carbon emissions reduced through initiatives, and the amount of waste diverted from landfills. But numbers alone simply aren’t enough.  Without benchmarked data, or clear ‘befores and afters’, carbon reduction headlines can appear spurious – or worse – just plain fake. 
   
   

   Taking the wider view

4. Promoting partnerships with sustainability leaders. Sustainability wins and collaboration generally go hand in hand.  Marketing should have a voice in suggesting and forming strategic partnerships with sustainability experts. These might be non-profit organizations or industry groups focused on the environment and social good; or it might be about key relationships in the supply chain that contribute to lower carbon product and service delivery . Partnerships can generate new ideas, insights and messaging that marketing can use to strengthen the company's sustainability programs and communications – the message that sustainability is ‘better together’ belies the positive compound benefits that can be achieved when multiple stakeholders all play their parts.
   
   

   Delivering marketing magic

5. Inspired and inspiring sustainability communications. Last and by no means least, Marketing Teams have to communicate the company's sustainability efforts to customers, stakeholders, and the public in ways that make an impact. Each and every company is on its own journey to Net Zero and some are far more advanced than others.  So for some Marketers, this will be an all-day, every-day focus. For others it will be a strand of activity to be woven in and continually championed as part of the Marketing Mix.  However, irrespective of where an organisation is on its journey – we can all be confident that sustainability will only get more important.  So beginning to think about best practices now, OR pushing thought leadership further-faster by advocating clear customer insight is certainly a safe bet right now.