How to make sustainability marketing work for your brand
In simplest terms, the goal of marketing is twofold: building a brand and helping the company reach sales goals. Sustainability marketing (or sustainable marketing) weaves the company’s sustainability efforts and the sustainability of its products or services into the marketing mix to reach both of these goals.
After all, consumers and companies alike are increasingly paying attention to sustainability, and for good reasons. According to the 2024 Blue Yonder's Consumer Sustainability Survey, 78% of U.S. consumers reported that sustainability concerns are very or somewhat important when choosing products or retailers. Additionally, 65% of the respondents said they would pay more for sustainable products.
Quick summary of sustainability marketing:
To incorporate sustainability into your brand and marketing, you must first be clear about your goals. Then, you have to be smart about when and where to put it into practice—wrongly timed sustainability communication can actually have adverse effects on sales!
Step one: setting goals for marketing your sustainability actions
It’s important that you and your team are on the same page when it comes to answering this question: “What do you want to achieve by incorporating sustainability into your brand and marketing?”
That’s why setting goals right at the start is key – they will help guide your actions.
Here are some examples of what companies typically try to achieve by marketing their sustainability efforts:
Improving brand loyalty: Marketing can help increase customer loyalty if sustainability is a value your customers share (and data shows that most consumers do).
Attracting new customers: After all, most businesses try to grow their revenue and profits over time, and finding more customers helps achieve this.
Employer branding: If you’re trying to attract talent that resonates with your values, sustainability marketing can help. Forbes reports that younger generations prioritize meaningful work when seeking workplaces.
It can also be something else—like thought leadership or simply being transparent about your business's impact. Choose goals that fit your company-wide goals and values.
Step two: choosing when and where to communicate about sustainability
How can your sustainability messages work in your company’s best interests? It may seem like a silly question. After all, consumers care about sustainability and want to make better choices – so you may be tempted to highlight what you’re doing in all channels, using all the tools available!
The reality is a bit more complicated than that. Ask anyone who’s tried to measure the actions rather than the words of consumers, and you’ll learn pretty fast that what people say and do are often two different things.
Behavioural economics even has a term to explain this: the Attitude-Behaviour gap, also known as the Value-Action gap. In short, it refers to the discrepancy between the stated values of an individual or organisation and their actions. In the context of sustainability marketing, its significance lies in how there’s an increasing global environmental concern, but environmental engagement is lagging.
One real-life example is that, according to surveys, 50-86% of consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable packaging. Yet in a recent experiment, we offered more than 7,000 people the option to opt for sustainable packaging for less than 1 euro, and only 6% of the shoppers chose to do so.
Similar experiments by other brands have seen up to one-third of online shoppers choose better packaging for a small fee—better, but still way off from the willingness reflected in the surveys.
How wrongly timed sustainability messaging can harm your sales results
Even more, a recent study from the fine people at 181st Communications showed that sustainability messaging before the purchase can negatively impact sales.
Sian Conway-Wood summed it up at the start of a recent LinkedIn post:
The good news is that Sian also has a strong hypothesis for why that is so and proof of how moving sustainability messages to the post-purchase phase can help drive more business:
Top-of-Funnel (TOFU) messaging should focus on meeting the customer’s immediate needs, highlighting how the product solves their problems and aligns with their aspirations.
Sustainability messaging is most effective in the post-purchase phase, when customers are already committed to the brand and seek validation for their decision.
In a test with an ethical fashion brand, they shifted sustainability messaging from TOFU to the post-purchase stage. As a result, revenues per customer grew, the returning customer rate increased, and annual sales grew by 53%.
Again, this is based on behavioural science, namely the “Peak-End rule”: people remember the most emotionally intense part of an experience (the peak) and how it ends. As 181st Communications puts it,
“For sustainability-focused brands, the post-purchase phase is a strategic moment to highlight eco-credentials, create an emotional peak, and reassure customers that their decision aligns with their values.”
How to make sure sustainability messaging helps drive more business for your company
So, how do you put this to work for your brand? Here’s a simple checklist of things you can do to make sure your sustainability messaging is supporting your business goals and not hindering them:
Review your top-of-funnel messaging: is it focused on the customer’s needs? Remove any sustainability credentials unless they solve a key part of your target customer’s problems.
Include sustainability messages in post-purchase communication: confirmation emails or shipping updates are a good place to start. Case in point, a post-purchase email from agood company talks about its sustainability mission and highlights its charitable contributions:
Incorporate sustainability marketing into your unboxing experience: after all, for new customers, this is the first physical touchpoint with new customers and the “End” in the Peak-End rule, at least for this particular purchase. Drive the message home with prints on the parcel or unique materials to leave a lasting impression.
Finally, here are some tips on how to communicate about sustainability
As a sustainability-first company, we have given this a lot of thought. While there’s no doubt sustainability is a complex field, the communication part can be narrowed down to a couple of pretty straightforward guidelines.
Here are the guidelines we developed for our sustainability communication:
Make it data and fact-based. Be transparent and use or link to trustworthy data sources where relevant. Pro tip: Specific numbers also make the impact tangible and easier for your customers to understand.
Have real, ideally third-party proof. That means including certifications and accreditations where possible. Depending on your business, these can include Fair Trade, Cradle to Cradle, OEKO-TEX, and B Corp.
Accurate and consistent reporting. Sustainability is never “done”. If you’re serious about it, you’ll have goals, timelines, and reporting to back them up.
Consider and report on impact throughout the entire supply chain, from raw materials to a product’s end-of-use.
Cover three overarching areas: people, planet, and animals.
Actions speak louder than words. Anyone can create a sustainability page on their website, but showing sustainability in action is much harder. Find ways to do that to stand out from the crowd.
Following these guidelines, you should be able to avoid any unintentional greenwashing and actually move towards the goals you set yourself with sustainability marketing.
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