Marketing and Communicating Your Sustainability Efforts

If you are thinking of implementing sustainability measures in your business, or have already done so, effectively communicating your commitment, objectives, and successes to customers, employees, and other stakeholders will help determine how much return on investment you will get out of your green program. 

Strategies for Greater Return 

To help you achieve a greater return on investment when marketing and communicating your sustainability efforts, try these three strategies: 

Create green value Marketing

Success is defined by how well you position your product or service for your customer. What’s the value you’re creating for them? And how do your green initiatives relate to your overall marketing message? According to an article published in Environment magazine: “Research indicates that many green products have failed because of green marketing myopia—marketers’ narrow focus on their products’ ‘greenness’ over the broader expectations of consumers or other market players (such as regulators or activists).” The key to successfully marketing your greenness involves not solely focusing on environmental or sustainable attributes, or customer satisfaction, but rather, on both. All green products and services can gain from concentrating on some or all of these five benefits: health and safety, convenience, efficiency and the associated cost savings, performance, and (at times) status. If your products and services don’t seem to embody any of them—say your product is produced in a way that uses less water but consumers can’t see that—you can bundle your product features with other benefits to create a compelling value proposition. For example, in addition to promoting the absence of the controversial ingredient, aluminum, Tom’s of Maine deodorants are also positioned as longlasting and highly effective in fighting odor. So the company’s marketing message extends beyond greenness to appeal to what people expect from a good deodorant. If your products or services meet fundamental consumer needs, then consider how to incorporate some or all of the core benefits that consumers desire from green products and services. It’s important to reframe the way you think about marketing green to make the most of the attributes your products or services possess. 

Avoid greenwashing 

It’s impossible to talk about marketing greenness without talking about greenwashing. Greenwashing refers to efforts by companies to portray themselves as environmentally responsible to overstate environmental benefits or misrepresent, mislead, diminish, or divert attention from environmental wrongdoing. To decide whether you can position a particular product or service as green, ask yourself these questions about your marketing: 

• Does it exaggerate an environmental achievement to divert attention away from an environmental problem? 
• Does it focus on one environmental achievement but conceal other environmental impacts? 
• Does it tout environmental achievements that are required or mandated by existing laws? 
• Is it impossible to substantiate the environmental claims? 
• Are the environmental claims vague or meaningless? 

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” then you should consider not positioning the product or service as green. You can either fix the issue(s) so the answer becomes “no,” or you can mention the environmental achievement, but not use it as a positioning strategy. Say you’re a retailer who sells a few green products. Instead of calling yourself a “green retailer,” you can credibly advertise a section in the store devoted to green products. For example, most office supply retailers can’t call themselves green because they offer products that are not eco-friendly. However, many have significant green sections on their websites, stores and mail catalogs. 

Communicate with stakeholders and employees 

If you haven’t already done so, it makes sense to write a green mission statement defining your green efforts, stating your company’s intention to mitigate the environmental impact of your business practices, and articulating your commitment to being green. Since your environmental mission is the basis for your competitive advantage, it should be at the forefront of your communication efforts. 

• Share it with customers, employees, vendors, and suppliers, as well as the broader community. In fact, failing to share your mission is a missed opportunity. 
• Post it on your website where people can find it. Depending on your industry, it might deserve a tab on your main navigation bar. 
• Include a link on emails, online newsletters, and printed materials. 
• Post it in a prominent area of your office or retail space. 
• Include an abridged version on all press releases.