10 tips for marketing sustainability

Giles Robertson, managing director of Green Banana Marketing and associate Sustainability Practitioner, Kim Bailey, took part in a Google Hangout Session on whether consumers have turned-off from green and how marketing can switch them back on.

Here are the top 10 tips for marketing sustainability that came out of that conversation:

1. Create your own unique sustainability journey.
2. Gain leadership from the top for an effective team effort.
3. Drop the jargon, avoid ‘greenwash’, go for absolute clarity.
4. Link up with those in-the-know to lessen your environmental impact. This can be with NGOs - such as the Marine Conservation Society - to work on marine projects, or sustainability experts to gain the right standards and certifications.
5. Develop credible targets and deliver tangible outcomes.
6. Break down your vision into bite-size pieces.
7. Use real people and real projects to tell your success stories.
8. Be bold in your ambition and actions and let people know about them.
9. Social media is your best friend in creating conversations and motivating your customers, explain on a day-to-day basis how you are doing things and don’t ever tell porky pies.
10. Celebrate success and reward your customers. Place the emphasis on personal benefit and show how the greater good has benefitted too.

Although the good old marketing strategies of knowing your customer and meeting them where they are in their environmental knowledge still holds good; sustainability marketing requires tangible proof for any claims.

Promises need to be delivered.

Watch the debate

Read more from Giles Robertson, Chairman of The Marketing Society Charity Group and member of the Sustainability Growth Group. Join the conversation @gogreenbanana #marketing4good