What is sustainability marketing? Help for marketers and managers

Sustainability marketing is a field that becomes more important the greater a company's sustainability efforts are. At the same time, sustainability claims are increasingly being used in the marketing of a wide range of companies to attract customers or generally improve their image. Sustainability marketing is caught between ambitious companies that want to communicate their honest achievements and companies that use sustainability as an advertising slogan.

We want to explain how the field is to be understood, what should be taken into account during implementation and how good sustainability marketing is organised.

In addition to this article, we also recommend the Sustainability communication as both complement each other.

What is sustainability marketing?

The term sustainability marketing is of course not clearly defined. Regardless of sustainability, marketing alone can be understood in different senses:

1. Marketing as a holistic discipline that encompasses product development, pricing policy and sales policy in addition to communication (cf. Marketing mix / 4P)
2. Marketing as external communication that serves product sales or branding

In practice, most companies usually use the second definition of marketing to refer to the specific field of activity. This is also how we want to describe sustainability marketing in this article.

Differentiation between sustainability marketing and sustainability communication

Once again, there is no general definition for this and the two disciplines are absolutely indistinguishable. That is why we want to treat both as we usually encounter them in the day-to-day work of company departments. Sustainability marketing places a major focus on marketing, market positioning and brand strengthening. Sustainability communication on the other hand, also includes internal communication and communication with stakeholders, e.g. in order to work together on the supply chain.

Differentiation between sustainability marketing and sustainable marketing

Here, too, there are major overlaps and ambiguities in practice. We want to define sustainability marketing here as the marketing for understand the sustainability efforts. On the other hand sustainable marketing the question of how marketing itself can become more sustainable. This means, for example, how print media can become more resource-efficient, how design can be more inclusive for people with disabilities or how diversity can be promoted through marketing.

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Goals

The be-all and end-all of every marketing activity is a clear goal, which problem needs to be solved. The process of defining objectives is no different from other marketing disciplines. Aspects to be included in the considerations are where the company stands, how far sustainability efforts have progressed and what the next steps are. Steps for the sustainability strategy be undertaken. The Articles on sustainability communication provides a good basis for this.

Typical targets are:

• Align the brand (of the company or product) more strongly with sustainability
• Communicate the company's sustainability efforts, e.g. to achieve market positioning on the labour market (employer branding)
• Communicate the sustainability performance of the product, e.g. to perform better on the market than competitors
• Market new sustainable products to enter a new market

Typical pitfalls in sustainability marketing

Certain target groups are sceptical about marketing that uses strong sustainability claims and keywords. This is due to the fact that quite a few companies want to capitalise on the neo-ecological megatrend and the growing demand for sustainability. The accusation of Greenwashing out loud. As a supplement we recommend the Article on how to avoid greenwashing can be realised.

We would like to list a few typical pitfalls of sustainability marketing here:

• Emphasise sustainable sub-brands too stronglywhile sister brands are conventional: This raises doubts among certain target groups about the veracity of the company's sustainability performance or the feeling that companies are distracting from their major conventional brands.
• Communicative focus on productswhile the company's operations do not become more sustainable: If the biodegradable and plastic-free product is manufactured in a water-damaging production facility using child labour, this will not be easy to communicate for long. In addition to the product characteristics, the production conditions and the company's other sustainability efforts must also be communicated in a harmonised manner. This is the only way to make sustainability marketing credible.
• Communicative focus on sustainable corporate operationswhile the products remain conventional: Just like in the previous example, it doesn't work the other way round either. If only the production conditions are marketed, but not the sustainability properties of the product, the target groups become suspicious.

Sustainability marketing instruments

Sustainability marketing comprises the same range of instruments as other marketing disciplines. The speciality is more likely to be found in the way sustainability communication should be designed in general.

Some instruments of sustainability marketing are

• Product campaigns that are either intended to emphasise particular sustainability features or generally place a product on the sustainability market
• Brand campaigns designed to charge the company's brand with typical sustainability characteristics
• Partnerships with other companies or NGOs to give additional credibility to your own sustainability efforts
• Brand development in which, for example, a product brand is to be recognised as more sustainable following product adjustments
• Product marketing across the board, including social media marketing, adverts, SEO and SEA
• Employer branding for sustainability

The basis for good sustainability marketing: sustainability performance

Everything we recommend about sustainability marketing and sustainability communication is based on the company substantially improving its sustainability performance. Only those who really work on becoming more sustainable can successfully market themselves in the long term.

For companies, this means first finding out which sustainability issues are relevant to them (Materiality analysis). In the following, they present a sustainability programme or a Sustainability strategy on which they can work consistently.

Ideally, companies will see sustainability not as a project or a separate strategy, but as a sustainability transformation. In this way, the topic becomes deeply rooted in the company and it will swim ahead of the wave of competitors and regulation in the long term. In this article, we explain what Sustainability transformation is.

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Conclusion: Use sustainability marketing consciously but profitably

Sustainability marketing is not rocket science and is nothing new for experienced marketers. However, it is important to have an in-depth understanding of the sustainability issues themselves and the sustainability requirements of the target groups. This is the only way for companies to avoid greenwashing and benefit from communicating their own sustainability efforts profitably.