How do you conduct a green marketing audit to assess your strengths and weaknesses?

A company’s green marketing audit can take different shapes. You may find industry players naming this process as a green assessment, anti-greenwashing controls, etc. Remember that it must be relevant to your specific circumstances and align with the broader corporate enterprise risk management program to serve the ultimate purpose of making a business successful.

Any company seeking to be more sustainable will already know their product, supply chain, manufacturing partners and methods for getting the product or service from cradle to grave. Self evaluation on these elements is the first factor in deciding at each step of the process how can you reduce your impact from an environmental perspective. Is your raw material supply from sustainable sources, processed using clean technology or through considered processes from a regenerative stand point. Are you partners in the supply chain also making concious decisions to undertake this approach. If not why are you using them ? A logical and common sense approach to the relative issues your product or service faces is the bench mark of any audit

A green marketing audit reviews, objectives, and analyzes your brand's current sustainable marketing products, materials, campaigns, and in-house marketing scope 1. Before a green marketing audit, the company should have a solid sustainability strategy. A well-done sustainability strategy will be based on scientific evidence, follow a creditable framework, and review all scopes 1, 2, and 3. A green marketing audit and strategy are used to align the department's activities with the published sustainability strategy.

Green marketing audits are only relevant if your core products or service are based on sustaianablity and ethical manufacturing through the complete supply chain. Manufacturing products from petroleum based or High energy use processes with high uses of chemical and solvent based additives but shipping them in recylced packaging is not going to win an consumer favours and an audit is simply a further waste of resources in this regard.

To set the foundation, you will need to define what regulatory, industry or internal company protocols you will follow to conduct audit. The identified protocols and standards may influence the scope and direction of your audit program. Once those identified, you can proceed with the design of your audit exercise. Following the best audit practices, you must define the audit scope, stakeholders, goals, artifacts, methodologies and timeline. Since artifacts will primarily exist in digital format, you also have to identify technology solutions from which you will source data for your audit examination. Remember that green marketing audit has to be holistic and capture a company’s footprint across the entire supply chain.

To remain ethical and transparent, the green marketing audit should aim to be as comprehensive as possible across all products, services, departments, and scopes 1, 2, and 3. Alternatively, depending on the goal of the audit, you might also do a green marketing audit for a specific product or campaign. A green marketing audit will include the scope of work, goals, and objectives, the methodology used, the stakeholders involved, alignment with the goals set within the sustainability strategy, audit analysis, and a detailed action plan. Remember the green marketing audit should be guided by principles of local regulatory "green claim" or green advertising guidelines that are relevant to the areas you do business.

You can apply various methodologies to the process. Observations, re-performance, review, and testing are amongst many techniques that can be used to perform green marketing audit. Interviewing SMEs and customers to assess brand perception is another technique to be applied for a comprehensive audit examination.

The green marketing audit findings and improvement recommendations should be summarized in an actionable report. The results of the report can be used in multiple ways, including internal brand and product management decision-making, anti-greenwashing procedures, competitive analysis, and leadership oversight.

The green marketing audit will be the basis of your sustainable marketing strategy. Either you're in the process of transforming your current green communication of a specific product or service to be more ethical and transparent about its sustainability. Or you'd like to build a broad sustainable messaging strategy for the brand based on the company's sustainability strategy.

The frequency of the green marketing audit should be identified based on a company’s risk profile. If a company operates in a fast-paced environment that is prone to “green” impact changes, such as regulation, suppliers, climate it may lead to a higher corporate risk profile. The higher the risk profile, the more often a company needs to conduct audit. An annual audit is often used as a rule of thumb but doesn’t necessarily represent a good cadence for a high-risk organization.

An audit should be performed any time when there is a change to the the product / service or alteration in the full supply chain. This maybe as a result of A different supplier Manufacturing partner New product A new service. The likelihood is that this would be minimal if all metrics within the supply chain have a defined benchmark and agreed standard of acceptance and any new development should fall within these parameters or better still exceed it.

Remember that prevention is the best risk management strategy. Objectively assessing your product against potential threats of greenwashing and being transparent regarding your products’ environmental impact are the best ways to build and preserve public trust.

Not all new developments are as sustainable or as ethical as the marketing narratives would have us believe. Greenwashing is rife in many sectors. Many new products to market are shrouded in the hype but very little in the way of product, service, corporate or business transparency. Full open source information should be a legal consideration when lauching any new sustianble product, material or service for consumption to consumers. Full Public disclosure each and evey time. This would ensure the green marketing narratives can be shared credibly.

Setting up your green marketing audit is just one part of your greater sustainability strategy. All stakeholders within the company should be involved and the importance of ethical green communication should be communicated to them.