How to Create a Sustainable Marketing Strategy

Welcome to Conscious Marketing Insights! Every other week, I share actionable conscious marketing insights to help you deliver digital experiences that matter. My goal is to inspire brands to adopt a more positive, sustainable, impactful, accessible and inclusive approach to marketing.

This week, I'm happy to introduce Gemma Butler , who is speaking at an upcoming event hosted by the Conscious Marketing Movement .

I've been a huge fan of her and Michelle Carvill for their incredible work on the Can Marketing Save the Planet? podcast and their fantastic book, "Sustainable Marketing: How to Drive Profits with Purpose." Michelle and Gemma are such an inspiration, and I’m so grateful for their participation.

Event Details

Date: Thursday, 5 December 2024 (tomorrow!)

Time: 6 PM CET (find your timezone here)

Duration: 1 Hour

Why Attend?

A relaxed conversational opportunity to ask questions directly to Michelle Carvill and Gemma Butler about how to craft and mobilise your Sustainable Marketing Strategy.

What Will You Learn?

In this 1-hour session, you'll learn:

- The role marketing plays to support, mobilise and optimise your organisation’s sustainability agenda.

- Insights, tips and ideas about how Marketers can utilise methodologies and models such as Sostac and the 7Ps adding a responsible, sustainability lens to support driving impact.

- The components of the Sustainable Marketer Action Plan - Inwards, Upwards, Outwards

Interested in Attending This Event? Here's How.

If you're part of the Conscious Marketing Movement , you can join this event for free. Go to the community to get the details. ??

Not part of the Conscious Marketing Movement yet? We’d love to have you!? Check out our membership options to suit every budget and need, starting at €15 per month. Learn more here:

Interview with Gemma Butler

… And I had a chat with Gemma Butler to give you a sneak peek into what you can expect:

What is the driving mission behind your business or work?

As Michelle mentions in this article, around 6 years ago, we started researching our first book, "Sustainable Marketing - How to Drive Profits with Purpose". At the time I was the Marketing Director for the Chartered Institute for Marketing and I had noticed that I was commenting more and more on environmental related issues in the media, something that hadn’t really come up before. This spurred my interest and was further fuelled by the research we were undertaking as it soon became apparent the role business and indeed marketing was playing in driving the issues we were facing.?

So as Michelle said, we set about putting that right - our first book was the catalyst for change, quickly followed by our podcast so that we could keep the conversation going. We weren’t willing to publish the book and leave it there. Our knowledge, conversations and background quickly moved into the learning programmes to support education, and it was here that we realised the need and started working with leading academic bodies and extending our reach.?

We have always believed that marketing is a strategic role, and not just comms and campaigns. Look at everything marketing has done to get us to where we are today, changing mindset, shaping behaviours, driving innovation, sharing insights. We now need to apply those things with a responsible lens and start innovating and engaging stakeholders to build new markets and economies which better serve the planet and society.?

Why is sustainable marketing important to you?

Because it has the potential and opportunity to drive positive change at scale, and if done in the right way everyone (people and planet) will benefit. It’s made marketing exciting again, it moves Marketers away from the monotony of digital comms and into a space where they can use creative problem solving.?

What are some key metrics that businesses should use to measure the success of sustainable marketing? How do these metrics differ from traditional metrics?

In addition to Michelle’s answer here, business needs to measure sustainable marketing beyond just sales of products and services and revenue. We need to think about social impact, which does move the metrics from objective to more subjective, but they are just as important. Building communities, nurturing them, sentiment and increased positive wellbeing – how are people feeling, what do they care about. Shared value, participation and contribution. We can’t make progress on social and environmental issues if society doesn’t take part. As Marketers we can leverage market and consumer insights to understand market trends, behaviours and attitudes, and see where challenges and opportunities may be. Marketers can leverage stakeholder engagement working cross functionally internally, with suppliers and partners as well as with citizens. And, marketing can use its understanding from its activities to build trust and reputation which is a long term objective for any organisation.

Can you share some examples of marketing campaigns or strategies that embody sustainable marketing strategies?

I think social marketing and cause marketing embody sustainable marketing strategies. Using marketing principles and techniques to influence behaviours that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good, or partnering on campaigns to support a cause. I love the creative campaigns that come out of Ocean Saver where they are actually doing both social and cause marketing – Through purchasing their product they are getting people to engage in refill (circularity), their message inform and engage and, at the same time purchasing their products supports donations which Ocean Saver gives to the Blue Marine Foundation.

What are common mistakes businesses make when trying to implement sustainable marketing strategies?

As well as Marketers seeming to forget that sustainability needs to be marketed in the same way as anything else, there is also a tendency to try and fix everything at once which let’s face it is impossible (I wish it was that easy). It’s better to understand the landscape and challenges and then look at where you can make change and progress and focus on that as a start point. Also, talk about progress (successes and failures) sustainable marketing has a to be an ongoing conversation – all too often sustainability is approached as a ‘campaign’ – a one off.?

If someone's new to navigating sustainable marketing, what resources would you recommend?

On the Can Marketing Save the Planet website, we have a Learning Zone and a 100 Points Challenge. This is a great starting point as it’s all free to access. We have many teams taking our 100 Points Challenge - which encourages them all to start learning and sharing and once you start… you just want to keep going.

Our Can Marketing Save the Planet podcast is an absolute fountain of sustainable marketing knowledge. Gemma and I have learned so much over the years of interviewing many brilliant minds - and we’ve got much more to come...

Marketers, academics, social impact organisations, researchers, ESG strategists - there’s something for every Marketer. I would encourage your audience to dive in and explore the topics and learn. The podcast is on all the usual podcast platforms, including Global Player and The Marketing Society podcast.

Finally, we have our Online Sustainable Marketing Training Hub - here we have formal training courses, which we’ve designed to be scalable learning resources - fully online. Some of these online training courses are certified programmes, such as our Carbon Literacy for Marketers.

Interested in Attending This Event? Here's How.

Not part of the Conscious Marketing Movement yet? We’d love to have you!? Check out our membership options to suit every budget and need, starting at €15 per month. ??Learn more here

Become a part of the Conscious Marketing Movement

Transform your marketing from manipulative to conscious. Join our online community, listen to our podcast, or come to our coliving retreat! We bring purpose-driven entrepreneurs and conscious marketers together to learn, connect and grow so that we can create social impact and profits.? ??Learn more here

That's all for today!

If you would like to show some love for this newsletter, you can consider buying me a cappuccino with oat milk right here ?. I'll happily sip while writing the next edition, in my favourite local café here in Dresden, Germany.

See you soon ??