How to Make Sustainability Marketing Effective Marketing

(This is the third of three posts discussing the use of environmental claims in marketing. The first two posts in the series can be found here and here. This post describes how marketers can make environmental claims more compelling for potential buyers and thus more effective at driving revenue growth.)

Many marketers at companies offering sustainable products or services have been featuring environmental messages prominently in their marketing campaigns, and this shouldn't be surprising. After all, numerous surveys have found that most people are concerned about the environment and support actions aimed at improving environmental sustainability.

But many surveys have also revealed a substantial and persistent disconnect between the views people express about sustainability in surveys and their actual buying behaviors. This say-do gap can be attributed to several factors, including:

• The impact of the social desirability bias on survey findings

• The failure of some surveys to capture how important sustainability is to survey respondents compared to other factors that influence their purchase decisions 

• The higher cost of many sustainable products

• How convenient it is to purchase sustainable products (compared to "non-sustainable" alternatives)

While all these factors have contributed to the say-do gap in specific instances, marketers also bear some of the responsibility for the gap because we haven't consistently communicated the benefits of sustainability in ways that produce changes in buying behaviors.

Recent Research Provides Important Insights

Making sustainability an effective marketing tool has been a tough challenge because there hasn't been much research on what kinds of sustainability claims are most appealing to potential customers. However, two recent studies have provided several important data points on this issue.

The Public Inc. Survey

The first study is a 2024 survey conducted by Ipsos on behalf of Public Inc. (the "Public Inc. Survey"). This survey was conducted July 11-24, 2024 with a nationally representative sample of 1,510 US adults and 1,508 Canadian adults.

The NYU-Edelman Study

The second study is a 2023 research initiative conducted by the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business and Edelman (the "NYU-Edelman Study").

For this research, NYU and Edelman partnered with nine consumer brands from various industries. The researchers conducted a survey with a sample of the US general population and asked respondents for each brand to rate the appeal of 30-35 marketing claims, which included a mix of conventional product claims and environmental claims.

The researchers used two robust survey techniques to obtain an appeal score for each claim and to identify the combination of claims that produced the maximum overall appeal.

The Formula for Effective Sustainability Marketing

Collectively, the Public Inc. Survey and the NYU-Edelman Study provide robust evidence about the attributes that make sustainability claims appealing to potential customers. They also identify two steps that you must take if you want to be successful at using sustainability claims in your marketing efforts.

Focus on the Right Goal

First, you must always remember that your primary objective is to drive increased sales of a sustainable product or products, not to evangelize the cause of sustainability.

This distinction is critical because it largely determines which sustainability claims you will use and how you will frame those claims.

The focus on increasing sales is not solely a matter of economic self-interest. The surest way to advance sustainability is to increase sales of sustainable products. As the authors of the NYU-Edelman Study report wrote:  ". . . consumer demand will be a key driver for companies to scale investments at the pace necessary to combat climate change and other urgent issues."

Recognize the Diversity of Your Target Audience

The target market for your sustainable products - and therefore the target audience for your marketing campaigns - will consist of potential buyers with substantially different levels of interest in, and commitment to, sustainability. So, your sustainability claims must take this diversity into account.

The Public Inc. Survey identified five consumer segments based on the percentage of their purchases that are conscious, i.e., purchases of "products or services made with consideration for social, ethical, or environmental factors."

The researchers found that only 9% of the surveyed consumers made conscious purchases at least 75% of the time. Forty-five percent (45%) of the surveyed consumers made conscious purchases less than 50% of the time.

Three Ways to Make Sustainability More Appealing

Based on the findings of the Public Inc. Survey and the NYU-Edelman Study, there are three steps you can take to make sustainability claims more compelling for potential buyers.

Step 1 - Link sustainability claims to "conventional" product performance claims

• The NYU-Edelman Study evaluated the appeal of sustainability claims and conventional product performance claims (which the study report calls "category claims").

• In this study, product performance claims were found to be "paramount and non-negotiable" and were more compelling than stand-alone sustainability claims.

• However, the researchers also found that claims that combined sustainability and product performance elements extended brand reach and were the most compelling claims tested.

Step 2 - Make sustainability personal

• Both the Public Inc. Survey and the NYU-Edelman Study found that sustainability claims were more appealing when they expressed how sustainability provides tangible benefits to the buyer or to the people or things the buyer cares most about.

• Specifically, the NYU-Edelman Study found that the surveyed consumers cared most about themselves and their families (health, well-being, etc.), saving money, local farms and farmers, their children and future generations, and sustainable sourcing.

• Conversely, both studies found that science-oriented claims like "carbon neutral," "net zero," and "bio-degradable" did not perform well with consumers. The NYU-Edelman Study did find that the performance of science-oriented claims is improved when they are tied to a personal "reason to care."

Step 3 - Emphasize the aspects of sustainability that deliver present-day benefits

• The Public Inc. Survey found that consumers are more likely to respond to sustainability claims that focus on immediate or short-term benefits.

• As the report's authors put it:  "They [consumers] want to know how their purchase makes their life better or easier now, not in some distant future."

A Final Point

Marketers who include environmental claims in their marketing communications must ensure that they have adequate scientific evidence to support those claims. And the same is true for environmental claims used on product packaging.

Without such supporting evidence, you run the risk that your company can be accused of greenwashing, which refers to making false or misleading claims about the environmental impacts of a product or company to make it look more environmentally beneficial than it actually is.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission is the federal agency primarily responsible for regulating environmental marketing claims, and all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have laws prohibiting false or deceptive advertising that can be used to combat greenwashing.

Equally important, the number of private class-action lawsuits involving allegations of greenwashing is increasing, and some have resulted in the award of substantial financial judgments against companies found to have engaged in greenwashing.

The important lesson for marketers is:  Only make an environmental claim if you have the evidence to back it up.

The top image is a version of the universal recycling symbol and is in the public domain. Accessed via Wikimedia Commons.