The last decade has seen the rise of ESG from an emerging practice to a central part of any organization’s operational efforts. Investors are demanding it. Businesses are pressuring their suppliers to adopt science-based targets and increase the diversity of their staff. Even governments are drafting new regulations.
Businesses that aren’t taking action or are focused on greenwashing and bandwagoning will falter as common standards emerge to measure and compare ESG performance. The next decade has widely been called the Climate Decade – but it will also be the ESG Decade. Expect diversity and governance concerns to gain in importance at the same time companies are pressured to adopt net zero goals.
The organizations that thrive? They won’t just be those making the right investments, creating the right culture, and empowering people of all backgrounds to thrive. It will be the companies doing that – and also communicating their impact effectively.
Here’s the bottom line: if your ESG marketing efforts stop once your annual ESG report is released – you’re doing ESG marketing all wrong.
Why You Need an ESG Marketing Strategy
Everyone is an ESG stakeholder these days. 99% of millennials are interested in sustainable investing and 73% of them made changes to their investment portfolios because of social justice issues, according to a 2021 study by Morgan Stanley. The broader population of investors isn’t trailing far behind — 79% are interested in sustainability and 50% shifted their portfolios.
And it’s not just investors companies have to consider. A 2021 report by PWC, found that 83% of consumers think companies should be leaders in ESG best practices and 91% of business leaders believe their companies should act on ESG issues. 86% of employees would also prefer to work for companies that care.
How to Use Your ESG Report in Your ESG Digital Marketing
But, you might be thinking, you invest a lot in your ESG Report. Does that mean it’s not important? Absolutely not. Your ESG Report will only become more important as companies and investors increasingly turn to it to make buying and investing decisions. But you need to stop seeing it as a stand-alone product. Instead, see it as a jumping off point to create the material that you’ll be integrating into all your other marketing messaging.
Use it to create an interactive and engaging web page where you talk about your company’s commitments. Leverage it on your social channels. Create content that expands on some of the themes in your report or interviews experts in your company or organizations that your company supports on your corporate blog or podcast. The CTAs for that content? Your normal pitch but this time also include a link to your ESG Report to learn more. Your job is to call attention to all the ways your organization is leading on ESG.
Create a Multi-Channel ESG Campaign
So, how do you integrate your ESG marketing strategy into marketing campaigns that include the right amount of ESG messaging?
- Revisit your personas. Start by looking at your existing buyer and stakeholder personas. What are each of their ESG concerns? Use research studies to help guide you. Targeting the CEOs of startups? Find a study that examines their ESG concerns. You might need to make some additional personas to represent new potential buyers or stakeholders. The goal is the better understand how ESG is motivating each of your key segments and what ESG messaging they might need at each stage of their buyer’s journey.
- Tweak your sales collateral. Now that you know what’s motivating each of your segments, you need to check if your current sales collateral is addressing their ESG pain points. No? Find ways to integrate your company’s ESG value proposition into those pieces in callout boxes or within the messaging itself.
- Renovate your digital channels. How often do you talk about ESG on your social, email, and web channels? Not much? Time to change that. Find opportunities to share your brand’s values driven story across all mediums. Make sure that your channels are also optimized to be accessible and inclusive.
- Update your content calendar. Your content calendar could use an ESG refresh. Think of reports, thought leadership, infographics, articles, interviews, videos, or podcasts that would show that your company cares and is leading on ESG issues. Check your site to see if your images and video reflect your company’s diversity. Does everyone look the same? Do you not have captions or transcripts? Time to shift your strategy and update old content.
The Era of ESG Has Arrived — How is Your Marketing Meeting The Challenge?
A savvy ESG marketing strategy integrates ESG marketing throughout an organization’s marketing strategy, customer acquisition, and customer retention lifecycles. That includes:
- Values and purposes-based branding
- Social and community marketing that centers ESG
- ESG-related thought leadership
- ESG sales collateral messaging
- ESG product marketing strategies
- Integration of ESG into recruiting material and internal communication
- Cause marketing
- Accessible and inclusive digital marketing
- ESG Influencer and SME marketing
- And more! It’s time to think of your company’s ESG investments as central parts of your brand story rather than just something you talk about once a year. Then build an ESG marketing strategy from there.
It’s time to think of your company’s ESG investments as central parts of your brand story rather than just something you talk about once a year. Then build an ESG marketing strategy from there.
