Of people want brands that demonstrate their positive actions on the planet: Green Marketing as a necessity

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Green Marketing is a practice that is gaining more and more importance due to the growing concern to adopt more sustainable practices.

Stephanie Coelho

Dec 22, 21 | 4 min read
green marketing
Reading time: 3 minutes
According to a study by Dentsu International and Microsoft facebook database Advertising , more than 77% of people around the world say that, in five years, they only want to spend money on brands that practice sustainable advertising. Additionally, 91% of people want brands to show that they are making positive choices about the planet .

But what does this have to do with Digital Marketing and what have been the impacts on companies and their consumers?

Green Marketing and its relevance for companies
Green Marketing is a strategy focused on developing sustainable actions and improving services and products that reduce the impacts of climate change.

This strategy has gained strength and importance in recent years due to the constant advance of global warming, causing great and sad consequences in different parts of the world, such as floods in China , water shortages in Colorado reservoirs and forest fires in the Amazon .

Despite these and many other facts, consumers are increasingly aware of the environmental impacts of their actions and, above all, of the actions of companies. Here is what the study conducted by Microsoft Advertising and the Dentsu International agency says :

“ Consumers put governments (51%), companies/brands (43%) and the advertising industry (41%) ahead of themselves (36%) as responsible for decarbonising advertising and hold companies accountable for how they experience the advertising they consume ”

Therefore, people are becoming more and more demanding regarding:

what they buy;
who they buy from;
how it impacts their lives and the environment.
These considerations are made by the consumer before deciding to purchase a solution and directly impact brands, since 3 out of 10 people are willing to pay more for more sustainable alternatives for products and services.

How can this data affect companies and brands?
With the spread of greater environmental awareness, Green Marketing has ceased to be an option and has become a necessity.

As an example, I bring up the case of a couple of friends who own a popular restaurant in my city. As local entrepreneurs for more than 3 years, they have always been concerned about sustainability by using biodegradable and recyclable packaging, in addition to constantly improving their products.

However, at one of the most critical moments of the pandemic, they had problems receiving these packages from their distributors and, in order to deliver these orders, they had to resort to plastic and expanded polystyrene.

To the owners' surprise, they received several complaints even from the most loyal customers and several negative reviews on delivery apps and on the establishment's social media.

Thanks to good management, the owners were able to solve the problems without major losses. This case serves as a warning not only of the direct impact of Green Marketing actions, but also to exemplify one of its greatest benefits: customer retention and loyalty .

In the book Customer Success by Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy and Nick Mehta we can see the concept of two types of loyalty that exist in the public: behavioral loyalty and attitudinal loyalty .

Behavioral or intellectual loyalty indicates that the customer is only loyal because they need to be and the scarcity of other solutions makes them loyal to the brand out of necessity.
Attitudinal or emotional loyalty , on the other hand, concerns customers who are loyal because they love the brand, finding values ​​similar to their own and identifying with that company.
And Green Marketing is directly related to attitudinal loyalty, as these are the most valuable consumers who will not only become loyal customers, but will also be willing to pay more for solutions and, above all, brand promoters for their network of friends and family.

What to expect from Green Marketing in the coming years?
Although the practical example of a Green Marketing strategy is specific to physical products, sustainable actions can also be applied in the digital environment and should be a practice to consider from 2022 onwards.

According to the study The Rise of Sustainable Media :

More than half of consumers showed they are ready to switch to brands that embrace more sustainable alternatives;
Within a year, 3 out of 5 people will start boycotting companies that take no action against climate change.
However, care must be taken when adopting these strategies because, more than a message, sustainability must be practiced in a transparent manner and in line with the brand's values, so that discourse and actions always go hand in hand.

If you want to learn about some examples of good practices and understand more about Green Marketing in your 2022 strategies, read our post on the topic.

I hope you enjoyed this article and started planning your strategies for 2022, including Green Marketing not only in marketing and sales actions, but also in the organizational culture as a whole.

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