Business Sustainability Begins in the Marketing Department

Guest Blog Post by Leah Feor of simplysustainableblog.com

What if your business could make a bigger marketing impact and reduce your global footprint at the same time?

From postcards to packaging, and everything in between, marketing your brand can use a lot of resources.  Of course you want to get your message out there, but is all of that print material really worth it?

Print Materials vs. Social Media Marketing

With today’s quick moving marketing and short attention spans, you can end up wasting a lot of printed promotional material at the end of each campaign. On top of that, studies have shown that social media marketing can generate 3X more customers than traditional marketing and it costs 62% less.* Clearly social media can be of great benefit to your company, not just because it’s an amazing marketing tool but also because it’s a more eco-friendly solution.

Social Media Marketing: Effective AND Better for the Environment

Consider the impact that social media marketing has made on the printed press.  Companies are shifting their marketing dollars away from print in favour of building their brands online. This change is being driven more by results than by environmental consciousness, but that’s ok! It’s a win-win situation. In paper conservation alone, online marketing is a big step forward for sustainability.

Being more sustainable and eco-friendly isn’t just about reducing your printing, or choosing eco-friendly materials. It’s also about creating better content, reaching more people, and ensuring a better return on your investment.

What about the materials that your business still needs to print? How can you make them more sustainable? You can start by using social media as a leverage point. At times it’s necessary for companies to make use of print. That’s where market research conducted on social media comes in.

Market Research

Good marketing is all about grabbing people’s attention and leaving a lasting impression. Social media provides the perfect opportunity to test the waters. You can send your content into the world to see how it performs. Doing so is inexpensive, both on your pocket book and on our global resources. If there’s a good response, you might consider the material suitable for print distribution, and you can test and tweak your messaging along the way to see what garners the best response.

Think Twice (or More) & Print Once

No matter what kind of promotional material you’re planning to send to print, consider the lifespan. Are you printing something that will be obsolete in two weeks? Or is it suitable for an ongoing campaign? For material with a short lifespan, plan your strategic distribution very carefully. Material that’s date-specific will be tossed (hopefully recycled) within a short period of time so taking the quantity and quality of the print materials into consideration will help to reduce unnecessary waste.

When creating your strategic plan for distribution, ask yourself the following:

• Who needs to know this information?
• How and where will the print materials be shared? (By direct mail, in a rack, on a counter, etc.)
• What is the likelihood of the material capturing customer attention? (Handed out individually vs. piled on a counter where someone might pick it up, etc.)
• Is there something of value on the printed material, like a coupon?
• Can this information be shared online instead of through print?
• What is the call to action?

Before rushing off to the printers, when you stop to consider these questions you might realize that it’s more efficient, effective, and eco-friendly to run an online campaign with a coupon code rather than distributing the marketing materials manually.

Embrace Evergreen Content

If you need printed promotional materials to distribute at a trade show or event, we recommend using the evergreen content method. That means using content that won’t expire, change, or become obsolete. When you print postcards and flyers with the evergreen method in mind, you’re creating material that has long-term value. The content should be as accurate tomorrow as it will be in 6 months or a year. If you really want people to hang on to your promotional material for the long run, consider ways to add value. Depending on the nature of your business, that might mean including tips, reference information, or even a great quote; anything that will make the printed material memorable and worth keeping. When you provide impactful and memorable content, people will want to hold on to it, refer to it, and even pass it along to their colleagues, clients, and friends. Branding to Last When you invest in quality promotional material that includes the right, tried, tested, and true content, it sends a message to your audience that you’re here to stay. Marketing has evolved drastically over the past decade and includes a whole new world of online advertising, engagement, and promotion.  For the sake of sustainability, both for your brand and for the environment, be sure to include online marketing in your strategic plan.”>evergreen content method. That means using content that won’t expire, change, or become obsolete. When you print postcards and flyers with the evergreen method in mind, you’re creating material that has long-term value. The content should be as accurate tomorrow as it will be in 6 months or a year.

If you really want people to hang on to your promotional material for the long run, consider ways to add value. Depending on the nature of your business, that might mean including tips, reference information, or even a great quote; anything that will make the printed material memorable and worth keeping. When you provide impactful and memorable content, people will want to hold on to it, refer to it, and even pass it along to their colleagues, clients, and friends.

Branding to Last

When you invest in quality promotional material that includes the right, tried, tested, and true content, it sends a message to your audience that you’re here to stay.

Marketing has evolved drastically over the past decade and includes a whole new world of online advertising, engagement, and promotion.  For the sake of sustainability, both for your brand and for the environment, be sure to include online marketing in your strategic plan.

Guest Post by:

Leah Feor
simplysustainableblog.com
@simplysust

*State of Inbound Marketing, Demand Metric