Sustainability – The Marketeers Dream or Nightmare?

• Communication
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• SEO
• January 10, 2010

Following the posts on communication I thought it would be a great time to talk about Sustainability and how it is becoming increasing popular in the FTSE100 companies.   Is giving something back to the community a sign of affluent times and the master of the house wanting to give the servants something extra or is a tax break enabling companies to pay less tax to a government which doesnt seem keen on spending it right, or maybe it is simply because environmental and caring issues are politically popular at the moment.  

Sustainability is something which has been happening across a lot of my customers’ roadmaps over the last few years.   How can we leverage business opportunities?  Whether that be through financial gain, customer acquisition, or brand awareness.

I cannot think of one financial services organisation that hasn’t mentioned the magic word to me in the past 12 months. “Sustainability“.  What is that all about?  Essentially it is about how these great big organisations gives something back to the world.  Barclaycard already had their Breathe credit card when I started there but, their Horizons project highlighted how they were sponsoring efforts in the third world – building dams, bringing aid and another project even helped single parents back into work.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) are also heavily involved and have published sustainability reports which detail its commitment to the wider environment – including communities, the environment, consumer issues and supporting enterprise. Have a look at the sustainability pages here. 

These are all great efforts and I’m sure there was a healthy tax benefit to them too (me being cynical I know). 

Ok so lets look at it from a marketeers angle.  Not only are you talking about something that is more exciting than financial services but you are giving those marketeers something else to talk about, another way to communicate with a specific grouping (1-2-1 marketing / personalised marketing)

However, lets look at the other benefits. 

1. Linkage

2. Client Acquisition

3. Search Engine Optimistation (SEO) by proxy

4. Brand Awareness

Linkage: Lets say for example you want to create a third party site to either talk about environmental issues and then link back to your own site e.g. “This site is sponsored by Miles’ Bank” – then that will generate more effort (as long as you’re continually working on developing the sustainability site and making sure that this is a authoritative site).  You do this by applying basic SEO principals – updating content (copy and images and video), commenting on blogs, encouraging comments on blog and commenting of other people’s blogs and linking back to your own. 

Client Acquisition: There is a breed of customer who will only shop where they feel ‘comfortable’ shopping.  Now I am not talking about whether the lights are too bright or whether they serve Mochas instead of Lattes.  I’m talking about the attitude that the organisation has towards:  the environment, animal cruelty, treating customers fairly and more.  Customers have been known to boycott organisations who have done/or perceived to have done something regarding emotive issues.

Search Engine Optimisation (by proxy):  Now this is a phrase I’m coining because by creating a site which has content and whose prescence is perceived to be “authoritative” you are creating golddust in SEO terms.  You are able to not only have a PR triumph but, you will be able to link to your own site on the right words in the hyperlink.  If you’ve read Naked Conversations (Scoble, Israel) you will hear about how businesses have created blogs by ‘customers’ in order to build brand awareness (see next paragraph) and as a sub-objective – create linkage and sales from the blog via the main site.  Some failed and some succeeded.

Brand Awareness: Everyone knows that having the right brand and keeping the brand in the right “light” is most important.  I remember when I was working at the Abbey National (about to be called Santander) and was dealing directly with account holders there was a massive push on ‘living the brand’.  You had to speak in a particular way and highlight benefits and so on. 

Conclusion: 

By investing in communicating about sustainability (or something else….) you are helping to create a brand persona.  A brand that cares about more than the bottom line. 

You are also engaging with customers 0n another level and allowing them to communicate with you.  Knowing more about your customer whether online or offline is ideal in a fast paced environment where customers’ loyalties can change with the slightest thought or bad customer experience.

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