Building trust and setting limitations: Marketing sustainability beyond product
In the latest feature in our new series exploring marketing’s role in driving sustainability, we explore the benefits of looking beyond product to the other 4Ps.
As warnings on climate change continue to mount, businesses of all kinds are moving towards lessening their impact on the planet, but marketing – driving both growth and value – has a difficult path to tread.
Understandably, of the four Ps of marketing – price, product, place and promotion – most brands have tended to focus their sustainability efforts on the product.
For B2B recycling and waste management company First Mile, a core aim of helping businesses recycle more and cut the carbon impact of waste means it is hard to get away from marketing about sustainability, explains Caiti Black, head of marketing and ecommerce.
However, marketing forms just one of a ‘Holy Trinity’ of key factors for First Mile’s customers, along with cost and service. Across its two core customer groups – SMEs and enterprise-level businesses – these three elements are constant, says Black, but vary in the “hierarchy of messaging”.
