Let me start this list of content strategies for eco-businesses with the bluntest disclaimer possible.
We can’t shop our way out of the mess that we’ve shopped our way into.
On the other hand, we can’t stop buying things altogether; and as long as we’re alive, we will be consuming something, whether it’s food, energy, services, clothes, shelter or education.
I believe in ethical consumption: buying less, but buying better. Because no matter how much we make-do and mend, when we live in society, we will consume something. I also believe in sustainable systemic change, the type of change that makes it easier for the highest number of people to make the highest number of sustainable choices.
Sure, they may be some asceticism advocates who tout the benefits of never again buying a new thing.
But I believe that we’re more likely to affect large-scale change if we vote with our dollars (or euros, or yens) for the kind of business practices that we want to see more of: sustainable, ethical, fair trade, sweatshop-free, organic, regenerative, local.
So the aim would be to replace buying 20 items of fast fashion clothing per season with one well-made item produced by a sustainable small business. The price is the same (the one item might be expensive, but it’s much cheaper than 20 items combined), but the impact is significantly lower.
That being said, the small eco-businesses or sustainability startups that are popping up and offering alternatives to buyers are often not equipped with the same marketing flair that has been helping massive corporations push consumerism for decades.
And my argument is that eco-startups shouldn’t even try to use the same sleazy tactics, such as making people feel bad about themselves and then selling them something as a cure to feel better, or exploiting people’s fear of missing out.
Instead, here are some communication strategies that eco-businesses can implement to talk about their products and services. These strategies come in no particular order, but I did include some real-life examples to make them easier to understand.
If you’re a small business, chances are that your resources are already stretched thin, so you can implement these communication strategies one at a time. You also don’t have to do all of them.
1. Your messaging should focus on the positive.
We all know what the problems are with the business-as-usual approach: high levels of pollution, destruction of natural habitats, plastic soup in the oceans. And that’s just scratching the tip of the iceberg. (Oh, don’t even think about the icebergs now!)
How did the sentence above make you feel?
Experts and research agree that using a positive pattern of communication is more productive in persuading people to take action. That’s because nobody likes to feel chided and chastised. And people don’t generally want to be reminded of the gravity of a problem, but they are more receptive to messages that focus on the possibility of overcoming problems.
Paradoxically, people don’t want to talk about the problem, but they do want to be part of the solution.
In general, we seek out positive emotions such as happiness and pride. We’re not mentally wired to be receptive to guilt-tripping or feeling ashamed.
The advertising industry has been using fear, guilt and FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) as drivers of sales for decades. But if we associate these negative feelings with sustainable behavior, the actions we want to encourage might not just be actively ignored, but the campaign could also cause psychological reactance (engaging in the complete opposite behavior).
A simple way to recognize psychological reactance is to consider whether your messaging might elicit reactionary responses along the lines of:
You don’t tell me what to do!
Who are you to tell me what to do?
But how do you craft positive messaging and content for your eco-startup?
Micro case-study: Beyond Meat
Let’s have a quick look at how Beyond Meat does it. Their messaging doesn’t focus on telling people that they should give up meat. In fact, ditching meat for a healthier and more sustainable alternative is not even mentioned.
And they certainly don’t guilt-trip people by showing them the devastation the meat industry is responsible for. All this information is freely available from other sources (as is most information about the different aspects of the climate crisis nowadays).
Instead, the company is encouraging people to give “humane burgers” a try because this is a healthier and more sustainable choice.
Even including the word “beyond” in the name of the company and in the name of each and every one of their products does not imply subtraction. They don’t focus their messaging on going without something, but in going beyond. It’s a qualitative addition, rather than a subtraction. And it’s a very clever way of putting a positive spin on it.
The American cultural zeitgeist has always focused on going beyond what was the norm (from the days of the frontier settlers to space exploration and the obsession with the “voyages of the starship Enterprise”). And at this point, Beyond Meat is semantically feeding on that obsession.
2. Show your process.
When you’re writing content for your eco-business, are you focusing on the specifics of your business?
Your business. Not the industry in general.
When you show the many steps it takes you to get from raw material to final product, you’re showing how much effort you put into your product. And buyers tend to reward effort when they see it rather than when it’s an opaque process behind the scenes.
This is the reason why some restaurants allow customers to have a full view of the kitchen staff hard at work, or why bartenders will prepare an overpriced cocktail right in front of you, giving you a taste of the knowledge and precision it takes to master the art of mixology.
The digital equivalent is that of websites such as kayak.com, which delays showing the results of your query by showing a Loading or Calculating tab. The actual process of finding the deals takes much less time, but they pull this trick just to give their users a visual representation of all the effort and hard work Kayak is saving them.
This type of content is also a valuable window into why a sustainable business is a much better choice than a non-sustainable mass-production high-waste operation. Show your audience why your fair-trade coffee has to cost more than the store-brand bucket of coffee that they might be used to. Or why there’s a guarantee that your sustainable linen dresses will last longer than the fast-fashion garments that only cost $10.
Here are a few topics you could write about to show your process:
- How you find raw materials and what standards you follow when you pick the materials you use for your products.
- How you choose your collaborators, partners, supply chain, stockists.
- How you come up with ideas and designs for new products.
- How you design your product and why you’re making certain design choices.
- How you manufacture your product.
- Any “behind-the-scenes” or “day-in-the-life” blog posts that show potential customers the effort and care that your company puts in creating the products you offer.
Micro case-study: Mott and Bow
Have a look at how Mott and Bow describes the process of making sustainable denim. They explain the “denim science” through a series of texts and videos that take their customers from resin application to oven curation, pinning, tying and, finally, finishing.
You may not have been familiar with what “denim science” is, but after you watch the videos and read the explanations, you feel a little bit more “in the know.” And a buyer who feels “in the know” is a buyer who feels like they’ve made the right purchase.
3. Let the numbers speak.
We’re all hard-wired to like numbers. They help us with anchoring (figuring out how valuable a product is to us) and then with deciding whether it’s worth it for us. They also help us feel part of a solution.
So think about how you would quantify the answers to these questions:
- What is the impact of your product?
- How much waste are you diverting from the landfill?
- How are you saving or using materials? (Use numbers!)
- How much are you recycling/reusing?
- How many people is your business supporting?
Micro case-study: Ecosia
Ecosia, the Berlin-based search engine that plants trees, makes it very easy to find these numbers on their website.
Over 87 million trees planted
9000 planting sites
15 million active users
(Screenshot taken in March 2020)
The website also has a rolling counter that shows how many trees they have planted so far. So when you’re on their website, using their product, you get a sense of how big their impact is.
And, most importantly, you get the feeling that you’re part of this solution.
You’re in with the cool kids! That’s also one of the powerful effects of showcasing impact through numbers.
4. Connect your message to your customers’ values.
Values are our most fundamental principles, the beliefs that we would defend no matter what. People make choices that match their perception of who they are or who they want to be. Values are a powerful communication tool that not only drills at the core of who we are, but also defines who we associate with and the groups we belong to.
Here are two examples of how people’s values influence their choices.
This is what I believe in: that we shouldn’t use animals for testing cosmetics.
This is the kind of person I am: compassionate, kind, animal lover.
This, in turn, will influence the choices I make: vegan, cruelty-free products.
This will also influence the people I choose to associate/or not associate with.
And it will also influence the brands I support.
OR
This is what I believe in: that everyone should receive fair compensation for their work; that everyone should have safe working conditions.
This is the kind of person I am: fair, compassionate, militant, generous.
This, in turn, will influence the choices I make: fair-trade, sustainably-made, transparent wage, sweatshop-free, transparent supply chain.
This will also influence the people I choose to associate/or not associate with.
And it will also influence the brands I avoid: fast fashion retailers with a history of using sweatshop labor.
First, make sure you know what your customers care about.
What are their values?
How do these values translate into the choices they make?
If your customers care about something, and your product delivers, you have to communicate this accurately and consistently throughout all the channels you’re using: landing page, blog posts, social media posts, newsletters.
Micro case-study: Black and Berry
Black and Berry Living sells healthy cleaning products in refillable aluminum bottles. They know that in addition to caring about a healthy life-style and zero waste (aluminum is easily recyclable and the company offers to take back the bottles and reuse them), their customers also prefer products that are vegan, cruelty-free, and gluten-free.
That’s why Black and Berry puts that information front and center on its landing page and in the product descriptions. Knowing your customers’ values is a little bit like reading their minds.
5. Use mental shortcuts for decision-making to your advantage.
You may be selling ten versions of your product, or ten different products altogether, but your landing page is not the best place to talk about all of them.
When you’re giving customers too many choices, they will start to feel the side effects of choice overload: unhappiness, decision fatigue, choice deferral (not making a choice at all). This latter side effect is particularly dangerous for online businesses because of how easy it is for an overwhelmed potential buyer to just close your page or abandon their shopping cart.
You can counteract choice overload by simplifying the number of options available or the complexity of the choices. Make it easy to choose and the people landing your website are more likely to make a choice.
Micro case-study: Who gives a crap
This Australian company sells 100 percent recycled toilet paper and donates 50 percent of its profits towards building toilets for sanitation projects in developing countries.
If you go to their website, you’ll notice they only have four choices of products. Sure, you may think there couldn’t possibly be too many choices of toilet paper anyway, but that only means you’ve never had a meltdown in the paper products aisle of a Big Box store trying to figure out the optimal ply-to-color ratio. (That’s pure luck, my friend!)
6. Use “moments of transition” in your messaging.
When someone transitions away from their current status quo or transitions into a new stage of life (getting a new job, getting married, moving, retiring, becoming a parent), they’re more likely to change their habits and make different choices. They’re also more open to change and more likely to seek it.
You can acknowledge this in your messaging and then guide these people into making new choices that are sustainable long term.
You can use the “moments of transition” strategy to advertise your product even if your product is not necessarily aimed at moments of transition. (for example, moving boxes, diapers or wedding merchandise).
Let’s say the product you’re selling is stainless steel tiffins. You can craft a content writing strategy on a few pillars:
- Tips for parents who want to pack on-the-go healthy snacks.
- Tips for employees who want to start bringing their own healthy lunches to work.
- Tips for couples looking for more sustainable alternatives to add to their wedding registry.
- Tips for newlyweds to switch to zero-waste habits while they’re merging two households.
- Tips for keeping healthy habits in the middle of selling/buying a house and moving.
7. Look for the silent super adopters.
For a lot of businesses, the tendency is to jump on the influencer bandwagon and get that one endorsement from the hip, hyper-connected social media busy bee.
But very few brands are digging deeper into who buys their product and especially who their repeat customers are. What keeps them coming back? Are they sharing about it? Would they want to be featured on your website or on your social media channels?
These people are your true brand ambassadors. And often they have more clout with their close friends and family than influencers have with the strangers who follow them.
That’s because buyers are becoming savvy about how brand partnerships work. Buyers know that the influencer is getting a reward – either monetary or in-kind – in exchange for promoting a product; and an influencer is likely to only mention products for only as long as their agreement with the brand requires them to.
What are your repeat buyers saying about your products? This matters because these buyers chose you, not the other way around. They voted with their dollars.
A brand ambassador can be an invaluable advocate. Have a look at this study which concluded that solar advocates who installed solar panels in their own homes were able to convince 63 percent more residents to purchase and install solar panels.
8. Focus on consistency.
Some companies make the mistake of underestimating how much buyers are paying attention to the whole picture.
Here’s what I mean by that: buyers expect companies to be consistent, not just in their messaging, but in their actions too.
I’ve experienced this first-hand, even after I had spent a few good hours choosing a hotel based on its environmental rating. Once I checked in, I was very happy with the visible efforts the corporate hotel chain was making to lower their carbon footprint (keycard activated lights, bulk toiletries, the usual messages about towel replacements only if necessary).
But my satisfaction with my choice of accommodation took a nosedive the second I stepped foot in the hotel’s breakfast room. Every single piece of dishware and cutlery turned out to be disposable. And the worst kind of disposable at that, from styrofoam plates and styrofoam coffee cups to plastic cutlery and single-use coffee pods.
As a consumer, I felt duped, betrayed and extremely angry. Needless to say that I haven’t patronized that hotel chain after this.
And my distrust snowballed to include the environmental platform where I found the hotel and the green certification this particular hotel chain was boasting about on their website and social media platforms.
And just in case you might think this is just anecdotal evidence …
According to one study often cited in sustainable branding literature, when a hotel made visible environmental efforts (such as offering compostable toiletries) and asked guests to save energy, guests reduced their energy usage by 12 percent. When visible efforts were absent, consumers thought the environmental appeal seemed hypocritical and instead they increased their energy usage, even though the environmental message was the same.
Yes, actions speak louder than words. And yes, people pay attention to both.
Don’t ship your plastic-free toothbrush wrapped in plastic (true story)
Don’t celebrate your new line of sustainable products with a balloon release (true – and very stupid – story)
Don’t give away useless non-biodegradable swag that your customer never asked for in the first place (true – and very wasteful – story)
In conclusion
If you run an eco-business, there are so many strategies that you can use to communicate the value that you bring to the table without resorting to salesy tactics and preying on people’s insecurities. Keep on fighting the good fight! And if you need a content writer for your green startup, I’m here for you.
Featured image by Taylor Simpson on Unsplash.
