Developing a Sustainability Communications Strategy: 10 Key Things to Consider

We don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that sustainability has never been more important. Both from a taking care of the planet perspective, and from a long-term business success perspective. 

More than ever, customers, employees, and investors expect companies to demonstrate a genuine commitment to sustainability. Fail to do that today, and those customers, employees, and investors are likely to focus their attention elsewhere. 

But here’s the thing; committing to sustainability by implementing sustainable practices is only really half the battle. You also need an effective sustainability communications strategy if you want your key stakeholders to know about, and react positively to those practices. 

You can be the most sustainable company in the world, but if you don’t manage to tell anybody about it, you won’t reap all the benefits you deserve. Benefits like improved brand image, increased customer loyalty, and recognition as a sustainability leader within your industry.

Well we think you should reap those benefits, because good things should happen to good people, and to good companies! To help make that happen, in this article we offer our best advice about how to communicate sustainability. 

By considering the following key points, you can create a sustainability communications strategy that turns your good sustainability deeds into a real competitive advantage. 

1. Map Out Your Sustainability Journey

Before you think about communicating your sustainability efforts, you need to determine what efforts you actually have to talk about. This involves understanding where you are right now in terms of your sustainability journey. 

How have you incorporated sustainability into your business strategy so far? In what areas of sustainability do you excel compared to your competitors? What are your sustainability goals for the future?  

To answer these kinds of questions, you should perform a sustainability audit. This can help you map out exactly what actions you have already implemented, what actions are in progress, and what areas you need to improve. 

From here, you can start to define a sustainability story that articulates what sustainability means to your company, while highlighting your sustainability strengths. 

(We can’t emphasize enough here how important it is to be authentic and transparent from the beginning when defining your story. To avoid greenwashing, you should always steer clear of overstatements and exaggerations, and be able to back up all claims with solid data).
 

2. Set Clear, Measurable Objectives

Once you know which sustainability credentials and goals you’ll be communicating, you should also determine what you want to achieve by communicating them.

Maybe you want to increase brand awareness, improve consumer trust, or attract new and forward-thinking investors or employees. Maybe it’s all of the above. Whatever your objective is, make sure that it is clear from the beginning, and that you can measure your progress.

3. Identify Your Audience

Knowing exactly what you want to achieve will help you identify your target audience. 

To do this, if you haven’t already, you should start by breaking your stakeholders into categories such as customers, employees, investors, regulators etc. 

Then, prioritize these categories depending on how important each group is to achieving your sustainability communication objectives. Any group you mark as a priority makes up part of your target audience. 

You should then outline what each priority group expects in terms of sustainability messaging. Doing this might involve conducting research to understand what your audiences care about regarding sustainability. 

(That last part is really crucial. As each group will inevitably have different concerns and motivations, you will have much more success if you tailor your messages for each group).

4. Develop Core Messages

Now you know who it is you are targeting, and what they care about. This is where the fun really begins; it’s time to get creative! 

Here you can take the sustainability journey you mapped out from your sustainability audit, and translate it into compelling core messages. As we discussed above, these messages should be tailored to each stakeholder group. This way, you can ensure that you are communicating your company’s sustainability journey to each in the most appropriate and effective way. 

As an example here, let’s say one of your core messages has to do with your sustainable packaging. When communicating this to potential customers, it might be best to focus on the packaging waste they can prevent by choosing your product. But for investors, focusing on complying with upcoming packaging regulations, or capturing a growing eco-conscious market might be a better angle.
 

5. Choose the Right Communication Channels

At this point, you might be feeling pretty chuffed with yourself, and rightly so. You already know what you want to say, who you want to say it to, and how you want to say it to them! But you’re not done yet. You still have to figure out the ‘where’. 

To reach your target groups, you will likely have to use a multichannel strategy to communicate your sustainability messages. This might involve social media, annual reports, email newsletters, television ads, or any number of other mediums depending on your objectives. 

Though your core messages will stay the same in essence across platforms, they will need to be adapted for each one. We’re thinking short, sweet, bright and attention-grabbing for social media, but deep and detailed for annual reports for example.

6. Ensure Consistent Messaging

Throughout all of your communication efforts, it’s important that you keep your sustainability messaging consistent. 

What you are really trying to do here is tell an ongoing, cohesive story. As opposed to sharing isolated facts or goals. You are creating a sustainability narrative that will become a key part of your brand identity moving forward. And just like your brand identity, this narrative should maintain the same ‘look and feel’ throughout your communications. 

This means emphasizing the same values, and using the same kind of language and visual elements across all touchpoints. While ensuring that all teams and departments are on the same page when talking about sustainability.
 

7. Sustainability Communications Should Not Be Siloed 

Speaking of which, it is absolutely crucial that sustainability communication does not become the responsibility of one department alone. 

If you want it to be effective, you must embed it across all facets of your organization. Everybody, from senior leadership, to supply chain managers, to sales interns, to customer service representatives should understand your sustainability story, and be able to communicate it effectively. 

If your sustainability team or your marketing team are the only ones who really know about it, you’re doing it wrong!

8. Measure Your Success, Optimize Moving Forward 

As we already mentioned, sustainability communication is about crafting an ongoing narrative. Your goal should be about more than implementing a one-off sustainability-related campaign. 

Through consistent, continuous communication, you will want to keep embedding sustainability into your brand identity. As you do this, you should use relevant tools and metrics to track the success of your communication efforts. While also continuously seeking feedback from stakeholders and monitoring public perception. 

This will allow you to adjust and optimize your strategy over time.
 

9. Be Prepared for Criticism

No matter how good your strategy is, you will no doubt face some skepticism or criticism along the way. People will scrutinize your sustainability claims, but this should not be a cause for worry. 

If, as we suggested, you have been authentic and transparent from the beginning, you can handle any criticism constructively by engaging in a dialogue and being transparent. 

If you respond in this way, it’s likely your company’s reputation will actually be enhanced, rather than hindered.

10. Consider Hiring a Sustainability Communications Consultant 

By carefully following the advice set out in this article, you should be able to create and implement a sustainability communications strategy that fits your needs, and achieves your objectives. Whether that means crafting an image as a sustainability leader in your industry, attracting new customers, investors, or top talent, or any and all of the above. 

To really boost your likelihood of success though, you can always choose to bring in some expert help in the form of a sustainability communications consultant. 

Sustainability communications consultants are specialists in, you guessed it, sustainability communications! From start to finish, they can show you exactly how to put together a strategy that works. 

If you feel like you could benefit from that kind of detailed guidance, then look no further; Dazzle has got you covered. 

Develop a Stand-Out Sustainability Communications Strategy With Dazzle 

We know the right sustainability communications strategy can go a long way to ensuring your company’s success moving forward. So we want to make sure that you get it right!

That’s why we have brought together the world’s best sustainability freelancers through the Dazzle platform. And this includes many top-quality sustainability communications consultants. (Their quality and track record is guaranteed as we extensively pre-screen all our consultants). 

You can choose to work with our communication experts on a project-based, on-demand, or interim basis. Giving you maximum flexibility while creating your stand-out strategy. 

If you contact us today, we can send you several consultant profiles within hours, so that you can choose the perfect one for you. 

From there, it’s only a matter of time before your sustainability story is up in lights, getting the attention it deserves.