If you want your company to thrive long-term, strong sustainability performance has never been more important. But performance isn’t enough if you want to maximize your success.
Customers, investors, employees, everybody, needs to hear and know about all the great things you’re doing.
Effective sustainability communication creates this link between your sustainability efforts — and your stakeholders admiring you for those efforts. Communicate sustainability in all the right ways, and your company will enjoy numerous key benefits.
But how can you make sure you get your communications right? How do you put a solid strategy together? What about greenwashing? The sustainability report?
We know that these kinds of questions can go on and on, and make this whole process feel quite overwhelming. But that’s why we’ve created this all-encompassing article. To clearly show you everything you need to know about sustainability communications, so there’s no need to stress.
So keep reading for valuable info about the following:
- 10 key things to consider when developing a sustainability communications strategy.
- The benefits of effective sustainability communications.
- How to avoid greenwashing.
- How to master the art of sustainability storytelling.
- How to communicate sustainability through different communication channels.
- How to communicate sustainability to employees.
- How to communicate your sustainability report.
- Measuring and optimizing your sustainability communications.
- Future sustainability communications trends to watch out for.
- 5 sustainability communications campaigns we love.
- How Dazzle can help you find your perfect sustainability communications expert.
If you follow this guide closely, we expect it won’t be long before your stakeholders are hearing from you. (And we mean, really hearing).
10 key things to consider when developing a sustainability communications strategy
First things first, before we take a deeper dive into various aspects of sustainability communications, we thought it would be nice to start with some key tips for putting a strategy together. So, here they are!:
- You should begin by mapping out your sustainability journey. This will allow you to determine what sustainability efforts/information you have to communicate.
- Then, set clear and measurable objectives. What is it that you want to achieve through your sustainability communications?
- You should also figure out exactly who your target audience is by breaking your stakeholders into categories, and prioritizing these categories relative to your objectives.
- With your target audience(s) in mind, it’s a good idea to translate your sustainability journey into compelling core messages that resonate with the stakeholders you’re targeting.
- It’s also important to determine which communication channels you can use to reach each audience, and adapt your communications for each channel.
- But although your communication will take a different form within each channel, make sure to keep your sustainability messaging consistent across channels. Your narrative should be cohesive, offering the same story across all touchpoints.
- You should never make one single department solely responsible for sustainability communication. Everybody in your company should be able to communicate your sustainability story effectively.
- And that story isn’t coming to an end any time soon! Ideally, this should be a never-ending story. So always measure the success of your communications, so you can optimize and improve moving forward.
- Be prepared for people to criticize and scrutinize your sustainability claims, and handle this criticism by being transparent and engaging in constructive dialogue.
- For the best chance of success, consider hiring a sustainability communications consultant!
(We have also created a dedicated article on this topic, where you can access these 10 key sustainability communications tips in much more detail).
Benefits of effective sustainability communications
We hope you find those tips to be useful. But maybe after reading through them you’re thinking, ‘well that sounds like a whole lot of work’. And we hear you!
But we promise, if you do the work right, the rewards are very much worth it. Have a look at the benefits involved below:
- Regulatory compliance: Getting your sustainability communications right will help you comply with reporting and marketing regulations like the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) and the Green Claims Directive.
- Efficiency and cost reduction: Beyond merely complying with the law, sustainability communication can act as a catalyst for improving efficiency across your company. (If you’re communicating your sustainability performance, you’re going to want to share positive things!).
- Builds stakeholder trust: Effective sustainability communication involves transparency, about the bad things as well as the good. Such transparency makes it much more likely that your stakeholders will trust you.
- Competitive advantages: Inevitably, when people trust you and believe in your commitment to sustainability, your brand reputation significantly improves. Leading to numerous competitive advantages.
- Customer loyalty: Communicating sustainability can attract new eco-consious customers. But it also opens up opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations with existing customers. Helping to build loyalty.
- New investment: Investors are also increasingly becoming interested in sustainability. Sustainability communication is the way to show them, your company is the one they should invest in.
- Top talent: The top young talent today wants purpose-driven work that aligns with their values. By clearly communicating your own sustainability values and performance, you can attract this talent and hold onto it, while fostering employee engagement.
- New business opportunities: Informing the world that you take sustainability seriously should also help you attract new collaborations and partnerships with like-minded companies. Who knows what kind of valuable possibilities that might create!
(Feel free to take a more detailed look at the key benefits of effective sustainability communications in our more in-depth article).
How to avoid greenwashing
If you want to enjoy all the wonderful benefits mentioned above, one thing you absolutely must never do, is engage in greenwashing.
Greenwashing basically refers to instances where companies falsely present themselves as environmentally friendly, often in an attempt to mislead consumers.
It is possible for companies to engage in greenwashing both intentionally and accidentally, and doing so presents several risks. Including reputational damage and various legal implications.
How can you avoid greenwashing? Well to begin with, we would recommend making sure that your company’s commitment to sustainability is authentic. From there, we can offer you several important tips:
- Always make realistic promises about what you can achieve. If you overpromise by outlining grand sustainability targets that are impossible to reach, you are setting yourself up to miss those targets. And when you miss them, it can look like your actions don’t match with your words.
- Avoid ‘selective communication’, where companies focus all their communications on a few positives, while leaving out the bigger picture. Of course you can focus on your positives, but always give a complete picture by sharing any relevant negatives as well.
- Use specific language wherever possible. So instead of using vague terms like ‘made from recycled materials’ for example, you could say ‘crafted from 75% post-consumer recycled plastic’.
- Always back up environmental claims with evidence in the form of data, certifications, or case studies.
- Images matter too! And you should never use imagery that suggests environmental benefits, unless you can prove that those benefits exist.
- If you ensure public accountability by publishing comprehensive reports regularly, people will be less likely to rebuke your environmental claims.
- Share your setbacks as well as your successes. When you highlight the imperfections and obstacles along your sustainability journey, people are much more likely to believe your commitment is genuine.
- Transform your sustainability communication into a two-way dialogue with your stakeholders through social media, forums, and feedback sections on your website etc. This is a very powerful way to create transparency and trust.
- Reputable third-party certifications, such as B Corp for example, can help to validate your sustainability claims.
- If your commitment to sustainability is real, and your employees know about it and believe in it, you can count on them to help tell the world about it. So make sure to educate them about your sustainability journey, and get them engaged with it. From there, they can become some of your most credible advocates.
(In our deeper dive into this topic, you can find more in-depth advice about how to avoid greenwashing).
Create content that engages through sustainability storytelling
With all that nasty greenwashing business out of the way, how about we have some fun and focus on creating some engaging content?
Well, to create content that truly engages your audiences, sustainability storytelling is a method you’re going to want to use. In a nutshell, this is the practice of weaving your sustainability facts and achievements into relatable human stories. The idea is to establish an emotional connection with your sustainability efforts, by showcasing the real-world impact they have. As opposed to just sharing cold numbers and statistics.
Doing this successfully begins with creating various audience personas, in order to understand your audience’s demographics, values, interests, challenges, and sustainability priorities. This step is crucial, as it allows you to tailor your messages to each audience.
Once you know all there is to know about your intended audience, it’s time to start creating a suitable story. You can use the following tips to make sure your stories are compelling:
- Start by determining what you want your audience to take away from the story. The answer to this question will essentially become your story’s core message.
- By using a defined structure, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, you can keep your story focused. This will usually take the form of presenting a challenge or obstacle, then highlighting a solution, and finally underlining a positive outcome.
- Human-centric stories are usually the most compelling. So whatever story you’re telling, make sure to place significant focus on the people or communities involved.
- People tend to be wowed by visuals, so wherever appropriate, use videos, images, infographics and whatever else works to grab people’s attention, and make your story easier to understand.
- The tips above can help you spark an emotional connection with your audience, but always remember, it is imperative that you balance this emotion with data. You should always be able to back your stories up with hard evidence. If your story isn’t authentic, people are unlikely to stay engaged for long.
(You may have already guessed it by now, but we have also created a dedicated article on this topic! Have a read if you like, for a more detailed look at sustainability storytelling).
How to communicate sustainability through different communication channels
Once you feel you have a worthy story to tell, you’ll want to make sure your message actually reaches the necessary eyes and ears. This will likely involve using a multi-channel strategy.
Below, we offer our advice about how to communicate sustainability effectively through each channel:
- Website: You should always use your website to talk about your sustainability journey. Ideally by using a dedicated and comprehensive sustainability page, as well as mentions of your sustainability story throughout the rest of your website where appropriate.
- Blog: It is always a good idea to blog about your sustainability journey too. You can use your blog to share about your sustainability initiatives, achievements, challenges, and offerings. And you can also share your knowledge and insights about relevant sustainability topics. Just make sure to always optimize for SEO, create original engaging, quality content, and post regularly!
- Social media: Now this is a big one of course. Utilizing social media wisely is a great way to ensure your sustainability messages land in all the right places. But it’s important that you choose the right platforms. If you want to reach a B2B audience for example, you should be sharing thought-leadership style pieces on Linkedin. For a young B2C audience though, short, snappy, eye-catching videos on instagram is a better way to go. (The videos don’t need to rhyme by the way, we just felt like rhyming here!). In short, you need to know your audience, identify the best platforms to reach them, and adjust your tone and formality depending on the platform.
- Email marketing: If you want to send personalized messages directly to specific audiences, email is the perfect channel to use. To get the most out of it, you should split your target audiences up into different groups, and tailor your content based on each group’s interests. (Also a good idea to use compelling subject lines, and keep your emails concise and impactful).
- Digital advertising: Digital ads are a powerful way to get your sustainability messages in front of the right people at the right time as they browse the web. As with precise targeting options, you can be very specific when choosing your target audience. To make an impact, your ads should be short, eye-catching, and should clearly communicate your sustainability message. While strong visuals and clear calls-to-action will also help drive engagement.
- Press releases: Big sustainability news deserves big reach, and press releases are an effective way to achieve that. So if you’ve got something significant to share, you can ensure your message lands and resonates with key stakeholders by targeting the right media outlets. Just remember to always keep press releases factual, data-driven, and aligned with each particular outlet’s style.
- Television: There’s possibly nothing more fun than telling your sustainability story through a TV ad. And it goes without saying, TV will get you in front of a very broad audience. The significant caveat being that it’s usually very expensive and targeting opportunities are limited. If you are going with a TV ad though, the goal is to tell a short story that connects your brand values with the viewer’s sense of sustainability. Keep the message concise, memorable, and centered around a clear sustainability theme, and you’ll have every chance of success.
- Sustainability reports: With regulations like the CSRD making annual sustainability reporting mandatory for many companies, this is a communication channel you should really get used to using. To create an effective report, use clear and accurate data, use visuals where possible to make complex information more accessible, and make it compelling with specific examples and stories. And of course, make sure it complies with any relevant regulations or frameworks!
(We have another dedicated article for you here, with extra detail and best practices for communicating sustainability through different channels. As well as advice about how to develop your core messages, and how to communicate sustainability to B2B and B2C audiences.
How to communicate sustainability to employees effectively
All the communication channels we discussed above are external channels. And while making the outside world fall in love with your sustainability story is of course absolutely crucial, it is also crucial to foster that love internally too.
Because when your employees really buy into your sustainability efforts, they don’t just follow along anymore; they become active champions of your mission. Engaged employees drive initiatives forward, embed sustainability into daily operations, and inspire others. Leading to much more impactful and lasting success.
To get your own employees engaged with sustainability, consider the following:
- You should always set clear objectives before initiating the internal communication process. What do you want your employees to know? What do you want them to feel? And what do you want them to do as a result of your communication efforts? Answering these questions should help to focus the direction of your communications from the outset.
- Connecting your sustainability message with each employee’s daily roles and responsibilities is possibly the most effective way to ensure engagement. So understanding your audience is essential. And that means understanding all the different kinds of employees in your company.
- From the very beginning, just like with external communications, be transparent! Don’t just focus on the positives, be completely open about the setbacks and challenges too. This is very important if you want to build trust.
- With all of this in mind, you can start thinking about the particular sustainability messages you want to share. And they better be engaging! To make sure that they are, try to keep them simple and relatable, use relevant success stories and other examples, clearly show how each employee’s actions fit in with the overall mission, and clearly explain how employees can contribute.
- Once you’ve created your engaging messages, you should use multiple communication channels to communicate them. Emails, newsletters, intranet posts, team meetings, even posters. Find out what is most likely to appeal to your different employees, and tailor your approach accordingly.
- For internal sustainability communication to be effective, it needs to go both ways. Your employees should be able to easily communicate their thoughts and share their ideas too. So make sure to always facilitate this.
- And remember, this is an ongoing process. You don’t just communicate everything once and then stop. So keep the updates and the discussion coming! Ultimately, you should be aiming to embed sustainability throughout your company culture through continuous, two-way communication.
- Every success, little or small, is worth celebrating. So make sure to always share these stories.
- Just like any form of sustainability communication, you should constantly be looking to improve. So measure and adjust as you go along. (More on that later!).
(You know the drill by now! If you want, you can learn more about how to communicate sustainability to employees in our dedicated article).
Communicating your sustainability report
In the world of sustainability communications, the sustainability report has become so important, it deserves its very own section in this article. So here it is!
Getting your sustainability report on point today leads to all sorts of benefits. Better stakeholder relationships, enhanced risk management, and increasingly, compliance with the actual law to name a few.
So it is definitely worth making sure your sustainability reporting game is up to scratch. To help with that, here’s our advice for how to write an effective sustainability report:
- Before you start writing your report, it’s important to be sufficiently prepared. This means identifying the sustainability reporting framework you need to follow, assembling a team capable of creating an effective report, and gathering the necessary data.
- When writing the report — as we’ve made pretty clear throughout this article with regard to sustainability communications — transparency and authenticity is key. Discuss the negatives in detail as well as the positives, and ensure that everything you say is accurate, and never exaggerated.
- Use clear language and a defined structure, with headings and subheadings throughout.
- Jumping back to our good old friend sustainability storytelling; your sustainability report should tell a relatable, human story! Your overarching aim should be to highlight the real-world impact of your sustainability efforts. (Of course you need to back up everything you say with data and evidence too).
- Make sure your report looks good! The graphical side of things can be nearly as important as the words. So use infographics and other visuals where appropriate to simplify complex data, and ensure that the report as a whole looks impressive.
- Wherever possible, it’s a good idea to demonstrate how you have involved stakeholders in the reporting process.
- Remember to talk about your future goals, confirming to your audience that your sustainability efforts are ongoing.
- When the time comes to share your report, stop. Take a deep breath, and review it to make sure that it is accurate, coherent, consistent, and well-written. Only when it ticks all of these boxes, should you think about releasing it to the outside world.
(Speaking about sharing your report with the outside world, in our dedicated article on this topic you can find our advice about how to communicate your sustainability report, as well as more detail about how to write it effectively).
Measuring and optimizing the success of your sustainability communications
Sustainability communication is an ongoing process which you should always be trying to improve. This involves constant measurement and optimization.
Below, we discuss how you can implement both sides of this improvement coin.
Measuring
- Metrics and tools for measurement: In terms of the hard data, combining quantitative metrics like website views, bounce rates, social media engagement metrics, and conversion rates from any CTAs (calls-to-action) you use, can help to form a numbers-driven picture of your sustainability communication performance. Beyond this, using qualitative tools and metrics like sentiment analysis, media coverage assessments, surveys, and stakeholder testimonials, you can begin to understand the stakeholder motivation behind those numbers.
- Building a measurement framework: To add real structure to the measurement process, you can take any of the tools and metrics mentioned above that are appropriate for you, and incorporate them into a solid measurement framework. Creating such a framework will likely involve first identifying clear and relevant key performance indicators (KPIs). And then choosing suitable performance tracking tools such as Google Analytics and SurveyMonkey. While establishing baseline metrics, so as to create a reference point for future evaluation.
Optimizing
- Using data to refine messaging: With all the lovely data and insights you gathered during the measurement phase, you should be able to paint a pretty detailed and accurate picture of what your audience responds to. Naturally, it then makes sense to tailor future communication efforts with this in mind.
- Optimizing communication channels: You can also use the information you’ve collected to determine which communication channels are working, and which ones are essentially a waste of time. From there, you can place extra — if not all — your focus on the higher-performing channels.
- A/B testing: A/B testing — where you go temporarily live with two versions of a sustainability message to see which one performs better — is another useful optimization method you can use.
- Stakeholder feedback: Direct stakeholder feedback provides you with first-hand insight into what is relevant and effective for your stakeholders. So pay attention to reviews, testimonials, and the results of any surveys or focus groups you conduct. This feedback is invaluable when it comes to optimizing your sustainability communications moving forward.
(For a deeper dive and added examples, please feel free to learn from our in-depth article on measuring and optimizing your sustainability communications success).
Future sustainability communications trends to watch out for
While we’re on the topic of moving forward, we would recommend paying attention to the exciting future trends below. In different ways, each of these trends is set to alter the landscape of sustainability communications in the coming years:
- Radical transparency, where companies openly share detailed, unfiltered information about their environmental and social impact, is likely to become much more commonplace.
- In various ways, such as facilitating hyper-personalized sustainability messages, artificial intelligence is set to significantly impact the world of sustainability communications.
- Technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) should soon make immersive, interactive sustainability messages more widespread and accessible.
- Companies will increasingly look to collaborate with ‘sustainability influencers’, as these individuals continue to grow in popularity and perceived credibility.
- Regarding sustainability in general, more and more companies will look to take a proactive approach to upcoming regulations. (After the shockwaves the CSRD has sent through so many companies and industries, companies want to be fully prepared for what’s ahead from now on!)
(Over in our dedicated article on future sustainability communications trends, we discuss each trend in much more detail. It really is very interesting stuff we promise!)
5 sustainability communications campaigns we love
We’re completely fascinated by what the future holds for sustainability communications. Some of those future trends get us very very excited indeed.
But back in the present day, there are other things getting us super-excited too. That’s right, we’re talking about our favorite sustainability communications campaigns, listed below:
- Patagonia: Don’t Buy This Jacket
- Ikea: Fortune Favors the Frugal
- Who Gives a Crap: Uncrap the World
- Dove: The Code (Dove Self-Esteem Project)
- Lenovo: Asset Recovery Services
Okay, so, the reason why we have only listed the campaigns by name here is because, well, we already created a really fun article about the sustainability communications campaigns we love.
If you’re interested in going on an emotional rollercoaster of sustainability goodness, we would recommend for you to click on that article and have a look. You can see all the campaigns there, and also read our thoughts about why we love each of them so much.
We certainly think it’s worth a click.
Dazzle can help you find the perfect sustainability communications solution
Our hope is that, if you’ve made it this far in the article, you will have formed a better understanding of how to do sustainability communications effectively. But we realize that it is a whole lot of information to take in. (Especially if you include all of our dedicated articles!)
There is no need to worry if you can’t remember everything though. Because to make sure you get your sustainability communications right, Dazzle can match you with an A-level sustainability communications expert.
Not sure if we mentioned it before, but the Dazzle platform offers access to the world’s best sustainability freelancers on demand. And we have several sustainability communications experts ready to help you tell your sustainability story in a way that resonates.
With Dazzle, quality and a proven track record are guaranteed, because we extensively pre-screen all of our freelancers. While for maximum flexibility, you can choose to work with our freelancers on a project-based, on-demand, or interim basis.
If you contact us today, we can send you several expert profiles within hours to make sure you find a great fit.
And from there, you’ll be able to implement everything we’ve discussed in this article and more, without having to stress at all.
