Sustainability Pays Off

Take Responsibility To Boost Your Profits

Over the past few years, sustainability has become a mega-trend and nowadays should be part of every business model. Customers now more than ever demand more sustainable products and services, and companies must understand that marketing sustainability also helps capture customers’ attention. Customers expect companies to care about the environment and offer sustainable products and services, but the important point here is that sustainability pays off: Sustainability attracts customers who are willing to spend more money on sustainable products and services. Your frontline employees play a powerful role, as they are in a position to direct customers to sustainable products and services.

Sustainability As A Trend

Today’s customers are more concerned about their environmental footprints, especially younger generations, e.g., millennials. Today’s customers check products’ ingredients, origins, and brands, so companies carefully must revisit their existing offerings and adapt them for sustainability. It is certainly your choice whether to offer both sustainable and regular products, or focus your offerings only on green options. However, in the interest of preserving your existing customer base, you might want to continue offering your current product/service lines and merely add sustainable options. Remember to include your frontline employees in such promotions, as they come into direct contact with customers and know the most about customer preferences. Also, if you decide to use quality seals, ensure that you have researched the institutions behind such labels thoroughly, as using just any label can be risky.

Customers Are Willing To Pay A Premium

From a revenue perspective, it is extremely lucrative to adapt the company’s service offerings for sustainability, as customers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable products, compared with regular ones. Therefore, your frontline should be trained accordingly on how to motivate customers to choose sustainable options. Considering that nowadays, it’s more often considered good form to offer green choices, companies need not rely merely on their own marketing and sales efforts to sell sustainable products and services. Another very powerful effect comes at no extra cost to companies: peer pressure. For example, among a group of customers, one person may be strong enough to influence others’ choices. Your frontline staff should be in a position to identify such key customers and offer sustainable options accordingly.

Design Sustainable Service Offerings

Top management’s decisions primarily and directly influence the size of every company’s environmental footprint. Of course, satisfying customers’ needs and demands, and optimizing your environmental footprint is a balancing act. However, satisfying customers’ demands in a sustainable way can optimize your environmental footprint simultaneously. It’s just a matter of how to do it. For example, in a restaurant setting, you can fulfill customers’ needs either with local and regional products, or with products from the other side of the world. Both products will satisfy your hungry clientele, but it’s your management’s choice as to what ingredients to include and their point of origin.

Praise Customers’ Choices

You also need to motivate customers into making green choices. The way you communicate and present your services plays an influential role, as it might highlight select services as being more attractive than others. For instance, a food menu’s layout is crucial to your guests’ decision-making process. You also can use psychological tricks in your communications to influence your guests’ choices, e.g., “Eight out of 10 customers make a sustainable choice by selecting our green food options.” The more guests gravitate toward sustainable options, the more you can make a difference. Also, let your guests know about previous guests’ decisions and why those choices were good, e.g., “By choosing our green options, guests helped us reduce our packaging waste by 50 kg in the past month.” Remember: The more specific the numbers, the more credible your guests will find them, and the more green choices they will make.