Well-known marketing facts of the last ten years are that:
- 70-90% of the buyer's journey is complete prior to engaging a vendor (Forrester)
- Consumer engages with 11.4 pieces of content prior to making a purchase (Forrester)
- Consumers are 5x more dependent on content than they were 15 years ago. (Nielsen)
How can we translate these into selling sustainability to your clients or board members?
You have to create valuable content on the advantages of adopting sustainability, specific to your audience. This is aimed at building trust and lowering their scepticism.
The challenge is that you have to educate and entertain them, not just tell them about the services you provide.
And your content has to be on your website, internal newsletters, LinkedIn, social media accounts...
There are two types of valuable content you can share:
- You can demonstrate that you are a thought leader and an expert in this field by sharing accessible, jargon-free guides and ideas. And because you'll need to appeal to (most likely) a non-expert audience, go back to basics and think about the wording and language you use.
- Another powerful influencing type of content will be testimonials and case studies from people you served before. Take the time to create those and share them with your target audience to corroborate not only your expertise but also the results of adopting sustainability. Few people and companies are ready to invest in completely new ideas.
This kind of content will take away their potential doubts that sustainability is still a risky gamble.
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