So we know marketing has to change to become more sustainable. But what exactly does this mean in real terms?
The future of marketing is exactly what GoSquared CEO and creator of EcoSend James, along with Maria from Soleil Marketing discussed on Episode 3 of the EcoSend podcast.
Now we’re 3 episodes in, we’re starting to find our feet with the podcast format. But if you’re yet to listen in or subscribe, details of how to do so can be found below.
In the meantime, here is a recap of what James and Maria had to say about where the future of marketing is concerned.
Positively Impacting The Planet And People
James Gill: “Maria is an award-winning, qualified marketing consultant who helps purpose-driven businesses increase turnover and brand awareness.
From a marketing perspective, we’ve got a lot to learn from you, Maria. But you are also big into the world of sustainability and being a climate-conscious business. You have accreditation as being carbon literate and you hold a mini MBA in Marketing from Marketing Week.
So you’ve got the perfect combo of skills, and knowledge, and I believe you’re also a volunteer for the Kent Wildlife Trust. So you tick a lot of boxes for being a great person to be speaking to on the EcoSend podcast.”
Maria Soleil: “I work for purpose-driven brands, and I am purpose-driven myself. So everything that I do is trying to positively impact the planet and people rather than be exploitative or extractive or purely just in it to make money for myself. That’s kind of the approach I try to take.
I came across the B Corp movement. They’re all about bringing purpose into business and using businesses as a vehicle to solve social and environmental problems, and I was obsessed with it.”
Repairing Past Damage With New Ways Of Thinking
Maria Soleil: “How can we regenerate and repair the damage that we’ve done over the last hundred and fifty years? Essentially to reset the balance because everything’s out of balance. So to me, it’s blowing my mind learning about it [digital marketing and the impact on climate].
Cause I’m thinking, well, how does this apply to my clients? How does this apply to the way I run my business? How does that even apply to marketing? And what does the future look like for marketing within business? I think it’s a really interesting topic. I think it’s going to grow the idea of really giving back and repairing; rather than just profit, profit, profit all the time.”
James Gill: “Yeah absolutely. I think it just makes so much sense to be sustainable. If what we are doing is unsustainable, it isn’t going to help us anywhere near enough to undo so much of the previous damage that’s been done.
And seemingly the world is getting more and more knowledgeable about the damage we have done and about what could happen in the future; it feels there is an urgency about the sheer amount of things that need to change and need to be done.
So all of those things combined feel like we need more people and more businesses to not just think, “how do I tick some boxes? How do I look like I’m doing the right thing?”
We don’t even need businesses just keeping things sustainable. We need businesses to go further to set the bar so much further out there that we can start undoing things in a big way and start turning the clock back on some of the damage that’s been done.
Do you have any thoughts on the future of marketing and how that’s going to look over the next five, or ten years? I mean, those are big, big numbers in themselves. Maybe even one year. I don’t know.”
Adopting Sustainable Marketing Techniques
Maria Soleil: “It’s one that I’m thinking a lot about at the moment because of all the things that I’m learning and things around how marketing is one of the causes of where we are now; driving consumption, causing people to buy things that they don’t necessarily need. We’re staring down the barrel of a bit of a scary future, unfortunately.
If anyone has een the latest David Attenborough documentary and the message that he left at the end is like, “We need to do something!” Sustainable marketing is something that is growing. The Chartered Institute of Marketing; they run a course on it. I know there’s a course by Cambridge University, I think about sustainable marketing. And so there is clearly a shift happening, which is making people realise that, okay, we need to do things differently.
A lot of the bigger brands will be legally obliged to report on carbon.
Marketing at the moment generally seems to be, I mean, it’s hugely data-driven. A lot of businesses have way too much data compared to what they actually need to actually achieve their goals from a marketing perspective.
And with data, we know it does have carbon emissions and I think because you think it’s just hosted on the cloud or you don’t think about the impact of it.
I think campaigns are going to look quite different because I think they probably won’t be so elaborate. But I also think there will have to be a lot more creativity involved. Because well equally, you know, these big campaigns cost money. But I think there’ll be a lot more changes in production around campaigns.”
“Copywriting Will Become Even More Important Than It Is Now”
Maria Soleil: “Copywriting will become more important than it is now. Because even a website has a carbon footprint. And usually the more images or complex code on there impacts carbon emissions. So I think things will be stripped back a lot.
It’ll become a lot more about language, and simplicity than doing crazy stuff and running campaigns on loads of different channels, sometimes unnecessarily.”
James Gill: “Yeah, 10 years ago things were quite different. I heard there were a lot of positives in terms of how marketing can be changing. A lot of, almost returning to, maybe some might call it the good old days where marketing did rely more on creativity, great copywriting and doing more with less. And it feels like that could be better for brands with smaller budgets.
It could be better for consumers too, with less bombardment of things on different channels, and then better for the climate too. So it feels like there’s a lot of reasons to be, as you said, optimistic.”
Where To Find The EcoSend Podcast
Listen to Episodes 1, 2 and 3 of the EcoSend podcast in full on one of the above streaming platforms. We’d really appreciate it if you would share it with your network, or send us a Tweet to tell us what you thought.
EcoSend By GoSquared – The Sustainable Email Marketing Platform
The conversation is just getting started when it comes to the future of digital marketing, including how we can all play our part in making campaigns more sustainable.
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Let us know any questions about EcoSend, including how it can help your company achieve its goals while reducing the impact on the environment. Reach out to our team to chat further with us.
