6 Best Examples of Green Marketing Today

Can you really make money by advertising your products or services as environmentally friendly?

Of course. Let’s find out how.

What Is Green Marketing and Why Should You Care About It?

Green marketing involves selling a product or service based on the advantages it provides to the environment. This can be something that’s good for the environment — such as a solar panel — or it can be a consumer item that a company makes in an eco-conscious way.

Do Consumers Really Care About Sustainability and Green Marketing?

Budgets are tight for a lot of us right now, and many consumer goods cost more than ever. Sure, people would love it if the things they already buy are good for the environment, but people don’t shift their spending habits easily. Will green marketing really increase customers?

The answer is yes. It really will.

PWC has found that consumers are willing to pay almost 10% more for a product if it’s sustainably produced or sourced. This number may decrease as budgets tighten, but it may also increase as the effects of climate change become more obvious. 

Green Marketing Strategies

Green marketing can take many forms. It’s not as simple as saying, “Hey, we love trees. Buy our shoes.” Customers will see through that. The most effective form of green marketing is to publicize the sustainable and environmentally friendly practices your business already employs or has just implemented.

Many of the best marketing strategies may not center sustainability, but the environmental benefits are a bonus — and part of the brand’s identity. 

Here are some common green marketing strategies:

• Green packaging: If you start paying attention to how much plastic products are wrapped in, you’ll start to tear your hair out. Sometimes, the packaging is more environmentally deleterious than the products themselves. Switching from plastic to eco-friendly paper is a relatively cheap and easy way to make a significant difference.
• Sustainable products: Changing how you make a product to be more environmentally friendly might cost more, but you can probably charge more for it. 
• Supporting environmental initiatives: Brands that don’t have a lot of room to “greenify” their production can always donate to environmental causes. This could involve a brand collaboration with an ecologically minded charity, sponsoring a fund or initiative or just giving money to a worthy cause.
• Highlighting sustainability efforts: Whatever you do to make your organization greener, talk about it. Don’t over-deliver or boast, but publicize what you’re doing. This makes your company look good and might inspire others to make positive changes.

6 Examples of Green Marketing

There’s a fair number of you reading this and rolling your eyes. It would be naïve of us to think the solutions to climate change and environmental degradation will come solely from for-profit companies. But while there’s plenty of depressing and frustrating news regarding companies’ environmental policies (or lack thereof), we actually have plenty of success cases we can point to.

Some companies have wholly devoted themselves to environmental responsibility and have found a strong audience willing to pay a little more for their products. Other companies — some of which are globally famous multinational corporations — have increased customer engagement and improved their brand image with relatively minor eco-friendly adjustments and messaging. 

Here are 6 examples of companies that have found success with a green marketing campaign:

Patagonia

Patagonia is perhaps the prime green marketing example. The company makes clothing ideal for outdoorsy types, so it makes sense that the brand would support environmental causes. However, their commitment appears to go beyond a green marketing strategy, evidencing the firmly held beliefs of the company’s founder, Yvon Chouinard. 

Since 1985, Patagonia has pledged 1% of its sales to preserving and restoring the environment. The company uses recycled and organic materials in its clothing, and in 2017, it even sued the Trump administration to preserve national monuments.

Dr. Bronner’s 

Dr. Bronner’s makes organic soaps and personal care products. It is explicitly committed to environmental sustainability; thus, its green marketing practices involve just marketing its products.

Rather than finding a few sustainable materials the company can use here and there, its mission statement consists of six “Cosmic Principles” that guide the company in all its commercial and green initiatives. Dr. Bronner’s target demographic is environmentally conscious consumers, and they’ve thrived serving this often-overlooked audience.

IKEA

When you think of IKEA, you probably don’t think of sustainable marketing, but rather affordable furniture, a surprisingly delicious cafeteria and that one frustrating afternoon you and your partner nearly broke up arguing about how to assemble a Skönabäck. Environmental marketing isn’t the company’s main focus, but it does more than most organizations to address environmental issues.

The Swedish chain has initiatives to source some of its wood from sustainably managed forests, works to meet Better Cotton standards and has a “Buy Back and Resell” program to reduce consumer waste. Perhaps most notably, IKEA is working toward using 100% renewable energy. The company is far from perfect, but it’s pursuing valuable green initiatives while employing a highly successful marketing strategy. 

Beyond Meat

Discussing the environmental impacts of the meat industry makes a lot of people uncomfortable. An individual can’t change our energy infrastructure, but they can change what they eat. Too many people see this as a binary: vegetarian vs. carnivore. But if we all ate less meat, we could make a serious positive impact on the environment.

Except, a lot of people love burgers and sausages, and black bean patties and soy hot dogs don’t appeal to everyone. Beyond Meat knew this. Rather than berate people for what they like to eat, why not try to make a veggie burger as delicious as a beef one, but without the environmental and ethical quandaries?

Nike

Many of these green marketing examples come from companies that make explicitly green products. Nike shows how massive multinational corporations can succeed with a sustainable marketing plan that supplements their campaigns for other product lines.

The company with such masterful marketing assets as “Just Do It” and the Swoosh logo has a product line with environmentally friendly materials, such as recycled polyester. It’s also been moving to renewable energy for its manufacturing hubs. Nike’s green marketing efforts include its “Move to Zero” initiative, which involves phasing out single-use plastics on all Nike campuses.

Apple

Mining some materials required for smartphones and electronics can be incredibly environmentally damaging. To make up for this, Apple looks to reduce its climate impact, conserve natural resources and integrate safer materials. The tech giant has launched wind and solar farms and uses renewable resources where possible. 

What About Greenwashing?

None of the brands mentioned above are perfect. Every organization and every person has some impact on the environment, no matter how little. The goal isn’t for everyone to be a solar-powered vegan that somehow inhales carbon dioxide and exhales pure oxygen. And the goal for every company isn’t to become perfect eco-warriors, but the brands above have made honest attempts to improve what they do. And customers have rewarded them for it.

That’s got other businesses thinking: What if we just say we’re environmentally friendly, change nothing and get customers to reward us for it anyway?

That’s called greenwashing, and it’s not what you want to do. Greenwashing is when brands make deceptive claims about how sustainable their operations or products are.

There are two reasons you don’t want to do this: First, it’s immoral and bad for human beings and everything else alive on the planet. And second, it doesn’t work.

Numerous advocacy groups scrutinize the green claims of companies, and they’re good at ferreting out fakery. The kinds of customers who are willing to pay more for environmentally sustainable products probably know if a company is lying. And for those that don’t, how are they going to feel when they realize a company has lied to them? When greenwashing is exposed, it can be incredibly damaging to a company’s brand.

How To Tell Customers Your Brand Is Green

Some brands have found success by making eco-consciousness their entire identity. These companies set up sustainable practices and then build their brand in eco-friendly forums, establishing a digital presence. 

But you don’t have to be in the “green” market to benefit from green marketing. It’s often beneficial to run an eco-minded marketing campaign alongside a broad campaign.

For example, you can have a primary strategy that communicates your brand identity and value props, and then maybe a side digital marketing campaign that reaches out to eco-conscious groups.

Consumers Reward Honesty and Creativity

It’s easy to be cynical about marketing, especially when it intersects with serious real-world issues such as climate change and environmental degradation. But there are many positives here. The data we have shows that customers really do care about the environment and are willing to pay more for goods and services that support it.

But that doesn’t mean you can just be “good” in the moral sense. Brands must be good at marketing, too. That means researching the right data, employing creativity and working with the right partners to help you achieve your business objectives.