By Jan Lee, Source: Triple Pundit

If there is one truism that sums up sustainable marketing today, it is that product sales don’t make a business successful, productive customer engagement strategies do. Levi Strauss and Co.’s popularity as a sustainable producer relies on its ability to continually tap into the values of its customers and reflect that vision in how it sells its products – as well as how it makes them.

It puts recycling and human rights, for example, at the core of its business model because it believes such ethics are part of its own vision, and because it knows that these are key concerns for many customers. Its success as a respected clothier is dependent not just on the quality of its product, but also on its ability to convey its understanding and loyalty of those customer values.

As one survey conducted last year by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan Review and the Boston Consulting Group discovered, customer opinion is at the core of many of the green changes that businesses are making today.

“[Companies] are 80 percent more likely to increase collaboration with customers as a result of sustainability than are companies that did not change their business model,” say the authors. “They are also much more likely to collaborate with competitors, suppliers and across their own business units.”

But can customers’ green values and engagement in sustainability be enhanced by business strategies?

Several businesses we consulted recently gave a resounding “yes” to this question. Business strategies and ethics do help to shape a progressive sustainable culture. Yet interestingly, each source we consulted had a different take on what was most crucial to the success of that goal. Here are a few of those tips:
Be willing to walk the walk

Eric Fleet, co-founder of Threads 4 Thought Sustainable Apparel, said that how you portray the significance of your message through your own lifestyle and actions speaks loudly to your customer base. He went on to explain that examples and image resonate when customers see your own conviction to sustainable living — and when they see how it can be integrated into the lifestyle they live.

“[We] encourage people to live in the most sustainable manner they can while obviously doing all the necessary things they need to do in life,” Fleet told TriplePundit.

MIT and BCG’s research surveyed this question in relation to the message and image put forth by senior management. According to the survey, 62 percent of companies said the CEO’s “strong support for sustainability” appealed to and motivated their customers.

Read more at: Triple Pundit