This guide explains ESG goals and how to best incorporate them into your brand campaigns to draw in new audiences and win over loyal customers.
The environment is changing drastically, and young people are standing up and taking notice. While they may not have much big, game-changing power to tip the tides, they can vote with their dollars—and they do.
This means that you must embody sustainability as a business to keep building a loyal following of millennials and Gen Z (and beyond). A great way to do this is to consider ESG (environmental, social, and governance) principles and how they can work in every corner of your business. Most notably, your marketing.
There will be significant ESG Reporting changes taking place from January 2025. Read what will change here.
What Does ESG Mean?
ESG stands for environment, social, and governance. ESG goals, on their own, can be put to work throughout your business. You can use them to help structure your business goals, your supply chain, and, yes, even your marketing.
Working towards ESG goals can mean going paperless and adopting the best electronic signature software instead. It can mean investing in carbon offset programs, a circular business model, and much more.
If you invest in ESG in your business, you should market it. Of course, you don’t just want to talk about your commitment to the environment for best results. You want to embody it.
Why Should You Incorporate ESG Goals into Your Brand Campaigns?
There are many reasons to use ESG goals in your business planning. The benefits of integrated business planning with environmental, social, and governance in mind cannot be stressed enough. At a minimum, you will:
- Prepare your business for future legislation changes
- Reduce your environmental impact
- Improve your relationship with your customers and supply chain
Regarding marketing, ESG is an excellent way to appeal to millennials and Gen Z. 46% of respondents see climate change as a significant challenge in the future, above economic inequality, political instability, and even job security.
More pressingly, younger consumers are voting with their dollars. A study found that 76% claim they would stop buying from a business that neglected its ESG goals. On the flip side, around 88% said they’d be more loyal to a business that championed social and environmental issues.
With how much ESG goals mean to millennials, Gen Z, and, if trends continue, Gen Alpha, you must incorporate them into your business model and branding initiatives.
Top Branding Tools That Support ESG Initiatives
You aren’t in it alone. You don’t need to design your tools or develop plans from scratch. There are so many tools and resources to help you add your ESG goals to your branding campaign, including:
Paperless Tools
Going paperless is one of the first and easiest ways companies start their ESG journey. A free e-signature system can help you do away with expensive and environmentally complicated paper and improve data record keeping.
This is key since branding campaigns, unlike marketing campaigns, go beyond the billboard. Your branding campaign must include customer experience initiatives, and a well-designed e-sign system can improve customers’ perception of you and their experience with your brand.
Rich Media and Video
Another great way to improve your brand’s reputation, increase collaboration, and ramp up engagement is to swap your traditional ads with rich media and video ones.
Rich media ads use programmatic technology to create interactive ads, which is great for getting customers to look at you, understand you, and remember you.
It’s expensive (and environmentally costly) to rely solely on digital and static ads. By enriching them, you invite your customers to engage with your brand. Done well, this can introduce your customers to your business and your values in a fun and memorable way.
Social Impact Stories
A great way to start framing your branding efforts is by using corporate social responsibility. CSR impact stories showcase how your brand has impacted the environment, government, or social lives of your customers and the wider community.
They are also a great way to connect to customers emotionally, working to stand out and develop a lasting relationship with your audience.
A Brand Lift Study
To follow through on your ESG goals and improve your bottom line, you need to measure results, analyze the impact, and use that information to improve. A great way to start analyzing your ESG branding campaign is with a brand lift study.
You can easily do that with the Nexd survey layout to collect data how you need it and do it sustainably.
This method helps you measure how your ESG brand campaign has impacted your relationship with your customers so you can make better decisions in the future.
How to Build an ESG-Compliant Brand Campaign
Now that you know more about ESG, its benefits, and the tools you can use, let’s learn how to build your ESG-compliant brand campaign.
Outline Your Goals
Start by outlining your ESG goals and what outcomes you hope to achieve with your ESG brand campaign.
For example, you may want to:
- Reduce campaign emissions
- Improve your brand image
- Increase customer loyalty
- Become a leader in the ESG sectors
- Boost sales
It is essential to have a clear understanding of your branding campaign’s goals. If you want to build a branding campaign that delivers a positive ROI, you need to first have a concrete goal in mind.
Assess Your Current Position
Analyze your current standing. This means investigating brand mentions using tools such as social listening and your environmental, social, and governance impact according to the public. You can also track your environmental impact by calculating your carbon emissions for each campaign.
Knowing what your audience, customers, and the media think about your brand will help you develop a campaign that can effectively sway their opinions.
Develop a Strong Corporate Social Responsibility Narrative
Next, you’ll need to create a compelling narrative that embodies your ESG goals and brand values. You can advertise your efforts to reduce your business’ carbon emissions, for example. Alternatively, you might consider sponsoring a green initiative or working with a circular upstart company as part of your supply chain.
The same applies to social or governance initiatives. Take Patagonia, for example. They have a very robust corporate social responsibility (CSR) program in place. As part of it, they are committed to ethical manufacturing and work to support everyone in their supply chain. On the social front, they also support and head many community organizations for causes like climate, community, land, and water.
Giving back and advertising is a great way to invest in your brand, but the narrative needs to make sense for your organization.
Use Sustainable Practices
Always consider the environmental impact of your brand campaign, and work to reduce your emissions with smart technology and carbon offset programs.
Even something as simple as switching from print advertising to digital advertising can work. Or you can invest in a tree-planting program can do wonders for your carbon footprint, and for boosting your brand perception. 24.13% of companies that have done this in the past have even seen a positive impact on their brand image.
Work With Your Whole Team
Work with all stakeholders in your business, from your marketing team to your R&D team, to workshop ideas for the campaign and bring UX experiences to life.
For example, did you know that you can have your ads change in real-time? The clothes that a clothing brand can advertise can swap in real-time to match weather conditions with dynamic creative optimization. You can even tie this into your CSR or ESG campaigns. For example, if it drops below a certain threshold your ads can swap to “Buy a Coat, Donate a Coat for Someone in Need”.
Use Analytics and Data to Target Audiences
Use analytics and market research to discover where your audience is and target ads to them directly online or in person. If you use social media or tools like Google, then rely on that tool’s built-in analytics to help you find your audience. Otherwise, analyze a similar competitor’s approach, and see where they’re advertising.
Track Results
Some metrics to track are:
- Sign-ups
- Page views
- Signatures gained
- Tickets purchased
- Sales
- Follows
- Likes
By understanding the metrics that matter most to your goals, you can track the results that matter. Use your own built-in analytical tools as well as the options available through Nexd to track the efficiency of your campaigns.
You will also want to create a specific landing page for your branding campaign, so you can really understand how impactful your branding campaign has been, since this special page is separate from your home page.
Adapt Your Campaign
Use the information from your analytics and tracking to then adjust your approach to improve your branding campaign in the long term. A great way to test and tweak your approach is with A/B testing.
For example, you may want to see if your audience responds better to your environmental efforts than your social campaign, or vice versa. Then you can compare how much traffic and sign-ups you get for each one. If one is vastly more successful than the other, then you know to tweak your approach to connect better with your audience.
Top Takeaways
Millennials, Gen Z, and any environmentally or socially conscious consumer want to feel good about spending their hard-earned money. That’s why they stay loyal to brands that match their values.
If you recently adopted ESG goals into your business model, now is the time to use these branding campaign tips to improve your efforts and ensure that your audience knows you are a green, socially responsible company.