Strategic sustainability messaging for Climate Tech brands

Written By Joseph D. Simpson

This is the fourth post in our Ultimate Guide To Building An Climate Tech Brand.

You'll get the most out of this guide if your desire to scale your brand is exceeded only by your willingness to execute on the concepts within this guide.

This guide is designed to describe all major aspects of branding, from your brand’s foundations to strategic messaging for sustainability startups to positioning yourself as a thought leader in the emerging impact economy to building your relationship with the press.

Overview

This guide will showcase 7 major sections including:

Communicating sustainability as a Climate Tech brand

Conveying the localities (in terms of distance), proximity (in terms of time) and the direct effect (on our lives) from the climate crisis at hand has been complex, to say the least.

To maximize the effectiveness of our campaigns and communicate about our impact, it’s important to understand what messages resonate beyond the sustainability-literate and how the general public responds to certain messages.

The imagery of climate change: A telling tale

Over the 20th Century, we became increasingly aware of the large environmental challenges that our planet faced and in the period since we’ve found many ways to address them. Yet there has always been a distinct challenge for those selling the solutions to the public.

The imagery used to convey climate change provides a unique example of this challenge. Imagery has always been able to distil abstract concepts and events for those at a distance. Consider the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the Vietnam war. What comes to mind? An image of a man standing in front of a tank and the image of a 7-year-old South Vietnamese girl running from a cloud of napalm smoke. Now think about environmental challenges. Imagine concepts such as deforestation, rising sea levels and climate change. What do you see? 

  Let’s take a look at this concept through a historical lens. At first, we were shown direct action. Images of men and women tying themselves to trees in the US and UK dominated the public discourse. Empowered by the injustices of the Vietnam war and a radically transformed society, people began to fight back against “the man”. Corporates and politicians called them hippies, sympathisers called them activists, and they managed to change the world. But as the world became more global, we realised that we couldn’t focus on saving trees as a solution. The problem became more global and so did our necessity to cooperate internationally. As a result, the imagery which represented environmental challenges adapted by becoming global in nature.

Direct action was replaced with images of polar bears in the Arctic. The theories went something along these lines: Hippies are despised by the corporate world, but they (corporates) can’t hate animals and children in the same political way. This era was defined by great global movements such as the Live Aid concert to raise funds for the famine in Ethiopia, the Reduce Reuse Recycle campaign, and WWF’s campaign against deforestation in Indonesia and Brazil. The imagery that was used changed from black and white to colour. It became more vivid. It became starving East African children, beaches filled with plastic pollution and orangutans or pandas trying to survive in the vestiges of decimated rainforest. The imagery evolved to face the challenges of the day.

Climate Visuals, an organization which draws on psychology to change the imagery we use in climate change communications, argues that the decision to begin associating climate change with an iconic animal like the polar bear has provided a simple visual shorthand for the issue. However, it has also reinforced the impression that climate change is a distant problem and arguably ‘closed down’ the climate discourse around a concept that is remote from people’s day-to-day lives. The organization’s director Adam Corner believes that because the images don’t contain people in them, they’re unable to tell a human story.

Images telling stories about climate change are now all about hitting home.

 

Why “the sustainability lecture” doesn’t work

Localisation and humanisation are key to crafting climate narratives which change minds rather than switch them off. The polar bear, just like the starving child and the activist had their place in their own individual contexts, but today they’ve become obsolete. After receiving this advice from Climate Visuals, The Guardian announced in late 2019 that they would change the way they used visuals to cover climate stories and consider showing the direct impact of environmental issues on people’s daily lives as well as trying to indicate the scale of the impact. Just as the imagery has to change to fit the day, so too must the way that we communicate about sustainability in the evolving impact economy.

When you lecture people about whats and the hows without giving them context, people begin to switch off. Lecturing can be defined as to talking seriously or angrily to someone in order to criticize their behaviour and bring about change. Whilst it sounds obvious that this doesn’t change behavior, this is the basis for the majority of climate communications. For example, it’s not uncommon to hear brands talking about the pressing challenges — i.e., climate change, plastic pollution or deforestation — and why they require change and then saying “buy our product”. The sustainability lecture usually hinges on three distinct emotions: Fear, being trapped, and guilt.

·      Fear. Marketers typically avoid fear in their advertising, because consumers tends to associate that negative feeling with the brand itself. However, when communicating sustainability, the most common tactic is to employ fear to spread our message. Opting for fear-based messages can turn consumers off to your message before they even know about your product or service.

·      Being Trapped. Telling the masses what to do makes them actively fight back against it. Research shows that when someone is told that they can’t do something, it makes them want to do it even more. It’s obvious in children’s behavior but you can also recognise it when adults are exposed to climate change messaging. Reactance Theory states that people are convinced they possess certain freedoms to engage in so-called free behaviours and when a loss of those freedoms is imposed on them, it motivates them to restore it. In layman’s terms, it causes a knee jerk reaction to resist.

·      Guilt. Whilst research suggests that guilt can be an effective motivator, when it’s too forceful, it turns people off to the message entirely. This was demonstrated in a controlled public experiment where two focus groups who were shown the same fairtrade tea options with two different messages. A subtle option and a forceful option, both conveying the emotion of guilt. In the subtle scenario, consumers reported anticipating future guilt if they failed to shop for green products and chose fair trade options 84% of the time. In the second scenario, customers became angry, upset, or irritable, and only 40% chose the fair trade option.

The Psychology of Inaction

“We ourselves are the process of evolution, just like any other animal.” says Kate Jeffery of UCL. “We are creatures that have been designed by natural selection to exist in the conditions that we’ve experienced...those conditions that shaped us, shape the way we think and act.” Scientists have been warning us about climate change for years. The science itself over the past half-century has only become more conclusive and more striking. It points to more and more dire scenarios for rich and poor alike, yet we’ve not made the dramatic changes necessary to avert a climate disaster. What is stopping us then? “Ultimately, human behaviour is hard-wired with all its quirks and faults,” Kate says. “We are unfortunately prone to these viral processes which affect our operations. For example; authoritarianism, or vaccine denialism or climate change denialism. And the internet’s fast speed of information transformation has made us act much more quickly than we used to.” But before we look at deep-seated climate denialism, let’s take a look at the three broad categories of psychology. “There are multiple mentalities and identity issues that feed both climate action and climate inaction. They all begin with the three broad categories of psychology; perception, cognition and action. These are not discrete categories, but they feedback into each other.” They are perception, cognition and action and together they paint a picture of climate inaction in our society.

  • Perception. How we make sense of all the things coming in through our senses. The term has been used to describe a range of psychological phenomenons including beliefs, attitudes, concerns and perceived risks. We’re not very good at perceiving slow things overtime or things at scale. According to Jeffrey, this is due to our perception’s inability to report truthfully on reality; something that’s often referred to as the parable of the boiling frog. If you put a frog in hot water, it’ll jump out, but if you put a frog in cold water and slowly warm it up, it will adapt to the changing environment until it’s too late and the frog boils alive. Human beings act in a very similar way. “For one thing, we don’t actually perceive the entire visual world in front of us. That’s an illusion in our brains. At any one moment, you’re only looking at a tiny spot which moves all over the place. Your brain stitches together and makes you think you’re looking at a film screen.” Perception is the first step towards action. However, this divergence between what we perceive and what is actually happening on the ground can lead us to misinformation affecting the decision-making process.

  • Cognition. How we organize that information to formulate internal representations of the world that will allow us to adapt to that environment. People don’t react to risk rationally, but rather what we’ve found in psychology is that they’re applying a whole bunch of heuristic and cognitive biases. “You can think of those as shortcuts, quick ways of thinking about things that don’t require any calculations”. These biases include loss aversion, that society as a whole is very reluctant to forego immediate gains for the benefit of longer-term gains, temporal distancing, how much time (e.g., past or future) separates between the perceiver’s present time and the target event and confirmation bias when you already believe something, you interpret all evidence on the subject with your position already determined. “So if we’re not getting our beliefs on logic, what are we basing them on?” According to Kate, a very strong determinant of our beliefs are the beliefs of people in our trusted circle. “We tend to form groups of people we feel bonded to. During evolutionary history this would have been our tribe, our neighbours and our immediate family.” The parallels with the climate change argument are obvious and striking. Over the past 20 years, in the United States, climate change has become increasingly political. In 2001, roughly 50% of Republicans and 60% of Democrats believed in Climate Change. Today it’s roughly only 30% of Republicans vs 70% of Democrats. “This makes us understand that when people aren’t acting on climate change, it’s not because they don’t have the facts. So it’s not a matter of pouring enough facts into somebody and then they’ll stop denying climate change and start acting.”

  • Action. How we convert that information into behaviour. Actions, just like beliefs, are not always rational. There’s a very famous example called The Tragedy of the Commons which exemplifies a big part of our inability to act on climate change. The Commons is a piece of land where three farmers have their livestock. As each farmer increases the number of their cattle on the land the land starts degrading. Eventually, it won’t have any grass at all and all the animals will die. The rational argument for each farmer is to add another animal because it will add a big personal benefit but a shared cost. The tragedy is that because everyone is focused on their own return on investment, everybody loses out in the long run. This is one way to explain the inaction between countries on climate change. The “why should we change our behaviour when China or India aren’t going to change theirs,” argument. Another irrational factor which influences our actions is that we often go beyond personal cost-benefit and focus on looking at the people around us. “What tends to happen with climate is that everyone’s looking around and living life as normal. It doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. But if you’re sitting in a cinema theatre by yourself and you smell smoke, you’ll probably leap to your feet, but if you’re sitting there and you’re surrounded by people and no one does anything, you’re less likely to do anything either.” 

The denial of personal impact by the majority of the developed world is underscored by some uniquely biological character traits. Just like humans process information through perception, cognition and action, we are also programmed to respond to an imminent threat in one of three ways. When we feel fear, we freeze, fight or fly. With a slow-moving, conceptual challenge like the climate crisis, the threat mechanism isn’t likely to be triggered. That is, we’re not highly likely to respond in the face of an abstract problem. According to Daniel Gilbert, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, the human brain evolved to respond to threats that have four distinct features. “Features that terrorism has and that global warming lacks.” 

  • Climate change lacks a moustache. Gilbert states that humans are congenitally prone to fear human actions. “Global warming lacks a moustache. No, really. We are social mammals whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others. Understanding what others are up to — what they know and want, what they are doing and planning — has been so crucial to the survival of our species that our brains have developed an obsession with all things human. We think about people and their intentions; talk about them; look for and remember them.” Climate change is not something that has been set upon us by a person, intent on destroying our way of life. Because climate change lacks a human persona, it’s difficult to characterise its motives.

  • Climate change doesn’t violate our moral compass. Acts or events that challenge our moral sensibilities are the ones that drive us to act. When the President of your country stands up and makes a fool of himself, it violates your sense of national pride, driving you to vote in the hope that you bring about change. Climate change doesn’t desecrate any moral code, nor does it profane over religious rules about sex, gender bias or food. Unfortunately, no human societies–regardless of creed or colour–have moral rules about atmospheric chemistry. “Moral emotions are the brain’s call to action,” Gilbert explains. “The fact is that if climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets.”

  • Distant in the future. The third reason why global warming doesn’t trigger our concern is that global warming is seen as a far away occurrence. We are programmed, like all animals, to respond to clear and present danger. Our brain has been engineered to react to the world around us and predicts danger before it occurs. “Our ability to duck that which is not yet coming is one of the brain’s most stunning innovations...But this innovation is in the early stages of development.” Without the feeling of an imminent threat to individuals, a future unseen is too far away to respond to. “Unfortunately, we see climate change as a threat to our futures–not our afternoons.”

  • Climate change doesn’t strike in real-time...until it does. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, our brain can detect changes to our environment in real time when they happen. Changes in light, sound temperature, size and weight, if they happen fast enough. However, if a change happens slowly, say for instance like a river losing a meter of width every couple years, the changes can go undetected. We are highly adaptable beings and whilst we like to reminisce about the “good ol’ days”, we tend to accept the present and adapt to it. Gilbert gives an example of traffic in Los Angeles. “The density of LA traffic has increased dramatically in the last few decades, and citizens have tolerated it with only the obligatory grumbling. Had that change happened on a single day last summer, Angelenos would have shut down the city, called in the National Guard and lynched every politician they could get their hands on.” Unfortunately, whilst we in the impact bubble may be alarmed by the rate of change, many aren’t confronted by any of these changes when they happen, and as a result, they go by undetected. 

          These factors combined are demonstrated when we take into account two catastrophic events in our recent history — the Twin Towers attack where 3,000 people died and the 2003 heatwave in Europe where between 30,000 and 70,000 people died. Although the heatwave was at least ten times worse than 9/11 in terms of fatalities, Jefferies says that most people wouldn’t even remember the event. “The difference is that one of them was a predatory attack while the other was a slow and insidious event. We reacted to one, we didn’t react to the other.” 

When I asked Kate how we can move forward, if our human condition is obstructing our starting point, she said “Things are starting to change. It’s getting harder to maintain a strong sense of climate change denial. Even Trump has reluctantly muttered that the climate may be changing.” But still, with the issue being inherently political, and thus one of identity, she was of the view, “You can’t turn people’s attitudes around overnight. And you certainly can’t push on people and expect them to change their attitudes.” 

So then, considering the current climate, I asked, what should we rely on to build a sustainable economy? Money is a good starting point, she says. “Money is the one thing that every individual understands. It’s the universal language and I think that might be the starting point because I don’t think there’s anything else that can work. XR was very anti-capitalist, but ultimately, we are in a capitalist system and it’s the only tool that we have that’s universally understood. Appealing to people’s better natures on their own is not enough. The bottom line comes down to self-interest.” 

To translate that into the context of the identity divide — between those who advocate for climate action and those who don’t — if you want to appeal to people who are inherently averse to climate action, you should appeal to their sense of economic utility maximization (opportunity). “It’s best to focus on the economic costs of climate inaction, the loss of revenue and the harm that non-sustainable decisions can make for businesses in general,” she says. “For example, to invest in solar power, not because it’s going to “save the planet” but because it’s more economical in the long run. People will buy if it makes their expenses cheaper or solves their problem better than other options on the market even if the added environmental benefits are not the main motivations.”

By phrasing climate change and sustainability as opportunities to get ahead in the new economy, and telling success stories as opposed to stories which evoke feelings of being trapped, fear, and guilt you’re essentially flipping the challenge on its head.

The Impact Economy must be framed as an opportunity

When I grew up, I was always told that if we just turned the lights off, if I just showered for a couple less minutes and if we recycled then we could solve our biggest problems. But has climate change slowed down? Has plastic waste in the ocean reduced? No. It’s accelerated. This framing of climate change and sustainability as a challenge hasn’t worked over the past 30 years. So why would work today? When we pedal the same negative narratives — that reducing consumption rather than consuming better brings about the change we need to see in the world — we aren’t solving anything. Rather, we’re adding to the problem.

Now I’m not saying that as individuals we can’t make a difference. But I am saying that we cannot rely on pressuring individual to take action to bring about systems change. Beyond eating less meat, flying less and investing in sustainable alternatives, there is very little that we as individuals can do to change the sustainability of our society as a whole. That’s why we need entrepreneurship to disrupt business-as-usual and build us alternative options (think hyperloop or plant-based protein or carbon-neutral jet fuel). 

Spurred on by The Paris Agreement, this rapid race to create a sustainable, low-carbon economy has pave the way for a new global race for innovation. Since the signing of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Paris Agreement in 2015, the costs associated with decarbonisation have reduced so rapidly, they’re creating a new wave of prosperity for businesses, investors and countries who choose to chase them. “This is a story of opportunity. It’s a story of growth,” says Sir Nicholas Stern, Professor of Economics and Government & Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. 

 “We know that inadequate action translates into massive and costly climate risk. The Paris Effect makes it clear that it also puts economies at risk of falling behind the next wave of the creation of prosperity. That wave is already gathering pace and will become a dominant force in growth and transformation over this decade. Wise policy makers and investors will aim for the opportunities, jobs and resilience that can be delivered only through a net-zero economy.”  According to The Paris Effect: How the climate agreement is reshaping the global economy, whilst in 2015 low-carbon technologies and solutions were considered uncompetitive, today they’re at cost parity in a quarter of the economy and by 2030, low-carbon solutions could displace carbon intensive technologies across nearly three quarters of the economy. The scale of the opportunity in itself is simply mind-boggling. And people are starting to catch on.

Once seen as mutually exclusive, creating positive impact and maximising profits have become aligned. Whilst investors were initially wary of having financial trade-offs for sustainable investing, the overwhelming majority of investors today, believe companies that engage in leading ESG practices have the potential to be more profitable than their purely for-profit peers. They are also considered to be better long-term investments.

What’s more, 8 out of 10 investors are interested in investing sustainably.

And this grows to above 90% when considering millennial investors. Given the pressures arising from a changing climate and other environmental factors, together with millennials overtaking Baby Boomers as the dominant generation, it isn’t unthinkable that this growth will be exponential. However, underscoring the high returns is something that runs much deeper into the veins of society: The shift of  the perception of sustainability from a challenge to an opportunity.

This huge growth in the impact ecosystem has created new opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs alike. For investors, a whole new sector, once relegated to philanthropy, foreign aid or nonprofits, not only became profitable but began to overtake other asset classes. For impact entrepreneurs, the additional attention soon translated into projects developing into scaling for-profit companies.

“There is also now empirical practical evidence built over the last 10 years that shows impact investment funds returning double digits and above comparable portfolios,” states impact investor and thought leader JP Dallmann.

Yet the ecosystem is only in its infancy and still defined as an emerging asset class.

The end destination is what McKinsey & Company call an impact economy:

“An impact economy is a very different kind of system from a traditional capitalist economy that prioritises only financial returns. In an impact economy, consumers and shareholders will challenge entrepreneurs and executives to show that they generate their profits in a manner that contributes to the public good.” 

The consultancy implies, within the public good, are looming social and environmental challenges like climate change, overpopulation, food security and finite resources. Given the global scale of these challenges and the difficulties governments have in addressing them, society is turning to the private sector and especially impact entrepreneurs to take their solutions to the world. And as these challenges increasingly become underlying factors of everyday life, investors, governments, cities and organizations are being galvanised into action.

Innovative and Climate Tech companies such as Tesla, Beyond Meat and Northvolt are living proof of the potential of the impact economy. And this trend is likely to continue. The energy transition, electric vehicles and sustainable agriculture are all some of the fastest-growing industries on the planet — and direct solutions to global challenges.

But to accelerate these solutions, we cannot continue to drive change with the negative narrative which worked in the golden era of NGOs and charities. We need to highlight this opportunity. We need to show success. And we need to explicitly define that there will be winners and losers. The winners are those who will build tomorrow. The losers are those who continue to drag their feet.

If you’re an entrepreneur and you have an early-stage startup, this growth in the impact ecosystem will inevitably change the way that you operate. It too, must change the way you think: From challenge to opportunity.

Whenever you communicate as a brand or an individual, how you framed your message will determine whether it will be successful. When a message is framed well, it carves out a piece of your target audience’s mind and lives there. If you’ve just started your business, then you’ll essentially be targeting a problem that your Beachhead Market holds.

You want to become known in your position as an expert and be able to get your market proposition across as value-driven. That’s your first aim. Once you have a foothold in their mind, you want to give them stories — or strategic messages — that empower them to share that value proposition with their immediate network.

In this way, you can rely on those who you’ve served well and those who stand behind you to share your message for you. 

All great movements started with an idea

When ideas spread they create movements because they evoke emotion and they tell a story. Religions, political movements and social awakenings were all started with an idea and those fanatic enough about it to spread the gospel and convert others. Brands are no different.

Tesla, BrewDog, Nike, Apple and Patagonia have all leveraged strategic messaging to become household names the world over. But a message only spreads if it’s strategic. Strategic messaging is a value-based communication framework that communicates product value to the target audience by describing the solution to a problem they have. However, we as impact entrepreneurs usually believe that as we’re doing something positive for the planet, its inhabitants and our society, we don’t have to bring value to the table. We just ask for it instead.

Impact entrepreneurs and sustainable startups go one of two ways when it comes to framing: Overly complex or incredibly broad. Scientific or social. Why? As we’ve covered, on one hand, you’re more likely to be an academic or scientist and on the other, you’re an inherently social human being. 

The scientific or academic route is a classic impact entrepreneur character trait: It’s a complex subject and you want to show that you’re qualified. However, this often drives us to speak to our peers, not our target audience. Effective messages are both simple and consistent. When you communicate as a sustainable startup or entrepreneur, you should ask yourself before you communicate externally, if what you’re sending out checks both of those boxes.

It’s common for founders with a technical background to describe the product itself, the features and the techstack which empowers both. They often believe that this will get the audience excited. However, because decision-makers in your target audience don’t usually relate to these kinds of messages, they’re often rendered redundant.

For instance, if you’re a cleantech startup selling energy-producing glass to the construction sector, the person who actually buys your product won’t have the same technical background as you. What they do have however, is a problem that needs solving. “I need my building to generate X amount of energy to be carbon neutral and for that technology to integrate into the existing framework our buildings use.” Getting into the benefits that your product brings and the problems that that specific buyer has will make your message far more effective. 

The social side is another story: Sustainability professionals are often generalists who want to help educate everyone on the planet. They don’t want to offend or exclude. But the thing is, if you catch too wide a net, you’ll end up catching nothing. 

Both are a problem because if you can’t communicate what you do effectively, you’ll struggle to bring clients, partners or investors along on your journey. The answer? Niche down your target audience, ask them about their problems and then address them in their own words. Only then will you be able to really fine-tune your startup’s branding efforts and communicate strategically.

For this group, the main thing which hinders their communications is their goal. When I ask the question, “What’s your goal in communicating” to my clients, far too often do I get the same response: “We want to educate the society/the world/our community on climate change/plastic pollution/overconsumption/any other social issue.” There are two main problems with this sentence.

  1. It’s not demonstrating your ability to solve a problem

  2. It’s not targeted to a market segment that you’re looking to serve

As a result, many sustainability-driven businesses end up spreading their message too thin. Creating content that only “informs” or “educates” the general public, but only reaches those who already believe what they believe. It achieves nothing more than rallying those who already believe in your cause and excluding those who don’t.

Essentially, it’s preaching to the chior. And if your goal is to increase sustainable actions — like purchasing your product — then this doesn’t get you too far. Your goal should only be to educate an audience if they’re interested in what you have to sell. And then, they probably don’t need to know about the global problems — climate change, etc — but rather, as an awareness tactic, what that means for their particular business and what they can do about it.

A surefire way to make your comms more effective is to focus on identifying and solving their problems rather than educating the public.

As we have seen with the Diffusion of Innovations theory by Evert Rodgers, adoption of new technology, ideas or change to the status quo goes through five sections of society before it becomes widespread. An innovation, for Rogers, is an idea, practice or project that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption.

Diffusion analyses the conditions that increase or decrease the likelihood that an innovation — a new idea, product or practice — will be adopted by a group. Your service, product or idea, no matter have advantageous it seems to you, is not going to be automatically adopted by wider society. It’s going to go through the same process as other ideas and technologies. First via the innovators, then by the early adopters, etc. In this case, the innovators already want action on sustainability — they just don’t have the ability to make it happen.

We spend far to much time on convincing a wider society of the benefits of our product or service. We lecture to a general audience. In terms of Roger’s theory ... we end up lecturing the early majority to try and turn them into innovators. And it simply doesn’t work. 

It’s the equivalent of trying to convince your uncle at a BBQ to go vegan. He might have sympathies towards the challenge — that he eats way to much meat, but it’s already ingrained in his identity. And if we’ve seen anything from American politics over the past few years, identity is engrained in the sense of self. But then imagine one of his best mates offers him if he wants a Beyond Meat burger, saying it’s not only delicious but it solves his health issues at the same time. Your uncle is much more receptive to the latter than the former. 

In simple words:
YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE ALREADY WANT IMPACT! 
It’s your job to help them achieve it.

And you do that through delivering value. Solving their problems. Helping them achieve their impact goals — not by telling them that their impact goals should be bigger. If your product is as great as you say it is, then they will help spread the benefits through to the naysayers. You’ve just got to arm them with the benefits and the stories to do so.

Getting over these major challenges is essential for communicating your brand’s potential to grow (it’s equity).

What is strategic messaging?

As the number of Climate Tech startups grows and the sustainability space becomes more saturated, your message is going to be key in setting your business apart. By now, you should have a defined vision and mission and you know who your target audience is.

This section is going to look extensively on how to define your messages and relay them to your target audience. We’re first going to look at the idea of creating something of value and giving it away for free.

Value-driven messaging flips the traditional communications mindset on its head by introducing one key element: You’re buying your audience’s attention. Without providing something valuable, they aren’t going to get their imaginary mind-wallets out and purchase whatever you’re selling. When your message is valuable to that specific person however, you’re far more likely to capture their attention.

Create Something Valuable

Strategic messaging is literally another name for giving something away for free in exchange for the right person’s attention. So often we, as entrepreneurs, have spent so long crafting our solution and are so proud of the features we offer, that it is all we want to talk about. Strategic messaging is literally the exact opposite. When crafting a strategic message, you have to start with the customer and work your way backwards. What do they need? What questions do they have? And what resolution does your solution afford them? It’s all about the result rather than how you are going to achieve it. 

When you start with your target audience in mind, you develop the ability to step into their shoes and understand what they’re struggling with. As you have probably gathered by now, this form of communication is all about making sure that the story you tell is a) delivered to the right person, b) adds value to their lives and c) gets them to act in line with your goals; including following your company, sharing your story and reaching out to you for new business.

As we have discussed, every day, the average European sees between 4,000 and 10,000 advertisements per day. That’s just insane. And what do they all do? The majority all do nothing other than self promotion and sales. We are currently living in a world full of information and void of value. 

Before you share your next LinkedIn post or Instagram story, ask yourself; what is this piece of information going to bring to my target audience’s life? Is it going to make it easier for them to achieve their goals? Is it going to help them make the right choice in a business situation? Or is it going to go past them like another advertisement for a new formula for toothpaste?

Give Something of Value Away for Free

Before I go any further, if there’s one thing that you take away from this book, it needs to be this: GIVE YOUR AUDIENCE SOMETHING OF VALUE. It’s not such a hard concept in theory, but it took me years to figure out what this means in practice. The fact is that really giving something away that is valuable is hard. But it goes hand in hand with crafting out your niche. 

There is just so much crap out there, so much content, that to get any real estate in your target audience’s mind, you have to actually provide them with something of value. ACTUAL value for your audience in order to engage them. Serial entrepreneur, investor and author Gary Vaynerchuk brings this concept into perspective.

“If you provide so much up front value to an individual, you can actually guilt them into buying shit? Especially if all your actions are predicated on not expecting them to buy it. That’s the big part. When the energy of your tactics is to convert, you will lose. When your energy is to disproportionately bring value and let the chips fall where they may, you will win.” Vaynerchuk also highlights that all while all relationships in business need to be a two way street to be functional, before you get to this point, you need to give away value for free. It establishes the relationship. “Because the truth is, people like people. We’re wired for it. And people do business with other people. So when you learn to generally give to those people without expecting them to do something in return, you win.”

With sustainability or impact in mind, however, we often get caught up in providing value for ourselves. We like to brag about the impact we’re making or challenge others, bring them down, harp on about how one company isn’t doing enough or celebrate another that’s doing better.

Whilst this is all fine in small portions, it should not make up the majority of content you are putting into the world. It provides little-to-no value for your target audience, but rather only engages others deeply embedded in the sustainability field who already have the same views.

Kind of like an echo-chamber. For instance, when you post something on LinkedIn saying, “Donald Trump’s latest policy is the exact kind of climate denialism that we fight at our company, join us in our battle to save the climate”, you’re sugarcoating a sales pitch by attaching it to a trending topic.

Another example is a post that says “We are determined to make the sustainable economy a reality. Last year we grew our impact by x5. Want to be a part of our journey?.” As a viewer, neither of these posts bring any value to me. They’re practically a self-five for your business.

How to create content that gives value?

If attention is the greatest currency of today and people are giving your content their attention, then they are actually paying for your content. They’re paying for it by reading it. If you make them fill in a form to access it, they may consider this too expensive for the value that they’re getting. If you hold back on giving away your insights, people will potentially feel like they’re being short-changed. With so much information floating around, we don’t live in a world where we can hesitate on this. If you want your content to really succeed, you need to focus on providing value to your ideal clients.

 In my experience in this sector, content that gives something valuable for free converts better than gated content or content that holds back. Most start-ups are great at self-fiving. Some are great at bringing people along on their brand’s journey. Only a few are great at creating content that gives value away for free. Creating content that provides value means that you have to step out of your own skin and insert yourself into your target audience’s. You have to actually understand the problems that they encounter on a daily basis and provide them with a solution. Sure, your product may be one solution, but your knowledge and your experience may also help ease their pains. It takes time but it also takes emotional investment from the founder’s side. But only then will you begin to see a payoff from your content strategy. 

Direct & indirect messaging

Since the beginning and certainly since the turn of the century, B2B businesses have been sales driven. “Hey, this thing is going to make your life significantly better. Do you want to buy it?” The era was pre-internet and it was hard to reach people. To get your name or brand out there, you had to be physical and loud. Have a great business to get word of mouth sales. Do something radical or it took a very long time to get started. Now, there’s not necessarily a problem with that but when you try and force a sale, you end up with your back against a wall. And with such an explosion in advertising that we’re exposed to and so many pop-ups etc, people really don’t want to be sold to. 

Over the past five to ten years, that all changed. Marketing and especially marketing through social media, has become more important. But the tactics and techniques used didn’t change. They stayed the same. People took their traditional sales-oriented techniques and just adapted them to social media. You’ll recognise it from a lot of companies that have been around for more than 20 years. They legitimately just push out adverts on their companies LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. “Come buy our stuff, it’s the best” or “come to our event”. 

Direct pushes don’t work in the current climate. Why? Only 3% of people are in buy-mode. Out of your entire market, only 3% who are proactively looking to your product or services. And if only 3% of your market is buying at any given time, then 97% of your market is not. Author and brand strategist Jeremy Miller calls this The 3% Rule which he outlines in his book Sticky Branding. It’s a model to segment your marketplace — including anyone who can buy your services: prospects, current customers, past customers — into buying groups. The 3% Rule divides your marketplace into five buying segments:

  • 3% are active buyers. These are the people and companies that have a need and are actively shopping for vendors. They want to make a purchase in the next thirty to ninety days. These are sales leads.

  • 7% intend to change. These prospects have a need, but aren’t proactively searching for options. A well timed cold call or marketing campaign can be very effective on this segment, because they are receptive to new ideas.

  • 30% have a need, but not enough to act. This group is not buying. They may look like and act like prospects, but they won’t make a commitment. They have other priorities. Until the need becomes more pressing, they won’t make a purchase.

  • 30% do not have a need. This segment of the market does not have a need for your products and services and are not receptive to any marketing messages. They may have just made a purchase, they may be too small or they may not be ready for your services.

  • 30% are not interested in your company. There is a segment of the market that does not fit your brand. Basically, these companies are never going to choose you. They may be loyal to the competition. They may have had a bad experience with your firm. They may use alternative options. Don’t sweat it. Just recognize that this dynamic occurs and your brand can’t be all things to all people.

According to The 3% Rule, the bottom 90% aren’t actively looking for your product, but they may buy at some stage. The top 10% are actively looking, albeit at different velocities. Miller says that this leads us to believe that there are two different types of marketing. Inbound and outbound. 

  • Direct. The top 10%. Marketing to people and companies who have a need for your services right now, typically described as “inbound marketing.”

  • Indirect. The lower 90%. Marketing to people who don’t have a need for your services, but will some day.

Before the internet, brands simply marketed to the top section. They used direct messaging to target those who were ready and looking to buy. But when brands are in buy-mode, they don’t want to be sold to. They want to be understood and have their hand held through the process. They want the process to be as smooth and simple as possible. But they don’t want a salesman, they want someone they already trust and know. 

Most brands are great with direct marketing to the top 3% who are actively looking for your service. They’re comfortable talking to the top 10%. But the opportunity lies in the remaining 90% who are so often ignored because there is no direct and immediate benefit. 

This is the crux of demand generation, a new vision for digital marketing that goes beyond KPIs and other direct lead generation metrics and focuses more on brand. Targeting people who you know are in your market, before they are ready to buy. Build a rapport. So when it comes time to start looking, you are front and centre of mind. Miller says “Create an opportunity where your customers know, like and trust your company long before they have a need. That way they’ll skip right over the inbound marketing messages and call your company first when they have a need.”

Indirect marketing, when done correctly, puts the 3% of your marketplace who are actively looking to buy your product or service on your doorstep. Instead of targeting the leads who are looking to buy, you create a funnel of them to your service or product. The business benefits of this are twofold: You reduce the time it takes to close deals, reduce cost per lead, receive better qualified and higher quality leads for sales to work on, increased deal size and experience less lead leakage.

The four stages of engagement

In essence, you’ll have the first choice advantage over your competition. So how do you become and stay, top of mind of your marketplace whilst you’re waiting for them to become ready to buy? There’s a four step process to do so which includes engagement, qualification, nurturing and management. 

1. Attention.

Lead status: They’re just discovering that you exist, but they may not know what you do or how you do it. When a customer first engages with your brand, it’s more than likely that they won’t need your help initially. This is typically known in marketing terms as the top of the sales funnel. It’s where you put your best foot forward and tell your audience about the niche that you’ve carved. Show with action how you are embarking on your mission and reserve the spot in their mind that you exist in. The first step is to understand your client. Speak to their life and their world and think about what problems they have and create value around solving them. Turn them into a story. One of the best ways that you can do this is by simply asking them. What was the job-to-be-done when they approached you? Or what jobs do they still need to do? One piece of advice here would be to create an Excel sheet here and literally put the answers in there. They can be as specific or arbitrary as you want, but understanding exactly what their problems are will help you solve them in the future. Once you have filled in a few answers to your questions, you can then move on to creating content which answers them. These can be in the form of: 

Social Media Posts.
The biggest change in marketing over the last twenty years is undoubtedly the way that we consume news and media. Social media gives us the chance to put content tailored to someone’s needs right into their lap. When it comes to content, there are two things that are important. You need to create content that speaks to your audience and you need your audience to see it. 

Blogs.
Blogs are one of the best ways to have the right people find your content. Your website’s blog should do the best to provide answers to your target audience’s pain points. You have many tools at your disposal to do this and they include, but are not limited to the following posts:

  • How to’s

  • Why you need to

  • 5 reasons why

  • How we use X to power X

  • The complete guide to

  • A cheat sheet to X

  • The ultimate glossary 

  • How to craft a successful X

  • Mistakes to avoid when doing X

  • 10 X best practices

Free Resources.
As discussed in the previous section, content which provides the target audience with free digestible resources is a key pillar to generating demand. These can be anything from a whitepaper or eBook to a slideshow shared on LinkedIn. One of my favourite examples is Gary Vee’s content strategy slideshow where he provides the insight on how to turn an one hour long interview into over 80 bits of content.

Events.
Online events and webinars are great ways to digitally distribute content without a sales pitch. What’s more, each event can be turned into multiple pieces of short-form content afterwards making these events pay off again and again. 

Outbound & Cold Reach Email.
Ask an illumination question; what does your client not know that can help them. Don’t ask about problems, find them. Find a problem that you KNOW your client has. A big problem. Find out something that’s going to hurt the client or something that’s possible: “Did you know that whilst your sifting through emails for two hours each morning, your prospective clients are 45% less likely to respond”. 

Pay-Per-Click Advertising.
As Google begins to ramp up it’s advertising platform organic searches are getting lost further into the depths of the internet. That’s not to say you can’t rank highly in Google’s search, but pay-per-click lets you get there a hell of a lot sooner.

All of these techniques are the first step in becoming a customer. They’re leads or as some call them “potential prospects”. By engaging leads with non-sales tactics but rather focusing on the problems that they face on the day-to-day, you can build a reputation in their head as a problem solver in that specific niche. 

2. Interest.

Lead’s status: You’ve got their attention and they want to know if your product may be a good fit for them. Qualification is the process to determine if your lead has the potential to turn into a prospect or not.

Traditionally, the qualification process would happen manually, usually by phone or email. Whilst that’s not necessarily an issue, the idea of demand generation is that by the time you interact with your customer, you know they’re qualified.

That’s why it’s important that your content speaks to people’s needs and asks them these questions in advance within your content. Before they enter into the nurturing stage, they should already know what problems they have that you can solve and that you’re the right person/team for the job.

For example, if you’re selling a solution for drivers, a question that you may ask is if your leads have a car or if they plan on buying one. If the answer is no, then they are not a prospect.

Another example in a B2B context could be focused on selling sustainability consulting services. Your question might be something along the lines of “Does your company want to become more sustainable and future-proof in 2020?”

Obviously, if the answer is no — either because they don’t have a company or because they’re not interested in becoming more sustainable — then they’re not a prospect. The qualification process begins as soon as you receive someone’s contact details.

As impact entrepreneurs, we often focus on people who aren’t leads, asking “Why you should make your company more sustainable in 2020” rather than engage people who already think that they should make their company more sustainable in 2020. “How to make your company more sustainable in 2020”. We spend too much time convincing people to make sustainable decisions and not enough time helping people make them. Tactics include: 

  • Community building & offline events.

  • Exclusive content.

  • Conversational email marketing.

3. Desire.

Lead status: Keen to know more. Once you have determined whether your lead is the right fit for your business or not, the next step is to nurture them from a prospect into a sale. Here you have to introduce your product as a solution to the problems that you’ve identified further up the funnel. This is where most businesses start the process and whilst it’s an important step, it’s useless to start here. You need to first have prospects discover your brand and then transition into a lead before you can nurture them into a customer. They include: 

  • Educational content. Product-Specific emails, playbooks, & sales decks

  • Social proof. i.e., customer reviews, case studies, testimonials. If someone comes close to your CTA, but doesn’t manage to make it, email them with a customer review or social proof that your brand follows through for clients. 

  • Inspirational content. Almost all quarters of B2B businesses are using video today to provide inspirational content and nearly three quarters report positive results to their ROI. 

  • Free trials, free introduction calls, free report or work done.

4. Action.

Lead status: Ready to commit. Here you want to make sure that you make it as easy as possible for this prospect to become a customer. The key is to eliminate all hiccups they may have in the buying process. This stage is all about focusing on building meaningful relationships with the customer. Customers who have already purchased from you are 60 to 70% more likely to purchase from you again. Furthermore, they’re likely to refer you to their mates. So maintaining these relationships is crucial to building your brand. Remember, your brand is how people experience your brand and that’s just as relevant for today’s customers as it is for tomorrow’s. Tactics include having good refund policies or money-back guarantees and not spamming people with emails when they’re already ready to buy.

In the next post, we’re going to look at how to build your brand’s platform, identity and digital assets.

Joseph D. Simpson
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