Certified B Corporations (aka B Corps) share a commitment to a better way of doing business. As part of our mission to help companies and organizations that are making the world better succeed, we’ve compiled a list of three marketing best practices B Corps can leverage to stand out among their peers.
Achieving B Corporation status is a major milestone for many purpose-driven organizations. If your organization has received or recertified your B Corp status, firstly: congrats! Secondly, some good news: marketing your B Corp in the right way can help you stand out from your peers, deliver a deeper emotional connection with your stakeholders and ultimately maximize your organization’s impact.
How can you make the most of your marketing efforts? Here are three best practices for your B Corporation.
While you may know how rigorous it is to achieve and maintain a B Corp certification, an important question to ask is whether or not your audience does?
Storytelling is a powerful tool for any purpose-driven marketing strategy. Incorporating your certification journey into your brand’s story can build credibility, emotionally engage your audience, and present a roadmap for achieving mission-critical goals.
For example, with strategic storytelling, your audience can gain an understanding of what compelled your organization to pursue B Corp status and where that fits into the big picture of your brand’s purpose.
Communicating your intentions, whether it was legitimizing your existing world-changing efforts or deepening your relationships with like-minded suppliers, employees, and stakeholders by having an internationally-recognized stamp of approval, helps to build trust by explaining why having a B Corp certification matters to you.
Additionally, the more that consumers and other businesses understand the work and commitment it takes to receive and maintain certification, the more respect the certification will command.
An easy way to call attention to your B Corp story is to have a dedicated web page or section on your About page that speaks to your B Corp certification. Once you have a landing point for the story, you can share it with new audience members (e.g. new email subscribers), as well as link to it on your social media channels. Budget-permitting, it could also be a fitting piece of content for an awareness campaign.
Another important best practice in marketing your B Corp is communicating the difference your brand or organization is making in the world.
Your audience, whether it is potential or existing customers, as well as other important stakeholders value knowing that putting their support behind a brand results in tangible outcomes.
So, whether it’s making progress in achieving your UN Global Compact’s Sustainable Development Goals program (if applicable), the amount of waste diverted from a landfill or the number of trees planted as a result of doing business with you, using numbers to clearly communicate progress and impact makes it clear to your audience that your organization values making a difference.
While it’s a big feat to receive B Corp certification, it’s important to stay accountable to your stakeholders and share impact information as content (e.g. with impact reports or infographics) on your website, blog posts, email newsletters, and/or social media channels.
Companies tend to think their internal operations aren’t newsworthy, but we know the power that small actions adding up over time can have.
When it comes to creating content to deliver to those who’ve expressed an interest in you, there’s a good chance your community will find small wins just as impactful and meaningful as your big PR pushes.
As a B Corp, it is particularly important to demonstrate via your marketing mix that you are living by your mission to not only achieve and maintain your B Corp status, but to show your stakeholders that you’re truly “walking your talk.”
Here are some tangible suggestions on how to market walking your talk:
The more that consumers and other businesses know about what it takes to achieve and maintain B Corp status, the greater the value that certification will have.
By investing time and energy in these three important marketing best practices, we’re confident that you can help set your B Corp up for success, and ultimately provide the world with a better way of doing business.
Want to use marketing to share your B Corp story? Whether you need extra hands, hearts or ideas on how to do so, we’d love for you to contact the experts at Sparx for a free consultation.
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