How Modern Marketing is Good for Business and for the Environment

A Guest Post by Benjamin Kolenovi?

Marketing is a big part of doing business and many would say a key process to creating and maintaining relationships with your consumers. But people generally don’t like marketing because they feel as someone is trying to convince them to spend their money. Traditionally it has been about introducing people to your products or services and persuade them to buy them.

But marketing is so much more than that. Marketing does not only have to do with selling something, although that’s the final goal. As a process, it is closely tied with the branding of the product, the mission of the company producing it and the sole reason for its existence. It is the way people are introduced to a product or service and the way they react towards it. This is why investing in marketing is so important. Without it, people might not know who you are, what you do and why you do it.

With the past developments in technology and the commercialization of the internet, companies have seen a new window of opportunity open up. A new, less expensive, faster in results, and easier to track activity. They found a new way to communicate with their consumers and a new way of gathering data and information about what they like and what they don’t. This, until now, was something that took time, effort and money to do.

But another thing that companies didn’t care about that much, and few recognized at first, was that this way of marketing cost the environment less. It was more sustainable.

What is modern marketing exactly?

This new modern marketing is characterized by closer relationships with the buyer, fewer costs and faster results. Nowadays, you have to be smarter about the way you portrait your business and how you want to market them, but the good news is that it is easier to segment the market. Modern marketing is creative, it is smarter, more reliable, more personal, measurable, and more effective. It is all about the customers experience.

There are many channels in which marketing is one nowadays. The first step towards it is a digital presence. This is achieved by creating a website, promoting it and making it visible to your desired audience. To do this you must drive traffic to that website where you have laid out everything you want to tell your customers. Traffic can be organic, driven through Google ads, and social media promotions. It can also grow by promoting it through digital influencers, celebrities and other people with a following online. It is basically a modernized way of getting the word out there, but more specifically to your targeted audience.

Is all Modern Marketing Sustainable?

Sustainability is a broad term. To understand sustainability we have to know that it doesn’t only apply to the environmental factor. Sustainability is something that extends widely into the social and economic components. Yes, modern marketing at first seems like the epidemy of sustainability but if we look closely, we can detect some flaws.

Some might argue that modern marketing is not at all sustainable because it pushes mass production, it moves with trends and it changes faster than ever. On the economicl front that is a positive move because it raises the demand for products and services, but that is where the elements clash. With the sprouting of mass production, we hasten the exploitation of natural and human resources and that way we hurt the environmental and social elements of sustainability.

But there are ways to stop that from happening. In fact, many companies have already directed their efforts towards educating the consumer first and then selling them the products. Patagonia is one of them, which have implemented this cause with their ‘Don’t Buy This Jacket’ campaign.

Sustainable marketing is the future

Like it or not sustainable marketing is the future. World and business trends have conditioned us to adapt and thrive. Keeping in mind all the factors that drew marketing to where it’s at right now we can’t help but know that these trends are only gonna get bigger. New technologies will be developed, there will be innovations shaping sustainability, new trends will emerge and people and businesses will adapt. All we can hope and work towards is that these changes are kinder, better and take us towards the future more sustainably.

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Also published on Medium.