73% of millennials are willing to pay extra for sustainable offerings. Ethical marketing is going through the roof. Now is the best time to apply it to your business and cash in on all of the benefits.
In this article, we’ll look at the 13 best ways to use ethical marketing to attract the right audience. They will help you avoid getting into trouble with law and make sure your brand will stay aligned with its values.
It’ll lead to a massive increase in sales, conversions, and the number of loyal customers.
#1 Identify Your Ideal Customers
The most important thing is planning and figuring out who you are selling to.
It’s the same for all marketing strategies. But, first, you must find out your target audience, desires, needs, and problems.
Only then can you create the perfect strategy and make your content personalized.
(Source: Outgrow)
To achieve that, you’ll need to create the buyer’s persona – your ideal customer profile.
We’ll be using the Make My Persona tool from HubSpot for that. It’s a simple, free solution you can use to create your persona in a matter of a few minutes.
You’ll go through the 7-step process where you’ll fill in all the essential details about your buyer persona, and it will generate it for you automatically.
The result can look like something below.
(Source: HubSpot)
You’ll need to know a lot of information about your customers, though. The best place to find out more about them is on Quora and social media.
Quora is one of the best places to discover your customers’ needs and problems.
After you have your persona, you’ll need to ensure your product is solving your audience’s problem and you are all set.
Take your time on this step, though.
If you fail to create the perfect plan, your whole strategy will collapse. I am sure that’s not what you want for your business.
#2 Add Higher Purpose Behind the Purchase
The earth is in a crisis, thanks to our carelessness and consuming lifestyle. Fortunately, more and more people are aware of it and want to fix it.
They want to support the saving of the planet and be more eco-friendly.
(Source: Shopping Gives)
You should leverage that in your ethical marketing strategy and give a higher purpose to every customer’s purchase.
For instance, for every dollar a customer spends, you can plant a tree.
The options are limitless, and there are a lot of other areas you can help. For instance, you can donate a certain amount of money to charities.
(Source: Shopping Gives)
The most important thing is to find out what your customers care about the most.
If you did the previous step correctly, you’d definitely know what this thing is. Make sure to implement a higher purpose into your ethical marketing strategy.
It will make a huge difference and will allow you to stand out among competitors.
#3 Make Your Strategy Transparent
The fastest and easiest way to lose customers’ trust and loyalty is to lie to them. It’s the exact opposite of what we are trying to accomplish with ethical marketing.
Consumers are bombarded with tons of ads and promotions on a day-to-day basis.
They can see through them and realize that most businesses are selling low-quality products and are just trying to cash in on them.
If you’re honest and sell high-quality products, you can stand out among them.
It’s the best practice, to be honest with your customers from the early beginning. Then, you’ll avoid a lot of scandals and explaining of why you were lying to them.
(Source: MBA Skool)
Don’t lie to your consumers. It’ll get you in trouble sooner or later anyway.
Be honest, sell high-quality products, and try to genuinely help your customers. It’s the only way to the long-term success of your business.
#4 Tell Your Story to Create Connection
Storytelling is one of the best ways to create a deeper connection with your customers and make them committed to your business.
It’s one of the most important things to have a loyal audience that will keep buying.
And if you do it properly, your customers will also spend more on your products…
(Source: Yotpo)
Video is the best way to tell your story. You can play the music in the background to set the right atmosphere and use visuals to evoke the right emotions.
The best type of video you can create is the mission statement video.
You can see an excellent example of that from Nike below.
It clearly captures their motto, “Just Do It,” and that even if you suck, trying to do something new is never terrible.
Do the same for your company too.
Just be sure to make it high-quality, professional and perfect user experience. Poor user experience can cost you customers and thousands in sales.
(Source: Intechnic)
Prevent that by choosing the right video hosting and video marketing tools and supercharge your video game (here are some of the solutions.)
Focus on your values, keep the quality high and build a deeper connection to customers.
It will go a long way in the future success of your business.
#5 Define Marketing Ethics
It’s always a great idea to create specific rules and guidelines you follow.
It will make your whole ethical marketing strategy a lot easier and ensure that you aren’t doing anything unethical.
(Source: Cleverism)
Basically, these are the standards your company should live by, such as:
- Never mislead customers just to make a purchase
- Never skew statistics or make them up
- Stay sincere and never promise more than you can deliver
The list goes on and on; you get the idea.
Creating this set of rules will help you prevent deceitful marketing tactics and promote ethics in your marketing strategy.
That will make your ethical marketing strategy bulletproof and effortless to implement.
#6 No Illegal Pricing
Unethical pricing isn’t always illegal pricing.
In most cases, it’s up to you to decide how far you will go and whether you’re going to break the law or not.
There are many strategies that marketers use to trick customers and boost sales.
For instance, let’s consider price discrimination.
It’s when a retailer sells the same product or service at different prices to different people. Instead of the same price for all customers, retailers adjust costs based on what they think the consumer will pay
(Source: Lynda)
It can be legal, but it sure isn’t ethical, as you can tell.
If you’re practicing ethical marketing, this is a no-go. It’s completely unethical and will lose you the trust in the eyes of your customers when they find out.
So be sure to stay away from it.
#7 Build a Sales Funnel
You can have the best story or the product, but if nobody knows about you, you probably won’t earn much, right?
The key to preventing that is building a solid sales funnel.
You can imagine a sales funnel as a journey your customers go through that ends with a sale for your business.
It’s the process where you convert strangers into loyal customers that buy from you.
(Source: Artifex)
In ethical marketing, it usually takes longer to convert strangers into customers than in traditional marketing. This is because you’re not misleading your customers with quick fixes that don’t work.
Instead, you’re genuine and honest, so think of it from a long-term perspective.
There are tons of tactics to target leads in different stages of the sales funnel. You can see a handful of them below.
(Source: SFE)
Sales funnel that captures the right leads and converts them into loyal customers will go a long way in your ethical marketing strategy.
Just make sure it’s high-quality and done correctly.
Many tools can help you with that, whether you’re a day one beginner or a field-tested veteran.
One of the best tools to use for creating high-converting sales funnels is ClickFunnels.
It features tons of pre-made templates, drag-and-drop editor, and the whole UI is highly intuitive. But there are also tons of other solutions that may suit you better. (here are a few of the best alternatives.)
Pick the right sales funnel tool, create high-converting funnels, and convert more leads.
#8 Raise Awareness with Different Content Types
Ethical marketing is not only promoting your products and trying to cash in as many sales as possible.
It’s also about raising awareness of the ecological situation and the environment.
Ethical marketing is about making a difference and helping others see how they can benefit society and the world with their purchase.
But don’t be like most marketers and use the same boring content types as blogs. Instead, experiment with different content types and reach a wider audience.
(Source: E2M Solutions)
For instance, while some people may prefer watching a video, others may fancy reading a blog post or attending a webinar.
If you’re looking for a content type with enormous future potential, you should pick podcasts.
They are a rising trend and will definitely continue growing in the future. They are reliable, comfortable and customers can listen to them while they’re doing literally anything.
(Source: Podcast Insights)
You can also invite an expert over to better educate your customers about the topic of the discussion.
Make sure to use good podcast hosting to deliver greater results, though. It will make the creation of podcasts effortless too. (check some of the tools here.)
It works wonders if you can use it properly.
#9 Get a Hand from Ethical Influencer
Speaking of rising trends, influencer marketing is no different. In fact, interest in influencer marketing has grown more than 90 times.
(Source: Host Papa)
Influencers can completely supercharge your strategy, mainly because many people feel that their favorite influencer gets them better than their friends.
Influencers are also more trusted than celebrities and can significantly widen your reach.
(Source: Shane Barker)
The critical thing is that your audience can relate to them.
You should also pick the influencers that share the same values as your company.
For instance, if you want to save the planet, you won’t pick an influencer that has no idea about an eco-friendly way of living, right?
Pay attention to the number of followers, too – the more followers, the better.
If you have no idea about which influencer to choose or don’t know any that shares the same values as your company, you can use Upfluence.
It’s an online tool that connects businesses to the right influencers.
Give it a try and make your ethical marketing more effective. It’s one of the easiest ways to make an impact and scale up your business.
#10 Perfect Your Social Media Strategy
Social media is crushing it, having over 3.96 billion active users.
It’s the place where we spend on average 3 hours a day and can present an excellent opportunity to connect and engage with your audience.
(Source: Smart Insights)
Facebook is the leading platform and one of the best places to start. You can join lots of groups with like-minded people and promote your ethical marketing strategy better.
You can also better convey your message and make your posts go viral.
It’s a whole other topic, though, and there is so much that goes into it. Personally, I advise you to hire a social media manager to manage your social media accounts.
It will save you tons of time and make your social media game 10X better.
Social media is a standard, and you must make sure that you aren’t missing out on it.
Create a winning strategy, make your posts go viral, and skyrocket your awareness, sales, and conversions.
#11 Avoid Market Manipulation
Ethical marketing is about honesty, transparency, and providing value to your customers. It has far from the market manipulation some companies have tried to take advantage of.
Market manipulation is an act of artificially inflating or deflating the price.
(Source: Proactive Investor)
For instance, let’s look closer at Spoofing. Spoofing is a market manipulation strategy where you post large orders without being filled on those orders.
In essence, you’re trying to make it look like there are lots of buyers or sellers, when in fact, there are not.
This may influence others to buy or sell, though, which the spoofer can profit from.
(Source: Constantine Cannon)
But there are many other forms of manipulation like fake news, bear raid, or wash trading.
Keep in mind that most of them are illegal, so keep your hands off of them. Manipulation of the market is the exact opposite of ethical marketing.
It’s a better idea to choose sincerity and honesty when looking for long-term success.
#12 Inspire & Improve
Sometimes there is no reason to try to reinvent the wheel.
Instead, it’s much better to get inspired by competitors, improve their strategy, and apply it to your business to get better results.
It’s one of the easiest yet the most effective ways to get ahead.
The strategy has been working great for your competitors, so you know that you’ll get similar results and you also improve it, which makes it even better.
Look around and list out your top competitors, steal their strategy, and get ahead faster.
Just make sure to follow all the ethical rules and guidelines you set in the fifth step to make sure you stay true to your values.
(Source: Pacelab)
#13 Track Your Progress
No strategy is perfect, and there is always room for re-evaluation and improvement.
Unfortunately, it’s a very tedious process, and most companies skip it, which can cost them thousands in sales and conversions.
Don’t make the same mistake, and be sure to track your progress and strategy.
The easiest way to do that is to use an analytics tool and track the key performance indicators (KPIs) for your business.
Depending on your business, these are a few KPIs you can track.
- Monthly Sales Growth
- The lifetime value of a customer
- Return on marketing investment
The most popular solution you can use for tracking your KPIs is Google Analytics.
It’s free, simple, and it’s from Google, so you know you’re getting only the most accurate information.
It presents your data in a beautiful and easy-to-understand dashboard as below.
(Source: Tom Petryshen)
But there are a lot of other solutions, some of which are more powerful in some areas.
For instance, when it comes to social media marketing, Google Analytics is not as near to what Sproutsocial can do.
(Source: Sprout Social)
But again, it all depends on your preferences and the KPIs you’re measuring.
Once you have all the necessary information, it’s time to use it in action. Find out what areas of your ethical marketing works, but also those that don’t.
Fix all of the errors and issues and create a better strategy that drives stronger results.
Conclusion
Ethical marketing is one of the best ways to separate yourself from competitors, stay honest to your customers and save the planet at the same time.
In this article, we’ve talked about 13 ways to supercharge your ethical marketing strategy.
Follow the advice above, apply the steps we’ve talked about to your business, and maximize your sales and conversions.
About the author:
Hanson Cheng is the founder of Freedom to Ascend. He empowers online entrepreneurs and business owners to 10x their businesses and become financially independent. You can connect with him here.
