Earth Day is a day to contemplate the impact we have on this beautiful planet. As an inbound marketing agency, we’re specifically thinking about the potential damages marketing efforts have had on the environment. Today is a day we can all consider how to lessen the damage already done to the globe and move forward with sustainability in mind.
The first Earth Day in 1970 was the brainchild of Wisconsin state senator Gaylord Nelson. Nelson sought to unite the efforts of groups fighting pesticide use, pollution producing factories, oil spills, toxic dumps, the loss of wilderness areas and wildlife and other similar groups, with one aim: protect the deteriorating planet. Today, because of Nelson’s efforts, over a billion people celebrate Earth Day.
Let’s salute the efforts of Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson by looking into how marketing affects the planet.
Marketing’s Environmental Impact: Traditional vs. Inbound
Traditional marketing has a huge impact on our planet and the environment. Here are a few environmental downfalls of traditional marketing.
- Trees: Trees are cut down to create the flyers, newspapers, and magazine ads, used by traditional marketing.
- Waste creation: When we throw out those flyers that pack our mailboxes they fill up landfill sites which threaten drinking water due to excessive runoff.
- Pollution: Emissions from factories that process trees into flyers, newspapers, and magazines fill the local waterways with harmful inorganic materials and the air we breathe with smoke, smog, and harmful pollutants.
Even worse, after all that processing and smoke-filled air, it’s still not a guarantee flyers and ads in newspapers will even reach your target audience.
- Energy consumption needed: Traditional marketing requires customers to consume a lot of energy simply to receive marketing messages. Customers not only need to be watching the right channel at the right time but they need fossil fuels to power their homes for the TV to be turned on. Let’s not forget about the other fuels like gasoline needed for our cars where we hear radio ads and drive on major highways with billboards strewn about. How about those planes flying over the city with an ad behind it, hoping the right person sees it at the right time.
Traditional marketing puts out a message and hopes it gets to the right people at the right time. Advertising on billboards, magazines and television only work if the right customer is watching, and it’s success or failure can’t be measured. Inbound marketing puts your customers’ needs first, builds trust and is a data-driven solution to your business goals. Inbound creates personas to help you target the right customers.
So how does the environmental impact of inbound marketing compare to traditional marketing?
- Less power required: You require power for your computer to run but that’s only a fraction compared to what traditional forms use.
- Fossil fuel free: Creating content for inbound marketing burns almost no fossil fuels.
- Inbound is forever green: Inbound marketing is proudly forest friendly. Instead of creating wasteful paper ads or pamphlets, inbound creates digital content that is easily searchable online to get you found by the right person at the right time. Because it is digital, your marketing content is always there. Plus, when you’re done downloading your premium content, you can get outside and enjoy this beautiful planet.
When your sales and marketing team chooses inbound marketing, you can celebrate an emission-free Earth Day. Over a billion people are involved in making the planet cleaner: electric and zero emission cars, compostable food packaging, organic alternatives for straws and toothbrushes. Cleaning up beaches and parks makes an impact but so does cleaning up your marketing strategies.
How Tangible Words Can Decrease Your Ecological Footprint
Discover how the content pros at Tangible Words can continue the eco-friendly momentum your marketing team builds this Earth Day.
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