How can you use Digital Marketing to reduce your carbon footprint?

March 18, 2020 | by Pete

There’s a lot to be said for creating a sustainable, environmentally-conscious business these days.

Firstly, it’ll differentiate you. How many of your competitors are as green as they should be? And how many potential customers are looking for sustainability in the products and services they buy?

Secondly, it will do the planet an awful lot of good - even if it feels like your efforts are a mere drop in the ocean. They’re not.

Thankfully, digital marketing presents numerous opportunities to reduce your business’s carbon footprint. Here are some of our favourite reasons why.

Trade shows can be put on the back-burner

Trade shows still have a place in the modern world, but they’re increasingly being trounced by digital marketing.

If you’ve bought a stand at a trade show in recent times, you’ve probably marvelled (through gritted teeth) at how more productive your website is at generating new leads while you stand there trying to tempt passers-by to have a chat.

The more you invest in digital marketing, the more you’ll feel its benefits, and that means you won’t have to load up that carbon-spewing truck every year to attend a trade show that isn’t really that effective.

You can make print a once-in-a-while affair

Let’s confirm one thing, firstly: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with print marketing. In fact, because it is so sparse these days for many companies, it can be incredibly effective (it’s a surprise when you receive it).

However, the more effort you put into digital marketing, the less reason you’ll have to continually turn to printed promotional material.

This will do two things. Firstly, it’ll reduce your carbon footprint, and, secondly, it’ll make the rare times you do invest in printed marketing very impactful indeed.

You can reach a much wider audience, faster

There was once a time when you’d need to travel the length and breadth of the country to reach a wide audience.

That was expensive and incredibly harmful to the environment. By comparison, marketing channels like social media and video platforms like YouTube enable businesses to reach a colossal audience without leaving the office.

What’s more, that audience can cross international boundaries without the need for air fare. There’s no other way to reach that audience more sustainably than via digital channels.

Cloud services can replace in-house infrastructure

If you’re currently undertaking a lot of heavy duty, traditional marketing in-house (be it of the printed variety or via email), you’re probably relying on lots of hardware to help you do it.

That hardware will suck up a significant amount of power and add considerably to your carbon footprint.

By instead relying on digital marketing platforms, you’ll be taking advantage of cloud computing, which has the ability to significantly reduce the entire world’s carbon footprint.

In fact, research suggests that cloud computing has the potential to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by more than 16%.

Wrapping up

The carbon-footprint-friendly digital marketing tips above can be put to use for any company in any industry.

If you’ve long been concerned about your company’s ability to be environmentally-friendly, perhaps it’s time you focused more intently on your digital marketing efforts.