As our environment continues to change, sustainability is more of a concern than ever. More and more customers try to reduce their carbon footprints, asking the businesses they buy from ‘What are you doing for the environment?’ and we are obligated to answer. This makes it harder than ever to create physical marketing and advertising collateral, but there are ways to think about sustainability when promoting your products or services.
However, it's crucial to recognise that online marketing, while seemingly greener, also leaves a carbon footprint.
In this context, sustainable leaflet practices can reduce the environmental impact of your leaflets and help you reach a growing eco-conscious audience. In this article, we’ll explore various sustainable leaflet advertising practices you can put in place to make your next campaign a hit for your business, your customers and the environment.
1. Make Your Leaflets Reusable
One approach to making more sustainable marketing material is to make what you do create reusable. Traditional paper leaflets are most often single-use, creating waste when customers or businesses themselves have to dispose of them.
Leaflets that can be used repeatedly extend the lifecycle of your materials, enabling brand and messaging exposure for longer. Consider creating printed materials for only the things you know will last. For example, a leaflet on your brand and services or products more generally will be useful for longer than a leaflet for a limited-time single promotion, reducing waste and your production costs.
When it comes to creating reusable leaflets, there are several different ideas:
- Seeded Paper: Printing on paper embedded with flower or herb seeds creates compostable leaflets. This turns your leaflets into a memorable and sustainable gift for your audience, that can be planted in their garden rather than wasted.
- Built-in Loyalty Cards: These can be designed as detachable sections, allowing customers to keep the loyalty card while using or recycling the rest of your content.
- Multi-Purpose Leaflets: For instance, design leaflets with tear-off portions that can be used as bookmarks, coasters, or even small notepads. This versatility not only increases the lifespan of your leaflets but also enhances their value to potential customers.
2. Use Sustainable Paper
Choosing the right paper for your leaflets is crucial when aiming for sustainable advertising. Traditional paper production is resource-intensive and often contributes to deforestation. Sustainable paper options can significantly reduce your environmental footprint.
- Recycled: Paper made from post-consumer waste reduces the demand for virgin materials and saves energy in the manufacturing process. With previous advancements, recycled paper now maintains standards as high as conventional paper, so there’s no compromise on appearance for your brand.
- FSC-Certified: Another sustainable option is paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). FSC certification ensures that the paper comes from responsibly managed forests, promoting conservation and biodiversity.
- Alternatives: Materials such as bamboo paper or hemp paper are more sustainable than traditional wood-based, as they grow faster and require fewer resources in manufacturing. While recycled paper is relatively indistinguishable from conventional paper, innovative alternate materials give a unique texture and appearance to your leaflets that can help you stand out amongst the crowd.
3. Encourage Recycling
While all the above considerations can help you create leaflets that last beyond single-use, most leaflets do indeed need to be disposed of once they’ve served their purpose. You can encourage customers to be proactive by creating fully recyclable leaflets, so watch out that the materials you use don’t include any plastic wrapping or lamination!
Once you know your leaflets can be recycled, encourage your customers to follow through by incorporating appropriate recycling symbols on your leaflet. This may be universal, or specific to your region’s local recycling programme. Remember to be clear if your leaflet can be widely recycled with normal household waste or only recycled with a particular kind of waste at particular places eg soft plastic at supermarkets.
If you want to go that extra mile, you could even consider offering incentives for recycling your leaflets, such as discounts or special promotions for customers who return them to your business. Not only does this encourage your customers to be more sustainable, but it also encourages them to get in touch or visit your business face-to-face which brings you one step closer to a sale.
4. Tell Your Sustainable Story
Beyond traditional marketing messages, sustainable leaflets can be powerful tools for brand storytelling. Incorporating narratives related to your business’ sustainability practices and goals engages your audience and helps them to create a deeper connection with your brand and its values.
You could use part of your leaflet to share your business’ sustainability journey, including the commitments and progress you’ve made to meet your environmental goals. Storytelling around the challenges you’ve faced and what you’ve overcome as a company helps to humanise your brand and make your business more relatable to potential new customers.
You could focus on particular waste or energy initiatives and showcase their results or progress in data, or focus on employees or external partners that are helping you drive organisational change. It’s details like these that make your sustainability story more tangible and believable, so customers know you’re acting on your brand values. Equally, you could focus on telling stories and testimonials from existing customers about how they’ve benefited or seen the positive change from your sustainability practices, products or services.
Once you’ve created a strong credible sustainability message, don’t forget to show them where they can learn more about your initiatives or practices on your website. This could be through a page address or link, but you could also include a QR code that takes them easily straight into your website.
In conclusion, sustainable leaflet ideas offer marketing and advertising professionals a unique opportunity to showcase their brand's commitment to environmental responsibility while effectively promoting their products or services. Reusable or recyclable leaflets and more sustainable paper choices all contribute to a greener marketing approach that resonates with more eco-conscious audiences. By incorporating these ideas and ending with a compelling call to action, marketers can drive positive change and make a lasting impression on both potential customers and the planet.
How Can Leafletdrop Help You?
At Leafletdrop, we go beyond industry-leading print quality. We are now partnered with a B-Corp print partner to expand our print options and offer FSC-Certified Paper. Put simply, when you choose Leafletdrop, you choose both effective and eco-friendly advertising.
If you are looking for further information, feel free to reach out or book a demo to kickstart your advertising journey with Leafletdrop.
