To select the primary target groups, the company must have a clear picture of its stakeholders and their requirements, expectations and wishes for the climate work.
If you do not already know the expectations of your stakeholders for the company’s climate work, you can open a dialogue on the subject and perhaps even involve some of them actively in giving priority to your activities.
Analysing the stakeholders will typically reveal that different things are relevant to different target groups.
• Retail consumers increasingly concentrate on whether the company is
known for having a green profile and whether its products seem more
climate-friendly than rival products.
• To the employees, it is a question of being proud of their workplaces so it is
important that the company can illustrate how its climate work goes hand
in hand with personal employee values and ethics.
• Regarding business customers, the company must show that it has taken
into account key reputation risks. As a supplier, you can become a burden
to customers if you become known as a company detrimental to society.
• Many investors find it important that the company can prove that it has
taken into account opportunities and risks entailed by climate change in
the long run.
The target group selection is also of great importance to what media and communication channels would be most expedient to use.
The majority of companies will benefit from using the media already used for contacts with customers and employees, etc., to tell about their climate work. This can be anything from the product catalogue to the intranet.
However, climate work may also give rise to using other channels, depending on the message and target group. Some companies use job advertisements, for instance, to illustrate to future employees that they are involved in the fight against climate change.
The actual communication contents must be targeted at the specific target group and its priorities. The messages must not be the same in the product catalogue and the job advertisement.