How to Build an Ethical Marketing Policy
B Corp Shares Example of an Ethical Marketing Policy and a Template You Can Use to Create Your Own
All businesses, especially Certified B Corporations, need to adopt an ethical marketing policy. But what does that mean? What should it look like? How should a company begin the process of creating their own ethical marketing policy?
JB Media is a B Corp digital marketing agency, and we too have been wrestling with the question of what it means to be an “ethical” marketer. The line that separates “ethical” from “unethical” marketing practices is always moving in step with the evolution of the technologies we use to send targeted marketing messages. In addition to the ethical impact of our marketing efforts, there are now legal implications to consider. New laws, like the GDPR in the EU and the CCPA in California, are being introduced to protect the privacy of the people companies want to reach through digital channels.
After much research and self-reflection, JB Media crafted our own ethical marketing policy to help guide our team and ensure we are doing our work and serving our clients legally and in the most ethical way possible. We also published an ebook titled “A Comprehensive Guide to Ethical Marketing” to share what we have learned.
We encourage all companies to write and follow their own ethical marketing policies. To help you get started, we have broken down what we included in our own policy below and have created an Ethical Marketing Policy Template in a Google doc that you are encouraged to copy and adapt to your own business.
Commit to Honesty in Marketing
Begin your ethical marketing policy by stating in plain language what you are willing to commit to. JB Media’s ethical marketing policy starts off with this declaration: As ethical marketers, we commit to absolute honesty in our marketing for our own campaigns and for customers and partner-driven projects.
- List examples of specific practices you vow to follow to ensure honesty.
- List examples of specific practices you promise to avoid in your marketing efforts.
Ongoing Project-Based Reflections
To ensure honesty in marketing, your whole team will need to consider the ethics of your strategy and your tactics. It can be helpful to lay out a series of questions that everyone involved in the campaign should be asking themselves and discussing with one another to ensure that your marketing efforts are ethical.
- Example: Are we clearly communicating our product or service’s value without exaggerating or misleading our key audiences?
Commitment to Rejecting Impact Washing
Impact washing is similar to greenwashing and happens when a business exaggerates their positive impact to gain a marketing advantage or uses “feel good” marketing to cover up or distract from negative outcomes that their core business model is having in another area — socially or environmentally. You may wish to explicitly commit to rejecting this practice, especially if you are a B Corp.
- Below your commitment, offer concrete examples to define what your company means by “impact washing.”
- State exactly how you promise to avoid impact washing.
- Example: We commit to being honest and transparent about the social and environmental impacts of our work.
Commit to Cultural Sensitivity in Campaign Creative
Many marketing campaigns and messages have the potential to be insensitive. Commit to doing better. Talk about why you are committed to cultural sensitivity in your policy, and then list specific steps you are taking to ensure your marketing reflects this commitment.
- Offer examples of practices you reject.
- Offer examples of practices you will follow to ensure your marketing campaigns are culturally sensitive
Commit to Permission-Based Email Marketing
Make it clear that you are not a spammer. The term “permission marketing” was originated by Seth Godin to describe marketing where the recipient of the marketing messages provides permission to receive marketing materials. In this section, explicitly state your commitment to permission-based email marketing
- List specific practices you vow to follow to ensure that only consumers who have “opted-in” will receive emails.
- Example: We commit to being GDPR compliant.
Commit to Ethical Digital Advertising
All advertising content lands somewhere on the honesty spectrum — from manipulative and dishonest to accurate, ethical, and honest. State your company’s commitment to ensuring the accuracy and ethics of the content you promote through digital advertising.
- You may want to address your stance on advertorials, pop-ups, pop-unders, and modal windows.
- Example: If an advertisement makes untrue claims about a product or services or clearly misrepresents what is being offered then it is false advertising, which is clearly an unethical marketing tactic.
Commit to Ethical Search Engine Optimization
Many SEO and content marketing tactics are considered to be manipulative and unethical. Make it clear that you will not use those tactics. As a general rule, ethical SEO means providing valuable and useful content that aligns with what users and search algorithms are looking for.
- List the ethical practices you follow for SEO and content marketing.
- Example: We vow to put the user first, focus on value, create content that aligns with our mission.
- List specific unethical SEO tactics you promise to avoid.
- Example: We do not purchase links. Links should be built organically out of merit and from real relationships and partnerships.
Commitment to Update These Practices As the Industry Evolves
We can all expect for ethical marketing practices to evolve along with the technologies marketers use to discover, reach, and engage audiences.
- Give examples of how you will continue to monitor the state of the field across different marketing channels and tactics, and update your practices accordingly.
Share Your Contact Information and Invite Dialogue
Transparency is an ethical best practice. Offer your contact information here and encourage readers to ask follow-up questions and offer feedback.
B Impact Assessment and Ethical Marketing
As B Corps, we have a vision for a better world and are trying to change how we do business to do our part to make that vision a reality. Ensuring that our marketing practices are ethical is part of the work of becoming and behaving as a B Corp. The updated B Impact Assessment includes a new section about ethical marketing with feedback and input offered by the team at JB Media Group. For some businesses working through the most recent version of the B Impact Assessment, the idea of having an ethical marketing policy may be a new consideration, but that shouldn’t stop you from creating your own.
B The Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
