Designing a marketing strategy with regenerative principles at the core

Are you putting the finishing touches on your 2025 marketing strategy, or perhaps just beginning to map it out? Wherever you are in the process, have you considered how to integrate regenerative principles into your plans? In doing so, your business can play an active role in restoring and rejuvenating the ecosystems and communities it touches.

Given the urgent environmental and social challenges our world is facing, there’s no room for complacency. Businesses must embrace regenerative action, and marketing—which connects your product and message to the world—presents a critical opportunity for transformation.

Let’s dive into 10 regenerative principles that can help you reshape your strategy for 2025 and beyond, ensuring your marketing efforts contribute to a healthier and more equitable future.

1. Anchor your strategy in your values-based purpose

To make sure your marketing strategy really serves your organisation’s purpose, start by revisiting why your organisation exists in the first place. What is your North Star? What is the positive change you want to see in the world and to which your organisation dedicates itself?

In this context, also consider the values that are driving your organisation’s purpose. They are the moral compass that guide your work at every step and keep the purpose front and center at all times. Ask questions like:

• What moral principles do we pledge to adhere to in our everyday work and big decisions?
• How will we make them truly actionable in the pursuit for the higher goal (so that they’re not just statements forgotten on a website page)?

Grounding your strategy in this way ensures every step and decision is firmly rooted in what truly matters. This approach enables you to reverse engineer your purpose into organisational and marketing OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) by starting with your desired outcome and working backward to identify the essential steps and strategies needed to achieve it.

For more on this topic as well as a practical example, check out this blog post on cultivating an impact-centred marketing approach.

2. Map your ecosystem and create personas with purpose

Marketing revolves around understanding your audiences, and a key part of this process is developing personas—semi-fictional, research-driven representations of the people you aim to serve.

However, adopting a regenerative approach broadens this focus beyond just direct users and customers. It includes all actors who are impacted by your organisation—community members, partners, supply chain participants, and very importantly, Nature itself! A regenerative marketing strategy requires systems thinking, emphasising the need to map and understand the entire ecosystem your organisation operates in.

This shift calls for developing additional kinds of personas, such as partner personas, civil society personas, Nature personas etc, to capture the full spectrum of relationships that both influence and are influenced by your business. It also involves moving from data extraction aimed at driving more profits to fostering empathetic, value-driven interactions that prioritise collective well-being.

In this blog post, I explored how personas can evolve through a regenerative lens. Dive in for practical tips and frameworks—including one for a Nature persona.

3. Redefine your indicators of success

How will you measure the success of your marketing strategy? Is it through increased profit, brand awareness, more customers, higher user engagement, a higher volume of leads?

While these metrics can be useful (also in the impact space), what if we shifted some key indicators to focus on the long-term value created for people, communities and the planet? Consider indicators like:

• Community wellbeing linked to your initiatives (participation in regenerative activities, social connections, economic prosperity in underserved contexts)
• Product longevity (increased lifespan, repairability)
• Ecosystem restoration (improved health of water, soil, forests and other vital ecosystems)
• Impact of social and climate justice campaigns (civil society engagement, influence on policy)

4. Make health and wellbeing a priority

I could have included this under the ‘indicators of success’ section, but I believe it warrants its own section because it encompasses so many important aspects!

First, consider how things are often done within marketing teams. If you’ve worked in a traditional marketing environment, you’re likely familiar with the intense pressure, competitiveness, and at times, the harmful culture that emerges in the relentless chase for profits, clients and leads.

Next, think about the content being promoted—often not fully aligned with the best interests of the audience’s well-being. For example, it may encourage behaviours, like prolonged device use, that can become harmful when practiced in excess.

Then, consider the methods used to market products. Even when a product is genuinely beneficial, marketing tactics can sometimes rely on manipulative strategies like artificial urgency or fake scarcity.

On top of that, there’s the ongoing challenge of balancing personalisation without exploiting user behaviour.

Finally, we must take into account the supply chain and the larger ecosystem in which the organisation operates.

So, what meaningful steps can you take through your marketing strategy to promote health across these various dimensions?

5. Ask yourself: Why are we growing? What are we growing for? Are we growing at the expense of others or the planet?

Right now, we use the equivalent of 1.75 planets each year. This unchecked growth and continuous extraction has led to terrible environmental and social consequences.

That’s why businesses need to pause, reflect on this reality, and ask a vital question: What is enough?

Growth is not always bad—what matters is that it’s intentional and mindful of the planetary boundaries.

As Marcus Feldthus, Co-founder of the Post Growth Guide, points out in one of his recent LinkedIn posts:

“4x highly questionable reasons to grow:

1. To sell more high-polluting products to afford more offsetting
2. To pay shareholders and executives even more millions
3. To boost top management’s egos
4. To avoid boredom

4x less questionable reasons to grow:

1. To build a buffer
2. To pay living wages to more people
3. To replace high-polluting products (not just add on top*)
4. To reach a steady-state phase (self-sustaining, resilient, impactful)”

As we know, in nature, growth isn’t infinite. It seeks equilibrium, creating space for other elements to thrive. Trees don’t grow infinitely; instead, they mature and regenerate, fostering biodiversity and resilience. As Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics, notes, unchecked growth—whether in nature or the human body—signals imbalance and demands urgent attention.

With this in mind, why not take a moment to evaluate your marketing strategy: is it primarily centered on scaling profits and expanding reach? How might it shift toward scaling impact instead? Even when it comes to impact, perhaps “scaling deep” can take precedence over “scaling wide.” This could mean focusing on qualitative indicators such as cultivating stronger relationships, enhancing ecosystem restoration, or fostering richer knowledge-sharing.

For more practical insights on this topic, make sure to explore the educational resources and incubator of Post Growth Entrepreneurship developed by Melanie Rieback, the Post Growth Guide by Mads Oscar Haumann and Marcus Feldthus and the (re)Biz programme by Ryan James and Erin Remblance.

6. Create conditions for meaningful relationships

Every marketer understands the importance of building relationships. But the question is: what’s driving this effort? Is it merely about making connections that will ultimately boost profits?

Or is it about creating an environment of genuine trust and reciprocity that nurtures authentic, meaningful relationships over the long term?

Is your marketing strategy rooted in principles that truly matter—like deep listening to genuinely understand and care for your ecosystem? Does it embrace transparency? Does it prioritise collaboration at every level, from your supply chain to your local community? Does it promote meaningful partnerships that focus on mutual wellbeing? Does it authentically embed DEI into every action, not just as performative measures?

In the long run, these values transform systems, create lasting change, and also strengthen your brand.

In the world we live in, progress won’t come from fierce competition but from meaningful collaborations where we complement each other’s skills and build on each other’s ways of thinking. And if that weren’t enough, partnership marketing is often more impactful and cost-effective than traditional marketing, which is increasingly seen as disruptive, frustrating, and less trustworthy.

7. Embrace decentralisation

We see this way too often. The marketing team at “headquarters” controlling the narrative and imposing a one-size-fits-all approach in local contexts, where local marketers are left to simply follow guidelines. This reinforces power imbalances, reflects a lack of trust and, in the context of international development, echoes colonial dynamics.

Is the marketing strategy developed in close collaboration with global marketing teams? Are the success indicators established collectively and owned by each team? Is there a culture of open, respectful knowledge-sharing, where teams learn from one another, value these insights, and integrate them into the broader brand ecosystem? Do all teams have the necessary resources, support, and system access to develop their own strategies, tell compelling stories, and create community-centered initiatives?

This approach not only promotes inclusivity and ethical practices, but also cultivates organisational harmony, ensuring brand cohesion and reinforcing the overall strategy.

8. Stay open to change and unpredictability

Much like natural ecosystems, the business landscape is subject to change, shaped by shifting community needs, political dynamics, environmental changes, technological advancements etc. The challenge lies in how your organisation adapts to these transformations.

While a well-defined strategy is important, rigid plans are doomed to fail. So it’s crucial to ensure that your strategy is flexible and that your teams are able to quickly pivot. This flexibility will allow your business to remain relevant and aligned with the changing needs of your ecosystem, while also fostering resilience. Make sure you cultivate a mindset that welcomes change as an opportunity to keep improving, rather than a threat to stability.

By embracing unpredictability, you encourage a culture of continuous learning and responsiveness, ensuring that your strategy remains agile and impactful, even in the face of uncertainty.

9. Foster a culture of experimentation

A regenerative approach thrives on experimentation, iteration, and learning from trial and error. In nature, beauty emerges from small, incremental changes adapted to local conditions, which leads to greater diversity and resilience. Likewise, in your marketing strategy, create a safe space for experimentation, where new ideas can be tested and refined over time.

This could involve incorporating biomimicry in product design, trying a different channel, experimenting with novel messaging, forming a new partnerships for an advocacy campaign, or launching a course in collaboration with a local school or university.

Combined with your core values (see principle 1), embrace the mindset of “failing forward,” where each experiment becomes an opportunity to learn and move closer to core purpose of your organisation. Through this iterative process, you’ll discover more sustainable, impactful ways to reach and resonate with your audiences, while enhancing the overall health of your ecosystem.

10. Integrate ecosystem feedback and maintain accountability

Last but not least, make sure that your strategy fosters ongoing dialogue and the exchange of knowledge within your ecosystem. Regularly gather and integrate feedback from a wide range of actors—customers, partners, community members, supply chain participants, employees, and Nature itself. This feedback loop ensures that your marketing efforts remain aligned with the needs, desires, and values of the broader ecosystem.

However, gathering feedback is only the first step. You need an accountability system to ensure that insights are acted upon. This reinforces trust and shows that your organisation is genuinely committed to improvement and to responding to the collective needs of your ecosystem.

Establish systems for tracking and measuring the impact of your changes, and be transparent about the progress made. Accountability ensures that your marketing strategy remains authentic and continues to create positive change. And do keep the loop alive: once the feedback has been integrated, communicate back to the ecosystem about how their input made a difference and invite further feedback to continue the cycle of collective improvement.

As you move forward with your strategy for 2025, remember that we can shift the power of marketing towards creating change for the greater good. By focusing on ecosystem regeneration, fostering meaningful relationships, and being accountable to the communities and environments you touch, you can shape a future where businesses truly contribute to a healthier and more equitable future. This is the transformative power of regenerative marketing, and the time to act is now!

Published on 19 December 2024 by Laura Tufis.