As the concept of a social business continues to become more broadly recognised as mainstream, traditional marketing approaches often still fall short of addressing the unique needs of and aligning with the values of impact-driven organisations. In my role as co-founder and regenerative growth director at Zebra Growth, I have had the pleasure of working with over 400 impact-driven startups, across the NGO, for profit, and third sector. But my previous career, and that of my co-founders, was rooted in the traditional marketing, growth and corporate venture building space, and like most marketers my success was measured by mechanistic and linear measurements such as customer acquisition, return on investment, annual recurring revenue, and customer churn. A world that I am grateful to have honed my marketing skills from, but also a paradigm that I am glad to have left behind.

Here is where the problem lies for impact driven organisations striving to create meaningful change. They know the goals they need to achieve to realise their impact, but feel completely disconnected to the commonplace traditional marketing approaches that are misaligned with their values. Therefore it becomes imperative to investigate innovative and non-traditional marketing strategies that can solve this challenge.

At Zebra Growth, we have been exploring potential solutions for 3 years now, and through our work consulting startups, designing and delivering training on regenerative marketing to students globally, and co-initiating the Regenerative Marketing Movement, have developed the beginnings of a marketing approach that is more holistic, and aligned with the values of the changemakers we are lucky to work with. 

This blog post intends to give an introduction to five unconventional marketing frameworks that not only drive growth but also ensure alignment with values as a social entrepreneur. 

The Broken Business System

As we all know, the traditional business model is rooted in a profit-first mindset, where maximising shareholder returns is the primary objective. This singular focus on financial gain often comes at the expense of broader social and environmental well-being. Such a narrow approach has numerous detrimental consequences:

1. Widespread Inequality: Businesses driven by profit margins frequently exploit labour, underpaying workers, and ignoring fair trade practices. This contributes to the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, exacerbating social disparities.
2. Environmental Degradation: The relentless pursuit of profit encourages practices that harm the planet. Over-extraction of natural resources, pollution, and inadequate waste management are common in industries prioritising short-term gains over long-term sustainability.
3. Erosion of Trust: As consumers become more aware of unethical business practices, their trust in corporations dwindles. Scandals related to environmental damage, labour exploitation, and corporate greed fuel public scepticism and demand for more ethical business operations.

What is regenerative business?

We’ve all heard of the term sustainability. In the business world, it has risen in popularity to become an essential part of any corporate strategy. Sustainability was originally viewed as a way to do less harm to our planet, but more often than not, it has taken the form of damage control, trying to even out our impacts rather than leaving our planet in a better place than we found it. With sustainability no longer enough to combat the vast number of environmental and social challenges we are facing, regenerative businesses are taking things a step further. These kinds of businesses work to give back to society and leave the planet in a better off position than when they found it. They do this by restoring the health of individuals, communities, and the planet.

Sustainability expert Jan Konietzko, describes regenerative business as “Models [that] focus on planetary health and societal wellbeing” he goes on to say “[creating] value at multiple stakeholder levels—including nature, societies, customers, suppliers and partners, shareholders and investors, and employees—through activities promoting regenerative leadership, co-creative partnerships with nature, and justice and fairness.”

We believe a regenerative business starts with the goal of making the world a better place. They have a clear purpose, goals, and values that guide how they run their business. Regenerative business practices are used throughout the entire supply chain and take people and the planet into account at every stage.

It’s important to note that before you begin to take part in regenerative marketing, you must first be a regenerative business. Regenerative marketing without the business ethos to back it up is essentially greenwashing.

The Broken Marketing System

Traditional marketing systems reflect the flawed priorities of the conventional business model, emphasising customer acquisition and revenue generation above all else. Even though we are witnessing widespread adoption of impact driven and more conscious business models, the marketing tools that these organisations can use are trailing behind in the old paradigm. The key issues with the traditional marketing system include:

1. Short-term Focus: Conventional marketing campaigns are designed to drive immediate sales, often at the cost of building long-term relationships with customers. This myopic focus can result in a high churn rate and diminishing customer loyalty.
2. Lack of Ethical Considerations: Traditional marketing rarely considers the ethical implications of its strategies. Tactics such as manipulative advertising, misinformation, and overconsumption promotion undermine consumer trust and fail to address societal issues.
3. Ignoring Social and Environmental Impact: Most traditional marketing strategies overlook the broader impact on society and the planet. They fail to address how products and services can contribute to or mitigate social and environmental challenges, not just in the long term but also in the short term through mitigating and preventative action.

What is Regenerative Marketing?

Regenerative marketing, in the simplest terms, is marketing activities that focus on creating a net positive impact on our planet and wider society. This type of marketing takes regenerative capitalism and regenerative agriculture concepts–practices that restore and heal rather than exploit and destroy–as the method’s main inputs. Regenerative marketing practices have ethics at their heart, avoiding scarcity language, manipulation, and exaggerated or false claims.

Regenerative marketing is still a developing concept. There are no set ways of doing it or activities it encompasses. However, there are some overall characteristics that regenerative marketers can embody to put themselves into the right mindset to serve our planet in the best way possible. Do remember, regenerative marketing is not just launching a campaign that gives back, rather it works to change your entire business model, product or service, and team culture. Take, for example, your company purpose or mission statement, when defining this, you are ‌ marketing. That’s why it’s essential to keep the regenerative characteristics in your mind. 

Regenerative marketing is bigger than just execution, it starts with your strategy, and this is where the biggest impact can happen.

The Need for New Marketing Systems

Developing marketing systems that align with both business objectives and social missions is crucial for creating an environment where impact driven organisations can thrive. The following five frameworks provide a blueprint for beginning to create these systems.

Framework 1: Regenerative North Star Metric

Your ‘North Star’ metric is the single measurement that best guides your company’s long-term performance. It’s the metric that matters the most. A traditional north star metric does three things: bring in revenue, reflect customer value, and measure your progress, but in the world of regeneration, we believe it has a better purpose; to correlate with and realign you to your social/environmental impact – your company’s reason for existence.

Businesses are made up of many moving parts, which means each department, team, and even individual contributors can end up working towards their own metric. This often leads to each team setting and defining its own goals, sometimes leaving internal members working against each other or duplicating efforts.

One of the biggest risks a company faces when attempting to measure performance is ‘KPI overflow’. This is when measuring too much blurs the line, overwhelms, and creates confusion on what areas need to be improved upon and optimised. Startups especially need to be clear on one metric.

Regenerative businesses have a unique opportunity when it comes to setting their North Star metric because they can directly link it to their social or environmental impact. Even though different teams will have their own sub-goals and metrics to focus on, having a north star metric means the entire company will be working toward, and able to connect their goals to, the business’ shared impact goal.

The north star metric is essential for any regenerative business. You can still use secondary metrics to help you track other areas or help you make a point, but be aware if your team isn’t crystal clear on the metric that matters the most–the one that directly correlates with impact and profitability–you can end up risking your entire business.

Spotify, is a great example of a traditional North Star Metric, and if you are a Spotify super fan you will recognise some of the input metrics designed to funnel you towards their NSM.

So how does an impact focused business apply this to their growth? In comparison to Spotify, a Regenerative North Star Metric should align with both your social impact and growth performance.

As you can see from the example below, from a children’s mental wellbeing app.

Helpful Resource → I’ve created a Miro Board so that you can try creating your NSM with your team. Click this link to view the board and to start creating.

Framework 2: The Impact Marketing Funnel

The marketing funnel is what influences your customer journey, in it you can understand the most important steps your customers are taking. Often, especially when it comes to data-driven marketing, the funnel is the basis of your whole strategy. However, most marketers have so far only been concentrating on “making noise”, trying to simply get the attention of potential customers in hopes that they become interested in making a purchase.

When it comes to regenerative lean marketing, however, the marketing funnel must be viewed through a much more holistic lens; it should end with a measurable impact. You must provide value before you can turn potential customers into paying customers. Ideally, an impact that can be optimised towards, which changes the mindset of your growth team and company as a whole. Instead of having to constantly battle between social impact and revenue generation, this ensures that both are in one funnel.

The impact funnel can help you to create a healthier pipeline, a steadier pipeline, and higher sales as you are able to tailor your messaging for each stage of the funnel. Instead of having your first user interaction be all about sales, you should instead focus on what they may want at that stage. Is it something free, inspirational, or informational? They probably don’t want to buy from you straight away, so provide value to avoid scaring them away.

Your impact funnel also helps you to understand which areas you’re performing well in, and which areas you have the biggest opportunities to improve. For example, if users are constantly dropping off at a certain stage, you need to figure out why this is happening. Perhaps you’re not providing enough value, or you’re targeting the wrong user? Apart from your north star metric, the conversion rate of your main funnel is one of the main ways you can improve your lean marketing activities, and therefore your profitability.

Helpful Resource → You can read more about the Impact funnel in Zebra Growth’s article here or give it a try for yourself with the Miro template we have created. 

Framework 3: Ecosystem Mapping

Ecosystem mapping is a visual representation of a process or system that highlights relationships in particular contexts. This activity helps you to understand what your business is a part of as a whole, and identify how different stakeholders, competitors, and others around the system, as well as planet Earth, fits into your ecosystem.

This activity helps you think beyond just your buyers and suppliers, but the entire ecosystem of touchpoints you have with stakeholders or those influenced by your existence. What effects does your business have on the wider world? Think both industry- and geographically-wise.

An ecosystem map enables you to see where your business is unique, and where your skills as an organisation are most needed – perhaps another brand producing zero-waste products isn’t necessary, but a business that works to take single-use plastics out of everyday use in larger facilities might be.

This also presents an opportunity to unlock new ways of revenue generation, potential services or products, or collaborative partnerships–all of which contribute towards increased profitability and ultimate self-sufficiency. Look at other organisations within your ecosystem to discover areas where you may be able to collaborate with other players to untap new channel potential, often for free.

Ecosystem mapping enables organisations to:

• Identify Key Relationships: By mapping ecosystems, organisations can pinpoint essential relationships and connections that are crucial for creating systemic change.
• Understand Power Dynamics: Recognising where power resides and how it flows within an ecosystem helps in addressing inequities and redistributing power more equitably.
• Foster Collaboration: Ecosystem mapping encourages collaboration by highlighting how different stakeholders and communities can work together towards common goals.
• Build Contextual Awareness: Understanding the unique cultural, social, and environmental contexts of different communities ensures that interventions are relevant and effective.

Helpful resource → I’ve put together this Miro Board for you to spend time plotting your business ecosystem with your team.

Framework 4: Strategic, Rooted, & Meaningful Partnerships

About a year ago, I came across a transformative concept that reshaped my approach to marketing, and in particular to acquiring customers. Deep Scaling, introduced by Tatiana Fraser and The Systems Sanctuary in their comprehensive research, “The Art of Scaling Deep,” offered a refreshing perspective that resonated deeply with me. It challenged the conventional strategies of endless customer acquisition and instead emphasised the importance of building rich, rooted relationships.

The Power of Deep Scaling

Deep scaling centres on the slow, steady work of deepening relationships, prioritising context, and fostering connections that bridge diverse communities. Unlike traditional approaches that focus on expanding reach by influencing and spreading new models, deep scaling nurtures abundant growth through networks and lifelong, mutually beneficial partnerships. This method is not only more sustainable but also more impactful, as it creates a foundation for lasting systemic change.

Introducing T-Shaped Scaling: A Balanced Approach to Growth

Inspired by the principles of deep scaling, Zebra Growth developed the concept of T-Shaped Scaling. This balanced approach combines the strategies of scaling wide (the top of the T) and scaling deep (the bottom of the T) to create a holistic marketing model for organisations.

1. Scaling Wide: Expanding Reach

The top of the T, or ‘Scaling Wide,’ involves expanding your organisation’s impact by forming strategic relationships, developing collaborative structures, and creating new marketing tools. Working synergistically amplifies your social impact, allowing your organisation to reach new audiences and create broader change.

2. Scaling Deep: Deepening Roots

The bottom of the T, or ‘Scaling Deep,’ is where the transformative power truly lies. This involves engaging authentically with stakeholders, fostering deep ecosystem engagement, and developing shared spaces for collaboration. Deep scaling nurtures abundant growth through networks and lifelong, rich, mutually beneficial partnerships. These relationships become the bedrock of resilient and adaptive systems.

Practical Tips for T-Shaped Scaling

• Focus on building long-term, strategic partnerships that go beyond transactional interactions. Invest in relationships that offer mutual benefits and foster deeper connections within your community.
• Develop structures that promote collaboration both within and outside your organisation. This could involve cross-functional teams, partnerships with other organisations, or community-driven initiatives.
• Utilise marketing tools that not only promote your organisation’s message but also engage your audience in meaningful ways. Storytelling, interactive content, and community events can all play a role in creating deeper connections.
• Engage with your stakeholders in ways that are authentic and meaningful. This could involve regular check-ins, community forums, or collaborative projects that allow for genuine input and participation.
• Foster engagement within your ecosystem by creating shared spaces for collaboration. This could be physical spaces like community centres or virtual spaces like online forums and collaborative platforms.

The Journey of T-Shaped Scaling

By the end, you’ll see how T-shaped scaling not only widens your influence but also deepens your community ties, leading to sustainable and impactful growth. This balanced approach ensures that your organisation can achieve both breadth and depth, creating a resilient and adaptive system that thrives on deep, meaningful relationships.

Helpful Resource → Grab a cuppa, and enjoy reading the beautiful piece of work, “The Art of Scaling Deep” 

Framework 5: Lean, Experiment-Led Marketing

Introducing the G.R.O.W.S process….

One of the key principles of regenerative lean marketing is experimentation. This means trying out strategies and tactics, letting yourself get comfortable with failure, and using experiments to accelerate the growth learning curve. This method results in discovering the tactics that can create profitability in your startup much quicker than traditional methods, in other words, the faster you know what you’re doing wrong, the faster you can stop making these mistakes and therefore become more profitable.

At the heart of the experimentation process lies the data-gathering process. The key to this is trusting the G.R.O.W.S process. The process consists of 5 steps, which are as follows:

• G – Gather Ideas:

Brainstorm as many experiment ideas as possible with your team. This is where you’ll sit down and consider one specific pain point where you see an opportunity for growth and generate ideas to tackle this. Try to consider what specific value you’re offering to potential customers/partners, and at what specific part of the funnel, then consider how you’re planning to communicate this.

• R – Rank Ideas:

Once you’ve brainstormed your ideas, you need to rank them to understand which ideas are more likely to be easily achieved and create a big impact on your growth. Use the ICE framework (impact + confidence + ease) to prioritise which ideas have the highest ROI (=potential x effort). This is basically an easy and systemic way of sticking to the 20/80 rule–you want to put in 20% effort to achieve 80% output.

• O – Outline Experiments:

Now that you’ve got a shiny new hypothesis, you need to outline the experiment. Choose your next steps and design your experiment as quickly and small as possible. The main question here is: what is the one metric that matters the most within this experiment, and what is the minimum amount of data required to validate it?

• W – Work work work:

Execute your experiment in a 2-4 week window. (The time period of running your experiment may vary based on your business size, industry and model). We’d also recommend a weekly meeting per experiment you’re running. This ensures all team members involved are aligned and you’re keeping on schedule.

• S – Study (and Implement) outcome:

Congratulations, you’ve now run your first experiment! Now it’s time to study the data, a crucial step–how else are you going to validate your experiments? Analyse the data from your experiment and decide on the next steps to take: learn or implement! Remember–if you find the results invalidate your hypothesis, that’s totally normal! The focus is on studying the data to gather insights and key learnings that will inform your next growth cycle or experiment.

The G.R.O.W.S process also encourages you to conduct experiments around what may make the biggest difference within your business – we’re not just talking about changes that 0.1x your performance, but ones that 3x or 5x it. Use this process to take big risks with your high- level objectives, and uncover something that will have the biggest effect on your profitability and your impact goals.

A practical example of the G.R.O.W.S. process is our own experimentation we undertook to convert more potential customers for one of our technology clients. We were struggling to convert leads into clients, believing potential customers weren’t converting due to an​ inability to acquire funding or because they lacked confidence in the new technology we used within their services. This is how we underwent the G.R.O.W.S. process:

Gather Ideas

We ideated multiple concepts, including a webinar series to help leads overcome key blockers, refreshed eBooks focussed on product capability and payback, and LinkedIn sales team activation focussed on user pain points.

Rank Ideas

The webinar series took priority due to its ability to reach multiple audiences: including existing stalled deals, existing pipelines and top-of-funnel audiences.

Outline tests

Outlined a 4-stage webinar series tackling key user pain points.

Work, work, work

We created the assets, built the funnels & organised the webinars

Study Outcome

3 months later, after 2 live webinars, we’d supported the acceleration of 4 ops with $10M+ value and delivered 180+ leads, becoming the second-best high-intent lead source.

That’s the magic of the G.R.O.W.S. process. The reality of business is that failure happens, and if you want to survive you’re going to need to be able to pivot a lot. This process gives you structure and security during these pivots and enables you to embed the ability to pivot into your company culture.

Helpful Resources → Make a copy of our step by step experimentation worksheet or read our full GROWS process guide

Summing it all up

Stepping away from traditional marketing methods and embracing these unconventional frameworks can truly revolutionise your social business. By adopting the Regenerative North Star Metric, Impact Marketing Funnel, Ecosystem Mapping, Strategic and Meaningful Partnerships, and Lean, Experiment-Led Marketing, you’ll find a way to grow that feels authentic and aligned with your values. These strategies not only help your business thrive but also ensure you’re making a positive impact on society and the planet. At Zebra Growth, we’ve witnessed how these approaches can transform organisations, and we believe they can do the same for you. So, dive in, experiment, and let your marketing efforts reflect the change you want to see in the world.

Some bonus value

If you got this far, we’d love to say thankyou by sharing some additional resources:

→ Join our Growth4Good huddle and receive weekly regenerative marketing tips into your inbox

→ Looking for impact aligned marketing freelancers, check out our database of marketing specialists that are on the same mission as you

Author bio

Lee Fitzpatrick is the co-founder and Regenerative Growth Director of Zebra Growth. A problem solver at heart, Lee has been an entrepreneur operating in the startup space both in the UK and globally for 15 years. So, understandably, he’s picked up a thing or two about business and growth. Lee has been involved in ‘business for good’ initiatives since 2012 and has grown increasingly disconnected from the traditional profit-driven business ecosystem, thinking, “there has to be a better way.” This led to him co-founding Zebra Growth and becoming a Certified B Corp in 2021.

Find Lee on LinkedIn

Zebra Growth

Zebra Growth is a regenerative marketing partner helping purpose-driven organisations grow while staying true to their values. They have supported over 400 impact startups and scaleups globally, fostering positive influence through empathetic, transparent marketing. Their collaborations include training with Rockstart, Bethnal Green Ventures, Start COOP, and Maze Impact. By integrating living systems thinking, regeneration, and social impact into our strategies & training, they co-create solutions that drive both short-term viability and scalable positive impact.

www.zebragrowth.com

For more articles in our Social Business Series, see:

Branding Your Social Business

Measuring & Communicating Impact