Small and medium businesses are underserved by many utility and energy marketers. Large commercial and industrial businesses carry a significant load and often have face-to-face sales resources. Residential customers often have an abundance of resources and communications attention. But often utilities have a less defined plan and set of executional tactics for small and medium businesses. This often results in larger gaps in customer satisfaction and a lack of participation in utility and energy marketers’ programs.
So what insights can help utility and energy marketers better serve the small and medium business segment? How can their communications get by the gatekeeper? Which techniques should be used to help engage business customers? These are common questions that utility and energy marketers consider when considering how to best reach small and medium business customers. We’ve compiled 9 proven techniques for getting through and getting the attention of this critical segment.
1. Take an educational tone and explain the “whys” to overcome the “underserved” perspective.
Many utility and energy marketers focus on communications and marketing to their residential customers. Many utility and energy marketers also have dedicated resources against their large business customers. Often small- and medium-sized businesses fall between the cracks.
If you’re a utility or energy marketer with a lack of dedicated resources against small and medium businesses, utilize email, direct mail, content marketing and other targeted communications to reach this segment. Get these customers engaged, and even remind them of resources and programs available for them.
The reality is that many times the person receiving the bill is not the energy decision maker. Leverage direct marketing best practices to get the communication passed along within the customer organization.
Also ensure your communications take an educational slant. It’s important that the communications aren’t overly assumptive and provide a level of mental “hand holding.” Small and medium business customers need to feel that they are being empowered to impact their energy usage and bill.
2. Consider where energy usage fits within their overall expenses.
For certain types of business, energy might be a significant portion of their monthly expenses. But for many small and medium businesses, energy is a large portion of their expenses, and decision makers don’t perceive the bill as something that they can change.
It is important to consider usage and where energy fits into a customer’s world when constructing communications programs. Incorporate this mindset in copy tone and creative development to find the right motivators to get businesses to take action.
3. Make the benefit obvious, since many business decision makers wear a number of different hats.
Over the last year, J&C has conducted several communication preference research studies. And we have universally found that customers prefer and have come to expect personalized communications.
The reality is business-to-business decision makers are constantly wondering whether or not every email, phone call or direct mail contact is worth their time. Will this really help their business, or is there a better way to spend their time?
Small and medium businesses expect their utility or energy company to know something about them. If the communications don’t speak to them and their business, you’ll probably lose their attention quickly. Decision makers tend to wear many hats within the business, so they often guard their time and priorities carefully. Relevancy is a key strategy to improving your chances of getting business customers’ attention and driving them to action.
Make the communications about them. Leverage information and behavior to tailor the messaging and increase relevancy. Create variable data fields that can be used to customize the communications to be even more specific.
We’ve also found that personalized URLs (PURLs) are an effective strategy at delivering personalized and customized information for utility and energy business customers. PURLs have proven to be particularly powerful when integrated with email and direct mail communications. Utility and energy marketers are in a unique position, in that customers expect them to know about their business and energy usage. PURLs can deliver on that expectation and also play on a critical human curiosity, “What is on this page that they know about my business, and how can it help me?” PURLs are a proven mechanism to increase engagement with the page and get utility and energy business users to the next step, ultimately increasing conversions.
4. Ensure your communications stand out to get through the gatekeeper or just get their attention.
Given that energy management isn’t the highest priority for most businesses, marketers need to work hard to ensure their communications get the proper attention. One of the fundamental challenges of business-to-business decision makers is getting your message through the gatekeeper and into the hands of a decision maker. Sometimes the gatekeeper is a human, and sometimes the gatekeeper can be an overfilled inbox.
In energy and utility business-to-business direct mail, we almost always recommend utilizing an oversized format. However, we 
make sure the tone isn’t overly promotional. Businesses expect their utility or energy company to speak to them in a professional and serious manner. These three energy marketing examples demonstrate how an oversized envelope can be used to break through the inbox and get the attention of business-to-business decision makers.
5. Remember, small business decision makers have a lot on their plate…give them an offer that they can’t refuse (but make it believable) and…
6. Give them a date to act by.
One of the core principles of direct marketing is to provide a reason to act NOW. Many utility and energy marketers are not fully leveraging offers or incentives in their business-to-business marketing. Offers and incentives are a proven technique to increase response. Sending out general messages that don’t provide a reason to act now subliminally give decision makers a reason to deprioritize whatever you sent them. Energy is a low-involvement category; every effort and best practice should be utilized to drive action in utility and energy communications.
Utilizing offers that are time-sensitive and providing reasons to act now can drive response and deliver marketing channel effectiveness. If you’re a utility or energy marketer and you send out an email or direct mail package that doesn’t include a specific offer and an expiration date, it is likely that your communications aren’t fully optimized. Human nature is to put off things that don’t have a definitive deadline. You can probably think of many examples in which someone procrastinated about the delivery of an item because they weren’t given a definitive deadline. That is the power of the expiration date—simple, but effective.
7. Ensure you are in the right place at the right time, when small businesses are thinking about energy.
Most utility and energy marketers realize that their customers aren’t constantly thinking about their industry, products or services. In reality, energy is a low-involvement category. Energy and utility marketers need to do everything possible to be in the right place at the right time. Be in the right place when business-to-business decision makers are thinking about something energy-related.
Content and inbound marketing provide a mechanism to be in the right place at the right time. As business-to-business decision makers are looking for information, content marketing delivers solutions packaged in a customer-driven way.
Additionally, business-to-business decision makers often prefer having an opportunity to do their homework independently. Content marketing provides an opportunity for them to learn about your products and services, without the hard sell.
8. Small businesses tend to want to make well-thought-out decisions, so give them a chance to learn more, on their terms.
It’s important to realize that most channels seldom work as a stand-alone medium. For example, 2 out of 3 people who receive direct mail engage in a different marketing channel. This demonstrates the power that tactics like email and direct mail typically can play as part of a larger integrated strategy.
Most business-to-business decision makers prefer to have an opportunity to do their homework before talking to a salesperson. Furthermore, research has proven that decision makers don’t take their energy-related decisions lightly. Customers prefer to do their homework. That makes integration with landing pages a must. Ensure your landing pages continue and expand on the storyline that you started in the outbound communications of email and direct mail.
9. Ensure small businesses feel that their business matters to you.
Most small business decision makers aren’t thinking about energy that often. That doesn’t mean, however, that they want to feel like they are doing business with companies that don’t value their business. Once you start communicating, don’t allow your organization to fall back into the trap of not communicating with small business decision makers on an ongoing basis.
Many utility and energy marketers are considering more aggressive communications for their small and medium business customers. Breaking through to business-to-business decision makers isn’t always easy. This article provides 9 insights and techniques to getting business-to-business decision makers’ attention.
Topics: Utility Industry
