One of the biggest challenges utility companies face in marketing is customer participation and customer engagement in energy efficiency efforts. Utility marketers often hypothesize that participation is due to lack of education. Energy efficiency can save customers money. Adopting energy efficiency efforts can also make a home or business more comfortable, as well as support environmental efforts. Despite all these benefits, customers still tend to ignore many utility energy efficiency marketing efforts. Utility content marketing is one of the best ways to get attention and motivate customers to learn more. Read on to learn why.
Passive delivery can often be the strongest technique in utility marketing.
Customers sometimes seem almost programmed to tune out utility marketing efforts. Customers have some strong points of view regarding utility advertising. I’ve often heard customers wonder why their utility is advertising on broad media such as television.
Furthermore, providing customers incentives to reduce energy usage often feels counterintuitive. “I’m being incented to use less” is the view many customers echo. Energy efficiency rebates often seem too good to be true. Offer a rebate to customers to make improvements and they assume there must be some sort of catch.
The idea behind content marketing is it is available on a user’s terms. Digitally-based content marketing is for customers to find it when they have something on their minds. Content marketing is magical because customers don’t feel like they’re being sold; they are reading about solutions to a problem. This is one of the reasons content marketing is such a strong fit for energy efficiency.
The key is to ensure content marketing is customer-centric, not company-centric, and not just typical web copy. Content marketing can serve many goals, but ultimately content marketing is about getting users to engage and then working to deepen the customer experience and relationship. This might translate to reading additional articles that are conveniently linked and then driving these users to downloads that require data collection. Through these education resources, engage customers by thinking about participating in your utility’s energy efficiency program.
The goal isn’t just to divert users on your own website with standard web copy.
The goal is to ensure articles are keyword-oriented. Well-written articles published by utility companies will often come up in searches. One of the most frequent searches we’ve found related to energy efficiency is actually to find a technician or contractor. From there, the cycle repeats — engage customers and they’ll at least want to learn more.
Content marketing for utilities can provide useful resources to many segments and support a range of energy management understanding.
One of the biggest advantages in online content marketing for utilities is that you don’t have to try to guess at your target audience. A utility company generally serves virtually every demographic, and it’s no big effort to reach them all with most marketing communication techniques. Content marketing for utilities can bridge that gap.
Content can cover a variety of energy efficiency topics that are part of your utility marketing efforts, from tips and simple improvements to major undertakings and retrofits. A number of keywords can be targeted to cover your bases. Content can be built to start with the basics as well as targeting customers with more advanced knowledge. These differing levels of content can be based on the personas of different segments. The goal is to tie segments to likely associated search behavior and keywords.
Here is an example of a content marketing program we are currently supporting for PG&E. The program is founded in a strong content marketing strategy for utilities that encompasses content for a number of users. An example of an article targeting basic business users might be a broad report about eight ideas for saving money in a commercial setting. That topic might be too basic for more sophisticated businesses. A more sophisticated target might find more value in a detailed article about the money-saving benefits of using occupancy sensors.
Content marketing is a natural way to support a utility’s energy efficiency and demand-side management programs. To learn how your company can build a cohesive, actionable content marketing program for your utility’s energy efficiency efforts, set up a time to get our personalized assessment.
Topics: Utility Industry
