How To Win More Green Deal Business

Transcription

1 How To Win More Green Deal Business An Expert s Guide To Marketing The Green Deal Please consider the environment before printing this document

2 The Green Deal was launched in the UK to make it easy and affordable for people to make their homes more energy efficient. The Government aims to insulate 14 million homes through the scheme by But when the Green Deal launched in January 2013, a YouGov poll commissioned by uswitch of more than 5000 energy customers, found that just 19 per cent of respondents (950) were aware of the Green Deal, and 81 per cent (4,010) had not even heard of the scheme. And, on the day the Green Deal scheme launched (Jan 28), only five homes in the UK had taken out a Green Deal assessment. The same survey, however, showed that 67 per cent of the respondents were interested in a scheme that would help them reduce their energy bills.

3 The dilemma for the Green Deal customer The dilemma for the consumer is that this is a new market about which the media is overall negative and for which there are still more questions than answers. Great Green Deal marketing means putting your message in front of the right audiences, long before they re considering a purchase. Questions like: Which Green Deal Provider (GDP) can I trust? What measures are feasible for my home? Does the assessor really know what he/she is doing? Will their assessment be truly impartial? What s involved? Why is there no guarantee on energy saving bills? How much can I really save? Will my landlord need to approve? Will I qualify for free installation? Should I arrange Green Deal finance or increase my mortgage to fund installation? Which Green Deal offers and products are best? What about warranties and insurance? How can I avoid being ripped off? Misinformation about the Green Deal is rife, which means that when Green Deal Providers begin marketing, consumers will be apprehensive and confused, and they will need hand-holding all along their buying cycle. The Green Deal marketing imperative The scheme may have its critics, but we believe it is a welcome catalyst for change, and an opportunity to convey a new powerful and positive message to a new set of people. Prospects will most likely be alerted to the Green Deal offer through a variety of touch points; it could be their local builder, a home improvement store, an energy saving event, their local council, their estate agent, a friend, their landlord, a local community group, a small energy efficiency installer, an article in the press or online, or their energy supplier. But their homework and research will include a thorough investigation on Google. Hence, you will need quality trusted and relevant branded content to be on the Google radar.

4 Using this guide In this guide we outline an approach to Green Deal content marketing that will help you bridge the Green Deal customer s confidence gap, lower their resistance to a Green Deal sale, and build Green Deal supplier trust. Based on our analysis, we estimate only 5% of the Green Deal supply chain has content on their websites that is noteworthy or share-worthy enough to attract and convince customers to retrofit their homes under the Green Deal scheme. There is no time to waste. Passionate companies need to be planning and creating the Green Deal marketing content they will be disseminating in three months now; that is how long it takes to create and to distribute great content that has the power to attract and convert Green Deal prospects and turn them into Green Deal customers and advocates. Waiting will just put you at a disadvantage. Remember, once the Green Deal PR machine stops whirring, you will rely much more heavily on your own Green Deal content to attract sales leads. Don t be one of the 95% Make sure your Green Deal and retrofit marketing works. Create a sound strategy that confronts the fears and resistance of prospective customers with authoritative content that builds trust with your target audience and converts your hardest prospects into your most loyal customers. Green Deal Content Marketing is a great way for you to become more relevant and create more loyalty in an age where consumers and the media are controlling the Green Deal conversation.

5 What is effective Green Deal marketing? Put simply, effective Green Deal marketing is creating and sharing valuable, and often free to-user content, in the form of quality, hard-working blog posts, newsletters, videos, guides, apps, tweets, or brochures that convince and convert your prospects into paying customers. Unlike traditional sales-focused materials, it s about telling, not selling. In content marketing, the content is closely related to what you sell, but and this is critical your content is driven by editorial rather than marketing or sales content and, as such, is journalistic in style. This gives your marketing more relevance (expertise) and resonance than standard Green Deal press releases, brochures or websites. Great Green Deal marketing comes down to putting your message in front of your audiences long before they re considering a purchase, providing them with branded content (case-studies, guides, videos, tweets, blog, posts, etc.) to keep your brand top of mind until they re ready to engage and reward you with their business. That s effective Green Deal marketing. Who s doing Green Deal marketing? Creating and distributing informative and brand enhancing Green Deal content is hard work and time consuming. It s for Green Deal leaders ; companies that see a long term future and business opportunity in the scheme. It s for Green Deal companies that are in their buyers shoes and have Green Deal in their DNA. Green Deal content marketing is a multi-channel opportunity that is financially efficient.

6 An example of effective content marketing One example of impressive content marketing is successful blogging, says GreenWise founder and editor-in-chief Louise Bateman: The GreenWise blog focuses on producing original content, building audience and driving engagement with our target audience. Our blog posts consistently rank top of Google search results and they are read by hundreds of interested customers every week. To compete effectively, you have to demonstrate that you understand your customers better than anyone. One company in the green space doing a great job with content marketing is Abundance Generation. The start-up enables individuals to invest directly in community renewable energy projects and its mission is to democratise finance. The website is a great example of a well-designed website, but more importantly its content is hard-working, informative and clear. The site has a designated blog page that is regularly updated by the team, and Abundance has managed to build a communications strategy around Facebook and Twitter, which has enabled the company to engage with its audience in a way that belies relatively small budgets compared with larger competitors. Its content strategy is driven by a company culture that is acutely aware of its customers, its competitor position, and the power of content marketing, explains Wise Up Media specialist content marketing director Stephen Bateman. Abundance Generation produces FAQs, blogging, an investment calculator, making its offering transparent so that customers can make an educated decision. In all its communication Abundance Generation never sells, there is no call to action, it just reinforces the brand so you know who it is.

7 Doing Green Deal content marketing well Probably the biggest rule of all is: tell, don t sell. Content marketing is about informing and exciting a prospect, not about selling the company, although the beauty is, when done well, content marketing becomes effective self-promotion. If your Green Deal company distributes poor content, you won t see any returns, and if it s very poor content, it will have a negative effect on your search engine algorithms, meaning that you will quickly disappear from Google Green Deal search engine results. In the past, your company may have created marketing collateral such as brochures and a static website and, once these were published, your work was done. With content marketing, your focus needs to be on generating a constantly refreshed stream of interesting and engaging Green Deal content that can be discovered, opened and referred to at any time and then shared, commented on and updated by you and your audience. That s the power of modern-day Green Deal authorship. But it s no easy task and most Green Deal companies will not succeed on their own. They will need training to learn the techniques and master the tools and disciplines that are at the heart of content marketing. They will need to be in it for the long-term (more than 3 years). Not every company can make that commitment, and not every company will be a Green Deal winner.

8 What does Green Content marketing cost? Content marketing is a hugely effective investment compared with bought media. To use an appropriate analogy: it s like investing in a house rather than renting. Costs for Green Deal content marketing are infinitely variable and relate primarily to the marketing goals and the time spent creating and distributing the right amount of content. At one end of the spectrum, you ve got companies creating highly technical retrofit guides and at the other end of the spectrum you ve got small building firms blogging about their projects in whatever spare time they have. Outsourcing can be a good option, particularly if you need editorial skills, digital marketing skills, graphic skills and video production skills that do not exist in your business. When selecting an agency to help you with Green Deal content marketing always ensure the agency can show you success stories based on any previous jobs they have done for customers in the sustainable buildings sector. Outsourcing Green Deal content marketing can be less risky than investing in new staff. But it s very specialised work and there are only a handful of prequalified agencies in the sustainable building sector, so if you re going to use an agency, it s wise to ensure that agency is qualified and willing to train your staff in the core skills and techniques of content marketing. You should agree marketing goals and key performance measures at the outset of any project so that work can be measured in terms of increased traffic, enhanced brand authority, customer engagement and lead generation. The best Green Deal content marketing agencies will want to put your team at the heart of all content marketing and grow your Green Deal thought leadership and authorship. Don t forget that your agency may not be with you forever, but your best staff hopefully will. Therefore, try to appoint an agency that will give you a fishing rod rather than hand you a fish, as this approach will allow your company to continue implementing the best practice long after the project is over and the agency is elsewhere.

9 Does Green Deal content marketing work One of the biggest benefits of online content marketing is that it is highly measurable. A company can create and distribute Green Deal content (a blog post, a guide, a video) and instantly measure the views, shares, saves and bookmarks relating to that content as well as track the sentiment and respond to comments from readers and viewers. Content marketing allows your company to continuously interact with its audiences and to learn and adapt from what you hear and see. This makes Green Deal content marketing a multi-faceted and highly beneficial business practice. Although it s easy to measure the impact of content via clicks, traffic, dwell time and comments, the ultimate question is whether engagement equals opening the wallet and purchasing a Green Deal package of energy-saving measures from your company rather than from another. Trust plays a huge part in people s decisions to reward a company with their business and, earning their trust and their business will be helped by your ability to provide them with the information they require. Retrofit expertise will vary hugely in the Green Deal home market. Positioning your company as a trusted source of expert and reliable information and knowledge will play a significant part in differentiating you and enhancing your reputation.

10 Green Deal marketing Do s and Don ts Do think long term. You can t rely solely on the Green Deal media and hubris to generate your business. Very soon the media, the Government and the public will be distracted by other stories. Green Deal content marketing is an ongoing process of creation, development, refinement and optimisation that will build your visibility and notoriety in the marketplace, giving you the voice and platform you need. Do keep the content relevant and helpful and change it regularly. It needs to be accurate and expert because it s telling people about something they re keen to learn more about, rather than selling to them. Do keep a close eye on competitors that are doing Green Deal content marketing well and identify the success factors. Do remember to focus on the interests of the audience more than you do on your company. Keep the wants and needs of your prospects in mind and never force your company on them. Do use your customer insights, testimonials, comments and observations to build up detailed customer profiles identify the universal truths and construct customer profiles, which help guide your marketing decisions. Don t create quantity at the expense of quality. It s the highest most authoritative Green Deal and retrofit content that will climb to the top of Google. When done properly, Green Deal content marketing should be about distributing relevant and valuable content to the Green Deal customer segments. If your content isn t engaging your audience it isn t worth publishing. Don t sell. Content marketing is about informing and educating the reader, not about selling, although when done well content marketing promotes your business by association. Don t believe anyone who tells you that content marketing should replace other forms of marketing. They all still play a role, but content marketing is adapted to the new consumer and is more of an invitation to a deeper level of engagement with your company, rather than a one-off communications campaign that starts then finishes.

11 Our expert tips 1. Plan your Green Deal marketing strategy first Many businesses start without a plan and then wonder why they don t know what to do next. Understand the things that are most important to your customers and plan the content that will help them most. Plan how you ll distribute that content and how you ll measure the outcomes too. Success will only come if you are strategic. 2. Understand your Green Deal customers Green Deal prospects are very willing to tell you about themselves, if there s something in it for them (a fair exchange). So include questions in your content messaging that will help you understand your prospects better. 3. Build your own Green Deal content hub As above, plan your content topics and when and where you want to publish them. Now consider the best formats for your content: blog posts, explainer videos, case-studies, success stories, consumer guides, research papers, checklists, Q&As. Then use the best social tools to publish your content where your audiences are most likely to see it. Is Twitter your primary promotional tool for Green Deal consumers? Finally, create, curate, and recreate what content do you need to generate from scratch and what can you pull together from different sources and overlay with your own unique point of view? Conclusion The Green Deal is a long haul. It s unlikely you will put together a story that is compelling and convinces people to retrofit their homes overnight. Therefore, start early (the time is now), create helpful content that engages readers and build your presence and authority online. This ensures you have long-term and respectable presence online and that you are able to grow your reputation with the search engines. If you are an ambitious Green Deal supplier looking for ways to make your Green Deal marketing stronger, but you lack the time and the expertise needed to plan and deliver customer-centric Green Deal and retrofit content, our team of content experts, digital marketers, video producers and designers can help you. Not only does our team understand the Green Deal, its strengths and challenges, but we have the expertise, reach and tools to ensure you get the results you deserve. For evidence of our work, request a copy of our latest case study.

12 Contacts Stephen Bateman, Digital marketing director Digital content marketing, social media Louise Bateman, Editorial director Editorial, copywriting, reports Mark Fewell, Creative director Video/film, design, digital Other enquiries Please consider the environment before printing this document