Content marketing strategy for renewable energy companies
In last month’s column, I discussed how a clever content-rich marketing strategy could reap dividends for renewables companies. This month, I want to discuss how to best create that content. Relying purely on your marketing team can be problematic, as they often lack the required knowledge and understanding of the complex products and services they must promote. More often than not, they cannot — on their own — come up with the elaborate, detailed content necessary to engage with their audience.
So the real challenge is putting together strategies that can utilise the company’s entire intellectual capital. Yet closing the often huge gap between marketing and the rest of the organisation is not easy. Older industries such as the automotive sector have solved this problem by favouring a special breed of super-specialised marketers who combine marketing capabilities with a technical background in the industry in which they operate. Their deep understanding of their business’ technology and capabilities enables them to create marketing content that hits home with a well-informed audience.
However, the reality is that this specific kind of marketer is still largely absent from renewable-energy organisations. So, for those companies, the only way forward will be to adopt a so-called “whole-organisation” approach to marketing. This method makes sure that the sales, technical, engineering, and most importantly, the management teams, understand that successful marketing can only be achieved if everyone in the organisation contributes his or her skills and knowledge, and dedicates the necessary time and resources to pitch in and feed the marketing-content beast.
An alignment of the marketing and sales teams will ensure that the marketing effort is “on target”, and also facilitates effective post-programme evaluation. Management must play a key role in ensuring that the whole-organisation approach to marketing is institutionalised in the company’s ethos. Doing so will enable your company to efficiently demonstrate its higher level of expertise, the superior quality of its products, the genuine commitment to its customers and the understanding of their needs.This is how you will eventually manage to set yourself apart from your competition.
(Originally published on Recharge News by Jonathan Collings)