Hello and welcome! Thanks for joining me in the 3 Ways to Make Your Brand Stand Out in a Competitive Market. For the next 15 minutes, we will go through some of the three ways to help your solar, wind, or EV company. In renewable energy, you have to stand out because it’s noisy out there, and we’re going to help you try to solve that and make you different. To begin, we’re Sociable Media. We’re a digital marketing agency, and we love creating business solutions in the social media world of digital marketing. We work with the renewable energy space. We love the solar industry, we love the wind, we love them all, but that is our niche market, and we do a lot of content, and we work for clients in this industry.
Today’s objective is to look at a few ways to stand out
You’ll leave ideas and how to relate to your customer’s interests. You’ll go with email marketing techniques some may not know and fresh ways to craft a social media campaign. To relate to your customers ‘ interests first, you must look at the research and customer profiling, also called personas. We like to dig in to understand who you are following or who your ideal target person is.
Tailor your offerings to them so you know more about your potential client
The more you can address their pain points and perhaps their questions and get at their level, the more it all comes down to building emotional connections because we’re all human beings, and if we want to connect with people. You have to get to their pain points, what makes them happy, sad, all of those things essentially, that is what marketing is: create a unique identity for your business and get clear on your brand. What I mean by getting clear on your brand is to use your logo consistently. Make sure it’s clear, concise, and consistent across the board on your socials, website, emails, and print literature. Ensure your brand is clear, and you don’t abandon your colour schemes and fonts. That’s what I mean: develop your brand personality. Is it funny, is it warm, is it educational, or helpful? That is, in a nutshell, your brand personality. You make sure you stick with that. Stick with it for a long time before you switch it up. You will probably find that you’ll get impatient, but make sure that if you’re doing an education campaign, play with that for as long as you can so you’ll be able to generate some results before you switch to another and not to another track craft a compelling value proposition.
What is a value proposition?
Your value propositions are your unique selling points. You may have some people on your team with PhDs, and they’re smart cookies. Is that a starting point or a selling point to set you apart from your competitors? You may have a whole bunch of five-star reviews. You have the most five-star reviews in your area or region. Look at specific ways that set you apart. You may have the most extensive team in Atlanta that works in this industry, that kind of thing. How are you communicating your value proposition? Are you telling it in emails? Are you sharing it in ad campaigns on your website? About Us section, make sure it’s clear and concise and it smacks people over the head.
Think, “This is what makes us different, what makes us valuable for you,” and be relatable with your target market. I mentioned earlier that creating emotional connections will help you gain credibility and brand loyalty because people like people. What we found in social media is if you have an ad campaign that’s running or social media posts, it’s just an object like a windmill. Chances are, if you put a photo of a person standing by that windmill or a dog or a cat, what have you? It will get more results than if you just had the single windmill, so make sure you have as many authentic people as possible. It’s not an iStock image. It’s somebody actually within your company that people can relate to rather than just simply having objects design exceptional customer experience by thinking, how am I providing additional value?
Think, “This is what makes us different, what makes us valuable for you,” and be relatable with your target market. I mentioned earlier that creating emotional connections will help you gain credibility and brand loyalty because people like people. What we found in social media is if you have an ad campaign that’s running or social media posts, it’s just an object like a windmill. Chances are, if you put a photo of a person standing by that windmill or a dog or a cat, what have you? It will get more results than if you just had the single windmill, so make sure you have as many authentic people as possible. It’s not an iStock image. It’s somebody actually within your company that people can relate to rather than just simply having objects design exceptional customer experience by thinking, how am I providing additional value?
Stepping up your intrigue by providing additional value
Providing additional value is by personalizing and customizing, so here’s an exciting story. A few months ago, we got our home solar panels installed by Polaron. They’re a Canadian company that did a great job, and a few months later, we have a gift in the mail. It’s personalized. It’s a four-pack of coasters with their name on it, and a thank you note that comes attached with it. Getting in touch with them afterwards or following them that’s an excellent idea of customizing the gifts. They may have gifts like this for other demographics. Still, I like that it was a special touch. It added value to us. Another way you can get around it is by having a referral program where you could put a QR code on this postcard to have people scan it and share their referral code or link so that if their friends sign up, they get a discount. Their friends get a deal; think of ways that you can continue and nurture that relationship with past clients.
The power of thought leadership
The power of thought leadership establishes yourself as an authority. I said earlier you might have some great people on your team who are super knowledgeable about your industry, whether it’s solar or Hydro, nuclear, or what have you, but make sure you share their knowledge and insight because that becomes an excellent way to answer some questions that your clients may have and that you are a trusted Authority. You become a voice and become known for it. For example, I started a podcast called Reimagined Energy, and this podcast is an interesting story because I need to learn a lot about the renewable energy space well. I do now because one season is already in and recorded. Still, it helps me connect with the desired audience to whom I want to talk, and I also learn by doing that I don’t pretend to be the educator; I’m the listener; I’m the one that’s asking questions because it gives provides strong storytelling and it also gives you to profile the people maybe it’s the stuff people it’s perhaps clients it’ll give you an idea to get in front of their of them and extend, but that’s how I did it not everybody has to start a podcast to gain credibility and a voice it could be a Blog it could be what have you.
Email is (still) king, so don’t ignore it
Email marketing techniques, and we all know email is still King it’s it ends up in our inboxes, we all complain we get too much of them, which is good to make sure that you use your email effectively and what you have to say you’re not just adding to the noise and getting to the spam folder build an effective email list segment your groups create some lists what I mean by that is maybe people aged 55s perhaps you could be families age 35 and up maybe it’s seniors perhaps it’s people that live in a particular region or area make sure that list is very customized, and the email is tailored to their interests craft engaging not boring email content you may have something that you may need to promote within your company, but you may end up learning that it might not be of interest to your people so you got to make sure that the text that you’re writing is palatable to your audience make sure you’re personalized say hi Maria, make sure you have a little bit of maybe you can talk about the heat wave. You know, is it super hot where you are? Here’s how our company can help you ensure it’s relevant and timely after your email campaign or campaigns you send out clean up your list. It’s a living, breathing entity.
Remove bounced emails. No one wants someone unsubscribed, or they’re just not there. Move them around if there are hard bounces and there are soft bounces. Have a look at the Hard bounces. Most professional emails will clean out your list automatically, but look at who clicked, who engaged, who got back, and who clicked on the buttons on the learn more. Ensure you analyze your open rates and look at what emails did well and which didn’t. Some professional emails like Soho Constant Contact or HubSpot will even tell you what sections of the email work better than others, and it will say it’ll get granular with it, so look at those. It only takes a minute, and finally, fresh ways to craft a social media campaign.
Remove bounced emails. No one wants someone unsubscribed, or they’re just not there. Move them around if there are hard bounces and there are soft bounces. Have a look at the Hard bounces. Most professional emails will clean out your list automatically, but look at who clicked, who engaged, who got back, and who clicked on the buttons on the learn more. Ensure you analyze your open rates and look at what emails did well and which didn’t. Some professional emails like Soho Constant Contact or HubSpot will even tell you what sections of the email work better than others, and it will say it’ll get granular with it, so look at those. It only takes a minute, and finally, fresh ways to craft a social media campaign.
Strategic social media can be the change you need
The power of social media is amazing. Increase it helps you increase brand awareness in a competitive market, and believe it or not, organic will only take you so far. If you’re finding that your reach numbers are very low, it’s because Facebook or Instagram would like you to put some money behind that either by boosting the post to your followers or a custom audience or by creating an ad campaign it’s competitive make sure that you’re putting out there as meaningful because social media is changing there are a lot of moving parts going on right now. Your posts and your campaigns should educate and inform to help you cut through that noisy feed each your ideal Audience by creating custom audiences. You can create a custom audience and Facebook and Google and Instagram where you’re just targeting people that live in a certain area that have a certain interest, and you can really get granular with who they are and that is money well spent if you’re going to customize your audience then you know you’re reaching the right people and not going into the void. Carousel images; We love using those because they tell a story it could be an image with a small headline down below. Put about five of them together in your ad campaign it’s a really nice way for people to learn a little bit more about your product or your services.
Video works really well if you can put together a 15 or 30-second video that would do great on Instagram reels which are really hot right now even on TikTok you can do an ad campaign on TikTok you’ll reach a different type of audience and you can also get granular pick a region that you want to reach there video is great for LinkedIn too. Keep in mind that one size does not fit all what I mean by that is not only the image needs to be different for your different campaigns but also keep your text short. There’s nothing worse than seeing a truncated dot dot dot at the end of a really great headline because chances are people aren’t going to click on those three dots to expand the rest of the text. You only have seconds to work with here so the first few words are really impactful and really direct and to the point of what that ad is about.
Video works really well if you can put together a 15 or 30-second video that would do great on Instagram reels which are really hot right now even on TikTok you can do an ad campaign on TikTok you’ll reach a different type of audience and you can also get granular pick a region that you want to reach there video is great for LinkedIn too. Keep in mind that one size does not fit all what I mean by that is not only the image needs to be different for your different campaigns but also keep your text short. There’s nothing worse than seeing a truncated dot dot dot at the end of a really great headline because chances are people aren’t going to click on those three dots to expand the rest of the text. You only have seconds to work with here so the first few words are really impactful and really direct and to the point of what that ad is about.
Social media campaign tips and tricks
Fresh ways to craft a social media campaign could be getting customers to ask you questions to learn more about your audience. Maybe you’re asking them and maybe those questions that you ask could be answering a question about a myth true or false it could be. Did you know a lot of things like that could be educational? This is a great chance as well to establish credibility and dabble in user-generated content maybe you had some clients who put on fresh new solar panels two weeks ago and they posted and tagged you; That’s great ask if you can re-share that with your social feeds or maybe it’s a recent review or a thank you letter that you received from a client. That’s user-generated content, any content you didn’t ask for that it’s really great and people will resonate really well they always do with testimonials or photos that are contributed not from yourself case studies are important too and it doesn’t have to be this big long ebook it could be two or three paragraphs of just “here’s the problem, here’s how we solved it.”. Give your audience the situation and explain your solution; People love those on websites, it’s also a great opportunity to send that in emails as well.
Wrapping up
We have a webinar that’s coming up in August. It’s all about SEO. We’re crafting that together because we get asked a lot about SEO and Google Analytics and how to use passive SEO specifically, which is on-page SEO. We will explain everything on Tuesday, August 22nd, at 1 pm Eastern Standard Time. Lastly, thank you for joining me today, so we will make sure you and I block a free 30-minute one-on-one session. Click here. I’d love to talk to you and learn more about your company and your business, and what pain points you have right now because these could be some great solutions we can help you with. Thank you so much for joining!
