CLEAN TECHNOLOGY MARKETING THINK TANK

This Think Tank was held on November 12, 2009 at Exova.

Mandate of Clean Technology Think Tank:

To provide a forum for the discussion of industry issues and establishment of thought leadership positions which can be communicated to executives in the clean technology sector.

Attendees:

  • Drayton Weeissenfels
  • GreenCore
  • Monteco
  • Sempa Power
  • Vive Nano

Host: Michael Dell, General Manager, Marketing & Customer Care – Americas, Exova

The discussion was moderated by Bob Becker, Principal, SMA.

Issues Covered:

1. What are some best practices for marketing on a limited budget?
2. Advertising vs. trade shows: which scores better and why?

Synthesis of Group Discussion

How marketing has changed over last period of time

  • More focused on branding activities
  • Established more partnerships with other organizations and focused on building existing partner relationships
  • Expanded web-based initiatives, including online surveys, posting white papers, and using cookies on site to help identify traffic and manage leads
  • Became more targeted and highly focused with marketing activities
  • Applied for industry awards, which can be used to promote company
  • Presented papers at different venues, including Greentech conferences, to establish credibility
Best practices for marketing
  • Focus, focus, focus – target the market as specifically as possible and look at closing rates
  • Perform analysis on dollar value versus dollar spent. Evaluate ROI on every activity
  • Webinars
    • Door-opener to relationship with a prospect. Invite warm leads and use as means of follow-up
    • No geographic limitations – can be held internationally
    • Add value to relationships - become the expert in the eyes of the client
  • Tradeshows
    • Buyers with budgets have to be at tradeshows to learn about vendors
    • Determine which tradeshows your competitors are participating at – if they are there and you’re not there could be implications
    • Network and build relationships at conferences and tradeshows (consider tradeshows as a forum to build relationships – and not necessarily as a place to uncover leads)
    • Establish clear objectives about what you want to accomplish at a tradeshow, i.e., market research, uncover leads, competitive research
  • List purchase
    • Better to build your own list and update as you go, than to purchase an externally built list
Marketing to and with existing customers
  • It’s a mistake not to market to existing customers. Their “word of mouth” becomes negative advertising if they are not satisfied
  • Develop case studies of existing clients and use their logos
  • Develop co-branding initiatives with existing customers – trade on and promote what a successful client is doing
  • Selling new products into existing customers is key to success
  • Use existing customers as a source of direction for future product development – get them involved
  • Example: J.D. Powers in car industry. If you take care of existing customers, sales growth can be significant - there is a direct correlation to increased sales.

Advertising

  • The market is not as trusting of advertising – people are looking for trusted advisors
  • Press releases and online posting to various blogs are effective
  • Advertising may work in certain geographic markets – for example, South America – where it is the only way to communicate information to the market

Public Relations

  • Public relations is effective – submitting client stories to publications • Submitting press releases to news wire services is expensive
  • Better to target a few publications that are focused on your target market
  • Send to publication that have websites so they can post to their sites as well

 

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