Effective Content Marketing Strategies for Cleantech Companies

Urs Villiger 

Thanks for having me. 

Hessie Jones 

That’s great. So let’s let’s start with yourself. Tell tell us a little bit about who you are, what you’ve done and what led you to become somewhat of a a marketing guru when it comes to clean tech marketing. 

Urs Villiger 

So I do have a masters in business that’s basically my background. Academically, I have spent the last 10 years in e-commerce. I’m somewhat of an entrepreneur. I was running my own e-commerce company that I’ve. Sold a few. Years ago, and I was always. While I was doing that, I was always looking for an opportunity. Me to do something for the planet to do something against climate change and given my strong marketing focus over the past years, I’ve decided to go into copywriting and marketing strategy, helping startups and and small companies in the. In the clean tech sector. Sector to thrive and to. To yeah, yeah. To be able to market their products more effectively or products or solutions, I should say. 

Hessie Jones 

It’s it’s, it’s great that you’re able to make that switch and I’m sure a lot of these founders are are pleased with someone as seasoned as you to to be able to help them navigate on the marketing side because we know a lot of early stage founders need that support. So let’s talk about some of the marketing. Challenges when it comes to specifically clean tech companies and the need for public education. Do you see the difference in marketing for clean? But. Versus let’s say marketing for products and services or other sectors that are more widely known. 

Urs Villiger 

Yeah. Obviously there there are differences. I mean, purely the definition already says like the the mission often focuses around something that has to do with with sustainability and there’s some type of environmental focus. Which then leads the messaging to highlight like the positive impact that those products have or that the solutions have. Whereas conventional marketing would rely more on product features than product benefits and such. So which obviously you have in clean tech as well. But there is, there’s the additional aspect of of that of that sustainability. Focus and as you say. There’s the education approach. That that these companies have to follow is is is very important because often we’re dealing with with new technologies that are new for the, for the public, to use, new for businesses that use them. So there’s a fair amount of education that we need to. Bring out there so. I have an example from this. For a residential solar company that I’ve worked with, we produced dozens of plots just explaining how solar on residential rooftop works, how much energy produces and how essentially, at the end of the day, when you have that and in the location where it works well, how you save money. So so those are. A few of the aspects, I mean there’s. There, there’s so much more. To it. Obviously for when we’re looking at the at the younger companies that the in, in the startup phase. You often have to rely on on thought leadership because you you might be the first one doing something or or you you’re at least early in the market, so you have to you. Have to build. The credibility, and I often help companies develop case studies or write papers that they can then use. To to build credibility that that would be sort of like my third thought towards that topic. You also mentioned the regulatory landscape, how how that can have an effect in here. It’s not just negative, right? It’s not just regulations that you have to comply with, but it’s also government incentives, which is a positive thing. There’s a plethora of government incentives out there for for clean tech, which has strong influence on your marketing. We’ll probably see later how how that works out detail. Another important point is that you often as a. Clean tech start up at some point when you have a solution that you’re ready to bring the market, you have to focus on early adopters. I’m I’m going to use Tesla as an example. In again in the early days, Elon Musk had this wonderful role, Sir, that he wanted to market, and he knew, first of all, he he knew he had to have a sexy product that. People wanted use over. Some gas powered cars and, but that was his marketing. He needed to find those early adopters. And he would market to them 24/7. I’m sure you could read stories about that and everywhere, but that was his target group. He was focusing on those early adopters. So that’s I think very common in this space. Another important factor is relationships, not just like often solutions are being to be residential solar for, for example, would be to see, but it’s also often to governments if you work in in stuff that’s more. Infrastructure related. It could be easy charging, so now you’re you’re all of a sudden you’re marketing to government, which is another a layer that you have to, yeah, be be prepared for or it could be, yeah, you could just see there’s an opportunity, not everybody has to go that route. Again, another important factor for for. Early startups, who’s your first? Who’s your first audience? It’s probably venture capitalists because you’re you’re looking for funding. So how are you talking to these people? How are you attract attracting investors? How? How are you demonstrating that your solution is scalable? Those that become important questions. So those would be my my opening thoughts. 

Hessie Jones 

And it it’s interesting that you you talked about investors being kind of like your first audience because of the the the fact that it’s going to take a while to actually get to market, get to a pilot, even get to commercialization. So just the amount of time and invest. To get to a place where, let’s say, most companies in B2B S can get there within a year, clean tech companies will probably take twice as long. At the very least, right. So OK, so let’s get to the next question because. This is it. This is an important one because of the. Time that we live in. We know that we’re transitioning. Now, from fossil fuels to renewable energy, so I’m going to point to a stat that came from the International Energy Agency. And in 2023 they indicated that we saw CO2 emissions rise by .9% it was a. It was a record high goal. It was a record high compared to previous years. At the same time, we saw renewable renewable energy. This is grow significantly. Solar increased by 22%, wind power generation increased by 14%. However, we also saw this growth in coal consumption 2%. Rise in oil demand 1.5% so given this recent data, when you you’re seeing this growth in both renewable? Non renewable energy and how renewable energy companies get. Need to craft messages that acknowledge that this is the complex reality of what we’re dealing with today. How do you? How do you square that in the message and still try to improve or promote the adoption of clean technologies? 

Urs Villiger 

Well, you could argue there’s there’s, there’s good news in those numbers and there’s bad news in in those numbers. I mean, the facts are that we’re adding every day we’re adding 200,000 people to our planet, right. And the other factor is that. Larger third world and 2nd world countries are improving their standard of living, which also comes with increased energy demand. So both those factors just in increased energy demand. As such, and us trying to trying to come up with solutions and trying to come up with the energy that’s required, OK, you could say, OK, there has been an increase in coal, but the increase in coal was 2% and the increase in solar was 22%, so. Yes, we’re chasing it. We’re definitely chasing it, but there have been absolutely massive deployments of of renewable energies and we just have to keep. Going. 

Hessie Jones 

Mm-hmm. And so like from your your perspective, given that clean tech is one of the fastest growing. Sectors. If you were to work with, let’s say, clean tech companies that are very early stage, they have limited resources, they may not necessarily have, let’s say, the time, the energy or even the subject matter expert to actually develop a a signal, a good white paper to prove their point. What do you think some of the crucial elements are that they should focus on when it comes to their marketing strategies as the company does? 

Urs Villiger 

Yeah, it’s it’s tough, right? There’s usually no marketing budgets. There’s not a lot of time. It’s it’s, it’s a tough question. I mean again it depends a. Little bit where you are. If you have a solution ready to go, your your focus is different than when you’re. You’re still hustling to to to find investors, so. If. The the the one thing you always need to do is identify your your your targets, right? Who are you gonna target? 1st is it is it those early adopters or is it established Target group? You know who they are? Where is your business gonna come from? That is is the key question. Who are the decision makers? If you’re if you’re dealing with corporations or the government and you have to go after them and I see a lot of companies, they go to trade shows, it’s it’s a very common thing. Do because it’s great to explain like in in person to explain your product, your your solution and make connect. Given that it’s often, as you say, like we need a bit of a longer term approach. Very often this is a strategy because you’re now you’re making connections and then you have to keep nurturing those connections, feed feed them information. One such thing could be to have press releases also often done in in early stages, which is also a tool to to inform in in possible investors is an investor relations tool, right? Just keeping everybody up to date on what’s going on in, in the company. At some point. You’re going to have to have an online presence. Right, I worked with a startup in the energy storage business and that helped them build their first website completely from scratch. It’s just important if you do that, that that you’re you’re wording. And is is connecting immediately with with your target audience and therefore you have to know your target audience. Otherwise you can’t connect properly so. So those are. Some of the things that that I think come first, obviously there’s social media, some people use blogs, they use Instagram or Facebook to to post updates, for example on their. Sorry, as an entrepreneur, they say, oh, I’m doing this. I’ve just been doing that and it can be interesting. You can get an interesting following from that. Just people are like, oh, what’s this? What’s this person doing? So if you’re, if you’re B to B starts going as soon as possible, start going. You’re linking because that’s where all your decision makers are. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah. I just when you when you mentioned LinkedIn and the same thing with Instagram because it’s a it’s a huge opportunity to actually develop community. There’s so many groups that are in LinkedIn that may be relevant to what you’re doing. You could actually potentially create like a collaborative marketing campaign. With them, especially if they’re within the same sector, because that everybody is in need of money, but if they don’t have it, they could develop these collaborations to to make a a nice big marketing campaign out of, let’s say, two or three companies come. And. So that’s one way to deal with. That, I think too. So OK, so tell me about how you tell the story, right? The the importance of storytelling. This is this is one way that really connects you to the people that you’re trying to engage in. There are things like video podcasting, white papers that you talked about. Inform. So how do you tailor your content for each platform? And which platforms did you find that were affected? For some types of content and not others? 

Urs Villiger 

Yeah. So that’s a very interesting point. So the way I would structure it is first of all on the top level, I would first of all ask myself and my marketing need to be or need to see. That determines some to some. In some form. Which channels you’re going to go on? You mentioned podcasting. I like podcasting, it’s great. I I listen to a lot of podcasts. It’s how I educate myself on what’s going on in the EV charging business in the solar business, so. To me, I almost feel like they have become like those. Those industry specific podcasts have become the the modern industry magazines. That’s how. 

Like I think the eyeballs have gone more like has gone away from those magazines more to podcasts. I want to get educated on that topic. I’m gonna listen to that podcast so. Yeah. Great. Great tool. You don’t have to run your own podcast. There’s there’s lots of podcasts you could you could reach out to see if they will have you or if they will mention you. Yeah. Then it then it comes down to like condensing or or or or telling your story. Yeah, which. 

Hessie Jones 

I I find that that those those things are are actually invaluable because even though they do take time. It’s a way to actually connect because. As you are talking because they see you visibly, whether or not it’s in video or they hear you through a podcast and then you create that credibility at the same time developing your content and not necessarily spending a lot of dollars doing it right. And I do find that they are engaging. If you’re on Instagram. You almost should be using some form of video, because anything that’s static does not necessarily work right. The more engaging the better. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean that’s those are great ways to to tell your story. 

So tell me so. Ohh sorry about that. 

Urs Villiger 

Yeah, you you also asked about tailoring the content for different platforms, so. 

Hessie Jones 

Urs Villiger 

Again, knowing your audience is key, right? That’s the number one thing I can give an example. You’re one of my clients in the mobile solar business, so they develop solar solutions for fleets. So they’re selling the fleet managers and corporations, B2B, so. The question becomes, what’s the most compelling to that Target group? And it’s cost. So the question becomes, how can I reduce the cost of operating the fleet now? Solar offers one such solution. We got going too much into detail. Essentially solar solar panels on the roof of the delivery truck can charge that the battery of that truck that the battery operates the lift gate. It helps save fuel cost and it helps save on vehicle maintenance because there’s fewer emergencies with like batteries that are run down. Etcetera. So what does this client do? They develop a calculator on their website where fleet managers can enter the specs of their vehicles and can choose from like a different solution, solar solutions and see how much money they can save. With adding that that solar package. So essentially, it’s an ROI calculator. For the fleet manager. Great way of. Of doing things right. So they had a press release about it, a little bit of communication around it and off you go to the races, right? 

Hessie Jones 

So what? So tell me about one of your other clients. I think you you mentioned it earlier, AC company named Switch energy, they said they’re an EV charging and energy management company. Tell us a little bit about them first. And what you did to help them, let’s say, improve their overall marketing strategy. 

Urs Villiger 

1. Yeah. So we I worked with uh switch on a complete website overhaul. So there I find they’re a fantastic example of a A Canada based startup, right. They have developed now phenomenal momentum as a as a provider of EV charging solutions for condo buildings and. Workplaces and their story is that, like with the rise of the EV, they realized that all these existing codes of buildings. Will be in real trouble real soon when all their residents want to buy EV’s and. Charge their EV’s. So they came up with a solution that manages the electricity in the building and basically feeds the the EV Chargers. And but now switch has gone through a few financing rounds. They were sorry at one point. So they have gone through all those. They just and now they’ve they’ve had an old website that was OK for what they ever they did before, but now they’re out there, they’re their solutions are are in in a variety of different buildings and at different workplaces and in in the US and Canada, right. So they’re, they’re growing. By the rapid pace and the website didn’t no longer reflect who they were today and are going to be in five years. So we worked on their website again, concise language very targeted to their to their audience was was key.

Hessie Jones 

And so OK, so it looks like you’ve worked. At for a number of companies that are in this space, you you also have a solar company. Solar client, right? Go power and they are solar solutions for recreational vehicles. Correct. So can you tell me about their technology, what they actually do and what what was your marketing strategy for them? 

Urs Villiger 

Yeah, that’s an interesting one because they primarily sell their solar solutions, which are solar panels and inverters and accessories that go that go on the recreational vehicles. But they sell to many to dealers and to distributors, however their. Obviously, they want to They want to establish a bit of a brand preference. Within the public as well, so. They have a dual. Approach what we did primarily with them in the beginning was develop like a block strategy has like an educational strategy that that goes after the consumer to to to establish that in marketing it’s called pull, right they want. You want to yes etablish pull from from the base that then entices the the dealers and distributors to, uh, to look at your. Product. But what we. Have done there was, uh, write a white paper on smart tech for RV’s smart tech. For RV’s. Basically the same that you would have in your home like you would know it from your home. It’s like a nest or something like that. So it’s basically an app based. Solution that helps you control stuff in your house, and in that case it helps control stuff. In the RV. Now, with an RV, one of the main. Concern is their power system. So when you’re traveling off off grid, you want to still be using your fridge, your stove, your coffee maker, maybe even an AC. So so power becomes a commodity and and. Solar is a good solution for that because when your vehicles parked somewhere it charges the battery and so forth. So the this tool that gold power has or the solution that that gold power has that lets you take full control of all all these. Items in the power system be the inverter. You can see how much power you’ve got in the battery, how much power is coming from the solar panels into the battery, and so forth. So it’s an. It’s an interesting topic, people or they want to understand it, they they want to use it and distributors and dealers they they need to know about it because they wanna sell the RV’s and upgrade the RV’s to those systems and sell the accessories. So the White Paper was a good solution. Because. The these it was educational for the dealers and for the distributors more so than than for the public, for the public. It’s the the format is a bit too big, like A blog post would be more suitable. But what they then did, what they they cooperated with a reputable magazine in our. In the street and to to publish that that by paper on their website, the magazine ran an e-mail blast, which then resulted in increased website traffic of over 400% for for two weeks. So that was a huge success. 

Hessie Jones 

That’s amazing. So so from your perspective, based on everything that we have learned today, if you’re to sum up your recommendations for Cleantech founders, what would be? I would say your closing thoughts on this. 

Urs Villiger 

Yeah, keep. Keep in mind the. Educational aspect of it. You have likely a product or a solution that needs to be explained. Even in the even in the first minutes or I’m I’m saying minutes. But in the first years of your your company, you must explain it to investors, but later to consumers. Being very clear about what it is like and and just that educational piece is very, very important. UM. The other thing is I truly believe that a lot of companies will have to. After going through. The first stages, after having raised a bit of money, you will have to target early adopters very likely if if the product has has anything to do with. Sustainability or renewable energy? And and it’s a new product, you will have to find those early adopters that will take a risk but but are excited by your product and you can help help that excitement along those those will be. The the people that create those use cases for you, then then you can later use as a like a proof of concept, so that’s that’s also that’s. An important point and. Again, I thought we mentioned it the the other thing is is really the the impact of venture capital and investor relations at the beginning, those are the people you’re marketing to and they’re just people they they want to understand how your solution works and if you’re good at explaining that. That that’s the first hurdle you’ve taken. The first hurdle, right? So. 

Hessie Jones 

That’s perfect. 

Urs Villiger 

So that’s and be able to demonstrate how you can scale it. That’s also very important. 

Hessie Jones 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I you know, the the nice thing about trying to find investment in clean tech, it’s so much easier now than it was 10 to 15 years ago. I think just because the government just because of the goals that we have, but also the increasing amount of venture capital out there that supports the need. To to actually make sure that we survive at least the next. Hopefully 100 years, right? So I think that’s all the time that we have today and I want to thank ERS for joining me and for those who are in the clean tech phase. We frequently post opportunities in funding, let’s say lab testing support. So go to our website. Altitudeaccelerator.ca and subscribe to your newsletter and for our audience, if you want us to explore different topics, please e-mail us at communications at altitudeaccelerator.ca. We’re so grateful for the time that you give us on a biweekly basis. Tech Uncensored is powered and supported and produced by Altitude. Accelerator were hosted on Spotify so you can find us wherever you get your podcast. Until next time. I’m Jesse Jones. Everyone have fun. And stay safe.