A prospective client is on your Website – you have lots to offer but how do you engage him? An effective call to action is the linchpin of a successful site and involves not only requesting your visitors to do something, but also being creative in your presentation.

It’s not enough to ask prospective clients to “visit our website.” It’s a very common mantra, but has little impact because it’s not specific. Give people a reason to visit your page and a way to engage further once they get there. For example, ask people to not only visit your website or “like” your Facebook page, but to also comment on a specific question or vote on his/her favorite product.

The true goal is to have customer engagement without even asking. Giving fans of your brand the opportunity to give their two cents on industry topics or product upgrades will encourage them to go out of their way to give their input. Create a call to action that is so effective people don’t even see it as a formal call to action.

It’s easy to ask people to like, retweet or click on something (and it can be effective too) but don’t settle.  For instance, encourage customers to keep track of a product from inception to completion by creating a journey to share. Creating a story for the brand and encouraging users to follow the action is a creative way to effectively raise brand awareness.

Great content leads to engagement and a call to action will get your company its highest levels of feedback. Part of your strategy should be to create content that will always elicit a response. If it is done right, it can generate a real measurable return on investment.

1. Run or install ceiling fans to circulate the air instead of using the air conditioner. Today’s ceiling fans are very economical and have various settings including one to reverse the blades to optimize air circulation.

2.  If your home is well insulated, keep your windows closed to keep in the cooler air. If not, it’s wise to look into energy saving insulation. And, you may qualify for a 10 percent Federal energy tax credit for buying qualified energy efficient improvements. To qualify for the tax credit, the energy improvement must meet or exceed the criteria established by the 2000 International Energy Conservation Code. The home insulation improvements must be made inside the taxpayer’s main home in the United States.

3. Run dishwashers and washer/dryers later in the evening, during non-peak usage times. The electric utilities are charging us all more to use appliances during peak times. By running appliances later in the evening, you’ll save $$ and keep you house cooler too!

4. Use energy-efficient light bulbs and don’t forget to use more energy-efficient landscape lighting! This is an area that many homeowners forget to check. Did you check the timer to adjust for longer daylight hours? Can you reduce the number of hours that the lights are on?5.

5. Invest in a home energy monitoring system. As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. By understanding where you’re using the most energy – whether it’s the washer/dryer or your kid’s gaming center, by identifying the energy hogs in your home you can adjust the time and length of operation. Or, you might find that the extra refrigerator you have in the garage or man-cave is not up to EnergyStar^® standards and is costing you a bundle to power. Easy-to-use monitoring software can help you understand your energy usage habits and arm you with information that can help you not only understand where you’re using the most energy – room by room – but will also help you understand your utility bill! The investment is well worth it and will pay for itself in no time. Typical users of our home energy management system, FIDO^®, are seeing 20-30 percent savings.

Here’s to more money in your pocket and staying cool!

According to the AP, the outage was due to a double failure in its data centers.  Twitter’s services rely on two parallel systems (when one fails, the other takes over).  However, today Twitter’s redundant setup experienced failure with both systems, making the widely used social media service unavailable for two hours.  On June 21, Twitter experienced a similar outage which was caused by “a cascading bug in one of our infrastructure components.”  No comments have been made linking these two instances.

Having easy-to-use and understandable insight into energy usage puts the power back into the consumer’s hands, literally. Saying that I used 50 kilowatts of power last month on my utility bill is not useful. This lack of meaningful information from utilities has launched a new industry known as Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS). These systems offer consumers an energy management tool that is tailored to their particular lifestyle. And, thanks to some very creative folks in the industry, many of these tools are very user-friendly.  One software tool in particular from EcoDog can not only show you where you’re using energy and how to save dollars, they’re app can show you how much money you’d save installing solar or predict how much it will cost you to run your electric vehicle. Very cool!

The Smart Grid is a brave new world for utilities and thanks to open standards, developers will be instrumental in creating useful tools to help us understand energy usage better and positively change our behaviors.

Yep, there’s an app for that…now, if I could just move to the next level in Angry Birds!

PJ Jennings

#2 If a business doesn’t have a story to tell—it does, or else it wouldn’t be in business—see #1.

Every business has something to sell and every CEO wants traffic in the door. Educating reporters and consumers about your business’s product/technology/service is vital to customer adoption (sales). The more the press understands what you do and the context in which you do it, they will be more apt to mention the business in relevant (and repeated) articles.

Of course, many executives don’t have the time nor the specific resources to become a media guru and that’s where PR comes in. Public relations is the practice of learning and listening to clients’ stories and then taking those golden message nuggets to the appropriate audiences. New product launch? Check. Customer wins? Check. New CEO? Check.   Regardless of whether a company is B2B or B2C, it’s important that the company’s messages are clear and reinforced in the minds of the right people.

From news releases and case studies to contributed articles and interview opportunities and social media campaigns, there are many ways to build a steady stream of excitement around your brand.  There’s no one-size-fits-all; the right approach is the one that meets the communication goals of the company.

We want all businesses to know that PR is not only applicable to them, but an important component in increasing sales.  Maybe a podcast is the right touch. Maybe the cover of a targeted trade magazine will get you in front of your prospects. Certainly, coverage in The New York Times wouldn’t hurt! Wherever you are in your communications efforts, it’s never too late (or early) to get public relations specialists involved in communicating your story.  And remember, PR builds your brand – not advertising. So if you want to improve sales, start with a focused PR program.

Working with San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), EcoDog Inc. has developed a Green Button app that can quickly and easily make use of the utility’s data.  The app, which is a scaled down version of the company’s highly sophisticated FIDO home energy management system, allows home owners to take their personal energy consumption data provided by SDG&E’s  Green Button and view energy usage as well as potential energy savings from installing a solar system or charging of an electrical vehicle.  EcoDog’s fully-featured FIDO Home Energy Watchdog is an easy-to-use hardware/software system that shows homeowners exactly how and where they are consuming electricity on a real-time basis with room-by-room detail to achieve typical monthly savings of 15 to 30 percent and more. EcoDog’s FIDO system also offers advanced monitoring of solar and alternative energy generation.

While society has had its sights on becoming more energy efficient for some time, it’s a slow moving process and the first tool needed is education.  Having a firm understanding of your energy usage can allow you to make minor (or major) lifestyle changes that can greatly reduce your energy consumption.  The Green Button initiative gives home owners an introduction to home energy management and is a forward step in understanding energy consumption in a way that is more understandable and actionable.  Finally, it’s getting easier to be green!

Securing the grid against human error and/or more nefarious actions needs to be a priority. Our appetite for energy is not going to go away. In fact, our need for electrical energy is exponentially increasing. It is our lifeline to the world and integral to our daily lives. Both investor-owned utilities (IOUs) and municipal-owned utilities (MOUs) are on the forward path to making the power grid more intelligent. However, the grid cannot be truly smart if it’s not secure. I propose that utilities need to be working on a parallel path in integrating data and communication infrastructure technologies that facilitate a more efficient and faster grid, while embedding security from the customer’s meter to a utility’s data center. Breaching the grid is serious and not only can the operation of the grid be compromised, but customer data as well. See article on “Data breach exposes info on NY utility customers.”  Fortunately, new reliability standards such as the North American Electric Corporation’s Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) security guidelines requiring a utility’s cyber assets be protected against threats are a step in the right direction.

Making the grid smart and secure is a must. Our way of life in the 21^st century demands it.

What are your thoughts?

PJ Jennings

While the momentum for green energy adoption marches forward, energy efficient technologies are taking hold. From energy efficient computers, IT/networking gear and even the products that protect equipment from power outages are all much more efficient than a decade ago. While not as exciting as solar or wind or the myriad of other renewable technologies, being smarter and more efficient with our energy use is the best way to start on the path to energy independence. Baby steps will lead to giant leaps.

What do you think?

Happy marketing,

PJ Jennings

In the Six Laws of Green Marketing, Colleen Kramer highlights why sustainability needs to be an integral part of the company and not just a temporary add-on. Her observation regarding the Patagonia company rings true: if you are genuinely trying to do the right thing, it’s OK to stumble in front of your audience. After all, the road to green is truly paved with good intentions. Patagonia’s transparency regarding greening the company’s logistics may be a compelling example to other companies leery of faltering; however, if companies continue to assess green initiatives with the same return-on-investment analysis they would use with any other capital project, many projects will fail before they are even started.

One of our clients, VYCON, has the good fortune of working with EasyStreet Online Services, a cloud, managed services and colocation provider in Oregon. Utilizing wind power and flywheel energy storage, EasyStreet has a long-standing green commitment and seized the opportunity to be a beacon of how to build energy efficient data centers. Reliability, sustainability and having a low carbon footprint are part of the ethos of the company – and they end up serving the company well, financially, when the energy bills come in.

If your company or your clients are looking to tout their eco-friendliness as a marketing ploy, remind them that this is the age of transparency. We counsel clients that small but genuine change is much more meaningful and has a longer-lasting impact on the company’s image, as well as the bottom line.

Just thought I’d express my appreciation for a marketing piece that is very well done and appeals to all.

Do you have a favorite holiday marketing item you’d like to share?

Happy Marketing and Best for the Holidays!

PJ Jennings