SITUATION ANALYSIS: The City of Bend had an ongoing challenge to educate the public about Fats, Oils and Grease. Most customers simply don’t understand that the particles and grease they put down their drains can cause backups in both their homes and in the sewer lines. Originally, the City sought to do a live-action 30-second video commercial. It proved to be too expensive for their budget, and the stock footage they ended up with didn’t deliver the message clearly or effectively. With time and budget challenges, they came to Goldstreet for a solution.

SOLUTION: Because the commercial was set to run around Thanksgiving, Goldstreet suggested tailoring the message to the holidays to make it more pertinent to utility customers. With video education you want to make sure to grab attention and spark curiosity. Goldstreet achieved this by creating an animated video with “characters” to explain Fats, Oils and Grease. During the video there were suggestions on how to avoid clogs and backups in a simple and entertaining way to raise awareness and help promote behavior changes. Not only was the video finished on time for the City’s airdates, but the animated characters created by Goldstreet brought a touch of fun to a subject that can be dry and uninteresting to many people.

Once the video was created the City could post this to their website and include in social media campaigns.

Video Marketing is a great way to create engagement and educate any audience.

Quote from Julie, Utility Dept, City of Bend: The team at Goldstreet really listened. They were able to understand what I had in mind and encompass it in their creative ideas.

 

Your agency regularly posts in social media. You’ve even started boosting your posts or purchasing advertising to increase distribution of them to the people in the community you serve.

Good for you! You’ve made big steps toward engaging with your community on Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media channels.

Do you know if your efforts are paying off?

If you answered “no” to that question, you’re not alone. Despite all the information out there about how to determine social media “success”, few utility communicators are clear about whether their social media efforts are working.

Here are some tips that will help you figure whether your social media activities are performing effectively.

Begin with the basics.

Do a simple cost / benefit analysis.

Once you’ve determined that your posts are performing as intended, it’s a good idea to see if the promotion you’re doing is cost-efficient. Do your best to track the hours you spend preparing, tracking and managing posts. If you are boosting or advertising, look at how much you’re paying for clicks (cost-per-click or CPC). Ask yourself: Is it efficient compared with other marketing techniques, such as banner advertising, email communications and direct mail?

In most cases, the answer to this question is yes. Social media is generally the most cost-effective way to get the word out to people in the area you serve, comparable with email and other digital marketing and communication techniques.

If you’re finding your social media promotion costs are too high, consider different types of targeting or leveraging a broader mix of social channels. Many utilities start out by promoting on Facebook. However, they may be able to more efficiently reach younger customers on Twitter or Instagram, which are generally lower cost ways to reach Millennials.

Don’t stop with social media.

It’s great to know that people are clicking on, liking and sharing your social posts and that you’re paying a fair price for those actions. However, are you monitoring what happens once they come to your blog or website?

It’s important to check that the visitors who arrive from social campaigns spend a reasonable amount of time with your content and move on to explore more of your site.

Check with your IT department or use Google Analytics or other similar website monitoring tools to find this out. They allow you to track the social media traffic to your site and see how much time they’re spending on individual pages. Thirty seconds or more, on average, is a sign that they’re engaging with your content and reading a significant amount of it.

If you’re seeing a high bounce rate (people spend less than ten seconds on a page and are not clicking to check out other pages), that means they are having a bad — or unexpected — experience. You can usually fix this by double checking your posts and the content they link to see if the content pays off on the promises you made in the post.

If you see a disconnect, try using a new post or revising your headline and the opening section of your web content. This should remedy the issue and improve your time-on-page results.

Note: It’s critical to fix social campaigns and web pages with high bounce rates. Google will penalize websites with high bounce rates because it’s a sign that the site is delivering a negative user experience. A penalty will make it harder for the people you serve to find your site when doing a Google search.

Need help developing and promoting your social media posts and monitoring their success? Contact Goldstreet. We have unique experience creating successful communication campaigns for utilities across the United States and we can advise you on how to take yours to the ultimate level.

 

It´s no accident that the all the big box stores start putting their seasonal items out months BEFORE you even start thinking about needing them.  The utilities and local government agencies who are seeing the highest rates of behavior change are doing the exact same thing: targeted seasonal outreach.

Just about every utility-focused topic we can think of has a “season” that will garner the most attention from your customers.  Even a single topic can be presented in different ways throughout the year to match the season.

To be effective with your public outreach this year, consider taking a well-planned, seasonal approach:

Steps for Planning Your Seasonal Outreach

    4)  Now add 2 months.

Your campaign should be released 2 months prior to your target month.  So if July is your target month to reduce outdoor water use, your campaign should be launched in May.

   5) Keep going into your target month.

Now that you set the stage for changing behavior, it’s time to finish up by delivering messages to your customers at the exact moment they may be engaging in or about to engage in the undesired behavior.  This is that moment when they see your message for the third time and think “Oh, I saw something about this before. It must be important. Maybe I’ll try that.”

 

Below are some of the most popular outreach topics our customers are currently tackling along with our recommend time frame for planning and launching your outreach campaign or materials to achieve the highest level of effectiveness:

Outreach TopicPossible MessagesUndesired Behavior Taking PlacePossible ReasonsStart Planning Your Outreach CampaignRelease Your Campaign

Reduce Indoor Water Use

·  Take short showers

·  Turn off water when brushing teeth

 

September, back to school time

·  Increase in bathing activities compared to summer

·  New schedules and habits

 

June

August

 

Reduce FOG

·  Can, cool and toss cooking oil

 

·  Scrape food scraps into garbage

 

Late Nov-December

·  Holidays, food and big gatherings

August

October

 

Picking Up Pet Waste

·  Scoop pet waste at home once a week

April

·  People spending more time in their yards after winter

·  Spring cleaning good time for new habits

 

December

February-March

 

 

 

You want to get your utility’s message across as effectively as possible and want to look good and competent in the process (you are reading this blog article, right?). The following are some things to look for when proofing material before sending it off to the printer. It’s a veritable checklist that should be reviewed each time you proof a final draft.

1. Make a Checklist

Make a checklist of your own, including these tips and adding others as you see fit. Print it out, and check off each item as it is performed. This will help with consistency and improve the quality of your public outreach.

2. Read the Copy Out-Loud

Teacher’s tell this to their students all the time. It’s the quickest and easiest way to spot common errors with punctuation, word choice and the flow of sentences and paragraphs.

3. Get A Fresh Set of Eyes on It

Again, something you probably learned in school. When trying to communicate to an audience it’s imperative that you get perspective from outside of your own head and experience. Also, you may be too close to your writing and are unable to spot errors, that, despite several reviews, someone else will spot immediately.

4. Design

Verify that the photographs are high-resolution. When dealing with a lot of colors, ensure that the text is readable against the background. Text should also be appropriately sized. In tables, review the content for consistency and review the spacing and alignment of the text within each cell.

5. Verifying Contact or Follow-up Information

A lot of brochures have phone numbers and addresses in them. Some even include hyperlinks. Verify phone numbers for hotlines or public facing phone numbers by copy and pasting them into a search engine and looking at the results. Ditto for addresses. For links, it can be as simple as clicking it and seeing if it opens the correct page, sometimes copy and pasting the link into the browser is involved.

6. Acronyms

Internal utility industry communications are full of acronyms. To help make a consumer-friendly brochure, verify that all acronyms are defined on the page they occur on. If the page has multiple boxes of information, it may be advisable to define re-ocurring acronyms in each box; or if it is a folded or multi-page brochure, it may be advisable to define the acronym on each panel or page it is used. Also, double check to make sure that the acronym is correct.

Using these tips is a good start for proofing the final draft. Good luck with your next piece of outreach!

 

There are a variety of reasons a utility may not be providing public outreach to their customers. We hear it often, “I don’t have time, there are too many things to do”. “We don’t have a budget for outreach”. “I don’t know where to start, it’s not my specialty”. “I covered that issue last year”.

The reality is, it doesn’t matter the reasons you wish you could do more outreach or the reasons you aren’t doing outreach. What needs to be the focus is making the most of the outreach you do provide because, if you create successful outreach, it will garner support from management to create more outreach.

Over the years, we’ve worked with nearly 350 utilities and municipalities on communication plans, public education programs and outreach covering a wide variety of demographics and topics. You name it, we’ve likely covered it; annual reports, communicating rate increases, water reclamation use and education, tracking improper pet waste disposal and reduction, kids outreach and activities for Fats, Oils and Grease, transitioning to online water quality reports, social media content creation, NPDES program development, the list goes on and on.

With this experience, we have seen strong trends in unsuccessful outreach efforts. Or, should I say, the reason for the lack of engagement with outreach materials is consistent.

Here are 5 reasons your outreach may not be resonating and creating engagement with your customers.

1. The quality of your outreach doesn’t match the quality of your department’s work: You are professionals in your field. That field may not be marketing and communications, but you work hard to keep your department running smoothly. Whether that be infrastructure systems, treatment systems, accounting or office management, you work hard to do your job correctly. Therefore, why would you put out outreach that didn’t match the professionalism of your organization? Of, if you aren’t providing any outreach, how professional does that make your department or organization look? If your outreach is not as professional, the your customers won’t respect it and engage with it.
2. There are way too many words and not any or enough engaging graphics: an easy way to think of it is what can you read when you are standing in your grocery line? People are on the go, whether looking a phone, driving by a billboard or opening their mail, people are busy. So, when you are trying to reach them make sure you grab their attention with graphics that are bold and include short, simple content. Provide a link to more detailed information but make sure to get their attention. Too many words means you’ll lose them before you ever had them engaged.
3. Your messaging is not integrated: Integrated marketing, to put it simply, it means that all your outreach is consistent. If you provide outreach to customers through bill inserts, website, social media and radio PSA’s then the content better be consistent and your branding message consistent so customers recognize the communication as a program and engage with it. This needs to include your internal communications to employees too!
4. You aren’t doing enough of it: Providing communication in only 1 area, such as the website is not enough. Or, if you just do a bill insert, it’s not enough. Customers need to be reminded multiple times and in multiple ways so come up with creative ways to reach customers such as bill inserts, updating your website content and social media updates are all ways to share your program goals and information.
5. No call to action: How do you know if your customers are even reading or seeing your information if you don’t provide a call to action? What are they supposed to do? Sign up for a program? Clip a coupon and bring it in? Enter to win? Call? Visit a webpage? click on a link? There are all viable options. so, when you are creating your outreach or education program, make sure you include a way to monitor your program and actually engage your customers.

These tips can help you in our next outreach piece, plan and/or program!

 

You’ve Probably Heard the Buzzword, So Let’s See if Your Outreach Qualifies.

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? All you have to do is make sure all your marketing and communication efforts are in sync, consistent and working together in harmony.

Well, if it was that easy, I wouldn’t be writing about it would I?

Integrated marketing is making sure the consistency and harmony runs across all channels, including digital (web, social media, intranet), customer service, employee communications, newsletters, bill inserts, infographics, snackable content, and any communications coming from your utility.

When integrated marketing occurs, success happens, whether recruiting customers to participate in a new program, changing behavior or just engage in reading tips and information you provide. Integrated marketing can be discussed in terms of marketing as a whole and how it relates to the marketing Mix (4 Ps) and other concepts. You can dig into Integrated Marketing a bit more if you want, but for the purpose of this discussion, let’s talk how this can be done within a utility.

From our experience, utilities often have limited budgets or time, or interest in doing more than the minimum when it comes to outreach. As mentioned there are many reasons for this, but making slight adjustments or additions can really make a difference in your outreach. Here are some ideas:

1. Determine your Objective: Have a clear objective with your outreach. What is the goal? To create behavior change? To increase trust with customers? To inform? To educate?

a. Without a clear objective or goal, you cannot determine if there’s success or have much focus in developing and creating your outreach.

2. Define your Target Market: Determining who you are trying to reach is critical because depending on your target market, your look, feel and messaging can vary. Is it new customers versus longtime customers? Age can be a factor too in regards to where you place your messaging. (social media vs newspaper etc)

3. Create a Plan: With your objective in mind, how can you reach it? Develop a plan before creating your outreach. By following steps 1-3 you will be able to have a more focused plan. Make sure this plan includes Integrated Marketing practices.

4. Execute your Plan: if your target audience so families and you want to promote your new kids outreach materials, social media, bill inserts, newsletter and the website would be offer a strong integrated approach to encouraging families to grab their activity booklet.

5. Measure Your Results: Your plan should have the plan included on how to measure results. How many kids activity booklets were distributed could be 1 way to measure.

With each of these steps, an integrated approach needs to be considered. If you are creating a bill insert on FOG, water conservation or keeping storm drains clean, it’s easy to create a secondary infographic or snackable piece for social media. That same piece can then be placed on your website and in your newsletter to offer a fully integrated approach to the topic.

Consumers, including your customers are bombarded with messaging all day long, so one reason an integrated approach is effective is because it provides a variety of places for your target market to see your messaging. The integrated approach, because it’s consistent, also triggers a memory with your customers because even if they may not have read every word of the message, they will recognize it and eventually read and remember what you are trying to communicate.