Getting people to care about saving water is our real challenge. You can find many easy to follow, practical suggestions on this blog or on many other
blogs showing just how simple it is to save water. Shorter showers, turn off the faucet when brushing your teeth, install a smart timer, high efficiency
nozzles, take out your turf, install drought tolerant landscape install drip irrigation on and on. You may have heard of some of these, all of these?
All of them are easily implemented and fairly simple to do. How many have you done? More importantly how many people have you motivated into action?
Traditional marketing
Have you been limiting your activities to traditional marketing activities? Traditional marketing activities are necessary, but lack the engagement
aspect we need to motivate people to care about saving water. Examples of traditional marketing activities include magazine advertisements, radio
spots, posters, commercials and direct mail. These attempt to interrupt water uses in a variety of ways to capture their attention for a brief
period of time.
Three fatal flaws of traditional marketing
- Attention is held for a short period of time
- Interrupts instead of offering something of educational value
- Expensive to promote over time
Content Marketing
Content marketing provides an opportunity to engage with water users, help them understand the importance of saving water and allow them to participate
in the process with comments, input and questions. Some of the forms of content marketing working in water conservation today include, blog articles,
podcasts, downloadable user guides, infographics and videos.
Advantages of giving valuable water conservation information
- Provide value to water users creating loyalty to your brand
- Education influences water use habits in the future not just in the now
- People appreciate your education and will buy your products with the hope of seeing more education
- You may create viral content that impacts millions with very little financial cost
- Discovery of new target groups. Content often travels to groups you didn’t target initially. This is a great way to discover new target markets
- Gives the customers the opportunity to ask questions
Great content examples
This is an advertisement for UF/IFAS Miami-Dade Urban Conservation
Unit. They were our guest on #landscapechat (another great example of content marketing). They were kicking off Water Wednesday talking about their
2015 conservation programs helping to keep Miami-Dade residents water cost down. They have many great videos!
- Over the years Denver Water has created some amazing content. You can’t make this stuff is their current message of why you should care about saving
water and they have several creative ways to promote this concept including this art installation across the city of Denver. - Athens-Clarke County Public Utilities Department Water Conservation Office uses a blog, videos, Facebook, and Twitter to get their conservation
messages out. Often they accomplish this with humor that keeps their customers engaged and coming back for more. They even had a film competition where filmmakers of all ages were invited to submit films about water conservation and stewardship.
Content marketing succeeds if it educates and engages customers and prospect into a two-way conversation. The goal is to educate people so that they
know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you. This creates relationships in a way traditional marketing was not able to accomplish.
We are really interested in learning about other water saving content you have seen on and would love it if you would share it in the comments
section. If you enjoyed this article please subscribe to the blog or follow me on twitter @H2oTrends.