Gifts for Your Business this Season

by Richard Rutigliano, PriMedia, Inc.

Ideas to help your company reach more consumers and sell more product

You are most likely reading this issue somewhere between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Eve. This is the height of the heating season for those of us in the energy industry. For the rest of the world, however, this is a time of vacations, celebrations and gift giving. In the spirit of the season, consider giving your company some of the following gifts.

The Gift of Warmth

You provide warmth to the community, and that reflects back on you with strong community relationships and positive reviews.

When you, your staff, or the company provide assistance to local charitable or community-based organizations, highlight it! Put pictures on your website and social media accounts of your team filling backpacks with school supplies, participating in a fun-run or a full marathon, or delivering free fuel to someone in need. Do you sponsor a local sports team? Post photographs of its games, parades, and celebrations. Send a truck to drop off snacks during a game or practice. You are a vital part of the community. Let them know!

Be sure to include those times your help goes beyond your service area, like sending trucks, fuel, or other materials to communities that were devastated by hurricanes, blizzards, wild fires or other mass events.

Another bit of warmth for you – your positive reviews! Potential customers want to see reviews about your company. One report claims that nearly 100 percent of customers read reviews before buying a product, and half of them trust online reviews as much as those from friends and family. You can increase your reviews by setting up automatic messages after a service call that request feedback and provide a link to Facebook or Google review pages. Don’t be afraid of the occasional negative review. Consumers expect them, and many will be suspicious of a company that has no negative comments or a 5 out of 5 rating. At the same time, the consumer expects you to reply to a posted complaint in a professional and empathetic manner promptly.

The Gift of Gab

With the gift of gab you can speak with more people, share your knowledge, make your relationships closer, and make more money.

First and foremost, the gift of gab needs to be shared with your entire staff. You can do so by giving your team the training and tools necessary for them to confidently speak with your customers about your fuels, payment programs, products, service plans, and referral bonuses. Providing them with talking points is good. Giving them enough experience and practice in training sessions so that they can casually explain your services is better.

Your gift of gab is not limited to one-on-one conversations! Utilize emails, e-letters, and newsletters as virtual coffee shops where you stop for a bit and chat. These formats give you the opportunity to provide more details about your products and services, the benefits of a highlighted piece of equipment, special promotions, safety information and warnings, regulatory changes that affect their fuels, introductions to featured team members, and more. With this outreach, you can enhance your relationships and expand your borders.

The Gift of Friendship

The definition of “friend” has changed over the last 20 years. Once upon a time, friends were people you knew, with whom you went to dinner, exchanged life stories, and created new memories.

Then came Facebook. Friends became people who knew people who knew you. That continues to expand until there is such a tenuous connection it might not have been there at all. Far beyond six degrees of separation, “friends” often have no connection other than an algorithmic recommendation.

There is still power in these “friendships.” If not, there would be no social media influencers.

You can use these friendships to strengthen your business and find your own influencers. Not a paid celebrity who may or may not align with your business model and might find themselves in the midst of a scandal that reflects poorly on you. Think about it. In addition to your personal and business social media accounts, your employees have accounts as well. Some may even be on platforms you are unfamiliar with. One or two (or more) have more knowledge than you about leveraging these platforms. You can task these employees with expanding your social media presence, and ask your staff to share your company’s posts on their feeds.

Spreading your message through friends and friends of friends is called organic messaging. Similar to organic results in your website’s analytics, it simply means that you are not paying the platform to show your message to more users.

Investing to expand your messaging is, however, one of the most cost-effective options you have to expand your reach and your potential circle of friends.

Most of the social media platforms offer businesses the option to boost any post on their feed. This is one of the easiest ways for you to promote your company, and an investment of only $10 can deliver 500-to-750 impressions or more to local consumers who are not connected to your business.

While you are considering boosting posts, Facebook, Instagram and others also offer more traditional advertising options. These are also cost-effective ways to expand your reach and become a quasi-influencer of your own!

Depending on how you target your campaigns, you can reach people who are at different points in the sales funnel, using broader filters to increase visibility and name recognition, or more targeted options that enable you to speak to consumers actively looking for your services. These targeting options, and more, are also available through other digital platforms such as Google Ads (search and display placements) and programmatic marketing.

Are you ready to give your business the gift of friendship? Find ways to be seen by more people!

The Gift of Time

Does it feel like there is never enough time in the day to get everything done? For you and your staff, every time you start digging into a project, there is another call or another email that needs to be addressed.

For you, we offer the gift of time. Time to think. Time to plan. Time to finish a project. Time to start something new.

Unfortunately, this gift is not a wizard’s time turner, a flux capacitor powered Lamborghini, or a British phone booth that transports you across time and space. As thrilling as those may be, our gift of time is almost as effective and as difficult to wrap: an integrated customer self-service portal.

By empowering your customers to check their balance, review invoices, make a payment, place an order for fuel or other products, request service or additional information, manage and redeem their loyalty rewards points, enroll in price protection and service agreements, and so much more, you can literally cut customer service phone calls and contact us requests by as much as 40 percent!

How much more could you and your staff get done with 40 percent fewer information requests to manage?

The Gift that Keeps Giving

Our last gift to you is one that will keep giving back, year after year, and that is the gift of professional assistance.

Every do-it-yourselfer has come face to face with the downside of trying to be an expert in all things. They believed they could be a plumber, electrician, painter, handyman, car mechanic, or, heaven forbid, HVAC technician. In many cases, they might be able to handle a minor problem, but often make a larger issue much worse.

The same goes for your company’s marketing and communications efforts. As a business owner, you rely on professionals regularly. Your lawyer, financial advisor, accountant, and insurance broker, to name a few. You turn to them because they know their fields better than you do, just as you expect them to turn to you when there is a problem with their boiler.

You might have the knowledge to manage your marketing and communications. But can you do it as well as a fully staffed company with decades of experience? Do you have the time to design and manage ad campaigns, social media strategies, professional newsletters, or direct marketing emails, and track their efficacy? Is it wise to put your business on the line by letting an inexperienced or part-time web developer try to modify a one-size-fits-all-business-model customer portal to meet your sales and pricing structures?

A marketing partner has the experience, skills, staffing, and tools to make your life easier. They can help you reach goals and help you plan for the next.

I hope this season brings you all the gifts you need as well as those you want. Happy holidays.

Richard Rutigliano is President of PriMedia, Inc., an integrated marketing and communications firm specializing in the home energy sector. He can be reached at 516-222-2041 or rrutigliano@primediany.com.

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