ReneSola MN
THE
CHALLENGE
ReneSola is an international company specializing in providing solar energy to businesses and organizations. Its Minnesota branch focuses on working with government programs and municipal utilities to incentivize companies to invest in green energy through community solar gardens. Our work with ReneSola was to launch its new community solar garden offering by educating C-level executives on the benefits of subscribing to community solar and provide context for the internal ReneSola sales team to follow up on the leads generated.
SERVICES PROVIDED
- Strategy & Focus Groups
- Advertising
- Marketing
- Media
Focusing on businesses/organizations provides a key point of differentiation
OUR
APPROACH
SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS
ReneSola MN provides community solar garden options to businesses and organizations through subscription services with zero investment, simple and flexible terms, no maintenance worries—and with guaranteed savings. A credit is applied every month to the subscriber’s energy utility bill. This credit is always larger than the subscription fee. This is how businesses realize savings while supporting clean energy and their local community.
KEY ISSUES
The C-suite decision-makers, who would benefit from this offering, are largely uninformed about the benefits of subscribing to community solar gardens making education critical to the sale. Because of the timing of the offering, the challenge was to quickly and efficiently educate the audience on how community solar works in order to open doors for conversation with the ReneSola sales team.
ReneSola also came with strong recommendations and a good track record in the industry.
– Sandra Wolfe Wood – Westminster Church
The
Solution
Through our research, we found all solar energy companies used the same language and visuals to communicate their offerings. To break through the clutter, it was obvious that we needed to take a different approach to language and visuals to capture the attention of C-level executives. We made the sun an employee of every business/organization and used that image to capture attention and educate on the advantages of community solar. We adapted the illustration, depending on the target industry, by using appropriate industry-specific iconic imagery to engage the target viewer in understanding the ReneSola value proposition.
Brand and Creative: Brand messaging was evolved to target businesses and organizations in an engaging way.
Website: We designed and built mobile first; the site is meant to educate the audience on community solar, why ReneSola, and have an interactive touchpoint at every question.
Digital Ads: Ad were designed to target leadership responsible for budgeting to educate on the savings ReneSola provides.
Newspaper Ads: Within the geographic target market, newspaper ads were created to support industry targeted direct mail and digital ads.
Direct Mail: Custom direct mail pieces went out to specific industries ReneSola was trying to reach, making the messaging and situations more impactful.
Results
Trifold brochures were delivered to 1,200 businesses in certain areas of Minnesota where ReneSola offers community solar subscriptions. Direct mail was supported with digital and print advertising driving viewers to the newly developed website. During the first two months, ReneSola saw 1,000+ unique visitors with an average time on site being over three minutes and a bounce rate below 20%. To date this has led to businesses filling up 40% of the community solar gardens and helped the sales team reach new audiences.