As a content creator and marketing campaign manager, one of the most difficult parts of my job can be determining the best way to tell a story that resonates with my target audience. I need to provide enough data and detail that the reader can find value in what I’m providing, but we all know that providing too much data or detail will cause a reader to lose interest and move elsewhere.
Basically, how do we avoid the “shut up and take my money” phenomenon?
The campaign below hinged on a single customer success story, the story of Rayburn Electric Cooperative, just outside of Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas. They met a rapidly growing population and demand for electricity using a simple template for electric substations, ordering and installing full racks of pre-programmed equipment that was ready to drop in place once substation buildings were ready.
Custom panel design is a service that SEL has offered for a long time, but it hasn’t been promoted too strongly. This campaign changed that by updating a few existing web assets, creating a new customer story, and plotting out a social media and email calendar to build demand for the service just as utilities were entering their planning and budgeting phase for the next year.
Read the story on the SEL website →
Direct Email
On release of the customer story webpage and video content, a promotional email drove readers to those pages. Like the customer story, this email promoted the customer first: expanding transmission service in the United States is complicated and expensive, and Rayburn was doing a
great job for their customers.
The email succeeds in driving traffic to the target pages by emphasizing services that are valuable to all transmission service providers and that are visible in the story.
This email took advantage of a close working relationship with the designers. SEL is known for quality craftsmanship, and neat panel wiring is part of that reputation. It’s not something that can easily be supported in a short email, however, so we chose to let the hero image of the email do that work.
Landing Page: Story Promotion
Digital advertising drives traffic to a landing page prior to the story itself. This intermediate step frames the story as one of customer service and substation panel construction quality, creating a pre-emptive call to action for readers interested in ordering substation panels.
The page features two separate calls to action. The visually-primary element is the button to Read the Story. Testing has found that a subscription box for readers to sign up for information about related content is successful as well. Crucially, the subscription box does not activate a new page when clicked.
This page’s success hinges on a connection to a single common need among all target customer groups: providing excellent service.
Landing Page: Custom Panels Promotion
From web ads and social posts related to this story, audiences were driven to a landing page promoting substation panel solutions.
One primary connection between the customer story and this landing page is the lack of administrative steps required to order a substation panel—the idea that SEL is a good supplier because customers can order full panels pre-wired, tested, and ready for commissioning. Engineers and utility managers would understand that this means the panels include non-SEL products as necessary but that a single order would encompass something that could otherwise
require a long list of suppliers and an integrator to put the order together.
This landing page succeeds by responding to a need specific to this customer group. Substation digitization makes individual panels far more powerful than in the past, but it also makes them more complex. Simplifying ordering and future maintenance reduces a major hurdle towards
modernization.
Social Post: Promote Related Services
Prior to any story content going live, we released a social post to prime audience interest in Engineering Services and substation panels. This social post was not as popular as the other posts in this campaign, largely because we were sharing content that is a little dated and has already been used in other promotions.
Social Post: Promote the Story
This social post promotes the customer story itself. It is meant to drive attention and clicks towards the customer story itself by highlighting benefits to Rayburn Electric Cooperative that other readers would find valuable.
- For utilities, this post emphasizes the fact that Rayburn is able to fulfill their mission of
delivering adequate and reliable power to customers. Reliability is a key word for many utilities
who must meet specific federal reliability standards. - For non-utility readers, including the “average reader,” this post also emphasizes the fact that
Rayburn is able to fulfill their mission while providing lower costs to customers.
The story itself identifies each of these benefits as a result of partnering with SEL on substation panel projects.
Social Post: Promote Related Product
These social posts promote a niche benefit in SEL panel solutions: neat wiring. This is a benefit
that is hard to claim on any product or solution webpage. After all, “we wire panels neatly and
label every connection” sounds like something any competitor could claim as well.
However, in conversations with customers, this is a consistent, positive remark. The social post
exists to remind those customers of their positive experience and offer a proof point—however minor—that SEL panels are a pleasure to work with.
Content from platform to platform differs slightly to meet the requirements of each. Note that these posts were all written to get the full message across (including some or all of the link) before truncation.
Webpage: Custom Panels and Enclosures
Tabbed content is expanded in the PDF link below, and it was captured on July 28, 2023. A live version
of the page can be found at https://selinc.com/solutions/custom-panels-enclosures/
