Solidify your program strategy and decide which customers you will focus on; what products, services, and support you will provide; and how you will partner with contractors and others to deliver services to your customers.
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Establish relationships with organizations that can help deliver your program by enhancing your knowledge, resources, capabilities and access to customers and contractors.
Determine if enhancements to existing financing products or the development of new products are necessary to allow you to achieve your goals and objectives.
Decide on priority target audience segments, messages, and incentives that will motivate customers.
Identify and partner with financial institutions that can provide capital, underwriting, and other functions to enable your customers to access financing.
Establish goals, objectives, and timeframes for your financing activities.
Establish relationships with organizations that will assist with program marketing and outreach.
Determine how your target audience currently funds energy efficiency services, to what extent upfront cost is a barrier, and whether improvements to their financing options would increase the uptake of energy efficiency measures.
Identify and prioritize potential target audiences based on their likely receptivity to your program's services.
Survey existing and potential demand for energy efficiency products and services based on an understanding of policies, housing and energy characteristics, demographics, related initiatives and other market actors.
Establish specific marketing and outreach goals, objectives, targets, and timeframes.
Research and analyze the specific barriers, needs, and opportunities for a residential energy efficiency program in your community.
Many programs that focused on a specific neighborhood or other small geographic areas have found it difficult to generate enough customer interest, partner interest, and upgrade activity to meet program goals. Regional or statewide approaches are often more attractive to contractors, lenders...
Developing new energy efficiency loan products requires financial expertise and resources that not every program has available or that might not even be necessary. Finding and promoting existing energy efficiency loan products, such as loans that may be offered by a local credit union, your state...
All residential energy efficiency programs have found that outreach needs to be repeated to connect with and remind potential participants about program offerings. As marketing gurus note, the majority of people need to be exposed to a product message at least three times (on separate occasions) to...
Many programs found that market research can help identify, segment, and characterize audiences to understand how to prioritize them. A comprehensive evaluation of over 140 programs across the United States found that programs had greater success when they identified specific target populations...
Programs that conducted one-on-one outreach found that community events provided good opportunities for the program and its partners to connect and build credibility with potential customers. Particularly successful events were ones that attracted the program’s target audience and aligned with their...
Words have power, so many programs decided to use language with positive associations. For example, the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program encouraged use of the term "assessment" instead of "audit" to avoid the negative connotation of a tax audit. "Home energy upgrade" sounds more positive than...
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This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on targeted marketing strategies that can be used to craft successful outreach initiatives and communications. It also covered challenges and best practices for engaging specific demographics, including hard-to-reach market segments such as Hispanics, and provided insights into Hispanics relationship with energy.
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This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to identify stakeholders and map them to determine the best engagement strategy.
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This presentation shares the findings of research conducted to determine a customer base for energy efficiency improvements developed by the California Public Utilities Commission.
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This audience brainstorming and categorization worksheet assists programs in determining their target audiences and which audiences to prioritize.
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This research report and slides provide a detailed segmentation of the building energy upgrade market and summarize market research on each segment. Market segments include single-family homes, multi-family homes, and several types of commercial and institutional buildings.
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Organizations or Programs
Enhabit
Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) developed consumer profiles based on research the program conducted on its target audience.
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In this video interview segment, Mary Templeton with BetterBuildings for Michigan discusses developing a readiness scale to determine if target audiences are ready to hear a program’s messages and take advantage of its offerings.
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In this video interview segment, Bruce Doeuck of JEA ShopSmart in Jacksonville, Florida, discusses the market segmentation methodology his program used to better understand its audience.
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Through its target audience research, Rutland, Vermont's NeighborWorks H.E.A.T. Squad learned that neighbors are the most trusted messengers of energy efficiency upgrade information, rather than governments or utilities.