Insights on geothermal marketing – Interview with Patrick Hanson of GeoEnergy Marketing
GeoEnergy Marketing Website, Patrick Hanson
Alexander Richter
26 Sep 2018
How can we use marketing and social media to promote geothermal energy - an interview with Patrick Hanson, Principal of Geo Energy Marketing.
A good friend in the industry, Patrick Hanson has been on the forefront on pushing geothermal energy on social media both generally to promote it, but also in his work for several companies in the sector to promote their services and products.
His career has been focused around strategic marketing in the geothermal industry for companies including, ThermaSource, Scientific Drilling, and most recently for TNG Energy Services. In 2015, he started Geo Energy Marketing Services as a marketing consulting business on the side. Today, he’s made the consulting business his main focus.
He recently started a rather interesting social media campaign promoting the geothermal industry, using the hashtag #GeothermalFactsandStats. So, we wanted to ask him how this came about and what he wants to achieve with the campaign.
Insight from thought leaders is an important part of our #GeothermalFactsandStats campaign. @geothermalsusan founder of @altarock & @HotRockEnergy is a champion for #geothermal energy & has committed her career to the advancement of our industry. #solar #wind #energystorage pic.twitter.com/CY65ivjbUG
— GeoEnergy Marketing (@GeoEnergyMrktg) September 25, 2018
What is the background on the campaign you launched about 2 months ago?
We both know that geothermal struggles to share the same limelight as other mainstream renewable energies. Dissecting why that is would take too long for this interview. That being said, it takes an organic, grass-roots effort to begin spreading the word about our industry. I wanted to create the Geothermal Facts and Stats social media campaign to do just that. Creatively share an array of facts, stats and insightful quotes across all sectors of the industry that begin to educate the public about our great industry. We are starting small, with a post a week across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the Geo Energy Marketing Blog.
Who are your targets?
We are targeting geothermal industry leaders, and the general public that share an interest in renewables and are as socially active as we are. The goal is to, A) Have the campaign reach our fellow geothermal leaders to like, comment, re-tweet, and share with their respective networks and B) Capture the attention of progressive energy enthusiasts that may lack the general knowledge of our industry who can learn something new, and share it with their networks. It just takes one viral tweet or post to capture the attention of a socially aware, clean-energy driven culture to make #Geothermal trend.
How important is social media for the geothermal energy sector?
It’s paramount. There is no other far-reaching, economic, user-friendly tool that we have at our disposal to share success stories, news, job openings, and general industry education. However, our industry has a lot to learn about the usage and implementation of these social media platforms, as we continue to struggle to collaborate consistently and effectively.
How do you think the geothermal sector could make more use of social media and what do you consider the most important things to consider?
The two most important elements to consider and adopt would be to collaborate and engage across all social platforms. That said, there are dozens of legitimate region-specific and international geothermal associations that have yet to prove they can work together to co-promote our industry. Each have their respective social presence. Each share news to some degree, some like, share or engage with other associations – however, it’s astonishing how disconnected each are in terms of using a unified language, or in social media terms, a consistent hashtag. It doesn’t take much to make a hashtag trend. So why haven’t each of these global, or regional associations, media and marketing outlets alike, locked-arms together and agreed to use at least one geothermal focused hashtag with EVERY single social post? And in turn, each and every entity commit to liking, sharing, and commenting daily? Geothermal should be a trending topic and we all could play a part in making that happen.
A lot of the geothermal companies are rather small and often don’t have the capacity to be more active on marketing related issues. Where do you and your company fit into this and what do you offer companies?
Geo Energy Marketing is committed to working for small and mid-size geothermal companies that cannot afford a full-time marketing manager, team or haven’t prioritized that value and ROI of a strategic marketing presence. We fill this void by providing targeted, creative marketing services, such as web design, brand management, trade show management, social media management as well as market research, video communications and business development. We can be project specific or become a full-service outsourced marketing team. All of which are offered at competitive rates targeting the small to mid-size company. Furthermore, Geo Energy Marketing brings over a decade of specific geothermal industry experience – which enables seamless on-boarding of new clients and avoids the time consuming geothermal 101 course given when you hire a local marketing agency.
Patrick can be reached via Geo Energy Marketing’s Website, via LinkedIn or via GeoEnergyMarketing/Twitter
ThinkGeoEnergy and Geo Energy Marketing have been cooperating for many years to help push branding of the geothermal sector and professionalise our approach to marketing and promotion of the global geothermal sector.
