MARKETING
What's the approach Sundog
takes to connect Otter Tail's
customers with these three
buckets of messaging?
1. Economic Impact – "It'll
save you money."
2. Community impact – "It
might sound like a little bit, but
if everyone does it, we'll make
a big difference."
3. Environmental –
"Conserving energy helps
preserve the place where
you live. If you're serving
rural communities, that
environmental aspect is
incredibly important. These are
people who love to hunt and
fish, they're involved with or
closely associated with ag."
With Otter Tail, you have
customers spread out all over
North Dakota, Minnesota and
South Dakota. Does that pose
any specific challenges?
"In order to hit one market,
you have to buy this much
geography. You're being
charged to reach all these
people, even though your
customers are only in a small
pocket. Which is where digital
kind of offsets that. Digital
provides better targeting for
rural audiences.
media, we can target digital
radio – Pandora – by zip
code. So now we're at the
zip code level. When we start
doing digital display ads and
working with ad networks,
we're able to place ads based
on behaviors rather than
demographics. We're not
targeting by genre, by age, by
gender. It's zip code. And a
lot of these small towns have
probably one or two, which
allows us to save so much
more money than buying a
large geographic region that
may spill over into people who
aren't Otter Tail customers.
And that allows us to be more
efficient."
Sundog's Revenue Performance
Model platform
You mentioned something
before about the customer
journey. What is that?
"Basically, every consumer
has to go through a series of
phases before they make a
purchase:
unaware
aware
perception
preference
use
loyalty
or
I don't know anything.
I've
heard of you.
I like you.
I want you.
I buy you.