Leaders in Energy, an educational, professional networking, and advisory services organization in the clean energy and sustainability sector, was initially launched as an online social media group. It expanded to hosting monthly face-to-face professional networking events held at unique locations around the Washington, DC area. With the rapid word-of-mouth and growth of the events, Leaders in Energy faced a dilemma—how to harness this growth and transition from a complimentary online group to become a revenue-generating organization.
Our Solution
By listening to members and conducting extensive research, members validated and identified three things they wanted. Members valued meeting face-to-face through monthly events. They wanted to hear from thought leaders on a variety of clean energy topics to broaden their knowledge, and members signaled they were willing to pay to attend events.
We created a business strategy for Leaders in Energy, which led to the establishment of a marketing team. As part the marketing strategy, the team developed a full-year fee-based events plan. It included marquee events such as: Green Jobs, Women in Energy Extravaganza, and the 4 Gen Event.
Leaders in Energy also embraces and leads with social media, digital marketing, and advertising to promote their events. The organization established a clean energy and sustainability blog. They have opened it up to guest bloggers and speakers who regularly blog on a diversity of topics, including event topics.
The Results
Leaders in Energy launched the marquee events which exceeded attendance and revenue targets, creating sold out events. The events also positioned the organization as a convener of clean energy and sustainability thought leaders from universities, state, local, federal, and foreign governments, nonprofits, communities, and industry who share knowledge, success stories, and best practices.
With the success of the marketing strategy, Leaders in Energy created a sponsorship program. After testing and validating it, the sponsorship program is wrapped around their events, generating a new source of revenue to support the business strategy, and providing content for the blog.
The transition to becoming a revenue-generating organization has enabled Leaders in Energy’s Janine Finnell, Founder and Clean Energy Ambassador, to raise the profile of the organization globally, attract new speakers, and establish new partnerships.
“Pivoting Strategies served as our business strategist and Chief Marketing Officer as we transformed into a revenue-generating organization. Their guidance and recommendations greatly assisted our efforts to develop mechanisms for creating additional streams of revenue–from our events, attendance, and sponsorship strategy.
Pivoting Strategies’ insights regarding digital strategy, advertising, and business intelligence played a valuable and critical role in contributing to the growth and success of our activities and organization.”