Communications Shouldn’t Start With What You Want to Say. It Should Start With What Your Customers Need to Understand.
Utilities are communicating in an increasingly complicated environment.
Infrastructure investments are growing. Costs are changing. Customer expectations continue to rise. New technologies are changing how electricity, water and broadband services are delivered. And customers expect organizations to communicate quickly, clearly and transparently.
At the same time, the communications landscape itself has fragmented.
A bill insert isn’t enough. Neither is a Facebook page, an occasional email or a quarterly newsletter.
As utilities begin planning for 2027, the question shouldn’t simply be:
“What should we communicate?”
A better question is:
“What do our customers need to understand, and what do we want them to think, feel or do as a result?”
That distinction turns communications from a collection of activities into a strategy.
Here are five questions every utility should be asking.
1. What Do Our Customers Need to Understand This Year?
Start here.
Before building a content calendar, media plan or list of campaigns, identify the most important things customers need to understand about your organization during the coming year.
Perhaps you’re making significant infrastructure investments.
Maybe rates are changing.
You may be introducing new services, deploying smart technology, expanding broadband, launching efficiency programs or preparing customers for major construction.
Or perhaps the priority is less tangible: helping customers better understand the value your utility provides every day.
Once those priorities are established, communications can be built around them.
Strategy starts with the outcome, not the tactic.
Instead of asking, “What should we post on social media this month?” ask, “What does our customer need to understand this month?”
The answer to the second question should determine the answer to the first.
2. Where Are the Greatest Threats to Customer Trust?
Utilities provide essential services, which means customer relationships are different from those of most consumer brands.
Customers may interact very little with their utility when everything is working well. But during an outage, rate increase, billing issue or major construction project, that relationship suddenly becomes highly visible.
Those moments can build trust, or erode it.
Utilities should proactively identify the issues most likely to create customer confusion, frustration or concern during the coming year.
Then communications should begin before those issues become problems.
Transparency matters.
Customers don’t necessarily expect every piece of news to be good. But they increasingly expect organizations to explain what is happening, why it is happening and how it affects them.
The strongest communications strategies don’t only promote positive stories.
They prepare for difficult conversations too.
3. Are We Communicating the Value Behind Infrastructure Investments?
Utilities routinely make enormous investments customers never see.
A substation upgrade, distribution system improvement, water treatment project, grid modernization initiative or fiber deployment may represent millions of dollars of investment—and years of planning.
To the customer, however, much of that work is invisible.
Until the road is closed.
Or construction begins.
Or rates change.
That creates a communications opportunity.
Instead of communicating only what is being built, utilities should explain why it matters.
What does this investment mean for reliability?
Resiliency?
Capacity?
Economic development?
Safety?
Future growth?
Customer experience?
A photograph of construction equipment may show that work is happening.
Strategic communications explain why the work is worth doing.
That distinction becomes particularly important when customers are being asked to help fund long-term infrastructure investments through rates.
4. Are Our Communications Reaching Customers Where They Actually Consume Information?
Utilities have more communications channels available than ever before.
The challenge is determining which ones actually reach customers.
Different audiences consume information differently.
Some customers may respond to email. Others may engage primarily through social media. Some audiences are best reached through digital advertising or video, while others may still respond strongly to direct mail.
Community events, local media, customer service representatives, websites and even employees themselves can also play important communications roles.
The answer is rarely choosing one channel.
It’s creating an integrated communications ecosystem where multiple channels reinforce the same strategic messages.
That requires understanding not only what you’re communicating, but also who you’re trying to reach and where you’re most likely to reach them.
5. Can We Measure Whether Our Communications Are Changing Awareness, Understanding or Behavior?
One of the easiest traps in marketing and communications is measuring activity instead of impact.
How many social posts did we publish?
How many emails did we send?
How many people visited the website?
Those numbers can be useful, but they don’t necessarily tell you whether communications are working.
Utilities should connect communications efforts to measurable objectives whenever possible.
Depending on the initiative, success might mean increasing awareness, driving enrollment in a program, generating fiber registrations, increasing participation in efficiency initiatives, improving understanding of a rate change or driving customers toward digital service options.
This requires establishing objectives before the campaign begins.
Because the most important question isn’t:
“How much marketing did we do?”
It’s:
“Did it accomplish what we needed it to accomplish?”
From Communications Calendar to Communications Strategy
There is an important difference between having a communications calendar and having a communications strategy.
A calendar tells you what you’re going to communicate and when.
A strategy defines why you’re communicating, who you’re trying to reach, what they need to understand, how you’ll reach them and what success looks like.
Utilities need both.
But strategy has to come first.
As organizations begin planning for 2027, this is an opportunity to step back from individual campaigns and communications tactics and look at the bigger picture.
What are the organization’s priorities?
What will customers need to understand?
Where could confusion or resistance occur?
What stories aren’t being told?
And what role can communications play in helping the utility achieve its broader organizational objectives?
Answer those questions first.
Then build the communications plan.
How CMOco Helps Utilities Communicate Strategically
CMOco Marketing & Advertising has extensive experience working with utilities and broadband providers on strategic planning, customer communications, brand development, infrastructure communications, rate-change campaigns, broadband marketing and ongoing marketing execution.
Our approach begins with strategy.
We work alongside leadership teams much like an outsourced CMO—understanding organizational objectives first, then building the communications roadmap and marketing programs necessary to support them.
From strategic planning and campaign development to digital advertising, creative, social media, direct mail, websites, video and media placement, CMOco can develop the strategy and help execute it.
Beginning your 2027 planning? Let’s talk about what your customers need to understand next year, and how you’re going to reach them.
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