"After some research and customer interviews, Mark built a persuasive message around one of the most important advantages FotoMagico offers - creating great shows fast. I am very happy with the results."
Oliver Breidenbach
Director
Boinx
Software Ltd.
TechPromo, November 2008
Marketing Newsletter For Technology Promotion
Why Are You Sitting On Your Most Valuable Asset?
You spent lots of time gathering information about your customers and their operations. That information is a supporting sidebar to your product.
But it could also be another main event. Put the pieces together a little differently, and it may be worth big bucks to your customers, and therefore to you.
What do the pieces show about similar services in nearby locations? Who else needs to know about those trends?
Siting of solar energy collectors has become big business. Whether it's solar thermal plants that replace coal-fired boilers with concentrating solar or photovoltaic panels generating electricity directly, renewable energy requirements in states like California have power providers signing up for millions of dollars of megawatts.
Measuring the power from renewable sources is a profitable business. Governments need to verify compliance with their power requirements, and third-party measurements are the most accurate way to do it.
Enter power measurement companies like San Jose, California's Fat Spaniel Technologies. Fat Spaniel provides power measurement services to homeowners and corporate providers. They can tell you how much your system is producing right now, how much sun it's getting, the temperature at the site, and how much greenhouse gas you're avoiding. The company can also send you email alerts when your produced power falls below a level you set. An early warning tells providers to make service calls before there's much lost power.
Fat Spaniel can also provide a utility-grade measurement of power output. That satisfies government reporting requirements for renewable energy, gives billing data to power providers, and enables accounting for the renewable energy certificates (RECs) utilities are starting to trade.
Fat Spaniel focuses on measurement and reporting. But years of data on renewable energy systems around the world have other uses.
When providers want to site a new solar power system, they usually have raw data on sun radiation for several locations. But there's no information on how much power a photovoltaic system actually generates in that location. With data sampled every 15 minutes, Fat Spaniel can show possible energy generation by hour, day, month, or season. That's incredibly valuable to power suppliers. It lets Fat Spaniel offer exact siting advice for photovoltaic and solar thermal plants. Even if you're looking at a different system than the measured one, hard data on an installed flat-panel PV system are a baseline for your proposed concentrating PV system.
An accurate power estimate lets customers figure government rebates and overall costs to supply power, for the best go/no go decisions. They can also see the environmental data for a site and factor in maintenance costs due to weather, dust, smog or other factors. This is especially useful for sites not in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's TMY3 database - but Fat Spaniel's data goes beyond TMY3 hourly sun irradiance to offer actual power generation for a location. This is a huge competitive advantage.
No new customer acquisition is needed to get started. Fat Spaniel already has a database full of large customers who will be expanding as the demand for renewables goes up.
So think about what's already in your database. You may have another product hiding in there.
Mark Bohrer is a marketing consultant and technology writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has appeared in EDN, Portable Design, Electronic Design, and Elektronik i Norden. He's also written technical advertising for agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Mark is a 25-year engineering veteran of Silicon Valley. Visit www.precision-copywriting.com to download his free report, Technical Articles For Leads And Sales: Nine Ingredients to Grab Your Customers.
Looking For Breakout Product Launches In 2009?
You and your product developers are too close to your business to catch all the best ideas. Research and detailed marketing recommendations from a senior consultant who's already fought similar battles will expand your market share. It costs less than you think - the value of your increased sales will dwarf the money and minutes you spend. Call or email me to get started now - 408.866.9405 or
