How Oil and Gas Companies Can Turn Stakeholders into Raving Fans

Many oil and gas companies spend thousands of dollars in building and managing their brand value.

But in many oil and gas companies, branding is often the most misused and least effective marketing activity.

Technically speaking, there is one major reason for ineffective branding in the oil and gas industry, and the reason boils down to the tendency of the branding strategies to focus solely on increasing investors outreach,boosting recruiting efforts and creating a positive image in the community.

A huge amount of time and energy is devoted into attracting stakeholders rather than creating raving fans.

Instead of focusing on delivering amazing customer experiences, these companies use branding and communication activities to push and pitch their corporate message.

Your brand is more than just a company name, logo or website.

It is the perception of your company or its reputation. It is what people say and feel about your company and what they expect to achieve by working with you.

If your brand has a good reputation but not have high visibility in the industry, then it would be hard to build a solid brand.

A solid brand has both reputation and high visibility. That means that the brand is well known to target audience in the industry.

And the cost effective way to having a highly visible and well-known brand in the industry is focusing on creating raving fans rather than stakeholders.

The best benefit of creating raving fans is that they amplify your brand’s messages and they take it to the height you would never reach on your own with paid advertising.

Here are some strategies which oil companies can capitalize on to turn their stakeholders into ravings fans who will talk positively about their brand and spread their company’s story to their friends or even colleagues. This will have noticeable impact on their brand.

Show Them Your Efforts and Achievements

Investors who will like to fund your next drilling program want to be invest their money in a visible and strong brand. They also want to be educated about your performance and activities.

By telling them all the efforts that goes into your operations in extracting oil and gas resources, it gives them assurance in your company.

Do this by producing a special report that demonstrates how you overcame a unique challenge and take smart risks, or even share your brand success stories.

Related: Five Stupid Marketing Strategies to Avoid When Marketing in the Oil and Gas Industry

Once this report is published to reputable industry publications and distributed to delegates at major industry events, your brand stories will reach more people that you would never reach on your own with normal annual report.

Don’t let your efforts go unnoticed: tell them your challenges and ways you combated it, and make sure it’s distributed to the delegates at major industry events.

Make Smart Use of Technology

The reality is that the oil and gas industry is one of the slowest industries to adopt new things, especially new technologies. Also the industry is struggling to attract very talented people. For instance, your current workforce will retire in the next 10 years. Guess what? Your company will need to hire young people and students to fill the positions after the current workers retire. And the best way to do so is by making smart use of the new media and digital technology as well.

Creating amazing content on the social media on the way your company deploys new technology to extract oil and gas resources in harsh and dangerous environments, such as the deep water will help develop deep connection with young people and help give them the taste of how is it like to work for your company.

By doing that, you build an image as an educator or trusted advisor for your brand in the industry.This raises their self-esteem and they begin to think that your company is an amazing place to grow their career.

Make It Easy and Fun to Deal with Host Communities

Host communities support brand that care for them. When you demonstrate your care about a community, the community will in turn care about your brand and have positive perception about your brand.

The communities do not care about your company name or logo, but they care how your operations benefit them. The era of pushing your corporate message has ended.To build your brand,your marketing strategies should deliver amazing experience and, if done well,these communities will become evangelists for your brand.

Final Word

When your company has raving fans, you attract investors easily, and the best employees will want to work for you. So, it will make recruiting the best talents easier.