From drawing new customers to offsetting utility costs, to showcasing your company’s commitment to green energy, more and more businesses are realizing the many possible advantages of hosting EVSE at their properties. Although installing electric vehicle charging stations can bring many financial benefits to a commercial property simply as a reliable place to charge, EVSE can also be utilized as a profitable marketing tool if leveraged properly.
As a somewhat young technology, marketing opportunities are still in development, but the ways to capitalize on using EVSE as promotional spaces can be as broad, varied, and lucrative as the creative minds that strike upon them. Let’s take a look at a few of the biggest opportunities currently available:
Different Ways To Market Your Business At Your Charging Stations
Add Custom Branding
Custom branding is a way to make your clients or potential customers equate charging electric vehicles with your business. By branding your EVSE with your own unique logos, colors, or fonts you could give your charging station a visual identity that people can recognize and immediately associate with your business. This adds value to your EVSE and may possibly yield more traffic and customers. Effectively branded EVSE could also allow people in your area to easily spot your property as a location that hosts charging stations.
Online branding could also make your business easily findable if you are able to add searchability functions to your website, to apps, or to online search engines that bring your business up when people are looking for charging stations. Increasing your search engine optimization with electric vehicle and charging station keywords could also boost search results and get your business name to more people online.
Promote Sales, Specials, and New Releases
Charging an electric vehicle is as convenient as it has ever been, but it still takes time. The benefit to this, as a business owner, is that EV drivers are a somewhat captive audience while using your charging stations. This offers a great opportunity to directly promote your business initiatives to potential customers who are already on your property. Using traditional promotional materials such as posters, flyers, business cards or something similar are simple and affordable ways to let people know about your current specials, promotions, sales, or open positions.
These messages can also be delivered via electronic means. Tablets, TVs, projection screens, or electronic signs could be installed on or near your charging stations and provide easily updatable ways to inform your patrons about whatever new promotions your business is running. Utilizing QR codes or offering email list sign ups via a tablet or computer could also allow you to grow your virtual rolodex. Collecting contact information from EV drivers can also open up a direct line to promote to your consumers through email blasts, direct mail or SMS text marketing.
Connect With Your Customers
Businesses can use EVSE marketing space to post their mission statement or branded messaging as a way to express their shared values and commitment to clean energy. As a space for businesses to communicate their brand values, charging stations can serve a platforms for sharing ideas as much as advertising products and sales. Installing a permanent plaque or poster at your charging station could be a valuable asset in showcasing a company’s commitment to a green future and demonstrating alignment with your local green-focused community.
EV charging stations can also serve as a data collection point. Being aware of how long an average EV driver spends at your charging station can help inform how you utilize the space for advertising or marketing. It can provide insights into how you should maintain the charging station space itself, or inform you on how to better serve your customers while they are charging.
Conducting market research at the charging station is another opportunity to improve services, sales, and business performance by obtaining feedback and responding to your customer’s stated needs. This can be accomplished in a number of ways including collecting data through a 1-800 number, making printed or electronic surveys available on a website or through QR codes, or with on-site customer service representatives. These efforts can bolster customer loyalty because they show that your business listens, cares, and delivers based on the needs of its patrons.
Create a Loyalty Program
EV charging stations can be a great way to routinely draw customers back to your property. While most EV drivers are able to charge at home, the option to charge more quickly while also shopping or conducting business can be a great draw to your commercial property. With the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to expand the EV infrastructure and EV charging stations becoming more abundant in the coming years, there can be a lot of value in creating a loyalty program to differentiate your EVSE from your potential competitors.
Similar to gas stations, an EV charging station host could provide incentives that correlate with time or money spent at your business or the charging station itself. Some examples of this type of program include things like “5 cents off per KwH for every $100 spent at your business,” or a new tenant signing bonus for multi-family housing in which the first month of charging is free. Whatever the method, a loyalty program can incentivize customers to keep coming back and could bring more foot traffic and sales to your business.
Make Money by Selling Ad Space at Your Charging Stations
For the many aforementioned ways and reasons your charging stations could be a great resource to promote your own business, your EVSE could be equally valuable to other brands and local businesses. Your EVSE could be a great way to make additional income by becoming a space for other companies to advertise. Local electric vehicle service centers, commercial retailers, or green-minded brands could buy ad space from you and deliver their own messaging directly to EV drivers. Some may even be willing to pay for the installation cost of whatever multimedia delivery method they choose, which could save your business the cost of doing it yourself.
Providing advertising space could also be a way to connect to other local, like minded businesses and open up a line of communication for future business or marketing opportunities. Speaking with local businesses could eventually yield solid chances to collaborate on products, or raise funds for local initiatives which could be a great way to connect with your local EV and business community. Green value-aligned partnerships could grow your brand name and customer loyalty and help spread awareness of your company in general.
