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What You’ll Learn
Like many broadband storytellers, Manager of Sprout Fiber Internet Marketing and Services Bonnie Baty began working on the electric utility side. She offers advice for communicators making the switch and shares her take on how broadband communications will evolve over the next five years.
Guest Speaker
Bonnie BatyShow Notes
Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Intro: A production of Pioneer Utility Resources. StoryConnect, helping communicators discover ideas to shape their stories and connect with their customers.
Megan McKoy-Noe: How can you transform communication skills into broadband marketing tactics? That’s what we’re going to be talking about on this episode of The StoryConnect Podcast. Hi, I’m your host, Megan McKoy-Noe, one of the storytellers at Pioneer Utility Resources, and I am joined by the amazing Bonnie Baty. She is the marketing and services manager for Sprout Fiber Internet at Cullman Electric Cooperative in lovely Cullman, Alabama. Bonnie, thank you so much for being with us today.
Bonnie Baty: Thanks, Megan. I really appreciate it.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Well, and we’re here recording live. We are at the Calix ConneXions Conference in Las Vegas with a few thousand other broadband storytellers. It’s quite an exciting time. So any background noise that folks might hear on the recording, it’s here to set the mood for sparking inspiration in your own stories, so I hope you all enjoy that. Now, like many broadband storytellers, Bonnie, you began working on the electric utilities side at Cullman Electric. Then you moved to Sprout full-time about two years ago now. So I’m just curious, what differences have you found between electric and broadband storytelling?
Bonnie Baty: That’s a great question, Megan. There are a lot of differences. And so I would say for any cooperative that is getting into the broadband space, just acknowledge they’re going to be different.
Megan McKoy-Noe: It’s not the same.
Bonnie Baty: Be prepared.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah.
Bonnie Baty: On the electric co-op side, I was hired in six years ago as a communications specialist, and our communications was telling people about our programs and what we were doing. It was very one-way.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Right.
Bonnie Baty: That’s the way I think a lot of electric cooperatives communicate with their members. We’re telling you what’s going on. On the broadband side of it, it’s very different. Because it is a competitive market, and you are having to actually sell your services, a little different format. Your marketing and your tactics go beyond communication. Communication and PR is one small facet of the overall marketing strategy that you’re going to have to have for broadband.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Oh, so you’re saying there’s a lot more to it.
Bonnie Baty: There’s a lot more to it.
Bonnie Baty: There’s a lot. I think a lot of electric co-ops these days are starting to see the value in marketing, and you’re starting to see more marketing background people coming into electric co-ops. Especially the ones that are getting into the broadband space. You’re starting to see co-ops think about serving the membership differently than what they have historically in the past. Even though you have a finite group of membership, customers that you can serve –
Megan McKoy-Noe: Right.
Bonnie Baty: You do have the opportunity to sell them other things. And it may not be a revenue generating product, like it is for broadband, but it is selling them the story of the co-op and creating the next generation of cooperative members. Just on the electric side, I think a lot of younger generations don’t have that connection to their co-op, and it’s going to take a marketing style to be able to get that message across to them. These are people who are used to being marketed to. And I think co-ops are going to have to evolve their communications into a true marketing strategy on the electric side. And if they’re in the broadband business, then it’s going to make it an easier transition for them, because you are going to be in that competitive market, and you’re just going to have to start marketing on the broadband side.
Megan McKoy-Noe: But you’re right. I think it’s important to realize that we’re not just communicators anymore, and we can’t just communicate. So we really have to market. So what does that mean? What does marketing look like at Sprout Fiber? What are the elements for success?
Bonnie Baty: So we first talk about brand, in my opinion. Who are you? What do you want to be? How do you want to be seen? One of the things that I have said in previous discussions is work backwards. Write mock testimonials. Actually come up with personas and say, I want Bob, the 45 year old guy who works from home for a big company in a large town, but still lives in small town America, using his broadband service. I want him to say this about me.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Right, I like that.
Bonnie Baty: And once I’ve actually created Bob’s testimonial, then I’m able to work back and say, “How do I get him to believe that about me? How do I get him to feel that about me?” And, “Where am I going to be talking to Bob? Where is his space?” And then that gives me how I’m going to go to market to him. Where are my communication points with him? And it could be anything as simple as our co-op magazine. It could be traditional tactics like direct mail. It could be more advanced tactics, like some geofencing and targeting marketing. So I want to make every interaction Bob has with me a way for him to actually want to say those things about me.
Megan McKoy-Noe: I love that approach because we talk a lot about audience segments and really identifying the different people that you are trying to reach and differentiating – that’s a very large word. But, you know, having specific stories that you’re telling and places where you’re telling those stories to each of those people. But I haven’t heard of someone starting with the testimonial, because that really, instead of just identifying this person and this is Bob, this is what Bob does, and we want to reach Bob. Instead, you’re focusing on the way you want Bob to feel.
Bonnie Baty: Exactly.
Megan McKoy-Noe: And I think that’s a really powerful twist to something that we’ve heard. But it really, for me, that really sinks in. So I appreciate that.
Bonnie Baty: And if we can take that a step further, in most traditional for-profit businesses, you have a product that serves a need that you’re going to market with. And you have a pretty defined group that is going to use that product.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Right.
Bonnie Baty: In broadband, your group is everybody. You know, for marketing, you really want to know who your target audience is, right? Who do you want to sell to? Well, with the broadband service, it’s anybody. And not only just 18 and above –.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah.
Bonnie Baty: But you even have influence for those that are 18 and below. You can influence those kids by doing the community events. And the kid that goes home and says, “Mom, I got to have a gig service so I can play my Fortnite.” He’s an influencer.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Right.
Bonnie Baty: And he’s helping make a purchase decision within that household. So broadband is very broad, pun intended, that you are going to have to market to everyone. You can create these personas: gaming, work from home, all of these things. But really it’s even more broad than that. And there’s a crossover. So you’re going to take a very wide swath and have to figure out what you’re going to say to them. So for me it’s more about the feeling. It’s more about what is that testimonial, regardless of how they’re going to use the product, regardless of what persona they’re going to be in. How do I make them feel about my product? How do I get them to talk about me to their friends and neighbors, who might not even be the same persona that they are?
Megan McKoy-Noe: Well, and you have been focusing on the feeling that initially Cullman Electric had with the community and really monitoring that level of trust through reviews online and those testimonials. You’ve been monitoring that for years and finding ways to spark those conversations. And now you’re bringing that skill set into the Sprout Fiber brand, which I love and has been so much fun to watch what y’all are doing there and how you’re really growing that brand. I’m wondering, for folks who haven’t thought about really sparking those conversations and finding out how people feel about them. There are so many tools out there, like Google reviews, which is where everyone goes. They’re not going to go to your website to learn about you. They’re going to see what people say about you online. What tips do you have for folks who haven’t really monitored that in the past, and haven’t actively invited folks to share how they feel about your brand online?
Bonnie Baty: First, be open and be willing to have long conversations, whether that is a phone call that comes into the office. Take the extra time to just talk to them. You know, ask them the questions, because they’ll give you the feedback if asked. When you’re at community events, same thing. Get out from behind the table and just talk to the person. Don’t just hand them the flier and let them go on about their way. Really have a conversation with them. Those one-on-one interactions will give you more dividends than any survey you could ever send in all honesty. Just put yourself out there and ask the questions. Have the people that work on your staff, who have those face-to-face interactions doing the same thing. And then be open with each other, start to compile that information. And as a team, sit down and say, “This is what I’m hearing.” These are the repetitive things, positive and negative, that you’re hearing. On top of that, in addition to having those personal one-on-one conversations, social listening. People are talking about you, and they’re not just necessarily talking about you on your platforms. They’re talking about you on their platforms. So you need to go listen to what they’re saying about you behind your back.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah.
Bonnie Baty: So be involved in those other things. Community groups are a great way. You can actually search Facebook for your company name, and you’ll find every time that you’re mentioned, whether you’re tagged or not tagged. And that is a great way to find out what people really think about you.
Megan McKoy-Noe: And I remember when Sprout launched, you did a lot of training with all of your staff to make sure that you shared talking points and really educated the whole team. I think you even had – was it games that y’all had with folks or competitions?
Bonnie Baty: We have a pretty competitive little team on the Sprout side of things where we have some very aggressive goals that we set, and it has to do more with customer service than it is about, you know, how many subscribers you get. But we want to have one call resolution. And not just with the subscribers, but even with the person inquiring. If somebody calls in for electric service and that electric customer service person, member service representative, we want them to be able to have enough knowledge about Sprout that they can confidently say, “This is something you should consider and look at in addition to your power.”
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah.
Bonnie Baty: We don’t ask them to be experts on everything because it is a different industry, and it’s different skill set, different product line that you have to know, but we have to give them enough baseline information that not only can they answer that phone call when it comes into the co-op, but they can answer that question at the grocery store or at the ball field or at the church, because that is where everybody’s going to talk to you. If they know you work for the co-op and the co-op has gotten involved in the broadband business, they’re going to ask, “When am I eligible to get the service?” And they need to have enough baseline information that they can comfortably say that. And not say, “That’s not my job.”
Megan McKoy-Noe: So how did you get that information two years ago when Sprout was first getting out there? And then, how do you get updates to your staff and information to your staff now to make sure, I mean, they’re not going to be the marketing experts, but to make sure that they are a trusted connection for potential subscribers in the community?
Bonnie Baty: Well, I’m going to give you a little bit of a lessons learned here, because it’s not something that we did not do as well as I wish we could. If I could get in the time machine and go back, three years ago when we launched Sprout Fiber Internet, I would do things very differently on the internal communications.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Okay.
Bonnie Baty: Have some different alignments with things. We went – and I think most electric co-ops do this – we went very fast and very aggressive, and we just kind of blazed by everybody else in the hallways and said, “I’m on a mission to go build this thing.” And we didn’t take the time that we really should have with the rest of the staff and give them “the why” behind things. We were in a lot of meetings with the people who were directly involved, but we didn’t host enough meetings with the people who were indirectly involved. And we see some fallout from that. We see some people who don’t have the buy-in that don’t understand the why, that don’t see the big picture of why the electric co-op is doing this. And understanding that life is going to be different from this day going forward. The co-op will never be the same once you’ve launched broadband. That’s one thing, if I could give advice to a new co-op getting into the business, it would be get that alignment, get that alignment early. Get everybody on board, even the people who are not going to have direct interaction with the broadband side of things. They have got to understand it.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Right.
Bonnie Baty: To be able to cohesively take this product to market.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah. No, I completely agree. There was a great session at Calix about bringing like, you can’t have a house divided, right? You have to bring all of the team together and make sure that your storytelling sings together in unison versus how sometimes people get very upset when they think you’re adding to their workload. Or they don’t understand.
Bonnie Baty: Exactly.
Megan McKoy-Noe: What you’re doing. So I love those tips for folks, who are just getting started. Now, you have built with your broadband system. You’re at the halfway mark this year. Is that about right?
Bonnie Baty: Yes, we’re about 50% built out.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Okay. How are your storytelling tactics changing now? I mean, you already mentioned that you wish you had a time machine, and I think all of us have that desire deep down for one reason or another. But knowing what you know now, what are you doing to make sure both your internal story is staying strong, and the families are united. And then also, how are your tactics changing externally?
Bonnie Baty: So let’s talk externally first.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Sure.
Bonnie Baty: Our go-to-market strategy when we launched Sprout was a lot about brand awareness. Just tell people who we are, what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I guess I assumed some of that would just trickle down internally, but, you know, maybe it didn’t do it as well internally as what we were doing externally. Because that was all of our messaging externally is this is who Sprout is. This is why we’re doing it, for the benefit of our membership, for the benefit of concern for community. And the big part about launch for us was about managing expectation. We knew, especially considering that we launched Sprout Fiber Internet on June 18th, 2020, in the heat of Covid. And if we would have had a crystal ball and could have foreseen that we were going to be in a pandemic or had that time machine and gone back, we would have launched way earlier than we did. But we didn’t. So we launched at a period where everybody needed it right then. They wanted it tomorrow, and we couldn’t provide that. We were just starting. So we had to manage those expectations. And the vast majority of our communications and storytelling was about managing those expectations. It’s actually what built our brand. One of the reasons we’re named “Sprout” is we wanted it to resonate that this has got to grow, and it’s got to be cultivated, and it’s got to be something that we’ve got to do together to grow it in our community.
Bonnie Baty: And that was intentional. Even the imagery that we used in all of our launch campaigns was the little baby sprout seed, and that it would be growing. Now that we’re 50% out, external communications is starting to take a shift. We are at a little bit of a pivotal point where we are looking at the places where we’ve already built and changing our messaging of, you didn’t take it on the first pass when we came around, so let me tell you about how really great it is and the fact that you should have this service.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Are you adding fertilizer?
Bonnie Baty: We are adding fertilizer to our marketing strategy now. We certainly are. So we’re changing into more of a traditional tactic with those areas that we’ve already got live. But we still are having to manage those expectations for the 50% who can’t have it yet. So we are very much at a crossroads. We want to be able to stand up and shout from the rooftops how great Sprout is, and how wonderful the product is and how great the customer service is. But also be mindful that there is a group of people who want it and can’t have it. One of the hardest things as a marketer is not being able to sell your product to somebody. Somebody who wants it, but you can’t give it to them.
Megan McKoy-Noe: But that’s where targeted storytelling really comes into play. You were mentioning geofencing earlier. Could you explain how you’re using that in certain communities?
Bonnie Baty: That gives me the ability to get targeted messages to a certain group, and geography is a great way to do that. I know who is eligible and who is not eligible. So I can look at a map, even down to an address level, and say, “This person needs to get messaging that his neighbor a couple of miles down the road doesn’t need to get.” And it’s much more beneficial. So you have you have geotargeting digital ads that you can do. Of course, direct mail is about as direct as you can get.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Have you all used that a lot?
Bonnie Baty: We do. We actually, we are using some direct mail. I think there’s a resurgence in direct mail. It’s personal. And, for example, we do Christmas cards. We send Christmas cards out to our subscribers and some of our prospects because we want them to see us. We want them to see that we are a local, concerned, for community partner. And it’s a way for them to get to know us.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Well, I along those lines, and you’re the second utility at Calix who’s told me that you’re sending Christmas cards out. The other utility is sending them to people who are not connected yet, but they’re on the list. Right? Which I thought was an interesting way to say we’re thinking of you. We know, you know, kind of like an I’ll be home for Christmas, but you’ll have fiber next Christmas, kind of a spin on it. What’s the message of your Christmas card at Sprout to your existing subscribers?
Bonnie Baty: It’s a thank you message. We are so grateful. We are so grateful to our community. We have had so much support. Most everybody who has the service, actually everybody who has the service, loves it. We get rave reviews from our subscribers. The people who don’t have it yet are just waiting for it to show up and are supportive of the co-op. We do have some that don’t understand the why it’s taking so long to get to them, but they’re grateful we’re doing it. And so our Christmas card is a thank you message.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Oh, I like that. I like that a lot. Are you having a different message that you’re sending out to people who are still waiting this Christmas?
Bonnie Baty: No, it’s one message because the thank you works both ways. The thank you works for if you’re a subscriber, and you’ve actively taken the service. The thank you also works that thank you for your patience with us. Thank you for supporting us.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah, I like that. Well, I could talk to you about this for hours. One of my favorite things about conferences like this, and just being able to see people like you, who I’ve known since you joined the utility world, is just the chance to have these conversations. And I think StoryConnect is a really great way just to listen in on conversations that are happening at these events. So we’ll have to have you on again to like dive more into some of these ideas. But before I let you go today, how do you believe that broadband marketing tactics are going to evolve over the next five years? And where are the biggest story challenges and opportunities? It’s a huge question, I know.
Bonnie Baty: It is, but it’s going to circle back to something that we talked about earlier. There is so much noise in the marketing place right now, and where the wind is going to happen is when you can break through that noise. And I think it’s going to come back to those personal touch points: that face to face time, that direct communication. The way that we approach our storytelling is not going to be broad. It’s going to have to be narrow, and it’s going to have to be in a way where we make those connections. Those personal connections that are going to set us apart from all the other noise that’s out there.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah, I could not agree more. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with utility pioneers. She is Bonnie Baty, marketing and services manager at Sprout Fiber Internet for Cullman Electric Cooperative. And I’m your host, Megan McKoy-Noe at Pioneer Utility Resources. And until we talk again, keep telling your story.
Outro: StoryConnect is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources, a communications cooperative that is built to share your story. StoryConnect is engineered by Lucas Smith of Lucky Sound Studio.