The Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA)

The Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) was in the midst of planning for their first PV America Expo and six weeks in advance of the event were nowhere near their target number of registrants. Their four-person in-house events and marketing team brought in Hagopian Marketing to help increase registrations and event marketing and Back Pocket Media contributed to the social media aspects of the marketing plan.

Although we were brought in by Hagopian Marketing to help drive registrations to the event through social media, we quickly discovered that what SIEA truly needed was a social media foundation to expand their communications reach, showcase their subject matter expertise, and connect with their association membership and vendors. We developed a social media plan that addressed their immediate needs for PV America along with a strategy for creating an association-wide vehicle for social media communications. The plan included:

• Asset Overview
  
• Creating and Maintaining Destinations like their Websites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube
  
• Promotion through Social Media Outreach, Opt-ins, Advertising, and Blogger/Forum Relations
  
• Exposure through Search Engine Optimization and Network Building
  
• Campaign Analytics and Tracking Codes
  

We also delivered an Administrator Implementation Toolkit that gave the in-house team specifics on where to post, what to post, ask influencers to help build their networks. We concluded our collaboration with Hagopian Marketing by consulting on cross marketing approaches through their eblast and printed event promotional tactics.

In the end, SEIA reached their target number of registrants a week before the event, largely due to the postcard campaign. The social media plan has been implemented in part, but solely targeting PV America. Knowing that SEIA may need assistance in setting up and maintaining the larger campaign, we are discussing their options for implementing the larger plan.