How Climate Software Companies Can Grow Using Content

Climate software companies often sell complicated, technical products in a market that depends heavily on government regulation and intervention.

It’s a stressful way to do business.

But they’re doing good work, and there are a lot of them doing it well. So, how do these companies make others understand what makes them special?

That’s where content comes in.

We’ll share how three leading climate software companies use content marketing effectively, creating impactful, informative content that resonates with their audience and highlights their unique contributions — and what you can learn from them. So let’s turn up the heat and get right into it:

Watershed: Meet Your Customers Where They’re At

Watershed is fantastic at creating content for prospective customers who may or may not be familiar with their subject matter.

This organization produces software that lets companies measure, report, and reduce their carbon footprint. They’re talking to two audiences: Highly sophisticated users looking for the best possible carbon reporting software and executives at smaller companies who are just starting to collect this data.

So, how do you speak to both?

Guiding Climate Experts and Regular People

Watershed leverages their guides, tools, and webinars that broach the subject at different levels of depth to speak to both expert and non-expert, executive audiences. 

Starting to build a climate program? Watershed explains how to do that in the “How to build a climate program” guide highlighted above.

Dipped your toe in climate reporting but aren’t sure how it’ll change in 2024? They cover that, too, in their 2024 disclosure guide.

Let’s say you’re a more sophisticated user who’s ready to understand the macroeconomic trends around carbon reporting — they can also meet you at that expert level with their “Understanding the climate economy” whitepaper on that same menu.

As an example, let’s say you’re an expert in charge of reporting climate data at your company, but you recently expanded to Europe. How will you tackle European regulations? 

Well, Watershed brought in real sustainability reporting experts from firms like KPMG, Covington & Burling, and Workiva to give real, practical advice in a webinar. Plus, their own experts weighed in for the guide as well.

Of course, that kind of content has a very niche audience of experts. But it’s the exact audience that Watershed needs to build trust with to establish themselves as thought leaders. 

Simultaneously, they produce content that “regular” people can understand, too. For example, you might not even know if you need sustainability reporting in the first place or what kind of sustainability reporting is best for your company.

That’s why they build tools like their sustainability assessment. It’s a simple, eight-question quiz that asks about your number of employees, where your company is headquartered, its global annual revenue, and more. The answers you provide determine if your company should use sustainability reporting and what reporting you need. 

The user interface is slick, but, more importantly, there’s a simple lead capture form at the end. It’s easy to click through with actionable insights after you fill it out, and it’s designed for all audiences.

For example, if the results say you need to do sustainability reporting in California, it forwards you directly to a guide on how to get started. Watershed does a great job of creating a “rabbit hole” of content for you to get lost in. 

Managing Two Audiences on Social Media

Watershed also speaks to two audiences across social media by creating a wide range of posts that appeal to most people. Take this LinkedIn post, which provides valuable, niche news and an original analysis:

But Watershed doesn’t just create technical content. 

This next post is five simple, actionable steps for people contemplating a sustainability program. It’s not meant for technical experts, executives, and business owners who aren’t sure where to start.

Pay attention to the bottom of that post. There’s no CTA, which might look a little strange. But part of Watershed’s brand image is that it’s genuinely interested in providing resources for everyone.

Leaving out a CTA on posts targeted towards a more general audience builds on that reputation. It signals that Watershed isn’t in it for short-term personal gains but for the more altruistic goal of audience education and engagement.

Asking for Engagement — And Getting It?

Speaking of audience engagement, Watershed has something that many companies can only wish for: The ability to ask a question and get a response.

Let me explain.

A lot of social media marketers make posts saying something like, “Hey, everyone. What are five tips for social media marketers?” and expect people to respond with engaging, interested replies.

Well, they don’t.

Marketers do this because the upside of a post like this can be great: It can snowball engagement, with dozens of people chipping in and exposing their connections to your post. That’s definitely appealing.

But if you look for it, you’ll find a graveyard of posts with zero engagement because most of the time, posts asking for engagement don’t work. People will share if they feel there’s genuine value in doing so — not because you ask them to. Many of these posts just ask a question without offering any value first, meaning there’s no motivation to reply or repost.

Watershed is different. They know their audience well, and their social media approach pays off. Just look at this post: 

There are a few things you can take away from this. First, Watershed led with value. They contributed to the conversation, offered resources to their audience, and thereby created something worth reposting and reacting to.

They also replied to the first comment they received. That boosts engagement and rewards people for commenting. You don’t have to do it every time, but it helps. And doing it with your first commenter can help build momentum.

Next, they tagged people. This can be risky since you don’t want to bug anyone, but if you’re complimenting a person you or your company has worked with, they’re more likely to respond positively, which will boost your post’s outreach.

Watershed also makes a very specific request here. It’s not “What are your thoughts on topical subject X,” but an ask for recommendations. That keeps things positive, productive, and easy to respond to.

So by leading with value, replying to comments, tagging others, and wording the questions well, Watershed can improve their chances of keeping their posts out of the graveyard of no engagement. 

VelocityEHS: Creating Useful Resources 

VelocityEHS is a prime example of how to build great resources for your audience and the benefits of this. They produce environmental, health, and safety (EHS) reporting software that helps companies accomplish a huge range of goals, including reducing air emissions, managing waste in environmentally responsible ways, and controlling their impact on water quality.

Much of their most popular content helps companies manage potentially hazardous chemicals in a responsible, safe, and compliant way. By producing that content, VelocityEHS is making environmental responsibility more achievable. EHS professionals see the “environmental” pillar of the acronym as encapsulating both pollution and the climate crisis. By promoting EHS generally and environmental responsibility more specifically, VelocityEHS works alongside climate software companies towards the same goals.  

Success Through SDSs

A key feature of VelocityEHS’s content strategy is the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) database, the second-highest traffic page on their website. SDSs are essential documents in the EHS world, providing information about the properties and proper handling procedures of chemicals.

VelocityEHS has developed the largest SDS database in the industry, and their users can easily find the sheets they need to comply with safety standards and regulations. With this database, you can easily generate an SDS for any chemical shipment. It’s paid off, too, building up tens of thousands of backlinks and bringing in thousands of dollars in traffic every month.

Part of what makes that resource page so valuable is that it doesn’t just have a search bar. It also offers a detailed overview of what an SDS is, an explanation of its 16-section format, and the regulatory framework that governs these documents. That’s a lot of information, and it’s critical that it’s all accurate and regularly updated as regulations change.

VelocityEHS has to do constant, labor-intensive work updating this guide as regulations change. But they know it’s worth the effort because it’s exactly what their audience needs from a trusted voice in the industry.

It’s also the perfect place to put this information. VelocityEHS put this information right below the search bar because it answers the questions their visitors will have when they use the database. That shows great attention to detail and care for their audience.

But their database’s great design doesn’t stop there. When you download an SDS, they don’t just use a simple lead capture form. They know the value of their content, so they provide up to five SDSs for free. After that, you’ll have to pay for the database.

There are a few things that make this great. First of all, if you need the SDS right away, you can get it. They don’t gatekeep anything for smaller-scale users, and they let you understand the database’s full value before you have to pay for it.

At the same time, they recognize that their ideal customers are those who frequently use SDSs and that the convenience of the largest SDS database would really make a difference. It’s a natural filter for the leads they’re most interested in.

Scientifically-Verified Content

VelocityEHS is also able to outrank competitors by targeting keywords and subject matter that others struggle to write about because it requires a level of technical expertise. Other companies are less willing to invest in having an expert write this content for them, meaning there’s much less competition. A prime example of this strategy is their article on ethyl acetate.

This content demonstrates VelocityEHS’ ability to delve into complex chemical safety topics and provide scientifically accurate, in-depth information that’s broken down for its audience to understand.

The article focuses on what matters most: What the chemical is, where you’ll most likely find it, and safety instructions. Those safety instructions are especially critical since they need to deliver that information as clearly as possible. Just see for yourself how they do it:

VelocityEHS lets you know about important chemical properties (it’s flammable!) and balances that with clear instructions about how to handle the chemical carefully. Plus, the bullet point format makes it scannable. 

Even better, this format is easily replicable, and VelocityEHS isn’t afraid of using it more than once. In fact, four of VelocityEHS’s top ten articles use this exact format.

What makes it so worth replicating? Well, it checks quite a few boxes:

1. Educational Value: VelocityEHS thoroughly explains the properties and risks of ethyl acetate to educate their audience, which is crucial in industries where knowledge of chemical safety is essential for compliance and safety.
2. Targeted Expertise: The depth and specificity of the content show a high level of expertise, appealing to professionals who are more knowledgeable about this area.
3. SEO Advantage: By focusing on niche topics like ethyl acetate, VelocityEHS can target specific keywords and phrases that are less crowded, improving their search engine rankings and visibility. These niche keywords have keyword difficulties of 15 or below, indicating they aren’t very competitive, but still see hundreds of searches a month. VelocityEHS ranks in the top ten for over 1,200 low-difficulty keywords, which brings them more than 10,000 visits a month.
4. Brand Trust: VelocityEHS provides scientifically accurate and useful information to build trust that it’s a reliable source in the EHS field. This trust is crucial for attracting and retaining customers in a market where safety and compliance are paramount.
5. User Engagement: The article’s format, which includes clear headings, a colourful image, and actionable steps, ensures higher engagement and readability, making complex information more digestible.

VelocityEHS’s URL — ehs.com — is excellent for their industry, as it communicates to search engines the website’s topic, helping to improve their SEO ranking. But VelocityEHS favours readability and content quality over quick SEO hacks by providing professionals who need environmental software with all the resources they need, whether it’s a database of SDSs or information about hazardous chemicals. This strategy will ultimately benefit their SEO and serve professionals at the same time.

KPA: Competing Creatively

KPA is another excellent example of a company using content effectively, especially in an industry where companies are competing closely for the same keywords. They also produce EHS reporting software, this time with an even stronger emphasis on reporting and controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

For example, they help companies track how much CO2 their shipping and transportation has emitted. They also make it easy for companies to break down their energy use mix — for example, how much energy they use for heating or fuel.

It can be tough to rank highly on the SERPs for companies of KPA’s size, so KPA focuses their efforts where they can win.

A Great Tool Users Love

KPA’s approach involves producing content that directly addresses narrow and specific needs of people in their industry. That’s why it built a great, useful tool to help companies calculate their Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR). 

KPA knows that many of their customers, particularly those in industries with high safety risks, need to understand and improve their TRIR scores. By creating content that explains what TRIR is, how it’s calculated, and why it matters, KPA positions themselves as knowledgeable and trustworthy guides in EHS.

Their content doesn’t just stop at the explanation stage. It goes further by including a tool for companies to calculate their TRIR and, more importantly, understand how to use this information to improve workplace safety practices. 

The calculator is especially important for SEO. It makes this a page you can bookmark and come back to any time you need to know your TRIR, helping to increase the article’s view count.

The result? The TRIR calculator is KPA’s highest-ranking blog post, with 1,400 visits a month. That’s only a hundred less than their most-visited marketing landing page!

This type of content is invaluable for safety managers, HR professionals, and operational leaders who are responsible for maintaining compliance and a safe working environment.

Short-form Video: KPA’s Secret, Repurposable Weapon

Over time, KPA has built up a library of short webinars on a variety of EHS topics. It’s an excellent strategic resource because it fills a need that a lot of B2B companies don’t bother addressing: Short-form videos.

These webinars offer bite-sized, accessible takeaways catered to EHS professionals with busy schedules. Their main webinar series is called “Take 10” because you can watch them on a 10-minute break — after you fill out the lead capture form, of course. These videos are a secret weapon because they’re a lot more convenient to watch than a live, hour-long webinar. 

This webinar series follows one of Foundation’s guiding principles: Never use your content just once. If they held a live event and didn’t do anything with the recording, it’d be a huge wasted opportunity. Instead, KPA adopts content repurposing to turn those webinars into on-demand videos.

But the repurposing doesn’t stop there! Maybe someone at KPA is a Foundationite because it’s doing exactly what we’d recommend anyone with a webinar library like this do: Slice up videos into clips and redistribute them on social media.

Are you doing everything you should to set your safety program up for success? KPA’s Amanda Rawls discusses some key things to consider in this on-demand webinar. Here’s a sneak peek. Watch the full webinar here: https://t.co/c9OtOlASpg pic.twitter.com/RYwMss4B8g

— KPA (@KPAonline) April 19, 2022

Tweets like that one show the value of repurposing content: To use the information you’ve worked tirelessly on to bring in more visitors.

What makes KPA stand out is its understanding of their audience’s needs. By focusing on specific, high-value topics for their audience and finding creative ways to repurpose and redistribute their content, KPA is able to attract, engage, and convert a steady stream of leads in the competitive EHS market. 

What You Can Learn from Climate Software Companies

It’s tough out there for climate software, or EHS, companies. They’re in a competitive market that’s constantly evolving as market sentiment and regulations change. Yet by understanding their audience, delivering valuable and targeted content, and finding creative ways to distribute that content, these companies can stand out from the crowd.

Whether you’re in the climate software industry or not, these strategies can help your content make an impact and drive measurable results for your business. So take some inspiration from Watershed, VelocityEHS, and KPA, and start creating high-value content that educates, engages, and converts your target audience today.