The importance of innovation in the UK water sector has never been greater, with a potential £96 billion investment in water planned for England and Wales alone. Water companies urgently need the solutions the supplier community has available, which means the supplier community needs to make sure they hear about them.
While innovation is a top priority for most organisations in water, what is less appreciated is the importance of effectively marketing and promoting new products and services.
A recent report from technological consultancy Gartner shows that marketing budgets across all sectors fell from 9.5% of company revenue in 2022 to 9.1% in 2023. Prior to the pandemic, marketing budgets were well around 12 percent. Figures for the water sector are not readily available, but I would be very surprised if they come close to these figures.
I often encounter small-to-medium businesses that do not have a dedicated marketing lead, and even when someone does hold the marketing brief, it is alongside other functions, and they do not necessarily hold the highly specialist skills required. Sometimes the companies are doing well and see this as evidence that they do not need marketing expertise in their team. They have not necessarily considered how much better they could do if they did make marketing a priority.
Marketing, public relations and communications are frequently misunderstood in this STEM-rich sector – and are even derided as ‘soft’ skills. Worse still, I have heard the entire profession equated with ‘greenwashing’ – even where the innovations in question are known to be rock solid and proven to deliver on sustainability goals, securing resources, and cleaning up the environment.
At its simplest, marketing is about finding ways for goods and services to reach customers in relevant markets – it is only greenwashing if a false impression or misleading information is being conveyed. My experience shows that this is a cautious sector that demands a constant flow of high quality information on which it can base its huge investment decisions.
Our clients at WiseOnWater often come to us saying ‘the market needs educating’ about the products and services available. More recently, they are also saying that the public needs to understand the water sector’s commitment to providing safe and reliable water services, and the role innovation plays.
Done well, marketing is a highly sophisticated, data-driven operation, requiring deep understanding of the services and technologies on offer, the solutions they provide, the market and society they exist in, and the people who will purchase and implement them. For innovation to be effectively brought to market, skilled marketeers need to be included early on in innovation and development discussions to help identify the partners and channels necessary if customers are to be engaged in a timely and appropriate way.
The importance of innovation means it cannot happen in isolation from the markets it aims to serve. Successful commercialisation can only come from ensuring a proportional investment in marketing is made alongside any innovation, with a strategy embedded at the start.
Brand expert Denise Lee Yohn, writing in the Harvard Business Review, says incorporating marketing into the innovation development process can avoid misleading assumptions being made about potential customers and their needs. It can also clearly define who the new offering is intended for and how to sell it in. Yohn also points out that innovators can become so wrapped up in the technical aspects of their work, that they miss the bigger picture in terms of making the offer successful.
It is time for innovative companies to work with marketeers to find these fabled golden eggs and bring them to life. Only by nurturing their innovation stories, alongside the innovations themselves, will companies ensure their messages reach – and stay with – their customers.
