My capstone project will be based on how to redevelop our company brand online by using digital marketing. I am currently serving in the energy business. The company I work for is an oil and natural gas exploration and production company. We drill, hold and supply natural gas in the eastern United States. Anywhere from “Ma and Pop” shops and houses to a Federal Penitentiary, so the need is wide. We are a small business that began in 1996. However, our business has primarily been face-to-face, or phone based and not focused to the online community.
We have many different natural gas wells and sites, and some are owned in a partnership with other individuals who invested with our company and some are sole ownership. Obviously, each investment is different; maybe a particular individual knew the owner of this company, or met an associate at a conference, maybe they found us in a newspaper, is a friend of someone already investing, the list really is long as to how an investor could have found us. But one thing is for sure no matter what: when people are researching companies to place their money with, they 100% turn to the internet to research what and where they are putting their money into.
Over the last decade, the natural gas industry has no exactly been thriving, but our company has stayed afloat because we have a three-part system. We drill, we own a utility, and now have a pipeline to export our gas to other locations. At first, it seemed the best way to get this information out to the public is through our website.
Luckily, our company has a website! However, it is very dated. A plan of mine for this project is to investigate and utilize all resources into revamping our website and interest potential investors or investment bankers. I will lean on our marketing team, our executives who have access to our maps, graphs and charts and contact a few investors with what they find most beneficial about a website and what they would prefer to look for or be available to them and try to implicate that in the new design.
By updating this website, I want to provide more information about our company specifically (drilling, utility and pipeline) and provide our numbers vs the average natural gas producer. Because we are able to cut costs by drilling our own gas instead of outsourcing, we are able to save a lot of money. All in all, I think an updated website will be very beneficial to our company, whether it’s specifically for investors or not. Anyone researching our company will be impressed with a more updated site and what we have now does not reflect who we are or what we are doing for the future. It is very much stuck in the past and we are drilling today for a brighter tomorrow, and our website needs to reflect that.
However, just updating the website is not enough. If we want to reach the most people with our message, we need to have accounts on social media platforms. All the updating in the world wont matter on our website without a way to increase the foot traffic to it, and with the world we live in today, the cheapest way to reach the most people is through social media.
With all the new renewable energy resources out there, I think it will be important to remind our audience, the general public and those looking to invest, that we do more than fracking and drilling. We supply people with their utility, and we keep the lights on and heat running at factories and even a prison. Natural Gas is still an important energy source and I think if our website described a little more about our production uses, we could become more attractive to customers. This is also a way to market natural gas and end the stigma associated with using natural gas. Having social media marketing will help us in more ways than one.
Capstone 2020 