Education to Differentiation: GridX's Strategy Shift

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Also with me right here today, I have Greta Mayer, head of marketing and comms at Grid X, a company whose mission is to make renewable energy accessible and affordable for all. How's it going Greta? It's a pleasure to have you here. I'm doing really well. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. For sure. No, when we saw that you were coming and that Grid X is a company that is very interesting. For me, it's the first that I'll be talking with with a company that makes renewable energy. So just to put the audience a bit more in context Greta, could you just share a bit of your background? What Grid X is? How you got there? Yeah. So I'm from Australia, but I'm currently in Munich, which is one of our main offices at Grid X. And I studied media and communications in Sydney and then I worked for a variety of agencies and I wrote for lifestyle magazines. I did an internship at China's biggest English newspaper in Beijing. Wow. I helped produce radio shows, so I had quite a diverse background. And then to make it even more interesting, I had a brief hiatus as a professional acrobat with Cirque du Soleil. That's so cool. Yes. So I toured the world with them for a few years. And then I made the move to Munich and I worked for a creative agency here first. And then I wanted to move in-house because I wanted to be a little bit closer to the work and really be able to influence the company a bit more. And I noticed in my previous work at agencies that I was much more passionate about sustainability. And I really wanted to work somewhere that really prioritized sustainable impact. And the energy industry is the perfect place to do that because energy is responsible for about three quarters of global emissions. And so if you want to reduce emissions and that's one of the biggest impact industries, where you can really have a big change. And so I was looking around for jobs and I found Grid X and it just really spoke to me. It's a really innovative company and growing really quickly. And at that time, so that was 2021. Okay. I joined. There were 35 people in the company. And now in the last few years, we've scaled to over 200 people and we are active in 15 countries and we have 180,000 connected assets. And I can explain a little bit more about what that means. So that's a pretty impressive number coming from, yeah, where we are. So maybe just briefly explaining Grid X, we basically provide an energy management system which connects distributed energy resources. There's lots of acronyms in this industry. DERs, basically small scale energy assets. So you've got batteries, photovoltaic inverters, solar systems, electric vehicles and their charges and heat pumps. So in a household, our system, so we've got a local gateway which you can also see behind me, which you install in a home. And that basically connects the assets locally and then optimizes the energy flows between all of those assets. And that reduces energy costs for end users and basically makes everything work much more intelligently so we can have a more stable, renewable grid. Wow. Okay. So just to make sure I understood correctly, what Grid X does is that you will install it locally in your home so that it manages the energy used by your different appliances that if they weren't independently set up, then they would consume more energy or maybe not understand that this one is not needed anymore. And you can then transfer that to this. Okay. That is cool. So if you're producing a lot of solar power, then it will know it will use your priorities and your kind of inputs, preferences to charge the battery or charge your electric car or feed back into the grid. And then it also uses price signals so it knows real time prices and the price is at heat, then it draws energy from the grid and stores the battery to then use it later that evening when prices are higher. So it just basically looks at everything really holistically and intelligently optimizes accordingly to lower costs and make sure that everything is working in most optimal way. Okay. Wow. I understand. And it just sounds so crazy. And Greta, for me hearing your experience in the past and everything you've done, I did not hear marketing in all those things. And so how did you end up as head of marketing for Grid X? Like I know you've been about four to five years in the company, right? Yeah. Okay. I do have more of a content background of writing and things like that. And then I started at Grid X as content and social media manager and then kind of stepped into the role. So when I joined, there was one other marketing person in the team. And then a few years later, he stepped away from the company and then I took his role as the team leader of marketing. And basically I had been working really closely with sales and kind of doing more marketing operations slowly. And then I took that over. And so within our team, I'm responsible for PR marketing, so product marketing, partner marketing, marketing automation and then also content. And I've done a couple of courses on the side as well of using digital marketing, using AI and marketing and things like that to kind of complement my experience as well. Wow. That is very nice. And I just love those stories. How it's not something you usually doing. And then you just ended up here and it's amazing. So that's very nice. And Greta, in regards to the company per se and the product you guys have, which is this grid, do you also offer to set up and install what the grid manages like the solar panels? And I'm not like I can't remember all the things you gave me on the top of my head. But like do you also sell those products as well? Or is it just the grid X? So we have a B2B2C model where we work with energy providers, for example, and they white label our product and then they sell it to their end consumers. So one of our biggest customers is Eon, the biggest energy retailer in Germany. And so they basically take our product, they take the grid box and they brand it as their own. So the Eon home energy manager and they use all of the technology they choose which features are relevant for their customers and they provide the service and a whole lot of other offerings on top of that package it up all as one and sell it to end customers. And to basically make this whole process as smooth as possible, we also have really close relationships with OEMs or manufacturers. So we have a ready for grid X partnership, which basically means that we collaborate end and really closely with manufacturers. So the companies that make the solar inverters and the heat palms and the batteries and then we help kind of bundle those solutions and then we work with the energy providers who then package that all up and then sell it as one bundled solution to end consumers to reduce that complexity because there is so much complexity in the end. And it's like basically in the past, the devices don't talk to each other. Everything works holistically and that's why grid X came about because everything was just separate. You couldn't get this everything from one hand basically and that's what we wanted to solve. And so you have to do that with the technology to the protocols and make sure everything actually talks to each other on a technical level. And then you have to do that on a commercial level as well of creating all those partnerships to make it easier. Wow. And Greta, is it hard or challenging to market like this white label solution for the companies that they desire with your product? Like is there any challenges with marketing such a complex service? Absolutely. Yes. Many complexities. So obviously with B2B there's really long lead times. So you have to kind of work on convincing energy providers that they need this solution that this is the future. And so a few years ago we really noticed that the energy industry is pretty slow to adapt. So our focus was really on education of what is this? What is an energy management system? What does that actually mean? Why do you need it? And it was really new. We noticed like for SEO nothing. There wasn't searched very heavily and think all of these time were very, it was like new ground basically. And we've really noticed a big shift in the last two years where a lot of other energy companies are coming up. A lot of new players in this space are doing the similar thing. So now it's becoming more of a household name. So we also noticed that through organic search of people looking at EMS and HEMs which is home energy management system. So it's becoming there's much more interest around it. And you see it as a big energy fairs and things everyone is talking about EMS and HEMs. And now we've kind of shifted our strategy a little bit away from education and a bit more towards differentiation. So basically where do we or one of the pioneers in this space? So why do we have more experience, expertise and basically what more advanced technology to kind of differentiate ourselves from other players? Wow. And do you have any other direct competitors who are also using like the internet of things to have them talk to each other or is that what is making Gritex stand out and be different? So what is really unique about Gritex is the breadth of our solution because we have two main use cases. So it's HEMs which I've talked a bit about and then also EMobility which is basically for charge point operators or charge point resellers. So basically sites with a lot of charge points they can very easily overload the grid because electric vehicle charges take a lot of power. And so you need to know that. need to charge them intelligently so that it doesn't overload the grid. And our solution basically enables you to add more charge points to a site without having to do really expensive grid infrastructure upgrades. So basically just using the power much more intelligently, adding PV and battery to virtually increase the capacity of the site. So we've got immobility and then home energy management systems. And then we also have a really close relationships with manufacturers and wholesalers and things like that. So we do have competitors in each pillar, but there's really many competitors that do everything that we do. I love it. So grid X is going to be like the one who does it all. Yeah. Yeah. We basically say we want to be the operating system of the clean energy future. So yeah, I love that. And I believe that you guys will do so with everything you're telling me and how organized you have like those three pillars you just mentioned. I'm like, okay, these people really do know what they're talking about. And Greta, have you found that any specific marketing channels that convert the sales better for B2B technology that you've noticed, like any specific way that you notice this company actually bit and wants this service or something like that? Yeah. So as I mentioned, there's really long lead times. I mean, generally in B2B, but particularly in energy. So it's really about convincing our potential customers. So utilities, energy providers, charge point operators that not only that they need this technology, first of all, but they also should work with us. So there's different parts like they have to make a decision of whether they build it themselves, which is really expensive and time intensive, whether they go for a different solution, which might be cheaper initially and have a more kind of narrow focus or work with us. And it's a real partnership. And we kind of build it together with them. And so to convince them of this, you need to have multiple touch points. So it's not just one advertisement that they see and then they're going to get in touch and then they're going to go for it straight away. It's really meeting them at fairs and having that face-to-face interaction, you know, having a lot of organic content where they can read things. The we are thought assert our authority as a leader in this space. So they keep seeing us on LinkedIn in news articles and specific energy magazines and then also maybe some kind of boosted posts. So we really focus on organic content. That's what we found to be the most successful channel for us is blogs and glossary articles, which are really good for SEO. And then we also have gated content, so downloadable reports, which are really deep dives on a specific topic. And that helps with lead generation. And it also helps, as I mentioned, with that kind of thought leadership. So we try to be everywhere focused on organic content, but also complement it with some targeted advertising as well so that we make sure we're being seen in the right places. And then also public relations with specific energy magazines. So it's really targeted and you always have to have every content piece that we have. We need to make sure that we have that target group in mind and a really clear message for them and then kind of reiterate that as well and do it across channels so that they keep seeing us and that they want to get in touch with us. Okay. So it's like being B2B makes it a longer process and it's a bit more arduous in the way that like you say, you insert your dominance in the market like you're the leaders, and if you're the leaders of it, you got to do it. And have you found that your clients are skeptical at the beginning to your platform integrations like has grid X already created the name and the branding to be already trusted or do you find yourself having to convince new people every single time that it's kind of work. So it kind of goes back to what I was saying before a few years ago, it was really convincing people of the need for this technology. So a lot of people were not ready where they said, I don't know, we've got other kind of priorities that's not what we're doing right now. And then now it's the way really seeing this urgency in the market because basically for utilities, for example, for them to innovate and maintain their customer relationships, they have to digitize and they have to offer these bundled solutions. And they're kind of realizing that now and now there's a bit of sense for urgency around it. And now they're shopping around, okay, where can I do this? How does this even work? Whereas if you years ago, we were having discussions and they were like, yeah, not yet. So now, yeah, we're really seeing that shift, which is quite interesting. Yeah. So basically just making sure that we've got the same requirements and it's a match. Okay. Okay. And how do you guys communicate like the return on investment when the implementation timelines and leads can be so long and lengthy? Like how do you guys measure that it's actually being successful specifically for marketing campaigns or generally the product? Well, marketing campaigns are generally the product. I want to know both. Yeah. So marketing campaigns were really focused on lead generation. That's really our core KPI because we don't want to kind of reach the mass audience. We want to reach a really specific target at audience. So reach and kind of, I mean, awareness is definitely important and awareness at the beginning was crucial to create some brand awareness and make sure that people know the name Gridx. And we did that quite well. We had a few big stands at energy fairs and a lot of public relations as I mentioned. And we did create a lot of that awareness. And then it really kind of gone to lead generation of targeting the right personas, the right companies and things like that. So basically for kind of paid campaigns, it's just all about there's not going to be a lot of like the click through rate is not going to be great. The conversion wasn't going to be great. That's the fact of it. But if you get one or two good leads out of a campaign, then that's really all you need. So it's kind of low numbers like our final is we have a lot kind of visiting the website, a lot of reach through PR and things like that. And then as you go down the final, it reduces a lot because it's a lot of work as soon as we get one partnership. Then that's a really long term partnership. And it's a lot of effort from our side to kind of develop a solution with them. So we really focus on quality of a quantity in that aspect. Okay, I understand. And more in the nature of what you guys are doing and it's setting up these grids in order to help the home energy management system. I'm not going to go off the set of so without remembering it perfectly. But I do understand the fact that it might not be or you might not need to have such a massive outreach and just be able to have word to good clients who actually purchase what you guys are offering. Yeah. Because yeah, I imagine if it's be the closing the sale, it should be pretty big and it should help out a lot since it's a whole company. So that's cool. Exactly. And Greta, how are you guys leveraging the topic of the moment, which is AI? Do you guys have that implemented in your standard processes during the day and your day to day? Like maybe talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah. So we basically use AI for a lot of efficiency. So for doing research, kind of consolidating material and doing kind of market intelligence as well. And then we leverage just kind of the normal AI tools. We have Gemini and then we use ChatGPT, Poplexity. So basically kind of summarizing what's out there and then also to kind of structure glossary articles and things like that. But obviously everything needs to be fact checked and we really prioritize us kind of producing original content. So that also needs to come from us in-house and our kind of expertise within all of the experts that we have at GridX. So we basically use it to complement our kind of current processes and yeah, to make us more efficient so that we can produce more. But I mean pretty much all of the tools that we use. So our CRM also embedding AI into all of their processes as well. And we use like AI tools for videos, so narration, so text to speech and things like that. That's really helpful rather than having to set up like a studio and record. So little things like that really make a big difference actually. And then in image generation and things like that. Okay. Now AI really has helped like take a load off our bags and managing those monotonous day-to-day tasks that we used to have to do every day. Now AI thinks it's kind of it for us. But I was also wondering if AI is being used like within the way that like the home energy management system manages the energy. Do you guys have AI implemented within that so that it reads the metrics or something or have you not zappled with integrating AI to the product? Yeah. So AI has been integrated since the beginning. It's basically so I mean uncertain products. AI is a bit of a buzzword and it's overused and a lot of context. So we're always a little bit careful how we use it. We in certain projects it is very much AI kind of machine learning to help with forecasting. So basically looking at behavioral patterns of when people charge for example. And then kind of understanding when they're going to plug in their car and when they're going to leave and things like that. So it doesn't have to be manually inputted. It can be automatically analyzed and then the system updates accordingly. Okay. Okay. I love that. That's so cool. And okay. Grinna, if you had to give some advice to a marketer that is starting today in the renewable energy space, what would you like to tell them that she would have loved to know when you started out? Okay. I think for me, we've realized this in the last few months that because we have such a technical product and we have a lot of really kind of technical experts at Grittex. It's really hard for us in the marketing team to convert these technical language that we use for everything in marketing material. And that's kind of the process that we did from the beginning. And recently we've shifted that a bit to start with the story and really focus on, okay, what are the pain points of the customers and what is the value that we bring and then bringing in the solution in that story? So basically not getting bogged down in the technical details. Obviously you need to understand it. It's crucial. But in the way, don't just take a product feature list. and change a few words and then communicate that externally. That won't work. So you basically need to set it up in a way that you really have this story that you understand the why at the very beginning and you frame it in that way and then focus on the benefits and the value of the solution rather than the nitty gritty technical details. Okay. I like that because I do feel it happens a lot with very technical products that the marketing team or the brand itself can get lost and try to talk about why it's so good technically and normal people or normal companies don't understand that jargon that is so native to the industry where it's being talked about. Maybe just building on that a little bit. We've found in our social media strategy the posts that do the best for us relatable posts. So mean, take a kind of technical concept and make it relatable to an everyday scenario and kind of make it a bit comedic and things like that. So yeah, it's actually quite surprising. Some of the easiest posts that we do really quickly have the best traction because people want to see they want to bring it down to the simplest kind of terminology so that they can understand it. So if you compare an energy management system to the way you do the dishes or things like that, then that makes it relatable. So people understand that because that's a struggle that they have every day and then it's easy to understand. So really engaging content and using images and video, we use a lot of video and things like that to grab people's attention. I love that. I love that. Now, and that's what I mean. It's like it's cool to know that your brand is actually like telling a story that people will empathize with. And then it's like this story is true because of these technicalities. And if you like geek out about renewable energy, you go into the technicalities. But I didn't want to ask you to write up before I continue is I heard you right now saying so, okay, you have videos and all that stuff. Do you use social media being a B2V nature? Like do you have user generated content with like, I don't know, testimonies of how much the product works or something like that or how is the best way that you market to these companies? Yeah. So LinkedIn is probably our biggest channel. We've really built up a network of followers on LinkedIn and we have a lot of people who, when we go to fairs and things like that, they always tell us, oh, wow, I love your posts on LinkedIn. It's so informative. We read your newsletters and that's how I get informed about things. So LinkedIn is really important for us. And I think in the energy space, it's just, yeah, it's a really useful platform. So that's by far our most important social media platform. And then we also use Meta, so Facebook and Instagram. And that's mostly for employer branding. Yeah. And then we've also recently tried to target more installers and they don't use LinkedIn. But we're trying new things with them of what's that community's Facebook communities, things like that. So for different target groups, it's kind of different platforms more effective. Okay. But I love how you guys are just going for everything and then something has to work from all the numbers that are being put out and YouTube as well, actually. So what kind of content do you guys post on YouTube? Like explanation videos of how everything is working? Okay. So we're just going to do some explanation videos and then we've also got a more employer branding channel. And then we also actually have a podcast. Cool. Cool. A renewable energy podcast like with the topic of everything that's going on in the day. Yeah. Exactly. What's up with energy? We interview partners and experts in the field about different topics all around energy management. Okay. So it's creating awareness about what's happening in the industry and just keeping people updated. Cool. That's a great way to generate community and with like your consumers and companies and everything. Very nice. Very nice. And I know we're almost at time, but I did want to give you the moment to please tell the audience if any company is listening to us. If there's somebody that is interested in learning more about critics, what can we find you guys? How could they contact you? Do you guys serve every country? Is it just in Europe or how does that work? Yeah. So the best thing to do would be to go to our website, gridx.ai or follow us on LinkedIn. And then also subscribe to our newsletter. So we have a monthly newsletter where we basically share all of our milestones, industry, news, everything that's new. Okay. And then yeah, also via our website, we have a contact form where you can get in touch. And in terms of where we're active. So at the moment, we have a European focus. As I mentioned, we are active in 15 countries all in Europe, but there's kind of potential to grow and expand into other markets in the next few years. Okay. So we get down to Argentina, let me know so I can start having my energy managed by a system in my home. Yeah. Well, actually, so the two founders were, they first had the idea for the company when they were bike riding through Guatemala and they noticed that a lot of houses didn't have access to energy. And that's where they first had the idea to try and help make homes more energy self-sufficient. And they basically, they were bike-rating and then they drew the first idea on an upkin. And we've actually got that napkin hanging up and showing, yeah, that's what I do. That's a nice story. I'm a sucker for those whole something that happened. And it's just so cool to see what, like such a nice company come from such a wholesome and nice place of a mission. Because yeah, me being from Madden America, I know what it is. I'm specifically from Venezuela. And although energy is very cheap, a lot of people don't have access to it. And it's intense. It's intense. So it's cool and they have an idea. And that we're here now talking about what happened with it. Yeah. That's one of the great things about Gredex is that really is the driving force behind the company. Everyone who joins the company really wants to do it to make a difference and to improve renewable energy because it's just too slow basically. So we just want to develop these solutions to make it faster. It's true. If renewable energy is one is able to make it more efficient, it can have a higher adoption rate. You can actually save the world a bit faster because I'm not sure if it's happening at the speed we need right now. But that's a beautiful note and did on. So Gredex, I just want to say thank you so much for hopping on the episode. The conversation has been amazing and I can't wait to see all the other things that you keep on doing with Gredex and along. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. It's like, guys, like, guys, have a good one, Gredex. Thanks. (upbeat music)