Strategies for growing the residential propane market

The residential sector of the propane market accounts for over 50 percent of all U.S. propane sales.

While it can vary by market, home heating, water heating and cooking are the main drivers of residential propane use, followed closely by clothes drying, hearth products and outdoor living uses.

Standby generators, once thought to be a minor player in the residential propane market, are also becoming a meaningful factor in energy reliability for rural homeowners. Consumers are beginning to realize that the degradation of grid electricity supply is the result of the continuing transition of base-load power generation to wimpy, unreliable wind and solar farms. A full complement of propane applications in the home, combined with a propane backup generator, is the best cure for energy reliability anxiety. Targeting and communicating that cure should be a primary part of your growth initiative.

Stabilizing and growing your residential propane market should go well beyond seeking satisfied customer referrals and waiting for the phone to ring. Besides consumers, your target list should include homebuilders and remodelers, HVAC professionals and equipment wholesalers, appliance dealers, realtors, and construction equipment rental companies. Here are some of the best ways to reach these targets.

⦁ Consumers – Your website and social media platforms have become primary ways of reaching consumers who are making energy decisions. A fully featured website, offering a defined package of your services, resources and energy expertise, also helps with customer retention. A poorly designed website and sporadic attention to your social media plan will silently drive business to your competition. If you don’t have the resources in-house to design, build and update your website and maintain a healthy social media presence, you should find an outside agency to do these marketing essentials for you. Preferably, that agency should have some energy-related client experience, rather than spending your money to educate themselves from scratch about your propane business.

⦁ Homebuilders and remodelers – While your website and social media posts may reach some builders, a much more direct targeting is essential. Networking with builders in your marketing area that have the potential to build or remodel homes in rural areas should include joining your area Home Builders Association (HBA) and being actively involved in their meetings and events. Your local HBA can also provide information on non-member builders that you can reach. Introductions can start with emails, but meaningful outreach means one-on-one meetings to discuss all of the ways that propane can make their businesses more successful. The conversation may start with the availability of temporary construction energy that natural gas and electric utilities have difficulty providing, to all the potential propane energy uses in the home, and end with promoting standby power generation that makes it all reliable for their clients.

⦁ HVAC professionals and equipment wholesalers – You have a similar path to reach HVAC professionals and equipment wholesalers by being an involved member of your local HBA. Those targets are usually members of the local HBA and may also be members of a Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association, if there is an active chapter in your area. Both organizations are important networking resources. Your contacts here may be more interested in newer technologies, such as propane tankless water heating, and more recently developed products, such as heat pump solutions. You can refer them to propane.com/heatpumpsolution for more information.

⦁ Construction equipment rental companies – It is time for construction equipment rental companies to realize all the advantages that propane temporary heating, lighting and power generation on the jobsite have over diesel-powered and utility-provided energy options. Cleaner exhaust, lower noise levels and timely service levels are a few of those propane advantages. Reference progressive companies like Evergreen Mobile Power and Eco Power Equipment Ltd. for the latest in propane-powered jobsite equipment and reference your company as the responsive and dependable energy provider for this equipment.

These are just a few of the ways to drive propane as the best home energy choice in your residential growth initiative. Propane – energy for every home everywhere!

Tom Jaenicke is known as “the propane guy” and works as an adviser and strategist to the energy industry. Check out his work at atomiksolutions.com. Tom is a propane industry veteran of several decades and can be reached at tom@atomikenergysolutions.com or by calling 810-252-7855.

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