The world’s ability to transition from planet-killing petrochemicals and the crazy over-use of natural resources has never been more important. Yet, as we enter 2025, it appears we’re in danger of backsliding, delaying and abandoning some of the progress that’s been so hard-fought to date.
The Paris Agreement’s short-term target of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5˚C looks on shaky ground — 2024 was the first year when global warming exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. In fact, under existing policies, we’re currently on track for a rise of between 2.6˚C and 2.8˚C by 2100. Even if all net zero pledges are achieved, we’re still looking at 1.9˚C.
This is bad news for everyone. Rich countries. Poor countries particularly. Everyone.
Of course, a massive part of the solution will be down to national and international politics.
Some of it will come from grassroots efforts — changes made by individuals and the pressure they place on elected leaders and the businesses they buy from.
And some will come from advances in technology — GreenTech, CleanTech, you pick your favourite term.
You’d think that with the obvious and pressing situation the world finds itself in, selling these technologies would be child’s play — surely, they’d sell themselves.
The reality is quite different of course.
While customers might get there on their own — maybe, eventually, someday — the planet can’t wait. We need to accelerate potential buyers towards making better choices.
And that means marketing.
Fundamentally, success will come down to how well we tell a compelling story of the future. One that makes the issues real, important and urgent. We need to be able to successfully inform, motivate, entertain and, yes, even shock people now and then.
We need to create change.
This article will look at three of the most important issues facing marketers for GreenTech/CleanTech businesses in 2025. For each, we’ll look at the role marketing can play and highlight some of the most effective approaches you can take.
The effectiveness data we cite comes from the technology edition of our B2B Effectiveness Engine data.
This is an in-depth study of what works and what doesn’t in marketing today. With data from over 1,000 senior B2B marketers, it’s the largest study of its kind.
You can read the full report for the technology sector here. And you can benchmark your own effects against a subset of the data here.
So let’s dive in…
GreenTech is a market in flux. In any given year, there are multiple new entrants and far too many exits.
Bloomberg reports that the number of renewable energy businesses filing for bankruptcy with debts exceeding $50 million in 2024 reached its highest level since 2014.
Uncertainty is the enemy of profitable sales.
Customers want to know the businesses they buy from will still be around in the future. Many GreenTech purchases involve significant changes for the buyer. Often they will need to stop doing things the way they’re used to and switch to something new.
It’s a risk.
Bear in mind that the #1 enemy of most B2B sales, no matter the sector, is: do nothing. Given the option, most people will happily muddle on the way they always have.
To make a change, buyers need to be confident they’re making a good decision — for the planet, their businesses and their careers. Large sums of money and their professional reputations can be on the line.
Addressing the market volatility challenge is fundamentally about building a strong, distinctive brand.
Brands that can be easily brought to mind are seen as more obvious (and safer) bets. (In psychological terms this is called the availability heuristic.) They are shortcuts to a buying decision.
Research from Bain has found, “buyers already have a list of potential vendors in mind before starting the search process, and 90% of the time end up buying off that day one list.”
There is a huge advantage to being seen as the ‘smart grid people’ or the go-to experts for ‘renewable energy storage’. You will compete with a far smaller range of competitors and have an in-built advantage over anyone not on the buyer’s Day One List.
In our B2B Effectiveness Engine data for technology, between 77% and 78% of top performers across lead generation, demand generation and brand building say they are truly differentiated.
Conversely, just 37% to 39% of average performers say the same.
Basically, you are around twice as likely to be in the top-performing groups if you’ve got your positioning sorted. This is why we say that if you only get one thing right in marketing, positioning is the one to go for.
From a tactical viewpoint, the watchwords are reach and frequency.
You want to get in front of the widest range of potential buyers and influencers as often as you can afford. Bear in mind that only around 5% of buyers will be in market in any quarter (less for larger infrastructure sales) — you want to be on their radar when they begin to consider a change.
Forget micro-targeting and hyper-personalisation, they are unlikely to deliver the results you need.
While a number of core GreenTech products have evolved over decades (wind and solar, we’re looking at you), others are less well established.
This generates potentially sale-killing concerns in the minds of buyers:
As in many B2B sectors, often it’s not the cost of the technology that worries customers most, it’s the cost of making it work in the buyer’s specific environment that’s the main issue.
Sure, they may understand the benefits on paper, they’ve run the ROI numbers, and they know that regulations may force a change in years to come. However, making the change in the real world is where many individuals see their careers going to die.
Addressing this issue is about making solutions real in the minds of the buyer. It’s primarily a demand generation exercise — moving buyers from that’s interesting to how could that work for me?
They need to have confidence that the technology works in the real world for other businesses just like theirs.
The obvious answer is case study content of course. However, today’s GreenTech businesses need to go beyond the tired old ‘we had an issue and the vendor saved the day’ content we see everywhere.
You need to recognise buyer concerns and deal with them head-on. This is how you gain a reputation as a trusted partner and not just another vendor simply touting the latest shiny new (green) thing.
In the B2B Effectiveness Engine research for technology, the top 10 most effective tactics at the demand generation stage are:
You’ll notice that case studies don’t make the list. In fact, they are one of the lowest-performing tactics you can use for demand generation (though they do have a role for lead generation with the small number of in-market buyers).
GreenTech firms often face significant growth challenges due to highly fragmented markets.
Unlike software businesses that can concentrate on tight niche markets, GreenTech companies must typically navigate a diverse range of sectors, industries and regions — each with unique requirements. This can make it difficult to focus.
Creating an ideal customer profile (ICP) based on demographics will be a non-starter for many.
The broad range of potential target markets can also make it challenging to use paid media to get in front of potential customers.
While an ICP is useful for focusing your messaging, it isn’t mandatory for success. A diffuse ICP that includes virtually everyone isn’t much use. Neither is a specific one that leaves significant value on the table.
More importantly, it is often very difficult to target an ICP with any level of confidence.
For all the martech promises around being able to personalise communications for added cut-through, the effectiveness of these approaches is highly suspect.
An academic study from MIT and Melbourne Business School found that something as basic as gender targeting is only accurate 42.3% of the time. The accuracy for something more specific such as senior IT decision makers? Just 7.5%.
So what’s the alternative?
In our B2B Effectiveness Engine research, customer insight is shown to have a powerful influence on success. However, this is less to do with crafting the perfect ICP and more about having a deep understanding of the world of the customer.
Top performers are significantly more likely to conduct wide-ranging research into the broader views of their customers than average performers. This delivers insight that they can use to create more relevant, more motivating communications.
And they adopt broad-reach distribution strategies in line with strong empirical data that demonstrates that this significantly outperforms narrow segmentation.
In-depth analyses by the likes of Binet and Field (Long and The Short of It) and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (How Brands Grow etc) both show that increasing reach leads to greater sales and market share growth. You succeed by marketing to the widest number of potential buyers in your market.
So, researching your market to overly segment it may well be counterproductive.
This has been a very brief look into what matters for GreenTech marketing in 2025.
To learn more about what works and what doesn’t today, head over to the B2B Marketing Effectiveness Blueprint: Technology Edition.
This report dives deep into what makes for effective technology marketing in 2025 — from the impact of strategy, differentiation and measurement to the effectiveness of tactical choices across lead generation, demand generation and brand building.
Of course, if you’d like to discuss how to make your own efforts more effective, we’d love to talk. Contact us at hello@consideredcontent.com and we’ll arrange a time to chat.
Jason Ball is the founder and managing director at Considered. With a multi-decade career in B2B marketing, he’s worked with world-leading brands such as Adobe, Google, EY and Cisco together with niche specialists in technology, manufacturing and professional services.