Nora-Oilheat.org - Consumer Education

CONSUMER EDUCATION

The biggest news for NORA is the launch of an interactive, internet consumer education campaign. Over the years, there have been two challenges for NORA in its consumer education efforts. The first was minimizing waste, trying to ensure that only people who will be making decisions about their heating systems receive information, and second trying to provide a level of consumer education in each of the oilheating states.

Trying to make people understand the value of their oilheating system is a challenge. NORA wants people to always be aware of what a great value heating oil is to their home. At the same time, NORA knows that consumers are not thinking about the system, because none of us really think about our heating or air-conditioning system, unless it is broken or not working properly.

NORA realizes that when people change homes, they think about the heating system, and even when they remodel. The challenge is trying to intercept people when they are thinking, might be thinking, or should be thinking about their system. Fortunately, the internet allows people to select themselves into categories. Television and radio select people by wealth, age and sex. Prior to the internet, television and radio were used to reach broad population categories who might be interested in information. Unfortunately, the oilheat consumer is a typical American, between the ages of 25 and 70, of any race or gender. Thus, to reach our customers required us to reach everyone, which is expensive.

The internet solves that problem, because by using the internet, the person describes what they are interested in, and when they are interested in it. Thus, making our job easier by needing to just supply them information at the right time.

We are confident that the internet will allow us to respond to these concerns. We have developed a strategy designed to exploit the internet. First, as you use the search engines, many of the terms associated with heating will direct them to www.oilheatamerica.com. Additionally, as people search, the search engines track their interests. As a result, we are able to send information about oilheat to people who have made inquiries about home heating systems.

In addition to the search terms, we are putting ads on several of the large home centered real estate sites including realtor.com, hgtv.com, and bhg.com. Each of these sites are focused on people who may be moving, are remodeling or who are interested in their home. Thus, when they are looking at these sites they will see information about oilheat.

Click here to learn more about your home's heating system.