Let’s be real: marketing budgets are not what they used to be. Especially these days, where we’re often expected to deliver moonshot results on a granola bar budget. But here’s the good news—we’ve got smarter tools, sharper strategies, and a few old-school instincts that still work if you know how to flex them.
Here are five tried-and-true rules to stretch that marketing budget and still make a dent in the climate fight.
1. Test small, learn fast, scale what works
Gone are the days of “build it and pray.” The best climate tech marketers I know treat campaigns like science experiments—hypothesis, test, measure, adjust.
👉 Example: Let’s say you’re promoting a new home energy storage product. Instead of sinking $10k into a slick video ad out of the gate, test 3-4 ad messages using static images across social. See what resonates—resilience? savings? the planet?
🔧 AI Tool Tip: Use Meta’s Advantage+ Creative to auto-optimize combinations of copy and images in real time. Or let Copy.ai help you spin multiple variations of ad copy from a single input.
2. Data is your best friend (and cheapest advisor)
If you’re not measuring, you’re guessing. Whether it’s click-throughs, cost-per-lead, or email open rates, data tells you where to double down—and where to cut bait.
👉 Example: A climate SaaS platform might find that webinar registrants from LinkedIn ads are 3x more likely to convert than email subscribers. That’s not a hunch—that’s data worth reallocating budget around.
🔧 AI Tool Tip: Platforms like HubSpot or Looker Studio (Google) make it easier to turn numbers into insight. Not a data whiz? Ask ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis to help you read the trends.
3. Don’t over-invest in perfect creative—just ship it
For this perfectionist, it hurts a little to say this, but polished videos and gorgeous animations are nice, but speed often beats style. 😳 Launch lean. Improve later. The perfect campaign three months from now won’t beat a good-enough one next week. There is always a time and place for a high-end corporate video. Also, ask your videographer what she can do to meet your needs.
👉 Example: A startup promoting heat pumps built a simple, scrappy TikTok-style video showing a customer’s monthly bill drop—filmed on a phone. It outperformed their polished product demo by 40%.
🔧 AI Tool Tip: Use Runway or Pika to generate video content fast—great for social-friendly demos and explainers without hiring a full crew.
4. Prioritize channels that pull their weight
You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be where your audience actually is—and where you can prove ROI. If your customers are engineers, maybe TikTok isn’t your battleground. (Unless you really know what you’re doing.)
👉 Example: One B2B climate analytics firm went all-in on LinkedIn because their ideal buyer is a VP of Sustainability. They doubled down on thought leadership posts, comment engagement, and direct messages—and grew inbound leads by 60% in two quarters.
🔧 AI Tool Tip: Use Shield App or Taplio for LinkedIn analytics and scheduling. Want to figure out which content performs? Feed it into ChatGPT and ask for tone, theme, or topic analysis.
5. Reuse like your job depends on it (because it does)
Repurpose everything. A webinar becomes five LinkedIn posts. A blog becomes an email. A stat becomes an infographic. When you’ve got something that works—milk it.
👉 Example: Alder just wrote a blog post about our environmental justice training and turned it into a podcast using Google’s NotebookLM. Check it out here.
🔧 AI Tool Tip: Use Notebook LM, Descript or Castmagic to instantly turn video/audio into usable clips, transcriptions, social captions, or blog outlines.
TL;DR for the fellow busy marketers:
- Test cheap and fast before you go big
- Let data lead your decisions
- Don’t wait for perfect creative
- Focus on the channels that actually convert
- Repurpose like a sustainability champ
Climate tech marketing is hard. But it’s also one of the most exciting, mission-driven jobs you can have right now. So get scrappy, get smart—and don’t forget to recycle (your content).
🙋🏽♀️Need help? There’s an AI tool (or a marketer like Alder) ready to back you up. Email us your questions at [email protected].
