Case studies / Lune

Building a foundational content engine for climate tech startup Lune

Company name: Lune
Industry: Climate tech – carbon markets
Funding stage: Seed
Project date: 2022 to 2023

In 2022 Lune was a seed-stage climate tech start up in the carbon markets space.

The executive team was aware that there was a big gap in top of funnel education on the carbon markets, and that if Lune could fill that gap with quality content, they’d establish themselves as a trusted brand in the space.

I joined the team to bring that to fruition.

My initial focus was two-fold:

Content pillars: Figuring out the right topics to focus Lune’s content around, that would resonate with the target audience of Sustainability Leads.
Consistent cadence: Implementing a content calendar with a consistent cadence of content production across core formats and distribution channels – starting the ‘engine’.

Choosing the right content pillars

Content pillars should always stem from a close understanding of audience pain points – and then determining how those pain points align with your product offering and expertise.

For Lune, it became clear that there were three main problem areas for the audience of Sustainability Leads which all aligned closely with Lune’s product offering of emissions calculations and carbon offsetting:

Carbon markets: Many businesses want to include carbon offsetting in their sustainability plans, but there’s concern amongst Sustainability Leads about ensuring offsetting is done in the right way – the carbon markets can be complex, and there’s a fair share of controversy around dodgy carbon offset projects.
Avoiding greenwashing: Sustainability Leads care deeply about climate action (it’s why they went into the career they did!) so they want to do things the right way and avoid being seen as greenwashing, but they often lack buy-in from senior leadership for the initiatives they want to implement.
Climate legislation: As climate targets come closer, businesses are under increasing pressure to take action to reduce their carbon footprint, including legislative pressure with new laws like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. Keeping on top of these complex laws to ensure compliance and reduce risk is a key requirement for Sustainability Leads.

I quickly developed my own subject matter expertise to be able to distill complex ideas and unveil the carbon markets for our ideal customers in core content of weekly educational articles for the Lune blog across these content pillars.

“[Customer name] keeps raving about our amazing blog content! He’s asking if he can cross post or even pay to use it on their platform!”
Lune senior leader

Key formats included:

Deep dives on different types of carbon projects, like enhanced weathering or direct air capture
Explainers on key carbon markets concepts like additionality or the Oxford Offsetting Principles
Answering offsetting FAQs like the difference between emissions avoidance and carbon removal
Legislation explainers for upcoming regulations like the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive
Guidance on avoiding greenwashing, such as understanding the difference between various green claims or how to ensure transparent climate communications.

“I came across you via your blog on the Oxford Principles – it was a really good article, really well laid out.”
Lune customer

Building a brand with a consistent content schedule

In terms of content cadence, I’ve already mentioned that weekly blog articles formed the core of Lune’s foundational content calendar.

Beyond this, I also developed one piece of higher-value gated content each quarter, with the aim of capturing the interest being generated through the top of funnel blog content, such as:

Beginner’s guide to carbon offsetting
Lune’s carbon project evaluation process guide
Slide deck template to support Sustainability Leads with getting buy-in on climate initiatives from senior stakeholders.

“I had a customer ask for help with building the business case for sustainability for their execs today and I had a really easy solution at hand for them with the business case template.”
Lune sales team

Content distribution was primarily via LinkedIn posts every weekday. I found particular success from PDF carousel posts – especially for co-marketing efforts with partners like Treeconomy.

I also implemented two monthly newsletters, one for subscribers to develop an owned audience, and one for existing customers which included monthly updates on the content projects they bought carbon credits from.

Putting that foundational content strategy in place with an initial cadence and topic focus, enabled the team to measure performance, make improvements, and determine how best to scale content efforts from there.