(NOTE: This blog was updated in July 2024 to reflect the latest information.)
When it comes to solar sales, it’s never been more difficult to stand out from the crowd. It’s also never been more important.
Our 2024 Solar Snapshot revealed that 44% of homeowners find it hard to determine if an installer is legitimate. That is a striking — and scary — statistic. It’s also an opportunity for solar companies to show that you’re one of the good ones.
But how? How do you build homeowner trust, set yourself apart from the pack, and reach more prospective clients?
Great marketing program is a good place to start. Here’s some strategies that can help you build your marketing program from the ground up.
How to market solar
Marketing is at the heart of every successful brand, organization, or cause. It’s the process of understanding what consumers need, how your offering can fill that need, and articulating the message in a way that converts to sales.
In this blog we’ll describe four marketing strategies that companies just starting out on their marketing program should consider. Each requires a different amount of investment, both in time and money. We’ll give you the information you need to help make your decisions, but it’s ultimately up to you to decide which ones work best for you now, and in the future.
Before we get to the strategies, let’s start with the foundations of marketing: your company and your audience.
Know your brand
You can’t sell what you don’t know. Before starting your solar marketing campaign, answer the following questions to help you craft the best solar marketing messaging:
- What makes your brand stand out from others?
- What are your brand values?
- How do you want to be perceived by your potential customers?
Know your audience
For effective solar advertising, you also have to speak the language of your target audience. Do some research to identify:
- Who is your target audience?
- What are their values?
- What questions and concerns do they have? What are they nervous about, and why might they be hesitant to purchase solar equipment or services?
- How can you address their concerns and meet their needs?
If you’re having trouble getting to know your audience, Sparktoro has a free audience search tool that can help you discover more about your target demographic. You can also use Facebook Audience Insight tools to gain important insights.
Why use digital solar marketing solutions over traditional sales methods?
Before we dive into some solar industry marketing techniques, there’s an important question we need to address: Why should we favor digital methods in our solar power advertisement instead of traditional solutions?
Of course, this isn’t an either-or situation. All potential methods of building your business are important and should be considered.
Traditional sales methodologies definitely have merits, but digital solar marketing solutions offer unique advantages that can’t be ignored.
Reach a wider audience
Traditional sales strategies typically involve direct interactions such as door-to-door sales, phone calls, or physical mail campaigns. These can have a limited geographic reach and rely heavily on personal interactions that can make it time-consuming and costly to generate quality leads.
Cost effectiveness
Digital marketing offers affordable options that reduce physical resources, travel expenses, and person-power needs. This leads to better budget control and a more predictable return on investment that allows you to scale your efforts.
Enhanced customer engagement
One-time interactions with potential customers through traditional selling may not be enough to effectively nurture leads. Digital solutions facilitate ongoing engagement through content marketing and social media interactions, and personalized email campaigns. It offers a platform to share valuable content, address questions, and develop long-term relationships.
Promoting the right message
Conventional sales methods often involve printed materials, travel, and other activities that contribute to environmental impact. This can be seen as contradictory to the eco-friendly message of the solar industry. Digital marketing promotes sustainability by reducing the reliance on physical materials and aligns with the green ethos of the solar industry.
Solar marketing strategies — how to get solar leads online
Now that we know ourselves and our audience, we’re ready to look at some strategies.
The world of solar sales is trending digital, so implementing effective online marketing is paramount to generating leads and growing your business. There are ultimately two methods for generating leads. Regardless of the method you use, however, social media, in particular, is a very powerful factor in sales, with nearly three quarters of people using social media when making a purchasing decision.
Let’s look at four popular techniques:
- Organic social media
- Paid social ads
- Search ads
- SEO and content marketing
1. Organic social media
Social media is a great way to generate leads. The key, however, isn’t posting copious amounts of material: It’s engaging and participating in purposeful discussions.
Start by identifying what platforms your audience uses the most. For example, if you’re targeting older generations, you should look to Facebook, which is seeing most of its growth in that demographic. X and Instagram, on the other hand, are appealing to younger audiences. Other platforms such as LinkedIn, Reddit, and Quora have their own unique demographics to explore, and TikTok is wildly popular among a wide age range and largely untapped in solar marketing.
Renewable energy and sustainability are popular on all social media platforms, with many groups focused on all aspects of solar, from emerging tech, to the latest regulations, to sales techniques. This means there are great solar marketing opportunities.
Check out solar groups on these platforms to get an idea of what’s out there, who’s searching for what, and what’s currently being offered. Popular solar groups include:
- The Renewable Energy Group (Facebook)
- American Solar Energy (X)
- Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) (Linkedin)
- r/solar (Reddit)
- Topic: Solar Energy (Quora)
Also, make sure to check out groups from your state and local area. Organizations like SEIA have active state chapters that are worth looking into.
You should link social media content to your website and blog content. That way you’re not only building organic social media leads, but also directing people to your website, where you can continue to show them the value of your services and turn them into leads.
Focus on quality over quantity, though. Social media users usually know the difference between shoddy content mills and the good stuff, so purposefully engaging others with quality posts will go much farther than cranking out thoughtless content. Here are some quick tips for what constitutes quality content:
- Commenting on someone else’s post. If you don’t have a large social media audience, commenting is a great way to get in front of other people’s audience (plus the person will appreciate you engaging with their content). Your comment should acknowledge the original post and add new information or perspective.
- Writing an original post that helps readers solve a problem or points them to useful information. When writing a post, try to start out with a short story that will pull the reader in before dispensing your advice.
- Being careful with tags and hashtags. A common signal for “spammy” content is when people tag way too many people and add too many hashtags (and the algorithms have picked up on this). To get the most reach, you should only tag 1-3 people in your post and use only 1-5 hashtags.
Some social platforms like Facebook and X offer customer service tools to help serve and manage your customers. Potential customers can inquire about your services directly through messages or comment on your page, allowing you to follow through immediately.
2. Paid social ads
Social media is a viable marketing channel, but it can be difficult to get organic leads without doing a lot of legwork. If you can spend a little more money rather than time, going with paid social advertising can be a good route to take, but you should make sure your ads are personalized to stand out from the din.
People see so many ads these days that we’ve developed what’s known as “ad blindness,” meaning, our brains don’t even see ads unless there’s something interesting or unique about them.
According to a study by Adobe, 67% of consumers think it’s important for brands to adjust content based on current context. When it comes to solar, personalizing your digital ads can be done fairly easily. Paid ads show up on sidebars and news feeds of social media channels, pushing your brand front-and-center above others clamoring for premium social real estate. Most social media platforms have well-established ad services ranging from $1-10 a day.
LinkedIn boasts being the #1 platform for business-to-business lead generation. If you’re targeting professionals or businesses, it’s a great place to advertise. LinkedIn has the most expensive ads on this list, so using it for B2C engagement might be risky.
If you’re wondering how to sell solar on Facebook, the platform’s Ads Manager lets you manage your entire solar ads campaign in one place. Ads Manager provides exhaustive tools to select your audience, set goals, create ads, and establish firm budgets and timelines to ensure you don’t spend more than you’re comfortable with.
X is unique in that a lot of trends happen there before they hit other platforms. X’s ad platform taps into this advantage, allowing you to be among the first to engage folks at the front-end of trends and movements. X offers over 20 product options to showcase your product or service and provides powerful targeting tools to help you gain impressions with the audiences that matter most. What’s more, X’s powerful analytics tools reveal insights into impressions, engagements, and cost-per-result across your ad campaign.
If bootstrapping your way through social ad marketing isn’t your thing, there are many ad agencies ready to craft marketing campaigns suited for almost any budget.
3. Paid search ads
As the name suggests, with paid search ads, you pay to get in front of customers when they’re searching for businesses like yours.
Google is the most used search engine on the web. When people search for “solar installers near me,” they’re actively seeking your services out. These are “high intent” leads, so they’ll likely have a much higher conversion rate, which is why they may be worth spending money on. Google knows this, and offers a suite of tools and services to help get you there.
Google Ads provides specialized ad solutions for sales, leads, website traffic, product and brand consideration, brand awareness and influence, and app promotion. Within these, you can select different campaign formats to showcase your product or service. Google only charges you for results, so you only pay when someone clicks on your website or calls your business.
Like Google, Microsoft Advertising offers decent targeting options for your ad campaign. But it’s not quite as robust. Microsoft does allow you to target geographic location, dates, time zones, demographics, and more, all features less developed or nonexistent in Google’s service. Another advantage of Microsoft Advertising is the density of competition. You’ll be battling with far less competition on Bing, giving you a lower average cost-per-click.
As always, if you’re in over your head with search engine ads, you can look into an ad agency to manage them for you.
4. SEO & content marketing
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the act of optimizing content for higher placement in search results. So, for example, when a potential client searches “solar installer in Delaware” or “best residential solar installers,” good SEO practices can help your business show up closer to the top of the search results.
A concept that goes arm-in-arm with SEO is content marketing. Like SEO, content marketing is all the rage, but it can be exceedingly hard to drive traffic without a lot of investment.
Developing and building an SEO strategy and content marketing plan is far from a “beginner” marketing strategy, however. They both take deep expertise, lots of time and dedication, and, you guessed it, money. The best bet here is to not engage in either until you’re ready to hire someone dedicated to the task or have the resources to put into the effort.
Those just getting into marketing their solar business should be looking for the most bang for their limited time and resources. Our advice? Focus on our first three topics (social media, social ads, and search ads) to start, then investigate SEO and content marketing as you build your marketing strategy and staff.
Solar Marketing: How to Win Over Prospects With Informative Solar Content
Turning visitors into leads
Now that we’ve looked at strategies for driving traffic to your website, let’s see how you can turn them into leads. After all, if they go to your site and there’s nothing to engage them, they’ll just click away, and your effort will be wasted.
Lead nurturing with email marketing
Once you have leads captured through your marketing efforts, the next crucial step is to nurture these prospects into loyal customers. Email marketing is a powerful tool to achieve this, allowing you to build and maintain relationships over time.
As a solar services company, understanding how to effectively engage your leads with personalized and automated email campaigns can significantly boost your conversion rates and generate long-term success.
Continue the conversation
The first step after acquiring leads is to categorize and segment them based on their interests, behaviors, and positions in the sales funnel. By doing so, you can tailor your email content to meet the specific needs and concerns of each segment.
For instance, a lead who has just shown interest in solar energy but is not yet ready to purchase requires educational content, such as articles on the benefits of solar power, case studies, or FAQs. On the other hand, a lead closer to making a decision might benefit from receiving detailed information on your products, customer testimonials, and special offers.
Personalize, personalize, personalize
Personalization goes beyond merely addressing recipients by their first names. It involves sending relevant and timely content that resonates with their interests and stage in the buyer’s journey. Use data from previous interactions, such as website visits, downloads, and inquiries, to craft emails that speak directly to their needs. For example, if the person viewed an article on your website about storage, make sure to send relevant information about your storage capabilities.
This approach not only keeps the conversation going but also positions your company as a helpful and knowledgeable resource.
Automate the process
To manage and optimize your lead nurturing efforts, leveraging email marketing automation tools is essential. These platforms enable you to create automated email workflows that trigger messages based on user behavior, ensuring timely and relevant communication without manual intervention. Here’s how you can set up an effective automated email marketing process:
- Welcome Series: Start with a warm welcome email as soon as a lead subscribes to your list. Follow up with a series of emails that introduce your company, highlight your solar solutions, and provide valuable educational content.
- Behavior-Based Triggers: Use automation tools to track user interactions, such as clicking on a link, downloading a brochure, or visiting a specific webpage. Based on these actions, tailor emails that address their interests. For example, if a lead downloads a guide on solar panel installation, send them a follow-up email with a video tutorial or a detailed case study.
- Nurturing Drip Campaigns: Create drip campaigns that slowly nurture leads over time. These campaigns can be designed to gradually educate your leads, build trust, and guide them towards making a purchase. Each email in the series should build upon the previous one — while at the same time not assuming the customer has read all your emails — providing more in-depth information and addressing common objections. Build anticipation for the next topic.
- Re-Engagement Campaigns: For leads that have gone cold or haven’t interacted with your emails for a while, set up re-engagement campaigns. These can include special offers, updates on new services, or simply a check-in to see if they need any assistance.
A note on CAN SPAM
One important thing to be aware of in all your email marketing is to avoid being spammy. All the techniques above will help, of course. Another critical thing to do is to comply with the CAN SPAM Act and not overburden contacts in your database who are signaling disinterest. This means making sure to have an unsubscribe button, setting up “quarantines” that isolate contacts who have not been engaging with your brand, keeping the database healthy by removing hard bounces or junk leads, and so on.
Quick recap
Learning how to market solar is a journey. In this post we’ve laid out three techniques that can help you get started, and one to avoid until your marketing program is more robust. Let’s review the key takeaways:
- There are multiple steps to marketing solar, including knowing your brand, knowing your audience, and choosing the best digital marketing strategies and advertising for solar.
- Make sure your brand messaging is consistent, from initial pitch to contract.
- Adopt a mix of organic and paid internet advertising and utilize social media and search engine ad tools to create advertising campaigns suited to your needs.
- Content is king. Make sure any content you produce on social media, in ads, or on your website is engaging for your audience
- Turn visitors into leads. Use tools like Lead Capture AI to make sure all your hard work getting visitors to your site turns into more quality leads for your sales team.
For more information to help you get started, check out some questions your solar sales pitch has to answer, and then see how to make the most of remote solar sales. Stay tuned for the next blog in our series, on advanced solar marketing, for more information on making the most out of your marketing efforts.
Have a question about solar marketing that wasn’t answered here? Schedule a personalized demo, or get the info right now by clicking the chat box at the lower right of the screen.
Featured image by Merakist
