There has been a sharp increase in the demand for solar as people turn to renewable energy sources. As a result, there has been a rush by both upcoming and existing companies to take advantage of the growing market. This makes it challenging to get new customers or become outstanding.
We have something for you if you have also been thinking of reaping from the increased demand for solar products and installations. This article will delve deeper into solar lead generation and everything you need to know about it. We aim to furnish you with ways of getting solar leads and help you increase your solar sales and installations. However, first, let’s define what solar leads are.
What are Solar Leads?
Solar Leads are similar to other business leads, just that they are confined to the solar industry. These are buyers who wish to switch from other non-renewable sources of energy to solar energy. They are often looking for those who can sell them solar devices or perform installations.
Now that you know what solar leads are let us look at some of the ways of solar lead generation.
You can get solar leads through the following ways:
- Self-generation
- Buying/Purchasing
Self Generation – This is the most difficult means of getting solar leads. However, it is possible and comes with many advantages that you will appreciate. If done right, self-generation can tremendously increase your solar sales.
How to Independently Generate Leads
You will notice that most of these methods are either time-consuming or hectic but worth it. Here are some of the common ways:
1. Online Presence
The advent and rise of social media have made marketing quite easy. You can build an online presence to help capture those in need of solar products and installations. A good avenue is Instagram, where you can easily attract several homeowners in dire need of solar energy. However, note that it may take a long time to get followers, and therefore, the only available shortcut is buying an account with a huge following.
To increase your chances of success, be sure to time your posts and post them consistently. You can gradually increase the number of posts you make a week. Also, make sure that you plan before to help you stay ahead of your schedule. You can include photos of an ongoing project, the before and after photos, photos taken from company events, quotes related to solar energy, etc. As for the right timing, ensure that you mostly post in the afternoon.
Be keen also to use hashtags properly. They target certain topics and are therefore used in searches. However, make sure that you only use popular hashtags.
You can also start a Facebook group or page targeting different homeowners. Like Instagram, Facebook is pretty popular, with a user count of over 1.5 Billion people. You can freely offer your expertise and advice and create good relationships with the group members. However, desist from creating a group with the main aim of selling products since this is a long-term strategy. Your main work in the group should be answering questions, writing relevant posts and offering expertise.
You should also ensure that you run your page professionally. It should also be constantly updated with your contacts and other interesting facts about solar energy.
2. Be Part of Homeowner Communities and Offer Advice
You need to find a good homeowner community or association and get involved. However, start with those in your target areas and find a way of being part of them. Most communities also have websites with contacts that you can reach.
Go the extra mile and get your business listed on such homeowner’s community websites. You can also participate in their events and get a chance to pitch your tent whenever they have their festivals or concerts. If you can’t find a community’s website, try Facebook, as a good percentage have Facebook groups and pages.
All in all, being part of a homeowner community gives you potential leads. However, do not come off as spammy.
3. Try Content Marketing
You can also use the power of SEO and Google rankings to generate worthy leads. This is, however, a long-term strategy. You can create a blog about solar energy or products and direct people to your website.
If well-optimized, your page will rank well on search engines such as Google, improving your brand and giving it the visibility you need.
4. Use of Incentives
You can give your exciting customers incentives to encourage referrals. The good thing about this strategy is that it will shed more light on your business, meaning that the referrals will come more informed and ready to take you up on your offer. Giving incentives can lead to loyalty, allowing you to enjoy a long-lasting relationship with your existing clients.
Other incentives include cash rewards and discounts. These generally have the potential to motivate your existing clients as they will earn more with every referral.
Advantages of Self-Generation Lead
Here are some of the advantages of generating solar leads:
1. You Get Genuine Customers
Generating solar leads on your own guarantees you genuine customers. It is different from purchasing, where you have to use other mediums to get solar leads. You will get genuinely interested people in solar products and installations and inquiries that may lead to purchases.
2. Has a Better ROI
You won’t spend much if you choose to generate leads through mediums such as social media. Opening an Instagram account is free. You can choose to grow it organically and market your products, which will not cost you a dime. You won’t spend much even if you decide to get one with an existing following.
3. You Can Develop a Personal Relationship With Your Clients
Most methods used to self-generate solar leads are long-term strategies that include developing and cultivating a relationship with potential leads. Therefore, a personal relationship with clients normally comes organically after transactions, sales or installations.
Disadvantages of Self-Generation Lead
1. It is Time Consuming
Building an online presence and driving around looking for homeowner communities that you can check online are not easy tasks. Self Generation of leads can therefore be a daunting experience, which explains why most people do not think twice about buying them.
2. Smaller Audience
You will most definitely not command a large audience if you choose to generate clients independently. Unless you rapidly grow your online presence, expect just a handful at the start. People who purchase leads normally have hundreds or even thousands of potential customers.
3. Hard to Measure ROI
You will have difficulty quantifying ROI, especially when one combines legacy and internet marketing and referrals. Therefore, you cannot know the exact amount you have spent to help you calculate ROI.
Purchasing of Leads
You can obtain leads from reputable companies at a fee. This is usually relatively fast, saving you lots of time and struggles. Several solar lead generation companies will serve you if you settle on this option. However, make sure that you only focus on one that will give you a good return on your investment.
Even though solar leads purchase comes with advantages, you should also be wary of the disadvantages. You will be at a loss when a huge percentage of your leads go cold, or you find out they weren’t interested in the solar products. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons.
Advantages of Purchasing Leads
1. Can Lead to Instant Business
One of the biggest advantages of purchasing solar leads is instant business when the lead is good. Save for cold leads and those who were undecided by the time of signing up to be contacted; you can make good money from purchased leads.
2. Return on Investments Calculation is Easier With Purchased Leads
You definitely know how much you spent on purchasing leads, and therefore, getting the value of returns won’t be difficult. You only need to purchase a lead and track your ROI every month. This is opposed to self-lead generation, which makes it hard to track marketing efforts.
3. Saves Time
You don’t have to spend much of your time looking around for leads or offering incentives to existing customers. Once you get the lead, make the call and if everything goes on well, make your solar sale or installation.
Disadvantages of Purchasing Leads
1. High Competition
Note that you are not the only one looking to purchase solar leads. Other companies are also in business like you. Therefore, expect that some or even all of the leads you have to have been sold to other local companies. This creates fierce competition, which you may lose in the end.
2. Expenses Involved
It is quite expensive to purchase solar leads. States such as California charge thousands of dollars for such leads, which can be traumatic if you have a cold one.
Solar Marketing
One of the best ways of generating leads for your solar business is through solar marketing. This is normally done through several strategies and marketing tactics that you will also find worthy.
We mostly advise you to use many organic and paid strategies that will easily connect you with potential leads interested in all that you have to offer. Here are some of the marketing strategies that you can undertake to generate leads:
1. Build a Buyer Persona Profile
You need to imagine your ideal customer and develop a buyer persona profile to target leads in a better and more organized way. Therefore, ask yourself about your ideal customer’s needs, how they communicate, what they find valuable, and what type of service they prefer.
This is usually made easier when considering metrics such as location, income, age and gender. You will definitely be in a better place to generate leads with complete buyer personas.
2. Put Out Quality Content
You will only have quality leads if you generate quality content targeting your established buyer persona. Ensure that it convinces your potential lead that you are offering a valuable service. Therefore while writing, ensure that whatever you put across is not only valuable but thoughtful. We also advise you to link your piece with other quality content that irks the reader’s interest. You can link amazing and well-written articles or videos.
Also, makes sure that you are consistent. No one wants to wait for a long duration to view content when you are the one benefitting from it. We recommend that you post at least two long and amazing blog posts monthly. Ensure that they ate optimized for search engines by following all SEO guidelines.
If you are wondering about want content to produce, you can try video. In your videos, highlight how solar installation occurs, how solar energy works or any other important information that viewers will find helpful. Make sure that the video is authentic.
You can also create blog content, which should only happen once you have conducted extensive market research and discovered what your buyers want. Ensure that you only write quality content on your blog to attract customers.
3. Use Paid Search Strategies
You can also choose to use paid search strategies, even though they are not highly recommended given their low levels of efficiency. First, make sure you understand how Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising work. Also, do kit expect to rank highly in every search since such strategies are only meant to ensure that you appear in the right searches.
Instead of focusing excessively on generic search terms, use local terms that your personas are likely to look up. Other mini-strategies that will make your search strategies successful are:
- Paying attention to trending searches- You need to stay updated on trending search queries if you intend to make your paid search strategies count. Ensure that you constantly check Google trends for trending topics and incorporate them in your paid adverts.
- Assess Your Keyword Performance- Make sure that you regularly assess how your keywords perform. If you notice that one has been performing poorly recently, change it and adopt a new one to have better results. Google plays an important role in marketing as you can easily figure out your competitor’s keyword performance with its Ad Auction Insights feature. Also, you may be lucky enough to have a unique keyword that drives traffic to your website or blog.
- Your Blog Should be Tailored to Fit Your Personas- We started discussing solar marketing strategies by asking you to establish the persona of your target audience. When marketing your solar business, ensure that you have your persona in mind. How? Find out what they are looking for and make it part of your keywords.
- Check Out Other Well Performing Ads- You need to check other well-performing ads and find out what their owners have done differently. Once you have established this, make necessary corrections on yours, and you will be good to go. Remember, the end goal is to drive more traffic to yours, which you should achieve with the right strategies.
4. Make Use of Case Studies
One of the best ways to market your solar services is to let your former customers market you. You need an experience where you went above and beyond to exceed a customer’s expectations. Such cases will make customers more confident and willing to try out all you have to offer.
A positive aspect of case studies is that they let customers convince your leads to try out your services. Therefore, they will do the marketing on your behalf, saving you from too much work.
How Will you win such customers? An important tool you can use for case studies is incentives or discounts. A customer who agrees to be part of the case study should be given a discount. What next after coming up with a case study? Ensure that it is strategically placed on your website. You can also show them in your blog posts or paid search ads, where they will drive more traffic to your website or business.
Case Studies can also be used when making a sales pitch. All in all, do all you can to win a customer over.
5. Use External Links
You can incorporate as many strategies as possible when marketing your solar sales business. Link Building links your website to other internet sources, increasing your online presence. Remember, increased presence allows leads to find you easily, which you should strive to achieve.
However, note that too much link building may make your content too populated, making it less appealing to your viewers. It will also harm your ranking, which you don’t want. You can also be penalized, further hurting your rankings.
Make sure that you use the strategies we have discovered well if you intend to boost your rankings and generate more leads.
Conclusion
Generating solar leads doesn’t have to be tedious, despite the market being saturated with several solar companies. If you only prefer buying leads, which comes with many cons, you should rely on what we have discussed for lead generation. We are interested in helping you get the most out of the market and, therefore, ensure that you look out for our future articles.
