Every business needs a marketing strategy. You can't just wing it and expect great marketing results. In creating a strategy you align your product, target areas, target audience and promotional channels to help you sell more.
In this blog we focus on the key elements in a solar marketing strategy.
If you're looking for a complete guide to implementing your solar digital marketing strategy then you can jump ahead here.
Often due to a lack of resources, solar dealers utilise a fraction of these strategies that have the potential to influence profitable business growth.
What is your marketing mix and how do you use it? It might be some or all of the elements above. Effective marketing requires extensive planning and organisation, which can be a lot to handle when your focus is on selling and installing.
Often due to a lack of resources, solar dealers utilise a fraction of these strategies that have the potential to influence profitable business growth.
To thrive in the digital space you need to:
Let's take a look at each of these elements in turn.
All of this wrapped up in awesome customer service makes your business stand out in a crowded space.
Aligning the following brand elements creates a strong impression.
You need a clear outline of the brand, products and services you offer.
Think about your most profitable solar combination. It might be LG NeON H panels, with a Tesla Battery and SolarEdge inverter. Make it clear what brands and products you recommend to help attract the customers you want.
Think about your most profitable solar solution combination to help attract the right customer to your business.
This often comes back to your business mission and goals.
Firstly, let's talk about creative positioning and differentiation. This includes:
Now let's look at overall brand positioning and differentiation. If you want to position your business as quality solar installers, then you won't be installing cheap solar products. And your customers need to know this. It might be something like:
Positioning and differentiation comes back to your business mission and goals. How do you want to be perceived in the marketplace?
Where is the business located and how far are you prepared to travel for a job?
Set your limits, know where your bread and butter customers are located and focus on those areas. Become the go-to solar company for that area before you start tapping into other target areas.
What places do your customers frequent? Are they on social media, do they ride trains to work, are they heavily involved in the local footy club, are they spending their time at the local bowls club? Knowing where your customers hang out means you can delve deeper into those identifiers to help attract your target audience.
How far you are prepared to travel for a job? Set limits, focus on profitable areas.
Often this is overlooked, but it's such an important part of your strategy. Here are some things to consider:
Promoting your skills and accreditations helps position you in the eyes of your ideal customer.
When it comes to any kind of marketing, it pays to know who your competitors are. It’s necessary for carrying out keyword research and for understanding why other businesses are performing better in the SERPs than your site might be (and indeed if they are outperforming you in any way). It’s also something that should be carried out on an ongoing basis so that you can constantly monitor what your competitors are doing and how they are ranking for keywords that you might want to compete for.
You’re never going to win against the big brands that have a huge advertising budget if you’re a small business, but by knowing what they’re doing and what keywords they’re ranking for will help you to adjust your strategy so that you can compete in other ways
It pays to know who your competitors are, what they are doing and how they are ranking for keywords that you want to compete for.
Marketing to solar audiences via their interests means targeting people who are interested in:
You can then target them using channels where you can best reach them, like FB interest groups or remarketing via Google Ads.
Understanding what interests your ideal customer has gives you a better chance of reaching them in unexpected places.
Any smart business owner typically follows the SMART goal outline.
SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals use a specific set of criteria to ensure your objectives are attainable within a certain time frame. It is a great framework to measure success.
Another way to measure the success of your marketing strategy is to calculate your cost per lead. This is particularly important when you are investing ad spend into a channel and you want to track leads and ROI.
We use HubSpot as an effective marketing and sales CRM to track and monitor lead generation campaigns.
SMART goals are a great place to start outlining your objectives.
Websites that create a great user experience have:
Websites that create a great user experience have fast load times, relevant content that is updated frequently, and are mobile responsive.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will improve your site so that it ranks well in search engines. It includes making changes to the way your site is architected and the content that is included, as well as encouraging other sites to link to it.
The benefits of careful and responsible search engine optimisation are vast. Currently, search engines will rank websites based on their own proprietary algorithms and machine learning. With more and more searches conducted daily on Google, Bing, Baidu and Yahoo, the opportunities for businesses to reach new customers are increasing. But with added opportunity comes greater competition, and ranking highly in the results is not as easy as it used to be.
SEO can be broken into two main components:
SEO will improve your site so that it ranks well in the search engines.
Where do your customers hang out on social media?
It might be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest.
By ensuring all social channels are updated, business brand and perception is maintained.
Organic social posts can also be used as inventory to promote via paid social channels.
To improve brand awareness and attract leads you need to be found in the right place! On socials you can post text or video that has:
And don't forget Google My Business profiles and pages. Keeping them up to date means your listing is timely and full of great content.
By ensuring all social channels are updated, business brand and perception is maintained.
For individuals and businesses alike, the internet has evolved into a place where things we may have said or done in the early days, can make or break us now. This is reflected in the growing field of reputation management, something which you can manage yourself or have a company do for you.
The best way to approach reputation management is of course to be careful what you say and how you deal with consumer complaints. However, this isn’t always possible for a number of reasons, you might have had your social media profile hijacked and someone is pretending to be you, or a disgruntled customer may be following you around the web commented negatively on everything you post.
Internet trolls are usually nothing more than an annoyance, as they seem to live for irritating others with innocuous and inflammatory comments. Usually they are best ignored, but sometimes they have more malicious intentions.
If you find yourself under attack, then report it to the relevant network and be completely transparent and honest with your followers, fans, customers etc. This ensures that you can take control of the situation and often people will surprise you with their support.
Internet trolls are usually nothing more than an annoyance, as they seem to live for irritating others with innocuous and inflammatory comments. Usually they are best ignored, but sometimes they have more malicious intentions.
Real customer reviews matter! Most solar dealers use referral programs to boost their growth in a favourable market. There's no better referral than from a happy customer! These days, everyone wants real customer reviews. You can ask happy customers to:
You can use these in your marketing, on your website and also via Google My Business.
Everyone wants real customer reviews.
Traditional marketing includes print, tv, radio, outdoor and direct mail. Radio and TV media buying rates are known to be very affordable in regional areas and often solar dealers get scripting and production services that are unattainable in bigger cities.
Signage around shopfronts and community events are also very popular, however considered to be more of a brand awareness technique than a lead generation tactic. Social presence matters however and keeps you top of mind when the time is right for the customer.
Radio and TV rates can be really affordable and successful in regional areas for solar dealers.
It's important to communicate your company brand in a consistent way. What do your internal comms look like? Are your:
If you're spending thousands of dollars on marketing campaigns that generate leads, what is their overall customer experience when they come to your business? Consistent branding across all aspects of the business helps reassure customers that you are a strong, professional company.
It's important to communicate your company brand in a consistent way across both internal and external comms.
We don't see many solar dealers in Australia using PR agencies in their marketing mix but you can consider hiring a PR company if you want to:
PR can provide powerful and positive exposure to help build a brand and maximise sales.
If all of this seems overwhelming you're probably wondering whether you should outsource your marketing campaigns. Let's keep it simple:
To find out if XEN Solar is a good fit for your business goals please book a discovery call here or call Kylie on 0409 153 635.