How do you know if your solar installation business generates enough leads? If you have to pay for every lead you receive, it’s time to generate more!
Professional solar installation companies know they can’t just sit back and wait for clients to come to them. Rather, they must go out and find potential customers on their own.
If you’re looking to start a solar installation business, know that you can get people interested in your products in various ways. Many have found success using social media sites like Facebook to increase brand awareness and reach prospects. Others have turned to online lead generation tools or printed flyers as part of their marketing strategies.
This article will discuss some of the most effective methods to generate solar leads, whether as a startup or a growing enterprise. We’ll share best practices, go over some advertising campaigns from the industry’s top businesses, and look at the most effective features of Facebook Lead Ads.
With these tips on how to generate solar leads, you’ll be able to get more customers than ever before. In time, your reputation will precede you!
Are you working in an area with high density and disposable income (say, downtown Boston)? In that case, it might make sense to use Facebook Lead Ads to target high net-worth households and generate high-quality leads.
On the other hand, if you’re in a location where most people aren’t online (think rural America), Facebook probably won’t deliver enough leads to justify the cost of the ads. But flyers and direct mailers would.
Start in your own backyard. That is, take a good look at your existing clientele. They will provide valuable insights on the demographics of your prospects.
A little sleuthing will go a long way, too. Solar installations require local and federal permits (as you already know). These documents may or may not be public, but it won’t hurt to try getting access to them. That would be a treasure trove of information on areas, households, and establishments most interested in solar power.
Profiling your target market is crucial for generating high quality solar leads, which can significantly enhance your lead generation, sales potential, and marketing strategies within the solar industry.
Once you have a clear picture of your potential customers, take some time to investigate how they interact with marketing and advertising campaigns.
Are they tech-savvy? If so, how much of their lives are devoted to social media? Do they tend to make purchases using mobile devices?
On the flip side, they might be more responsive to traditional media, e.g., door-to-door, word of mouth, and local events at the mall, market, church, or park.
Either way, the most important question to ask is: What kind of marketing messages do they respond to?
By knowing your audience well, you’ll be able to determine which lead generation tactics are a good fit for your business and focus on obtaining qualified solar leads.
What type of solar installations do you offer? Residential and commercial solar? Perhaps a combination of both?
List all the products and services you offer, highlighting your strengths and acknowledging your weaknesses.
Be aware as well that you’re selling big-ticket items for long-term use. Both home and business owners appreciate visual representations of such fixtures. That’s why real estate and construction companies invest in high-quality images and photos of their offerings.
More on that later.
Take a look at some of the popular brands or companies in your industry and see what they’re doing to generate leads. Visit their websites, subscribe to their email and mailing lists, and attend their events. Heck, you can even spy on their Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. If they’ve been successful in generating leads, you can use their tactics!
Now you have all the information you need to build your lead generation strategy: what you’re offering, to whom you’re selling, and which brands you’re up against. The next step is execution.
When researching the competition, it’s also important to evaluate solar lead generation companies. Considerations include verifying the authenticity of leads, determining exclusivity of leads, instant lead delivery to CRM, evaluating lead sources, ensuring consent for data transfer, and aligning messaging with the offers seen by prospects.
But before that, some inspiration…
In recent years, solar installation companies have ramped up their advertising efforts through both offline and online channels. These ads take many forms, as you can see below.
By analyzing these examples, you can develop your own solar lead generation strategies to reach people interested in solar power, employ local SEO, and utilize paid search advertising to generate more leads for your solar business.
If you’re looking to emulate a business that appears to be doing an amazing job of lead generation via Instagram and Facebook, check out SolarParadise. While note strictly a solar installer, they sell a range of solar products – many for the DIY market. Here are some example of the ads they’re running.
SunVena, based in Florida are running some excellent video lead ad campaign usn videos they’ve recorded in house. It just goes to show you don’t need a huge budget to run lead gen ads on Meta. Here are a couple of examples:
Emulating this strategy can just be matter of getting you phone out and recording some videos.
Not only is video marketing effective in attracting new leads, but it’s also a unique opportunity to showcase your expertise in an engaging, memorable way. You can do it with three simple steps:
Make simple videos at no cost (or low cost) by using free programs like Canva Video Maker or iMovie.
Use popular sharing sites like YouTube to promote your company’s channel and content.
Leverage social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook
A recent study found that over 80% of B2B companies now use video for lead generation purposes—and that number is growing every year! The bottom line? Video marketing should be part of any effective solar lead generation strategy.
The nation’s leading builder of solar-powered houses (11 thousand+ and counting), KB Home actively engages its more than 120K Facebook followers with before-and-after photos of those residences.
Similarly, KB Home recently ran an ad campaign in which they promoted their solar installations by showing the same images. This is a great example of using visuals to tell a story within the solar industry. When people are exposed to images, they can quickly understand why going green is important.
Like KB Home, you, too, can harness the power of Facebook Lead Ads. They’re designed specifically for businesses looking to capture contact information from prospective customers. By including creative graphics along with descriptive text, you’ll be able to grab the attention of even the most finicky FB scroller.
Facebook’s lead ads, first introduced in 2015, can be a huge asset to companies that want to generate new leads quickly. The process of creating these ads is simple and intuitive. If you’re not using them yet, it’s time to start.
Here are some best practices you would be wise to adopt:
Additionally, consider the pros and cons of buying solar leads as part of your lead generation strategy. While buying solar leads can increase efficiency and be cost-effective, it is crucial to track the return on investment and explore the possibility of negotiating for exclusive solar leads. However, some experts advise focusing on inbound marketing tactics to attract qualified solar leads instead.
Whether it’s on your website or posted on your social media page, let people know how they can reach out to you.
Including contact information can also help you track the solar leads cost, allowing you to stay updated with lead prices and make informed decisions based on your sales style and budget.
Choose the 40-65+ age range because they’re the ones who can afford your products and services. You may also conduct AB testing with all demographics (option 1) and keywords like Solar Energy and Solar Power (option 2).
Additionally, optimize your targeting options by focusing on the benefits of solar technology, such as cost savings and environmental impact, to better address potential customers’ concerns.
One of Facebook’s most powerful features is its ability to target users based on their activity outside the platform—visiting your website, watching your videos, or downloading your ebooks.
When someone takes action on any of the above, you can create a custom audience for retargeting campaigns. That way, when they come back onto Facebook, they see ads around what got them interested in the first place.
Additionally, generating your own leads can be highly beneficial for retargeting campaigns, as it allows you to have more control over the quality and relevance of the audience you are targeting.
This method allows you to track specific actions on your site and tie those actions back to conversions on Facebook. For example, if someone downloads a white paper about solar panels through one of your Facebook ads, then clicks through to your site and submits their email address, that person would count as a conversion.
If you have products that change price depending on factors like size or color, then dynamic product ads are right for you. These allow you to show different prices to customers based on their preferences.
Lookalike audiences allow you to find potential customers similar to your existing customers. This makes it easier to expand your customer base without any additional legwork.
Diversify your channels by advertising across different platforms such as Google AdWords and Instagram Ads.
To reduce the friction for people responding to your Facebook ads, try setting up Facebook lead ad campaigns.
After seeing the myriad ways of how to generate solar installation leads, we know you’re excited to buckle up and get down to business.
While you’re at it, keep these things in mind to ensure the success of your lead generation campaigns:
Whatever medium or platform you choose, always have a clear call to action (CTA). When users land on your ad, they should immediately understand what action you want them to take next.
Create a landing page for your ads where visitors will end up after clicking on your CTA button. Make sure it’s clean and easy to navigate. You may also want to create separate landing pages for different types of leads—one that’s geared toward homeowners and another aimed at businesses. That way, you can test which one works best.
Test out various CTA buttons — including button size and color and text prompts, like I want to go solar! or I’m ready for solar—and then monitor which one encourages customers to engage most.
Use high-quality images and pair them with compelling copy.
Lastly, set a clear objective for your campaign. Are you trying to create awareness? Get people to sign up for a free consultation? When you know what your objective is, everything else will fall into place. Focusing on high quality leads will improve the efficiency of your sales team, lower marketing costs, and create a consistent and scalable pipeline of potential customers.
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