In most regions, solar energy is the dominant renewable energy source.
For instance, in 2023, solar energy contributed to 16% of the 35% of Australia’s energy consumption that came from renewable sources.
That’s not all. It’s estimated that by 2030, the global solar capacity will have risen to 5,520 gigawatts (GW), a 2.6% higher growth rate than we saw between 2017 and 2023.
What do these numbers mean for you? In a nutshell, it means the demand for solar energy is growing steadily due to the push towards carbon neutrality. Therefore, you need to be working twice as hard to market your solar products, including panels, inverters, and battery storage systems, while educating customers on the long-term benefits of investing in solar energy.
One of the most effective ways to market your solar company is via the web. Specifically, you should invest in digital marketing for the best results. In this article, we share some of the most effective digital marketing strategies used by the top solar companies globally.
Understanding the Solar Customer
Do you know who uses solar products? Well, you should. This is the most important thing you should do before launching your marketing campaign. The chances are that you have already established your line of solar products. What’s left now is to understand your customer.
Generally, there are three types of solar customers.
- Residential customers: This includes homeowners who are mostly older and looking for cleaner energy alternatives.
- Commercial customers: These are mostly corporate companies. Corporations tend to have lengthy buying processes (we will discuss the solar buying process next).
- The government: This is self-explanatory. Like commercial customers, the government also has lengthy processes for buying solar products.
Based on how you have positioned your solar company, which among these customers are you most likely to attract? Now that you have identified your ideal customer, you need to know their buying process.
Typically, every solar customer will go through a research, consideration, and a decision phase when buying solar products. The good thing about digital marketing is that you can develop strategies to help them make better decisions through these three phases.
How To Build a Strong Online Presence
Digital marketing leverages online channels such as websites, social media, and web apps. Therefore, you need to start by establishing a strong presence on these channels. This is where you will be executing your digital marketing strategies.
Websites
The chances are that you already have a website for your company. However, it doesn’t end there. Your website is mostly the first point of contact, especially if the target audience is searching for solar products on search engines.
For your solar company, you might develop an ecommerce website and include pages such as About and Blog where you will market your solar products. We will get into the specific best practices later.
Social Media Channels
Social media is the best place to market your solar products, especially if you want to target specific demographics. This is because platforms like Facebook allow you to customise your posts and ads to be seen by specific people. Social media has high chances of giving you a strong online presence due to its possibilities of huge reach.
3 Effective Digital Marketing Strategies for Solar Companies
Your competition is already practising digital marketing. This means if you want to keep up, you need to get started right away. So, if you don’t know where to start, we have outlined three of the most effective digital marketing strategies for solar companies.
1. Set a Foundation with Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the foundation of any successful digital marketing strategy. It stands for search engine optimisation and it involves practices to achieve that.
You already know of search engines like Google. These engines are built to rank content based on factors like usability and relevance to search queries. SEO provides you with a roadmap to achieve these guidelines.
Optimising content for usability
Usability refers to how the search engine algorithm rates the user experience of the website. First of all, you have to make sure your website is crawlable by Google. Secondly, you have to ensure that your website provides a good experience to users.
Ensure that your website;
- Has a high load speed,
- Is mobile friendly
- Has a clean user interface
Making your website relevant to search queries
If your website is not relevant to what your ideal customers are searching on the web, it will be hardly recommended organically on search results. Luckily SEO can help you.
Some of the common strategies for optimising your website for search queries include;
- Use relevant keywords: Conduct keyword research and discover the most searched-for content on the web related to solar energy. Next, create quality content around these keywords to improve your site’s chances of ranking higher.
- Focus on technical SEO: Technical SEO entails strategies to ensure your website is crawlable, including fixing broken links, deleting duplicate content, submitting an XML sitemap to Google Search Console and so on.
SEO is not an easy task. Therefore, at first, it might seem daunting, but with time, you will get the hang of it. If you prefer someone else to do it, we offer comprehensive SEO services for solar companies in Perth.
Content marketing is about creating and sharing valuable, informative content to attract and engage your target audience. Remember that we established that your customers can fall into either of three categories. This is particularly important for content marketing. Let’s explain.
For your content to be considered valuable and engaging by the reader, they have to be the correct target audience. This means they have to relate to what is being said and how the information is presented. For instance, the government would prefer a more direct language that leans more towards formal. This would not be the same case for a homeowner who needs to feel understood about her frustrations with other sources of energy.
Do you get the point? Exactly; tailor the content towards whoever you’re selling to. The conundrum happens when your target audience happens to be both. What do you do in such a case?
Tailor the content towards who you’re selling to. The conundrum happens when your target audience happens to be both. What do you do in such a case? You strike a balance by creating content that addresses the needs of both groups without alienating either. Segment your messaging where possible—use tailored landing pages, personalized email campaigns, or specific blog posts for each audience.
When crafting more general content, focus on shared interests or problems they both face and position your product or service as the solution. Clear, inclusive language and examples that resonate with both groups can help bridge the gap effectively.
The secret of content marketing is strategy. In other words, you will need a strategy that outlines the how, why, and when aspects of your content marketing.
A content marketing strategy includes several items including;
- Topics you want to cover.
- Content format you want to create (e.g., blog posts, articles and videos).
- Content marketing goals
- Timelines and so on
All these items will make sure you have a solid content marketing plan that helps you hit your sales goals for your solar company.
Something else companies forget to do is promote their content. As much as you should aim for organic traffic to your content, a little push doesn’t hurt. If anything, there’s no rule against it. So, promote your content on social media, email, and other channels to get the word out there.
3. Leverage Social Media Marketing
Social media is a powerful tool for building relationships with potential customers and generating leads. However, most businesses don’t use social media the right way and they end up not achieving good results.
One thing you should understand is that social media is not exactly a marketing platform. It primarily serves as a communication and engagement platform. Therefore, you need to centre your content around that. The marketing comes in where you leverage the audience to promote products.
The common marketing approach that businesses use to promote their products on social media is by showcasing product features and benefits. But before you get to do that, you will have to create a loyal audience that cares about your brand. Like we said, social media is about creating relationships with your audience.
There are several social media platforms you can use. These include Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses when it comes to content creation.
Some of the best practices when using social media for your solar company include;
- Choose at least three platforms and be active there
- Put more effort where a large majority of your target audience would be found
- Have a consistent tone across your social media channels
- Avoid using too much sale-sy language on social media
- Engage your audience with comments and reactions
- Participate in trending topics for increased reach
The social media content you share should educate, entertain, or inspire your audience. Therefore, identify topics that can fit these aspects. With the right strategies and approach, you will achieve your marketing goals for your solar business.
Measuring Success of Your Digital Marketing Strategies
The success of your digital marketing strategies can be measured at several phases of the campaign. Why is this important? To evaluate the performance of the several strategies you have put in place.
When setting up a digital marketing strategy, there are key performance indicators that you can identify. These are supposed to act as the metrics through which you measure whether the strategies you’re using are working or not.
For instance, if you choose content marketing as a digital marketing strategy for your solar business, you should measure the following;
- Website visits: Check the number of unique web visitors your website gets periodically.
- Leads generated: A lead is a potential customer who hasn’t bought something but they’re interested. You can tell this from things like email signups.
- Conversion rates: When the potential customer takes the desired action, that means you have a high conversion rate. It indicates that your marketing is working.
- Customer acquisition cost: Calculates the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including ad spend, marketing expenses, and sales costs. A lower CAC indicates more efficient marketing efforts.
The above metrics generate a lot of useful data, whether that’s on your website or social media channels. To make sense of this data, you need to perform data analysis. This analysis gives you insights into your performance, and it helps you decide where to improve.
Let us Handle Digital Marketing For You
Digital marketing has the potential to transform the sales of your solar company. The best part is that it is cost-effective, and you can track its performance over time. If you practice the three strategies we have outlined, you’re guaranteed to win with at least one.
But why gamble when you can get results without the hassle? That’s why we pride ourselves as the best digital marketing agency with experience in helping solar companies across Australia and beyond get off the ground. Click here to get a free quote.