Solar Lead Generation

If you are someone looking to grow your business then the lead generation process is a great way of building customer interest in a certain product or service. Global warming has given rise to the use of solar panels as an environmentally friendly source of energy. Solar lead generation is a great way to promote your solar power business, and this article will tell you all that you need to know as a business provider.

Solar Appointments

Buying solar appointments is a low-cost way of growing a business. Most companies get call center representatives to set appointments with potential customers. These are offshore call centers that help you with setting your appointments with homeowners. However, some appointments are set using automated phone calls without getting the consumer’s consent and are thus considered illegal. Buying appointments is cheap because you just have to hire a call center and luring new customers is their job after that.

However, this way of solar appointments can be detrimental to the business in the long run because it can bring the company’s reputation down. The customer must get enticed by the solar lead proposition and the quality of your solar appointment leads is crucial for solar-powered business.

Here are a few factors making sure you have high-quality appointments as a solar installation company:

Leads should be filtered according to zip codes and the demographic areas that the potential customers belong to
Each appointment should be taken as a soon-to-be transaction
Appoints monitoring by a quality assurance officer
The management should make sure all the information provided is accurate and not misleading
Appointments should be set within 72 hours after the calls
The cost of the appointment should lower than the competition

Creating a Solar Lead Generation Campaign

A solar lead generation campaign helps attract new customers to your solar panel business. This means that your campaign was effective enough to convince a homeowner or potential customer to provide you with their contact information. A lot of people though expect something in return such as a free sample, more information, or research, etc.

Before coming up with a solar lead generation campaign make sure you have a clear goal in mind, a target audience, the offer tailored specifically to the customer, and lastly more details about the solar installation. The following is a step-by-step guide for creating a solar lead generation campaign.

Set your goals and objectives

Whatever you wish to achieve from your solar lead generation campaign should be emphasized before. The setting of your goal at this point can be a specific target number you wish to achieve for the following:

A certain number of potential clients
Revenue generated per lead
Subscribers
Registrants
Samples
Sales
A particular conversion rate

Research who your target audience is

As a solar installation company knowing your target market is essential because not everyone can afford these and not every household is interested in environmental friendliness. Even though you might vaguely know your target audience is homeowners or housewives or seniors, you should be more specific. There are many ways of identifying your audience lets look at some of them:

Use google analytics to identify the kind of people that visit your website
What are the demographics of your existing followers on social media?
What kind of people buy your solar panels – past sales data
Try to gain more data from the clients of your competitors in the solar power business
Run surveys about solar panels
Conduct interviews and focus groups from existing users of solar panels

Planning your content

This step ensures that your objectives are in line with the target audience and content that you wish to entice your leads with. The content needs to be on the company’s website, a blog, social media accounts, youtube channels, etc.

Here you need to use the digital marketing tools available to you. Pay per click advertising is useful as it uses keywords relevant to your solar power business. This means that the keywords you choose should be relevant to your solar installation business. If you wish to go with organic search, then search engine optimization can also be used. If your knowledge in PPC or SEO is not much then the consultants can do the research for you.

Creating an offer

This stage is often known as the lead magnet stage, where the customer asks for what you will offer to them. Here you tell them what they should do as the next step. As a solar installation business you could ask them to do the following:

Download your catalog
Register for a climate change event hosted by your company
Buy a solar panel or try it for a few days
Sign up for a contest or giveaway
Subscribe to your newsletter
Complete an assessment or survey
Request for a quote

Promoting your content

It is quite rare that your content becomes viral amongst your target audience without getting any advertisement. Thus, you need to promote your solar panel related content on different channels such as:

Emails
Social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, Twitter
Blog posts
Native advertising
Search advertising
Display advertising
PR events

Promotional campaigns should be showcased using a mix of organic, paid, and PR media given the nature of the solar panel business.

Optimizing the lead capturing tools

After you have left your potential lead with a call-to-action, they will then either leave you or drop a number or email address you can reach them on. Thus, it would be highly useful for you to have a record of that and so many companies use live chats and landing pages that help you keep track. This is essentially the turning point for your solar lead generation campaign.

Test your solar lead generation program

After you have come up with the above mechanisms for your solar lead generation program, you must make sure all of them are a good mix for your business. You should divide these into different components and run A/B tests to see which iteration works best on the consumers. This way you test your campaign with a variety of emails, headlines, designs, and surveys, instead of sticking to one mix for all leads.

Lead scoring

Once you interact with a potential customer, you are usually able to rank them based on their interest level in your conversation. Therefore, to pursue clients further for your solar panel installation business you should know which clients are willing to buy your product and which ones need more convincing.

Thus, setting a list of criteria to assign lead scores for solar lead generation can include the following:

Fit – How well the prospect lead fits into the target market
Behavior – How the lead has engaged with your content
Buying – What stage the lead is in the sale funnel

Nurturing the leads

To make sure that the lead buys your solar panels and remains a loyal customer that uses word of mouth to spread your business further, you need to nurture them. You assist them, understand their needs, and provide them with more information.

As a solar lead generation company you can leave them with the following:

Emails of promotional or exclusive offers
Flyers
Case studies
Comparisons with other energy-providing solutions and why solar is better

Leads to Sales

This is the part where you close the deal. This part tells you whether your solar leads generation campaign has been successful or not. It helps you improve future campaigns and also helps in getting more leads if you have been successful in converting your leads to your sales.

Solar Lead Pricing

The average cost of solar leads varies according to the state you are in. For instance in California, the average cost per sale is $1929 and the conversion rate is about 7%.

Generally, though the price of solar leads varies in terms of:

Quality of the source of the lead, whether it came organically or if it was created through content sent to the consumer through telemarketing or digital marketing
The number of solar installation companies that the lead sell
The average rate of conversion in the particular state
How going solar is trending in that particular region (if high demand then the price will also be high)

Solar Lead Lists

Solar lead lists are often marketed to solar energy companies as they provide them with users who might be interested in their business. Some lists are more customized to your needs than others. Lists are easily accessible too with the help of phone, email, and mails.

For a solar lead the following lists can be quite useful:

Environmentally conscious homeowners
New homeowners
Swimming pool owners
Credit-worthy owners

Many companies are in the business of making solar lead lists and so instead of getting a pre-made list, you can also get one specifically made for your business.

How to Find Exclusive Solar Leads

Exclusive solar leads are usually those homeowners who themselves are interested in buying solar panels from a specific contractor. There are companies out there that create lists of solar leads specifically to cater to your business needs. Thus it’s a quite useful opportunity for growing your business.

Exclusive solar leads are often your best chance of converting the solar lead to a sale. Not only do exclusive solar leads reduce the competitiveness for you but the lead quality is also better. Usually, the leads on the list have said yes to being interested in investing in solar panels in a survey, etc.

Exclusive solar leads also have a higher return on investment (ROI) and thus a higher conversion rate. However, as a solar lead generation business, you should keep in mind exclusive leads are more expensive than non-exclusive ones.

Conclusion

Thus, the solar lead generation process requires adequate research and a comprehensive understanding of your target market. After that your solar lead campaign’s effectiveness depends on many factors. Solar lead lists may be catered to you but is it worth it to still opt for exclusive solar lists? Well, the answer solely depends on your budget, the competition, and the use of solar energy as an alternative energy source in the area. Let us know what you think of the article and share it if you like it.