Top Solar Advertising Ideas

Need More Solar Customers?

Looking to door knock in 2023? You might want to rethink that strategy.  Here are some top solar advertising ideas worth considering.

As I’m sure that you are aware, COVID-19 has changed everything.  And, solar is no different.

Luckily, more people are at home and working from home than ever, so anything that has to do with health care or home services is doing REALLY.  The trick is, how do you reach this massive audience that no longer wants you to ring their doorbell.

Well, just like everything else, the internet is the key.

Now is the time to leverage every online lead source that you can get to profitably work for you (assuming you have the operational bandwidth to keep up with the demand).

So, let’s get real about about what works, what doesn’t, and what you should look for so you don’t spend an arm and a leg on mediocre solar advertise advertising efforts.

Solar Advertising Overview

As you start down the path of evaluating various solar advertising channels, there are two primary Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you will want to be aware of.

The first KPI is Cost Per Lead (CPL). As a matter of fact, regardless of whether you are vetting potential vendors for SEO, PPC, Door Knocking, PR, etc., it would make sense to take a moment and ask the potential vendor what their average CPL is all-time across all of their solar clients.

For our company, Lead PPC, for instance, we average a CPL of around $32. This is typically what you might find with online solar lead generation companies (which usually range between about $18-$70 per lead, depending on the vendor. But, within the PPC space (advertising agencies that drive leads online via Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Bing/Yahoo Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc.), this is extremely low with many vendors averaging between about $50-$100 per lead.

The second KPI to really take a look at is Cost Per Sale (CPS). Most solar companies are looking for a CPS that is somewhere in the range of $25-$600. So, any vendor that is higher than this is probably not worth it.

We Are Specialists

We are an ad agency that specializes in a handful of industries, solar being one of them. We get a lot of requests from potential clients outside of our target industries, but we try to stay as focused as possible on what we do best.

Solar advertising is an extremely niche market. When it comes to solar advertising, usually solar companies are limited by their budgets in regard to how much money they can afford to spend to acquire new franchisees, especially during the summer sales season. This being the case, it is extremely important that you put your initial solar advertising dollars into mediums that generate not only leads but actual solar sales for your business.

For this reason, we recommend that you focus your initial solar advertising dollars on mediums such as Google and Facebook, which tend to be 1/2 to 1/4 of the cost of mediums such as online solar lead generation companies. By concentrating your initial ad dollars in areas that have a high ROI, this will help generate additional revenue that can be used later to drive solar customers via other mediums.

How Do We Generate Leads?

How do we do this? We generate leads online primarily through Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Some of our clients also advertise on the Bing/Yahoo and LinkedIn networks.

Google tends to have the highest quality leads. Facebook tends to have the cheapest leads and highest lead volume available. With Facebook, however, we recommend that you import your highest quality leads that you have ever generated into Facebook and use those as Lookalike Audiences, so that Facebook has a better idea for their machine learning algorithm as to who actually is a good candidate for your business.

Advertising Budgets

Advertising on these types of terms with Google is extremely easy; even showing up in one of the top spots doesn’t cost much and can be done on a relatively cheap budget ($900 – $1,500 / mo). We usually recommend starting with an initial Google Ads budget of around $30 / day or $900 / mo.  On the Facebook / Instagram Ads side of things, a budget of $20 / day or $600 / mo. is a good place to start.

The primary reason that you want to start small is that your least efficient franchise advertising dollars are right at the beginning when you start.  So, it is important to start by honing in both your Cost Per Lead and your lead quality prior to expanding.  Once you are getting the types of franchise candidates that you are seeking, then it’s just a matter of either turning up your ad budget or sliding over ad budget from less effective keywords or audiences over to those that are converting best for you.

Facebook Works As Well

Another great network to find prospective solar sales is Facebook. In fact, you can usually get leads on Facebook for between $10-$40. The key is to target people in your desired locations who are home owners and actually interested in solar for their home. One thing that we have found that is very helpful is using Lookalike Audiences of your current solar customers or top leads that you have generated all-time. Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence is powerful. So, make sure to leverage that in your lead generation process so that you are finding new solar customers that are similar to those that have already come onboard.

Scalable Lead Sources

The great thing about dialing in lead sources such as Google and Facebook is that you can expand them over time, and they tend to be cheaper than other sales sources, such as door knocking. But, to be honest, more than half of our clients use lead sources besides just us. If you can get the right conventional advertising mediums working for you, then great! And, if you can figure out some word-of-mouth strategies that work for you, then you should use those as well.

Cost Per Sale

We find that it costs between about $250 – $600 in ad spend to acquire a new solar customer. This is cheaper than door knocking, which has a lot of moving pieces and requires a staff of people to handle day in and day out. At the end of the day, you want to diversify your lead sources and also try to generate as many sales as you can for the cheapest price.

Higher Quality Leads

The feedback that we get from our customers is that because our leads are exclusive to our clients, they are able to get in touch with a high percentage of them, as opposed to online lead generation companies, who resell their leads up to 5-10 times. Let’s face it. Nothing burns out sales reps like calling bunk leads that weren’t really interested in the first place. By tracking the keywords and audiences that lead to each high quality lead, we try to continually increase the quality of the leads as they come through.

Need Help?

If you are interested in using our services, please let us know. We would love to help you!