Cost Effective Solar Energy Marketing Tips

"The biggest challenge we face is educating people about the true costs of solar energy,” – Solar Energy Industries Association president Rhone Resch.  

Marketing for solar energy is all about presentation, which must be the foundation of the overall strategy. The sun is the cleanest source of energy we have. On a clear sunny day the sun shines approximately 1000 watts of solar energy per square meter on the earth's surface. We have the remarkable opportunity and ability to power every home and office over the entire world for free. Approximately 220,000 homes are without power.

 Focus on Internet Marketing- Your able to target a broader audience and it is relatively cost effective at times. You can create slideshows and upload them to slideshare and other PDF sharing websites with links to your website or sales page with further information. Not only is this service free, but the high view counts on the pages after running a google analytics report is quite amazing. 

 Create a Social Media Presence- Using your social media to connect with your customers you can promote your product, it’s an easy way to create awareness, and help brand you as a skilled expert on solar to the public.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, and many other social media sites are the ways society is sharing information and communicating among each other. Try to create a presence on all social media networks. To help you manage these accounts use social media dashboards resources such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite. Other great tools to keep you informed about conversation about your brand are GoogleAlerts to notify you every time your company name comes up online, and Talkwalker which offers social media campaign tracking tools, as well as brand monitoring and inquiries across multiple media. Participate in groups and pages related to solar energy, and share your thoughts and ideas with the community. This will help direct targeted traffic to your page.

 Offer Webinars- Webinars are a powerful tool for appealing new business or generating additional streams of revenue to your consumer. Webinars gives the general public the opportunity to interact when tuning into live broadcasts where people can openly ask questions directly to the presenters. Webinars also provides on-spot answers while your prospects and customers are given the luxury of comfort as they sit behind their computer screens.

 Inform Your Audience with Videos- This is a simple tactic to answer and educate the consumers on your products services and inform them on solar power. Getting creative and using a variety of videos is encouraged. For example, educational videos, promotional videos, instructional videos, video press releases, podcast videos and commercials. Creating videos is virtually free if you have the equipment, resources, and skills to have ability create them.

Create Commercial Success- Businesses often use YouTube to market their business and have success. This leads to a sky rocket in sales. How you present your idea is the most important. You need to think outside the box. Cartoons and animated commercials are ways of creating a quality low budget cost video. Also, YouTube communities are a great way to receive input regarding your videos or topics related to your business.

 Paid Advertising – “Search Engine Optimization”, or SEO, as it is frequently called in the tech world. SEO merely is the development of improving the visibility of a website, or a web page, in a search engine's un-paid or “organic” search results.  You can set a marketing budget on paid advertising on search engines.  On Google AdWords you will place a bid on keywords and compete against your business rivals.  You can promote your company through advertisements on search engines, or on social media and blogs creating artistic banners. The cost factor depends totally on your budget.

 Sampling Products- This gives your customers the option to “sample” your products so that they are introduced to all the benefits and the quality of your product. The customers will give reassuring testimonials stating: “It worked for me, it will work for you.”

Reinforce the Message to Your Consumers on Why They Should Buy Solar:

1.       Solar makes energy sense.

2.       Solar is a good investment.

3.       Solar is good for the Health of Future generations.

4.       Solar is good for the environment.

5.       Solar Creates energy independence.

Answering your consumers what’s, why’s, how’s and who’s are essential. Whatever you do, you should always— and I mean ALWAYS— make switching to solar sound easy.  For example:

• What are the initial costs/total setup costs?
• What is the process of setting up a solar system?
• Power/cost savings accurate?
• How much will I save and what are the benefits? Are they worth it?

• Why YOUR solar panels?