Solar Power Content Marketing: Reaching For The Sky

Clean technology is gaining awareness and momentum—and specifically, solar technology is at the core of its expansion and driving change. To remain competitive, you need to adopt solar content marketing tactics.

Without a doubt, solar power is gaining public awareness and consumers are looking to capture it as a clean, affordable electricity source. Solar power content marketing is an effective strategy for you as the solar energy provider to generate more leads.

According to IEA , the renewable energy economy is set to expand—and more than double in its capacity over the next five years. More than half of that expansion will be due to solar PV growth.

As solar power becomes more popular and consumers search for their local trusted cleaner energy provider—they will also look to be educated, informed, and guided in making the best buying decision for their household. This is where solar power content marketing is a strong strategy to generate prospects for your solar company.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a strategy used to attract, nurture, and retain your ideal customer audience.

A collection of content pieces (i.e. blog posts, emails, social media, downloads, and more) are created to educate your customers about solar energy by the means of quality, relevant, and helpful information.

As you attract new prospects and fill the top of the funnel, you’ll nurture those prospects with relevant information to determine if they’re a match for your services.

Content marketing is a great way to quantify prospects—and check to see if they’re engaging with the information and ready to move forward with the sales team.

For example, if a prospect read five blog articles, opened six educational emails, and downloaded your ebook—it would be safe to say they’re very interested in solar PV technology, and they’re worth the sales team’s time and attention to connect.

This is where content marketing can be a great benefit to sales and marketing alignment—and working together as a team, you can close more and higher-quality leads.

Content marketing is a viable strategy for all levels of the audience journey , and it will help you even keep clients longer; after they’ve purchased. You’ll continue to give them quality information and resources to maintain their solar power system.

Why is content great for solar companies

You might think that content marketing is just a buzzword—but it’s one of the oldest sales/marketing strategies in the playbook.

Building relationships, maintaining relationships, helping customers, answering questions, building trust and authenticity….these are all the fundamental principles of why content marketing works so well.

But many industries try out content marketing—how is solar power content marketing particularly great for you?

1. Content answers questions. Customers looking to invest in solar are never absent of questions. They have uncertainties about the price, how the installation works, the environmental impact, and they all turn to Google (or a similar search engine) to find the answers to their questions. You want your solar company’s blog to pop to the top of the page for your local community.
2. The environment is a hot topic. The news is exploding with topics regarding the environment—making the timing a perfect opportunity to use PR and thought-leadership practices to drive traffic.
3. Solar technology is growing. The industry is projected to expand in the next five years. At this point, you have less competition on Google to rank and get noticed. Jump on the fast-moving content marketing train before it’s too late.
4. Content is a relationship builder. Your audience is buying a high-cost asset—and they have to trust you before they make the buying decision. Content is a great way to build trust, authenticity, and help them make a well-informed buying decision.

How content can generate prospects for solar

The job of content is to attract relevant solar customers to your website—and they can come from multiple sources. Typically, the attraction content sources used by solar companies are;

• Blog posts
• Email copy
• Social media copy
• Ebooks
• Educational surveys
• Quizzes
• White papers
• Videos, and more.

But content’s greatest job is to channel those ‘top of the funnel’ prospects through the audience journey towards the sales team as pre-qualified. This is where many, many companies get caught up.

You have to eventually touch each point of the audience journey with relevant content to keep a prospect moving forward.

For example, what content could pair with each audience journey-level?

• Blog posts are used to answer prospect questions looking for key solar questions or keep up-to-date on clean technology news. Blog posts are great for attraction—and top of the funnel needs.
• Educational guides, specifically on topics like solar maintenance or installation, would target prospects closer to the ‘sell’. Educational guidebooks are great for consideration—and the middle of the funnel needs.
• Testimonials, a cost-saving calculator, or case studies would help prospects make the final decision: “To buy, or not to buy…”
• Referral programs or loyalty programs are a great tool for retaining current customers—and using happy customers as a jumping board to find new customers. We could nestle this in the advocacy level of the audience journey.

Many content marketing strategies forget that they eventually have to touch on all points of the audience journey.

Usually, our solar clients at MTC | The Content Agency begins with blog content, guides, and opt-ins (like a solar calculator) to get started.

And as our business relationship grows together and we learn more about your needs, we’ll become crystal clear on delivering the best content for these other levels. Read our latest case study with a solar client.

Crafting a solar content marketing strategy

Do I have you convinced? Content marketing is a viable strategy to consider for your solar company. It will help you generate higher and more quality leads over a longer period. If we decide to partner together on your content marketing project, these are the exact steps that we’ll follow:

1. Start with goals and expectations. We have a short 20-minute meeting after the contract is signed to discuss your project expectations and goals. We become crystal clear on this so that we understand how to help you reach your goals.
2. Audit of your current content. If you currently have live content, I’ll take a look, review it, look to see how it’s performing, and offer feedback for improvement.
3. Intelligence gathering meeting. In this meeting, we’ll hone in on your target audience and audience journey. Content creation needs to have a clear understanding of the needs, challenges, and motivations of the target audience. This will help us create converting content!
4. Crafting of the buyer persona, customer journey, and key touchpoints. We take all that great intelligence—and gather into a clean document as a starting framework for our content development. We’ll pinpoint key themes, interesting topics, and trends at each level of the journey.
5. Content best practices and structure. I’ll share with you a Mindmap or a similar tool that helps us map out the content and structure. You’ll see key topics at the center—and sub-topics supporting those larger topics. I call this the Cluster Topic approach. We lastly assign each topic a content “type” (i.e. blog post or social post).
6. Content creation. We have our roadmap—and we’re ready to create content. You can follow the content calendar and plan in an Airtable online calendar we’ll assign to you.

As founder of MTC | The Content Agency, I truly believe in the success of your project, so every content project includes weekly “catchup” meetings and a three-month review. I want to make sure our content efforts are still lined up and in tune with your team.

Are you ready to start with content marketing? Learn more about our residential solar marketing services .