If you search “community solar marketing” on Google, you will find guides, tips and advice on what you should do for solar marketing. But, are those things that companies actually do? 

Being aware of what your competition is not only for gossip. You can recognize the gaps in your strategy and optimize it. 

Let’s go over some examples and see what marketing strategies are companies in the renewable energy industry applying. 

Before we jump right into it, we will explain to you the benefits of doing Benchmarking. 

Benchmarking is a marketing strategy that businesses have used for years, way back before digital marketing. 

The idea is to discover what your competitors are doing. This will help you to find new ideas to implement (not copy) into your marketing strategy, recognize trends in the industry, and a very important aspect: Self-knowledge.

Being able to know your company’s strengths, as well as opportunities to take, are a great way to stay competitive and provide more value to your customers. 

You have the chance to take advantage and develop a strategy that differentiates you from other businesses to keep growing.

Now, let’s start with this analysis. 

First, let’s take a quick look at the general enviroment of the community solar industry. 

There are still barriers to break in order to reach the full potential of community solar. Some states lack regulation or are not attending new bills.

Despite this, the market appears to be in the right direction.

Cities like New York, New Jersey and Illinois have updated and expanded programs that benefit clean energy for their citizens. 

It is not a race, but New York has the lead. The city is aiming for at least 10 gigawatts of solar energy by 2030, which can power 700,000 houses every year. This will positively affect families, businesses and communities. 

Also, there are signs of other states that are ready to commit to new legislations, as the report from Wood Mackenzie and the Coalition for Community Solar Access stated. <linkear el reporte>

In summary, the market is still at an early stage, but it has a bright future for the next 5-10 years. 

What are solar companies doing in marketing?

Social media 

This channel is almost mandatory at this moment in digital marketing. A lot of companies think of this channel as soon as they want to make a marketing strategy, even if it means creating only the page. 

So, what social media platforms are solar companies using?

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Youtube. 

Facebook is the main platform all solar companies have and they replicate all their content to  Instagram.

For this channel it is very important that companies post regularly. You don’t need to post 3 times a day, but at least have a regular schedule that you can follow. This way people will not think that your company went bankrupt if they find your page and they see that the last post was 6 months ago. 

Social media advertising

Facebook appears again as the main channel for this category. Many solar companies seem to have a very well developed strategy for their advertising in Facebook and Instagram. 

They are using a combination of graphic photos and videos to attract attention from their target, but the key element of their strategy is very clear. 

The ads that they are running have a clear geographic location strategy. If you look for the ads in the Ad Library tool of Facebook, you will see how the texts are intended to a specific location or town. 

The problem comes when companies use the same image for all their ads and only change the name of the city. Ads need to be very specific, so it is important to personalize each one of them. 

Landing pages

The landing page is the place of your site where customers go after clicking on your ad. 

There is a big opportunity here, since not all companies are using landing pages though. Some of them will take you to the home of their website, which can be harmful since customers can get distracted going through your menu instead of actually making the action they saw in the ad. 

Companies that do have an actual landing page use  some tactics like limited time offers, social proof and more.  

The keys of a good landing page are: catchy media, engaging copy, effective call-to-actions and social proof. 

Although every case is unique, companies are following at least a few of these rules. 

Google ads

This seems to be one of the main channels that companies have success with. If you have a tool like Ahrefs, you can “spy” your competition and see popular keywords that they are using. Some of them may not be transactional, which means that they are not close to the selling or closing stage of the customer journey. 

SEO

One of the oldest strategies in marketing. 

If you go on Google and look for “what is community solar” you will find more than 1 billion results, which tells you that there is interest from the public and companies have already noticed that and are working on their strategy to position themselves in the first page. 

Here is where you can use Ahrefs again and analyze the SEO strategy of your competition.

The problem is, you may find some companies that are using bad practices that will not work in the long run. If you are behind on SEO and you are planning to take it seriously this year, there are opportunities to outrank them in a reasonable time. 

Again, not all companies are doing this wrong, but if you do your homework, you can find some interesting things. 

Now, with all these being said, let’s see what challenges solar companies are facing. 

Barriers solar companies face

It is difficult to plan a marketing strategy in an industry that has a lot of restrictions and specifications.

Even though it has improved over the years, the truth is that the situation of the solar industry is still far from a point where companies would wish to be. 

You can try to push your local government or try to persuade them, but other than that, the most you can do is keep your team updated regarding this type of news. 

Despite this, cities like New York, New Jersey and Illinois have updated and expanded programs that benefit clean energy for their citizens. 

It is not a race, but New York has the lead. The city is aiming for at least 10 gigawatts of solar energy by 2030, which can power 700,000 houses every year. This will positively affect families, businesses and communities. 

It is difficult to sell a service to a community that does not know much about this industry. Companies need to be educated in detail so they can make a decision.

Since this industry is not a common topic that normal people go and talk with their friends, it takes a considerable amount of time to educate the community . 

This is one of the most difficult challenges to overcome since this business model is still relatively new. 

You can share information with organic content, sales calls, ads and more, but this would mean a lot of resources that translate into a high customer acquisition cost, which takes us to our next point.

Every marketing team would love to have an infinite budget to be in every social media platform, run all the ads possible on the internet, tv and radio, build a team of +30 people specialized in every task needed to have the perfect strategy or hire the best marketing agencies. 

Yes, that would be the perfect world. But, reality is very different. 

If you do your own research on the tools we mentioned in this article (ads library and Ahrefs) or simply go into every company and analyze carefully the channels that they are using, you will see that some companies have a big opportunity field or are not even doing anything. 

The lack of resources is a crucial aspect to take in consideration. Especially after the pandemic. A lot of industries were affected. 

In addition to this, as we mentioned before, the cost of educating a customer and the time it takes for them to go through all the customer journey in order to buy is expensive. Companies need to be very careful with the channels they are using and do the most with the least. 

We already know that people are not familiar with community solar and are foggy on the details of how it works and all that implies. 

Therefore, there is no better strategy than to educate the community you are targeting, provide all the resources and valuable content that actually helps them answer their specific questions and be in their top of mind when they are ready to make a decision (thanks to your efforts of educating them).

Yes, it is going to take time and resources to plan a content strategy that works. But, after you spend a good amount of time doing this, you will see the benefits and it will take you less time to apply it in other communities. 

Someone that is a fan or is active on a community solar plan will most likely know other people that are enthusiastic about this option or at least are interested. 

People will trust more other people they already know than a company that they found on Facebook or Google.

Create a strategy that helps you with this. Maybe you can offer a discount to your existing clients that send you new people. 

If you have the possibility to use both types of marketing, do not hesitate to do it. Although people are most of the time on their phones, they also go out to local places. 

At the end of the day, community solar business is all about location. Maybe putting a billboard or applying some strategies that put your company in the eyes of the community you are targeting can be an effective tactic to start educating them on community solar. 

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https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2022/02/u-s-community-solar-market-growth-is-already-exceeding-expectations/  main source

Marketing challenges

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/energy-and-resources/articles/community-solar-market-renewable-energy-trends.html  main source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpqfp7R_LZE main source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvkfITd8xhY  main source