How to Prove a Solar Marketing ROI
The marketing world is both an art and a science, where creative endeavours meet measurable outcomes.
In industries with significant upfront costs and long-term benefits, such as solar energy, articulating the Return on Investment (ROI) can be challenging.
However, demonstrating ROI is essential to justify marketing expenses, gauge campaign effectiveness, and refine strategies. Let’s dive deep into how solar companies can prove their marketing ROI.
Measuring SEO ROI Can Be a Challenge
Across all marketing channels, none are as difficult to measure ROI as from SEO.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of generating free solar leads from Google search results and other search engines.
Most Solar SEO Agencies will show how your website ranks #1 for a keyword or generate hundreds of visitors to your website. But if you can’t prove how many solar leads your SEO generates, how can you prove a positive ROI? You can’t.
Ensure your marketing agency can show you what pages of your website generate leads and how that person found your website.
They don’t know what they are doing if they can’t show you that basic information.
The Unique Challenge in Solar
Solar installations are not impulse purchases. They often involve extensive research, deliberation, and financial planning from the consumer’s end.
The benefits of a solar system—reduced energy bills, increased property value, and environmental impact—unfold over years and decades. Thus, the time between marketing initiatives and their tangible results can be prolonged.
This gap often becomes a huge challenge in calculating a direct ROI.
Steps to Measure Solar Marketing ROI
Set Clear Objectives: The first step is to clarify what you hope to achieve. Whether it’s boosting brand awareness, generating leads, increasing website traffic, or actual sales conversions, having a defined goal can streamline the evaluation process.
For solar companies, we want to generate consistent and qualified solar leads to prove a positive ROI. Any marketing agency should be able to provide you with this information.
Track Your Metrics: The digital age has blessed marketers with tools that offer in-depth insights. But how can you track the metrics that matter (booked jobs and leads) and ignore those that confuse and muddy the waters of a positive ROI? Ensure your marketing agency is monitoring the right metrics that matter to you.
Monitor Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): How much does it cost to acquire one booked job, on average? This metric is crucial. By analysing the CPA, solar companies can ascertain if their marketing spends are profitable or losing money. Adjust as needed once you have this clear information.
Feedback and Surveys: Direct feedback from customers provides qualitative insights. Why did they choose your company? Which marketing touchpoints influenced their decision? Such feedback can be invaluable in attributing sales to specific marketing initiatives.
Leveraging Marketing ROI Insights
Once the ROI is calculated, it serves multiple purposes. Having the right data that is clear is only half the battle.
What you do with that information can have many pitfalls if you’re not clear on what to do next.
Budget Allocation: By understanding which marketing channels offer the best ROI, companies can allocate their budgets more efficiently, favouring high-performing channels over underperforming ones.
Strategy Refinement: Continuous measurement of ROI can highlight the strengths and weaknesses of a marketing campaign, allowing companies to refine their strategies for better outcomes to move forward efficiently.
Stakeholder Communication: Especially for solar companies that might have investors or stakeholders, showcasing a positive ROI can instil confidence and assure them of the company’s growth trajectory.
How Can Your Solar Company Increase Marketing ROI Efficiency?
Solar companies can accurately measure and prove their marketing ROI by understanding the unique nuances of the solar market, setting clear objectives, and employing a mix of metrics that focus on booked jobs and revenue.
Whether you’re running ads, cold calling, performing SEO, door knocking or combining them all, you need to understand what is working to generate consistent leads with a positive Return On Investment.
Get clear about how much you’re spending on marketing vs how much revenue these channels bring in for your company.