Remarketing (sometimes called retargeting) is a powerful way to get more out of your solar marketing efforts. In this post, we walk you through why it’s important and how you can get started.
What is Remarketing and Why Should You Care?
Picture this: your ideal customer visits your website late one afternoon at work.
He’s been thinking about solar for a while and has been meaning to contact someone about it. He clicks around to multiple pages and starts feeling good about your company.
He’s filled out half of your quote request form when just then, he gets a text from his spouse about dinner plans he’s late for. He quickly shuts everything down and forgets all about you.
In solar sales, this situation happens all the time. You’re rarely the most pressing item on homeowners’ minds. With all the education required, it’s easy for prospects to procrastinate and move on.
What recourse do you have?
Curse the internet gods for the fickle nature of the medium? Pour more money into your campaigns? Quit internet marketing, lamenting its lack of effectiveness?
Enter Remarketing, your conversion-boosting savior.
Remarketing, as its name implies, is marketing to people already familiar with your stuff. There are plenty of ways to set this up.
Why spend tons of time and money advertising to cold leads when you’re abandoning high-value warm ones?
Taking our initial example, you could set up a pixel event to fire when the prospect enters some info in your form but leaves without submitting it. Or has spent over two minutes engaged on your website. Or has clicked your company phone number from his cell phone.
The possibilities are endless and powerful. Why spend tons of time and money advertising to cold leads when you’re abandoning high-value warm ones?
That’s why I almost always recommend remarketing as a first step for solar lead generation. You can remind prospects of your services and provide a gentle nudge back to your page, when they’re browsing the web or Facebook and have the time to convert.
Done tastefully, everybody wins.
Solar Remarketing: By the Numbers
GTM reports customer acquisition costs of $0.52/W in 2016, or $3,668 per customer on a 7-kW system. Remarketing has been shown to increase conversions by 100% or more (sources: WordStream and HubSpot).
Most solar companies we’ve spoken with have lower CACs and we recommend conservatively estimating a 50% increase in conversions.
To sort all this out, we built an easy calculator for you to estimate your additional profit through remarketing. Check it out!
Getting Started with Remarketing
So now that you’re all excited about the potential, how do you get started?
One option is to go it alone and try to figure things out yourself.
Most companies don’t get too far down this path because even though they know remarketing is incredibly effective, it’s too time-consuming and complex for them. Don’t get me wrong, this option works – it’s just expensive and by no means assured.
The alternative is to hire an expert.
A competent, data-driven marketer can take this burden off your hands, allowing you to retain your marketing spend while improving your tactics and supercharging your sales.
Residential solar installers that have used remarketing have seen their sales increase by 100%.
We specialize in designing and executing cost-effective remarketing campaigns for resi solar companies – contact us today to schedule a free consultation!
Set on going it alone? Read on.
The single most important remarketing step to take is enabling proper data collection. As you’ll see below, this is more than just installing Google Analytics and without this set up correctly, you won’t be able to remarket to any of your unconverted visitors. Each advertising platform is different but the basic steps are similar.
- Update your privacy policy. You’ll need to comply with strict PII (Personally Identifying Information) guidelines among other things. Again, every provider is different.
- Install the correct tracking code. At a minimum, you’ll want Google Analytics, AdWords, and Facebook.
- Create tracking events. Site visitors who didn’t complete your quote request form is a good starting point.
- (Turn on remarketing features.) This one is optional as it depends on your platform. Easy to do if you’ve done the above steps (see example from Google Analytics below).
- Create remarketing ads. Not to be overlooked, you need to create ads that draw unconverted prospects back in without being creepy. Take heed.
- Profit.
If you have any questions on this process, please reach out. Remarketing can be a very powerful source of leads when done correctly. Take the time to do it right.
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If all this seems bewildering to you, give us a shout. We’re happy to extend a complimentary Marketing Strategy Session where we review your current situation, your goals, and what it will take to reach them through smart solar marketing.
To schedule this session, visit our calendar booking tool here or email us at info@solariety.com.