Why solar companies should have a blog

Are you reading this article because you've heard great things about blogging? That it can be a useful tool to generate leads for your company?

Or you've seen that blogging has worked for other solar installers, and you also want to have the same result.

Well, you are at the right place.

This image below from Google Analytics shows the number of organic visitors per day to one of our client’s websites. 

They started with organic traffic in the single digits per day, and now regularly reach 300 visitors a day on average. 

We achieved this over a course of 14 months.

And the visitors are still rising week by week.

We did it with no paid software.

No backlink building.

No marketing and promotion.

We wrote the articles, posted them, and left Google to do its work. 

This is what blogging can do for your company.

To find out the techniques we used to get these results, read our article on SEO for solar companies.

If you’re still unconvinced, keep reading.

Why should we blog?

The old way of selling doesn't work anymore. 

Imagine the old ways of a door-to-door salesman. They arrive unannounced, knock on your door and try to sell you anything and everything that they had. Whether you needed it or not.

These sales people only care about their sales numbers, but not what problems they’re able to solve for you.

Because of this, we’ve grown used to disliking sales people or these sales techniques in general. We’ve become sceptical.

Since then, marketing has changed. 

It's all about content marketing these days.

The most successful companies all use content marketing to some extent. 

It’s been working for the past decade, and it's likely to continue.

What is content marketing?

Gone are the days of sell, sell, sell. 

Instead, companies create trust and brand awareness by producing content. This can be in the form of either entertainment or education. 

Let’s take Red Bull as an example. They produce an energy drink. 

They can either talk about how good it tastes, how much energy it has, etc. But what they do is sponsor elite sports and how they push the human body to the extreme.

They sponsored Felux Baumgartner to jump from space. How awesome is that?

Hundreds of millions of people have watched it. Imagine the brand awareness it was able to create.

People are still talking about it.

But, for the average Joe, sponsoring a daredevil jumping from space just isn’t feasible for us.

But we can still draw inspiration from their approach. 

Showing expertise by speaking or writing

To get your name out there as an expert in your field, you have to do one of two things. 

You either speak, or you write. Or both.

There’s no way to get around this.  

No one is going to believe you when you say you’re an expert without some evidence. 

Ideally, recording yourself speaking is the fastest way to show your expertise.

But, if you are like many of us, speaking to a camera is a daunting experience. 

Live or otherwise. 

Especially if words don’t come easily to you, you may feel like you’re not suited to being on screen. 

If that is you, that’s okay. You can still write. 

No one needs to know how long it took for you to write an article. No one needs to know that you had to do hours or days of research before you were able to come up with your point of view. All they need to know is that you wrote it. 

And when your visitor reads your thoughts, they may start to trust you because they’re getting value from what you’re able to teach them.. 

Solar installer competition is fierce

Being a solar installer in Australia is difficult. The competition is rough, the margins aren’t high, and there are cowboys driving the prices down for everyone.

Let’s imagine that you don’t have a blog and you don’t intend to have a blog.

Of course, you could still run a very successful business, but you would be pushing uphill.

Most of the largest and successful solar installers all have a thriving and successful blog. 

You will be left behind if you don’t take action.

Driving leads into your business

Getting leads into your business is what all this is about. 

What happens after your visitor begins to get value from what they’ve read on your blog?

They begin to trust you.

• You have demonstrated that you know solar products 
• You’ve put yourself out there without fear of criticism.
• You’re confident in your own abilities.
• You show that you can communicate effectively.

And when a visitor trusts you, they are much more likely to work with you than with someone they don’t trust. 

This is the direct opposite feeling that traditional door-to-door salespeople give.

Instead of you trying to win business by trying to sell, it’s your visitors who are coming to you now seeking for your help.

This flips the perception around and allows you to be seen as the expert. 

Retargeting with Google and Facebook

This is an advanced technique that we can cover briefly, but deserves its own article.

Retargeting is a method where every visitor that arrives at any one of your pages gets tagged. This is usually done by storing a cookie in your browser. 

You can then use Google or Facebook to show ads for your services after they leave your website. That way, you’re constantly popping up when they’re on other websites.

This has shown to be an effective way of continuing to market to them, but there are a few things to consider.

• These ads are not free, and you will need to pay for them.
• Your visitors may get desensitised to seeing your ads.
• Their browser may have Ad-blocking software which prevents them from seeing your ads.

Keep in mind that they are tagged only if they visited your site. So without a blog, it will be unlikely for them to visit your site.

Conclusion

It is my opinion that content marketing is here to stay. 

To produce content, you either have to speak or write. If speaking in front of a camera is uncomfortable for you, writing for a blog is still a viable alternative.

Are you convinced that you should start a blog? If you are, here’s a guide on how to do it.