Sometimes pictures tell the best story. With that in mind, we created this 2014 Top Solar Contractors By The Numbers visual feature, which is based on the responses of 113 Top Solar Contractors, including Swinerton Renewable Energy, Gehrlicher Solar America Corp. and Infrastructure & Energy Alternatives. How do companies market? Where do they concentrate social media efforts? It’s all here.
carterl says
Is the caption “Again and again Top Solar Contractors said referrals were their No. 1 source for new customers. Social media came in second, proving its ROI.” supposed to match the numbers in the graphic? I think that graphic shows which tactics solar installers use, not what share of new customers do those tactics bring in.
revisionenergy says
Hi Carter, we were interviewed as part of that survey. I would not say that social media brings in new leads. Social media builds awareness and brand recognition that – eventually – turns into new leads! All good stuff, but marketers need to be clear what they want from each channel.
Referrals are huge for us, but of equal importance is good ol’ content marketing (Blogging, newsletters, etc), we net more than 70% of incoming leads through web search. I’m shocked to see content marketing rate fairly low on the totem pole in the solar industry. We have conversion rates from Google organic search (not paid) that are not far behind the people who hear about us from their friends.
Shelley Pettus Goodwin says
Great point. Also consider that each tactic attributes to another. A customer may see a pay-per-click ad, then go to Facebook, hear a radio ad, then do a keyword search and fill out the form. If you only count the web search as your source, you miss the contributing factors.