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4 Strategies Every Solar Energy Company Needs In Their Content Marketing Plan

solar-energy

The solar space continues to expand and for good reason: we continue to see increasing demand for sustainable energy solutions. With this growth comes a lot of opportunities for companies looking to grow, but also some unique challenges to reach businesses and individual customers. Regardless of whether your solar energy business is targeting B2B, B2C, or both, content marketing can be a significant factor in increasing your brand awareness, credibility, and ultimately, business growth. 

Solar Energy Pros Know the Challenges

If you’re in the solar energy industry, you understand how difficult it can be to have an online presence. Not only do you need to share your expertise with your audience so they can understand all aspects of solar energy, but you also need resources to do this accurately and effectively. 

You also know that even though these challenges exist, not producing content is just not an option if you want to grow and be taken seriously in the solar space. 

We’ve worked with many companies within the energy industry, specifically solar, and have developed four pivotal strategies that we believe every solar energy company can benefit from and should incorporate into their content marketing plan. Let’s dive in. 

1. Storytelling

When it comes to content marketing, storytelling isn’t just about crafting engaging narratives; it’s about placing your customer at the center of the story as the hero. With the StoryBrand framework, successful brands position themselves not as the hero – that’s reserved for the customers – but as the guide. 

Solar energy companies can leverage this method by framing their products as essential tools that will help customers overcome their challenges and achieve their goals. This could be as simple as helping your customers reach their sustainability goals or lowering their energy costs by using your solar products. 

Leveraging storytelling doesn’t have to be difficult either. Use it to amp up your content and more deeply connect with your audience. 

How to Implement:

Customer Success Stories: Share real-life instances where your solar solutions have made a significant impact on an individual or business. People tend to trust examples from real people the most, so sharing success stories is a great way to build your authenticity. 

Educational Content: Create blog posts, videos, and infographics that help demystify solar energy and teach potential customers how they can benefit from making the switch. Storytelling will help you better write this content in an effective way. 

Community-focused Initiatives: Highlight any community projects or local engagements that show your company’s commitment to supporting local energy transformation. Once again, people like to see real-life examples. By telling inspiring stories about local solar initiatives, your audience will feel more connected to your brand. 

Storytelling not only enhances your brand’s narrative but also strengthens the emotional connection with your audience, encouraging them to envision themselves achieving similar successes as the “characters” in your content. 

2. Thought Leadership

The solar energy market is crazy competitive, so demonstrating your unique expertise is crucial. Thought leadership content allows you to showcase your deep understanding and innovative approaches within the industry, setting you apart from competitors. This strategy attracts customers looking for reliable information while also establishing your brand as a credible authority in the solar space.

The beauty of this type of content is that you’re just leveraging the deep expertise you already have. Your greatest asset when it comes to content marketing is all of the knowledge you already have on your industry and products. You just have to find ways to share that expertise with your audience and utilize all of the solar energy experts you already have in your business. It doesn’t matter if it’s coming from either and you can change up the voices and faces with regularity, as long as they are a reliable source who knows their stuff! Anyone can create valuable thought leadership content. 

How to Implement:

Expert Articles and Whitepapers: Publish in-depth pieces that explore new technologies, regulatory impacts, or case studies on solar energy development. Make sure they are deeply informative but use language that your audience can understand. While there will be some education here, lean on your experiences and what you’re actually seeing happen. Anyone can create a rundown on emerging technology or information. Give them something more with expert insights. 

Film Informative Videos: Putting faces to the expertise can help grow your credibility. Have your solar experts set up a camera and talk about important topics in solar energy and your business. You can also do interview-style videos to make it more conversational. 

Host Webinars and Podcasts: Regularly engage with your audience through platforms that allow for real-time interaction and Q&A sessions, making your expertise accessible and personable. The best way to do this is through webinars. But, a non-live option is having a podcast or guest starring on other podcasts. You can even collaborate with well-known industry figures to co-create content, adding credibility and a broader audience reach.

Thought leadership content educates your audience all while building trust, authenticity, and credibility. These are all necessary to have with your potential customers as solar energy requires a decision-making process that often involves significant financial investment.

3. Provide Value Instead of Pushing Sales

We know, you want to sell your products, so it only makes sense to constantly post about them, right? Wrong!

Let’s be honest, no one wants to keep seeing content about the same products you want them to buy. Instead, post a range of content that covers different areas relating to solar energy. Yes, you can throw in some promotional content here and there, but make sure it’s mixed in with valuable content. 

With that content, you can slightly push your products with strong calls to action. This is a more effective way to keep your audience coming back without overwhelming them with sales. You want to keep providing value to the user consistently to build trust over time so you can develop a stronger connection with them. This is even more important when the offering is an expensive one, like solar energy. 

In high-investment industries like solar energy, hard sales tactics can often backfire. Customers are looking for value and information that will help them make informed decisions. They need to know why they should even consider solar energy in the first place. By prioritizing informative and value-driven content over direct sales pitches, solar companies can nurture potential customers through the sales funnel more effectively.

How to Implement:

Educational Series: Develop a series of posts or videos that guide potential customers through the basics of solar energy, installation processes, and maintenance. They need to know what they’re getting into if they invest in solar energy.

FAQs and Resource Centers: Create comprehensive resource sections on your website where customers can find answers to their questions. Depending on your resources, you can also have a live question feature where they can get specific questions answered by an expert. 

Interactive Tools: Offer calculators, comparison tools, or design software that helps customers personalize their solar energy solutions and understand potential returns. Once again, it all goes back to making sure they have a full understanding of what they’re buying so that they feel more comfortable going through with the purchase.

This strategy helps build a relationship based on trust and perceived value, instead of pushy sales content. Trust us, the former is going to bring you better results than the latter. 

4. Trend Predictions and Forecasting

To ensure you remain a leader in your industry, predicting trends and informing people about current ones, is an effective way to do that. The solar industry is often changing from both a technological standpoint and a regulatory standpoint, making it essential to stay updated on everything going on. 

By being a company that posts about these changes and updates, you can position yourself as a forward-thinking leader in the solar energy industry. This will not only set you ahead of your competitors but also give your audience confidence that you are the business equipped to tackle their solar goals. 

Plus, trend predictions and forecasting are another element of setting yourself up as a thought leader, making it an even more beneficial category of content to pursue. Not to mention, it is generally useful for you to stay informed about changes in your industry. By participating in trends and changes, you help yourself, your peers, and most importantly, your audience. 

How to Implement: 

Industry Reports: Regularly publish reports or blog posts that analyze trends, predict future industry shifts, and discuss new market opportunities. This could become a monthly installment depending on how involved you want to be and how many changes occur. 

Newsletter Insights: Send out a monthly newsletter that includes industry news, your company’s take on changes, and how these could affect current or prospective customers. This is a great option for keeping your customers informed because they would have to sign up for this newsletter. 

Social Media Engagement: Utilize social platforms to quickly disseminate information about breaking news or innovations in the solar industry, keeping your audience informed and engaged. Sharing information can be as simple as reposting a reliable source’s post on your social media story. 

Adopting a forward-thinking approach in your content will not only keep your content relevant but also showcase your brand as a knowledgeable and proactive leader in the solar energy space.

Sunny Days Ahead

For solar energy companies, an effective content marketing strategy is not just about promoting products but about educating, engaging, and empowering potential customers. By focusing on storytelling, establishing thought leadership, providing value, and staying ahead of industry trends, companies can build meaningful relationships with their audience, distinguish themselves in a competitive market, and drive sustainable business growth. Implementing these strategies with precision and creativity is key to unlocking the full potential of content marketing in the solar energy sector.

How Breezy Can Help: A Case Study

If you’re interested in real results from implementing these content marketing practices into a solar energy company’s strategy, we have an in-depth case study that breaks it all down. We show what the company’s goals and challengers were, how we altered their strategy, and the results from implementation. Check it out here.

Ready to Launch a Content Marketing Plan for Your Small Business?

 

We know that carving out the time, resources, and energy to create ongoing content for your brand or business is a full-time job. That’s why we created Breezy – your instant content marketing team.

You don’t need to hire multiple full-time employees to handle all of the strategy, planning, writing, designing, and publishing of content. You also don’t have time to wrangle tons of different freelancers to get this all completed. You need one expert team that can help get all of the amazing thought-leadership and subject matter expertise out of your head and into formalized, engaging content that keeps you top of mind with your audience.

We’re that team!

See how we can help your small business, startup, or agency with a free consultation. 

SCHEDULE A CALL TODAY!

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