Marketing Tactics for Solar Companies to Increase Holiday Sales

Every solar company wants to increase its sales during the holiday season. But not all of them know how to develop a robust SEO plan for solar companies strategy that can help close the deal.

With the holidays fast approaching, now is the perfect time to review your sales forecast goals and think of holiday campaigns that will help you meet them.  

In this article, we are going to share with you some of our favorite marketing tactics that you can use to keep your brand top of mind as your customers make spending decisions throughout the holiday period.

Without further ado, let’s get started!

7 Marketing Tactics to Increase Holiday Sales

1. Start With Customer Segmentation

According to a Harvard Business School professor, out of the 30,000 new consumer product launches each year, 95% fail because of inefficient market segmentation.  

Customer segmentation is a process where you group customers based on common characteristics, like buying habits and behaviors.  

It is important because when you know who you’re targeting, you can create marketing messages that resonate and campaigns they’ll want to engage with. And, doing that gets you more chances of sales.  

Oftentimes, customers are grouped under the following attributes:

• Demographic  

• Behavioral  
• Geographic
• Lifestyle
• Psychographic
• Preference

• Value
• Loyalty

Segmenting customers also enables you to provide them with a customized experience and prevents you from using an approach that doesn't feel relevant to them.  

Here’s how to leverage customer segmentation in your holiday marketing campaigns.  

• Use tools to easily segment customers into relevant groups.
• Customize holiday content for each group, addressing their pain points, and preferences, and based on which stage they’re at in the customer journey.  
• Develop personalized emails that will help move them down in your sales pipeline.  

2. Feature Your Best-Sellers

Before buying, modern consumers do thorough research to find out the best products in the market.  

Some of your top-selling solar panels are the audience’s favorite. They’re your customers’ go-to products and if you present them in front of web visitors, they’ll check them out for sure and may even decide to purchase them too.  

During the holidays, make sure you feature your best-sellers in creative ways. Here’s how:

• Use high-quality images. You want to give visitors an insight into what your customers are raving about.  
• Keep your product descriptions, short, concise, and catchy. Not everyone has the time to go through all the details but in case someone is interested, add a link with the descriptions that takes them to the product page with a detailed description.  
• Optimize your descriptions for SEO for solar companies to make them rank higher in the search engines. Be sure to highlight features you want them to see.  

• Include tidbits of the reviews and testimonials and add a “read full” link that will allow them to read the complete set of reviews. It’s a great way to help buyers decide.  
• Go for a sliding gallery on your home page so customers can easily access your bestsellers without clicking through numerous product pages.  
• Create a dedicated landing page for your top-selling products that are on great deals for the holidays.  
• Pitch your top-selling solar panels through email and let your recipients know about your holiday promos and deals for them.  

3. Offer Irresistible Holiday Deals for First-time Buyers

To attract new customers during the holiday season, offer them merry deals they can’t resist!

It could be a 10% cashback on their first-ever purchase with you or freebies. Whatever it is, offer them something they just can't say no to.

Here are some ideas to keep in mind:

• Find out what's valuable to your customers. Is it a free installation? A huge discount? One year of free maintenance? Our flexible financing options? You want your offers to be compelling so find out what they want the most.  
• Make these offers exclusive to first-time buyers only.  

• Give them early access to your upcoming holiday sales.  
• Offer a referral bonus.  

4. Don’t Forget About Customer Service

Traffic surges during the holiday season can cause major problems on your site, like slow-loading time and other errors.  

Your job is to make sure this doesn’t happen because it can prevent potential customers from buying. A one-second delay in page loading can lead to a 16% drop in customer satisfaction, a 7% decrease in conversion rates, and an 11% reduction in page views.  

According to research, 28% of shoppers use social media to search for or purchase holiday deals. Businesses also tend to receive 15% more social messages during the holiday season.  

You want to fix any other possible issues before they occur or as fast as you can the moment someone complains about them. Although you can't keep every user happy, it's still important to do your best to provide the best customer service.  

Here’s what you can do to improve your customer service during the holiday season:

• Reduce your average response time on social media. You can use immediate replies to help you do this.  
• Provide seamless customer service across multiple touchpoints.  

• Add self-service features on your websites like chatbots, and a dedicated page for answering FAQs, and include video tutorials when necessary.  

5. Retarget Users Who Have Previously Interacted with You

Did you know that 92% of people who visit your site for the first time are not yet ready to buy your solar panels and other services, while 97% never return? They might be interested but they’re not quite ready to commit.  

This is where retargeting comes in. Retargeting allows you to focus on advertising in front of people who are already familiar with your brand and have shown interest in your offerings.  

Retargeting can boost ad engagement rates by up to 400%. Retargeting campaigns also tend to perform 10 times better than regular display ad campaigns. Retargeted ads also have a 70% higher conversion rate on visitors.  

This shows that it’s advantageous to retarget people who have already shown interest in what you have to offer but haven’t converted yet.  

Here are some best practices when retargeting users during the holidays:

• Create a custom audience in your ad manager so you can target customers based on their past interactions with your site or social media content.
• Determine the right time to show your ads based on your website’s visit frequency. You can also check Google Analytics to see what days and hours of the week generate the most engagement.  
• Get your ads ready even before the holiday season. Avoid cramming so you have the chance to test out the best copy for the best results.  

• Use customer data to personalize your holiday ads. This way, you can create messaging that resonates with your potential customer's interests. As a result, they're more likely to click and buy.  
• Target people who have consulted with you previously but haven’t made a purchase yet.  
• Determine which channels most of your target audience spend their time online and put your ads there.  
• Use frequency capping to limit how many times a user will see your ads in a day. Ad fatigue is real and you want to prevent this as much as possible.  
• Optimize your remarketing campaigns through A/B testing.  

6. Use Fear of Missing Out

A lot of people would rather make impulsive purchases than regret failing to buy an item they want on sale. This applies to solar panels too.  

Creating a sense of urgency in your holiday offers prompts fear of missing out among potential customers. Use this to your advantage to boost your holiday sales. Here's how:

• Add countdown times for your holiday sales, flexible financing options, and best-selling items that are going out of stock.  
• Offer zero upfront costs if customers buy the product under your set deadline.  

• Notify potential customers through email, SMS, or social media about your holiday deals! And remind them about the end of your sales.  

7. Leverage User-Generated Content to Boost Holiday Sales

88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Incorporating testimonial videos, reviews, and ratings into your holiday campaigns can help boost your conversion rate.  

It’s also important to feature user-generated content on your site to establish credibility.  

Below are some user-generated content ideas for holiday marketing:

• Boost Brand Awareness – Ask your existing clients to create an image of themselves using an Instagram Stories holiday filter and post it on the stories. Optimize your posts for SEO for solar companies by asking them to tag you and use your hashtag. This helps boost visibility.  
• Increase engagement – Run a social media contest asking customers to comment why going solar is the best New Year’s resolution. Detail how you’ll choose a winner and information about the prize. You want your mechanics to focus on engagement.  

• Collect product reviews – Link your clients to a template that makes it easy for them to review your products and services, You can share this link via email, social media, or on your website.  

Take Your Holiday Marketing to The Next Level with SEO for Solar Companies!

With so many solar companies vying for your customers’ attention, it’s important to find ways to stand out and create campaigns that cut through the noise.  

By segmenting your ideal customers, featuring best-sellers, offering irresistible deals for first-time buyers, improving your customer service, using FOMO, and leveraging UGC, you can attract new clients and prompt them to buy during the holidays!

At Digital Resource, our SEO for solar companies specialists and digital marketing experts will work with you to create a custom plan to boost your sales during the holidays and beyond.  

Need help capturing more leads and increasing your sales all year round? We know what to do! Contact us today.  

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