Empowering Solar Customers to Share Their Story

There’s an old saying in the solar industry: “Nobody buys solar. They are only sold solar.”

Of course, it’s a hyperbole, but there’s a tinge of truth that we can all feel in our bones if you’re an installer. Part of the reason that the cost of acquisition is too damn high is that the customer experience is hard to nail, and also, we don’t make it easy enough for solar customers to tell their stories and refer others.

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Imagine waiting 3-6 months for your $40,000 home improvement project, which is supposed to save you money but is, in the meantime, just a black box of engineering, design, and administrative processes that you have no visibility into. Then it’s finally installed, and you have to wait another 30 days for it to receive permission to operate. Then you are handed five different manufacturers’ apps.

Assuming you’re able to overcome these obstacles and provide a great customer experience, solar homeowners are still in need of tools to spread the word to their friends and family. Most people who don’t have solar are extremely intimidated by it - and I know this from my own personal experience. I to this day have friends and family members who have been asking me questions about solar on and off for years, and just to get them to sit down and look at a solar design and proposal will probably take several years more.

So how do we overcome this resistance? By giving existing solar homeowners an easy way to show their friends and family that their solar installer is competent, experienced, in the local community, and providing tangible benefits.

How do we do that?

In order to turn your solar customer base into your marketing department you need to give them something personalized to share with their networks. That’s why Sunvoy developed a personalized landing page for every solar homeowner, which you can see here.

If you use just about any app these days, you will notice that they all have a clear and unambiguous way to share a referral link with a friend or neighbor. For example, take one of my favorite home sharing sites: HomeExchange. This is a great service where you can swap homes with anyone around the world, either simultaneously or using “GuestPoints” which can be earned when you host and spent when you travel.

Well HomeExchange has - wait for it - unique referral landing pages! Here’s mine for instance: HomeExchange Referral.

Now, we have to ask ourselves why a relatively new concept like online home exchanges have unique-ID referral landing pages, but the centuries-old home services industry and specifically the solar industry, with all its novelty and innovation, does not!

Every single homeowner in Sunvoy now has a page like this with a unique URL that can be used to trace their referrals back to them specifically, for purposes of referral bonuses. The image centers on their home and community, displaying all of the solar installations completed by the solar installer in their home area.

What message does this convey?

1. This installer is local and in the community.
2. This installer cares enough about this particular homeowner to highlight their project.
3. This installer knows the intricacies of the local codes and standards.

Every single homeowner referral landing page shows the total number of solar installations and an aggregate of all reviews across all major review platforms.

What does that convey?

1. This installer is reputable, credible and trustworthy.
2. This installer has a good reputation not just on one or two review sites, but all the major review sites combined.
3. This installer has a track record spanning many years.

Finally, every single homeowner referral landing page shows the environmental benefits and a clear call to action for referred friends and family.

What does that convey?

1. Going solar has tangible environmental benefits that can be quantified.
2. Going solar with this installer will be a good experience.
3. This installer cares about their customers.

No matter how much you spend on marketing in your solar company, ordinary, rational homeowners who “don’t get it” and are too afraid to ask will still resist. Providing social proof from their friends and family is worth 1,000 times what any social media ad or blog post could ever provide.

But we need to give solar homeowners the tools to share their story, pique the curiosity of their friends and family enough to ask questions.

The journey to getting an ordinary homeowner interested enough to ask for a solar proposal can be as arduous as the journey to develop and build a solar project itself. Turning solar homeowners into your marketing department so they can tell their stories will always be the highest ROI investment you can make in your solar business.