March 8, 2021
It’s a bad time to have ineffective lead generation. If you’re not securing enough potential customers to keep your accounts in the green, then your business is at an all-time risk. But in order to stop underperforming in this area, you first need to figure out why it’s happening. Below, we explore some common reasons why you may not be pulling in the lead numbers you need.
Bad or Nonexistent SEO
As a fairly blue-collar crowd, solar contractors can sometimes fall behind on the tech side of doing business. But skipping out on building a robust online presence can give your competitors the opportunity to snag the majority of your area’s leads.
If your website isn’t optimized to appear as a top option in search engine results, leads are going to have a harder time finding your specific business. Search engine optimization (SEO) entails putting keywords on your website pages that match the search terms your customers would use. For example, “Brighton Beach solar panels” and “Brooklyn solar installers” would be good keywords for that area’s contractor to put on their site.
Of course, quality matters here. Just putting some keywords on your site isn’t going to be enough. Search engines like Google reward the websites that provide the most valuable information associated with those keywords, so a web page that actually offers a lot of useful tips on getting solar panels in Brighton Beach would rank more highly than a general page that happens to have the keyword “Brighton Beach solar panels” on it.
Keep in mind that one major aspect of achieving good SEO is locality. That’s why our example keywords have included the locations that customers may be searching in. Doing this allows you to more easily connect with nearby customers, not get lost in the flood of websites competing for general keywords that apply everywhere (“solar panels”, “solar installations”).
Unprofessional Impression
Perhaps customers are finding your website, but they’re put off by what they see. For small solar businesses, this is a common problem. Working with tighter budgets and fewer staff means that many don’t invest the proper resources into creating a website with a sleek, professional presentation.
Usually, the problem lies in one of two areas: the website’s design, or its content (writing). A site with an unattractive, unpolished design can look dated and make a business look amateurish. When it comes to the site’s text, misspellings and grammar errors can cast doubt on the competence of your team.
Given that solar customers are looking to make a big investment, they want to feel confident that the contractors they choose are professionals with strong expertise and the resources to pull off their installation with success. Hiring a graphic designer or professional writer as needed will help you ensure that they get this exact impression of your brand. The investment is more than worth it.
Insufficient Lead Screening
It’s entirely possible that your website is solid and your schedule is packed with consultations – but you just don’t end up with enough viable customers. This often happens when a team doesn’t have the time to screen leads for quality.
The customer lineup becomes cluttered with leads that aren’t serious enough to pursue, resulting in your sales representatives wasting time on dead-ends. The good leads are out there, but you aren’t able to reach them in time because your team doesn’t have the ability to screen out duds.
Recruiting the help of a top-rated solar marketing agency can ensure that you’re only working with leads that have been fully screened for quality. You’ll end up with bookings that are only for real, serious clients, clearing up your schedule to fit in plenty of profitable meetings.
Grid Freedom is known for being a lead generator with excellent screening. An intensive process of validating lead information and talking with them via personal phone calls allows us to curate the leads that are best poised to meet with contractors and make a deal.