With only seven weeks left until the end of the year, it's the perfect time to kick start an end of year campaign to finish off the year with a bang. Solar dealers are running a variety of campaigns at the moment, preparing the most profitable option for the holiday season right now. 

What type of campaign can I run?

The current state of the market is showing many solar dealers trying different ways to engage with their customers. Here are some examples of the campaigns we're running for Australian dealers:

• Considering Solar Guide - LG branded
  • targeting people with a new interest in solar/renewable energy
• Commercial Solar Guide - LG branded
  • targeting small, medium and large businesses 
• Solar Battery Storage
  
  • targeting existing solar systems as an add on
  • targeting new installations as a package
• Solar Repairs and Maintenance
  • targeting existing customers who have had systems for 12 months or more
  • targeting all homeowners searching for solar repairs or maintenance 
• Off Grid Guide
  • targeting people with a new interest in off grid living.

Once you decide on your campaign, here's how to plan it out over the next 7 weeks. 

7 Week Holiday Campaign Plan

Week 1: Plan Campaign

It should all start with a well thought out plan. Determine the goals of your campaign and develop a strategy to meet those goals.  It should cover things like:

• Campaign focus 
• Goals
• Research
• Target Audience
• Ad platforms
• Creative
• Messaging
• Measurement of success
• Timeline
• Budget

Week 2: Implement Campaign

Once the brief and plan is clear,  preparation of required marketing assets starts.  Ad copy, landing pages, thank you pages,  graphic design, forms and email workflows, CRM set up and tracking.

Week 3: Launch Campaign

After the campaign has been quality checked and tested, it's time to launch.  Leads are captured in the CRM and you are able to track the source of those leads to determine ROI.

Week 4-5: Optimise Campaign

As the leads start to flow in, you can start analysing the results to determine:

• quality of the lead
• tageting locations
• effectiveness of different ad messaging
• tracking is captured correctly

in order to optimise the campaign for best performance.

Week 6: Set to Run Campaign Over the Holiday Period

Once you know everything is in place and working well, you can feel comfortable to set and forget during the holiday break.

Over the years we've had a lot of dealers ask whether it's best to switch off campaigns over the holiday season. Here's out top three reasons why we think you should keep your campaigns running:

• Your customers are in 'relax' mode.  This is the perfect time for them to be 'searching' and when they do, they'll find you.  If you're not there to be found, you can bet your life your competitor will snap them up.
• Similarly, if your competitor decides to pause ads over this period, then your business is more likely to show up in searches!
• Instead of directing people to phone you, you've set up a form with email workflow. Therefore,  once your lead fills in the form, they receive a thank you message with a note to say that you're back in the office in January and will follow up then. The automated sequence could send the following emails:
  • Thanks for filling in the form. We're back on Monday xx Jan. In the meantime, learn more about the benefits of solar in this recent blog post.
  • 2 days later: another email is sent. if you are considering solar for your home, check out these frequently asked questions.
  • 2 days later: here are some testimonials about our service. We are looking forward to talking to you once we get back from holidays!

The value of these kinds of emails is that they keep your lead warm until you can get back to them.

Week 7: Office Preparation While Campaign is Running

It's likely to be a crazy time during that last week before the break. You'll probably have installers going on leave and reduced office staff. Here is a handy checklist to help keep that last week organised:

• Make sure your auto-respond Out Of Office Message is on your email
• Change the voicemail message on your business phone and mobile/s
• Pin a notice to the top of your Facebook page
• Add a message, pop up or slide-in to your website
• If relevant, put a notice on your shop door
• For Google Ads - considering removing Call Extensions if you expect an influx of calls that will be too hard to manage when you return
• For Google Ads - consider updating the Call To Action on your ad messaging. "Contact us for 2022 quotes" with the URL taking them to a form.
  
  

Learn more: click here to review the key items that make a successful digital marketing campaign for solar dealers and installers

Looking to run a campaign before you break for the holidays?

Talk to us about our range of campaigns that we implement for solar dealers around the country.

To find out if XEN Solar is a good fit for your upcoming campaign please book a discovery call here or call Kylie on 0409 153 635.