The four ad types that actually work for solar

▶ 0:00This is the no-go zone when it comes to advertising solar and renewable products on Facebook and to be honest, most other platforms as well. So I've done a little rough diagram and we've got four quadrants that essentially are the foundations or cornerstones to a successful advert. Okay, so first one, education and expertise. This is probably our most common one because to be honest, I think it's the one that we do best and it generates quite often the best quality leads as well. These are typically in-store overviews.

▶ 0:28They may go into quite a lot of detail on the hardware that's been installed, anything that the installer in particular has done to showcase their expertise. You know, maybe it's a particular cable run, maybe it's a trench they dug, maybe it's the neatness of the conduit, things like that that we can really show and go into detail.

▶ 0:43The next kind of subsection is engagement. This often goes hand in hand with kind of skit style, with being a bit funny around things and these are typically shorter ads that are just meant to just grab that attention. It can kind of go into the kind of the virality category, but we're not really looking to send an ad viral. I'm not talking about hundreds of thousands of views.

▶ 1:04I'm just talking about something that could be shared, could strike basically a bit of a laugh and really connect with your personality when you get on camera. Then you've got offer and hard call to action. Okay, of course, you want to make sure there's a call to action in every single one of your adverts, but these are more so, it strips back very, very hard on just someone taking action and claiming some sort of offer.

▶ 1:26Okay, these can be video, but typically they're more static. In fact, that's me and the bunny there up on the roof and with the panels there, which is quite a fun one. But the important thing here is you don't have to put a price on these for these to work. You can just explicitly say, you know, get a quote or inquire, that kind of thing.

▶ 1:46Then you've got social proof. These are super important for the retargeting audience, right? So these typically will actually get you, if it's just an ad that's very focused on social proof, it will get you a higher cost per lead on the front end in the cold audience. But when you're looking at retargeting people and actually ensuring that people go from lead all the way through to sale, these are super powerful.

▶ 2:08Okay. And vice versa. It's really interesting, actually. So the social proof ones, kind of weaker on the front end, but really strong on the back end to actually push people through the sales cycle. The offer ones, strong on the front end, but pretty weak on the back end. The more advanced kind of strategy is you try and nail multiple of these, right?

▶ 2:29So a really easy example would be the education and expertise and the social proof. So you could do an install overview, but actually intertwine footage of you speaking with the customer, walking them around the property, and then you've nailed these two across here. Chris Sadler from Kimball Solar does a really good job of bringing some entertainment and some kind of humor into his install overviews.

▶ 2:51So the vast majority of it will be detail on the work that was done and the kit that was installed, but he will stop and pause and kind of bring in some light humor throughout the ad, which obviously increases that engagement factor. So one example I can think of is he was talking about how the battery was full by about 10, 11 a.m., and he goes, yes, the battery's full, so that's lots of solar power, and it's a really nice moment that just adds some personality to the ad.

▶ 3:20But essentially, you just don't want to fall into the pitfall of not nailing any one of these. So when we're making our ad briefs, when we're preparing for different shoots, we'll ensure that the ads we're creating hit at least one of these very hard, and that's kind of a safety measure to ensure that they're actually set up to succeed.

▶ 3:40If you're watching an ad that you've created or that your marketing provider has created and you can't easily see one of these four in action, then it's pretty likely they've missed the mark. So if you want someone to take this whole process off your hands, someone that's got this expertise and will ensure that you're hitting one of these four quadrants with all of your ads, then you should drop me a message, book an appointment, and we'll chat and see how we can help you.