Often called pay-per-click (PPC) ads, these ads are known to bring in potential traffic, eg. customers, who are 50 percent more likely to convert compared to organic traffic. Yet, solar companies such as yours have choices, including:
- Paid search ads: These appear in search engine results with the ‘ad’ tag to denote it’s an ad and not an organic result.
- Display ads: Typically, these ads have an image with a small amount of text. They appear on a search engine partner website.
- Social media ads: A popular type of paid advertising that may appear in social media feeds across different networks.
Remarketing ads: These ads utilize a tracking pixel to show ads to someone who previously visited and interacted with your website as they browse online.
1. Set Goals
It doesn’t matter if your company offers commercial solar installation or residential solar services. Every paid ads campaign needs goals to work toward, or what you want to achieve through the campaign. These goals could be increased brand recognition, revenue growth, or something else entirely.
2. Choose Up to 3 Channels
Your goals should be a factor in what channels you choose, but ultimately, make sure you’re using channels your target audience already is. Two common channels are Google AdWords, a type of paid search ad, and social media ads.
3. Perform Keyword Research
This step is a huge driver of any digital ad campaign, possibly more than determining your goals. Without keyword and phrase research, you won’t know the terms or phrases your target audiences are using. While they’re searching for ‘residential solar installation’, your ads may target ‘commercial solar services’, leading to a poor campaign with dour results.
4. Combine Other Parts of Your Digital Marketing
The most effective campaigns don’t reinvent the wheel but instead, use high-performing elements of existing marketing efforts. It could be using a highly trafficked blog as a gated download in an ad. Leverage what you already have and optimize as needed.
5. Sporadically Audit Your Campaigns
Audits give you the feedback needed to decide whether to keep a channel campaign going or divert the budget to a higher-performing one. Performance can be affected by the ad’s messaging, targeted audience, and/or the channel itself. Some channels aren’t nearly as effective for certain companies, such as solar, as others.
How You’ll Measure the Success of Your Paid Ads for Solar
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
This is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions on an ad or any other call-to-action. The higher the rate, the more prospects are moving through each stage of the customer journey.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
This metric provides a good look at your return on investment as it’s the amount spent on advertising divided by how many customers the ad generated. The CPA can be further broken down by campaign, source, and so on.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
Similar to CPA, the cost per lead is the advertising spend divided by generated leads. It too can be segmented into campaign and source to give you a more granular view of ROI.
Cost Per Click
It’s the advertising amount spent divided by the number of clicks on the ad, ad set, or ad campaign. The cost per click is a slightly controversial metric. Some believe it’s substantial for overall ROI and others believe it’s a vanity metric.
Cost Per 1,000 Impressions
It’s the cost of reaching a million people. When you’re running solar company ads online to build or expand brand awareness, it’s a good metric to use.
Let the AJC Group Help Drive Success to Your Ads For Solar Power
Whether it’s your first paid ad campaign or current campaigns that need a kickstart, the AJC Group is here to help! We know what it takes to create a high-performing sales team, backed by effective digital advertising.
To kickstart your paid solar ads, contact AJC Group today to schedule a meeting!