Executive Summary
Sun-Wind Solutions, LLC is a residential and commercial solar panel installation company serving the state of Connecticut. Though they were experts in their field and were known for their excellent service, potential customers were unable to discover them as their website wasn’t showing up prominently in Google Search Results. After partnering with Improve & Grow, they saw a tremendous increase in qualified traffic and new solar installation leads. As a result, they won more solar installation projects and increased their revenue significantly over the time that we worked together.
The Challenge
While Sun-Wind Solutions were known for their expertise and no-nonsense service, most of their business was coming from word-of-mouth referrals and they knew they were missing opportunities to reach new customers. For example, if someone in the area was interested in solar panel installation and searched for an installer, they weren’t showing up in the Google Search Results even in their own immediate locality, let alone their broader service area. While they were engaging in some advertising and marketing efforts, that work was not resulting in enough new leads to create a positive return on investment.
The Solution
When a mutual colleague heard of the challenge Sun-Wind Solutions was facing, they referred them to Improve & Grow for an assessment of their website and advertising efforts. After talking through the issues they were facing, we were able to uncover immediate opportunities to reduce ad spend waste and improve their website.
Improve & Grow began the partnership with Sun-Wind Solutions by helping them improve their Google search ad campaigns. They had been running Google ad campaigns on their own prior to working with us, but the campaigns weren’t producing good results. We helped them improve their keyword targeting, fine-tune their location settings and create ads that were tailored to each keyword group. These changes lead to improved performance, increased leads and more importantly, new solar installation projects for the company.
After demonstrating results thru the improved ad campaigns, we proposed adding search engine optimization as a strategy to increase traffic with a higher long-term return on investment. This involved redesigning their website to address technical issues that were affecting their search visibility, enhancing their existing website content, and helping establish a broader presence online by setting up profiles on social media, registering their company with business directories, partnering with industry associations, and distributing their blog content on relevant niche websites.
About two years into the relationship, we learned that Sun-Wind Solutions had a desire to increase their focus on the commercial solar segment, whereas previously that had been focused more on the residential market. Understanding the varying needs of the commercial space, we helped Sun-Wind Solutions completely rebrand their digital presence to better position themselves for the commercial market, including creating a new logo and redesigning their website. We also adapted all other aspects of their digital marketing presence and narrowed their marketing campaigns to focus primarily on the commercial market. While these changes lead to less overall website traffic, they experienced a higher concentration of traffic from their narrowed target audience, resulting in a higher number of commercial solar project leads.
As part of our efforts to increase local awareness, we initiated a digital PR effort that involved collaborating with a number of local businesses to promote sustainability efforts. The product of this effort was a blog article and infographic centered on “Making Every Day Earth Day”. We were able to use these assets to obtain links and social shares from more than 18 area businesses, in addition to multiple industry outlets and content sharing sites.
The Results
In the year prior to working with Improve & Grow, Sun-Wind Solutions received a total of 24 solar leads from their website. Within the first 12 months of our working together, that number grew 158% to 62 leads. Leads continued to increase each year aby by the fifth year of our partnership, they received 243 leads, a 913% increase over that first year. The increase in lead volume was the result of a 37% increase in annual website traffic and a 637% increase in website conversion rates.
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