In August and September of this year, full-page ads appeared in my town's local newspaper, the Los Altos Town Crier. "Brilliant!" I thought, after glancing through the ad. The headline was targeted specifically at Los Altos and Los Altos Hills residents and contained a simple call to action: "Act Now and Save 15-20% on a Solar Power System." It further stated that the "Promotion Ends September 28^th." The ad contained an invitation to attend a "workshop" at the local community center and requested that attendees register online at the SolarCity website. Further down the page, the ad offered readers a free site evaluation and gave a toll-free number. So what's so brilliant about that? Well, it turns out that in order to achieve the discount, "the aggregate total of resident purchases of solar systems through 9/28/07" must exceed 175kW per city. This is viral marketing at its best. It's in the buyer’s best interest to make sure that their friends and neighbors buy a solar system, too. Then everyone benefits. Solar City calls this its "Community Solar Program." Apparently, this promotion has been quite successful. So far the company has met its installation targets in 9 of the 12 "solar cities" listed on its website and is currently rolling the program out to three additional cities. There are several things about the program that make it effective and worthy of our marketing admiration. Including even a few of these key elements in a marketing program can supercharge it. The program:

1. creates an impending event, a clear deadline for purchasing
2. stimulates viral marketing by appealing to the purchaser’s own self-interest
3. could potentially pre-empt competitors (if SolarCity essentially gathers all prospects into a buying group)
4. generates local reference accounts that are often literally just down the street
5. employs three different ways to directly capture prospect names (workshop attendance, workshop registration and calling for free site evaluation)
6. results in an impressive list of community testimonials and highlighted “solar champions.”

Not only is this marketing program seemingly quite effective, it also has to be pretty efficient for the company. When the bright green van with the SolarCity logo emblazoned on the side cruises through the neighborhood, it’s reaching exactly the right eyeballs. In addition, there may be operational efficiencies associated with installations that are geographically clumped together. And the company recently hired one of its customers and most ardent “solar champions,” Bruce Karney, to fulfill the role of Community Programs Marketing Manager. There’s hiring efficiency for you!

Everybody wins. The company wins customers. Customers win discounts. The community wins a small sense of pride. The environment wins a gentler carbon footprint.

If you know of other cleantech marketing innovations – whether in the business-to-consumer or business-to-business space, send your stories our way.

Tags: clean technology, go to market strategy, Green Marketing, green opportunities

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