Ask an Expert: Marketing a Solar Business from the Inside with Justine Lee

Series: Ask an Expert Expert: Justine Lee — Marketing Director, Union Power Energy LinkedIn: Justine Lee Commentary by: Anthony Lopes, Lopes Advisory

Introduction

The first three Field Notes in this series brought in marketing and RevOps experts — people who look at solar from the outside, bringing frameworks and diagnostics from adjacent industries. This one is different.

Justine Lee is the Marketing Director at Union Power Energy, one of South Africa's established solar installation businesses. She does this work for a living. Not as a consultant. Not as an agency. From the inside, with skin in the game, every day.

Her answers read like someone who has tested the theories and kept only what works. That makes this Field Note a useful counterweight to the ones that came before it — and, in places, a direct challenge to some of the playbook assumptions I make with clients. I've tried to engage honestly with both sides in my commentary.

About Justine

I'm the Marketing Director at Union Power Energy. I was approached by Mark Gander, the CEO, in July 2023 to join the business. At the time I was working in the FMCG industry heading up an energy drinks portfolio, so moving to the solar industry was a big jump. I think that is what appealed to me — the opportunity to learn about a new, exciting, growing industry and look for innovative ways I could add value and bring Union Power Energy to the forefront of consumers' and suppliers' minds.

Anthony's Commentary

The FMCG-to-solar leap is interesting. Energy drinks is one of the most hyper-competitive consumer categories in South Africa, where differentiation is almost impossible at the product level and brand work has to carry everything. Bringing that sensibility into a solar business — where most competitors are engineers who see marketing as an expense — is a genuine advantage. It shows in the rest of Justine's answers.

Q: How has marketing a solar business changed over the years — what worked five years ago that doesn't work today?

Justine Lee: Initially there was a lot of hype around solar, with bikes zooting around with branding, odd street pole adverts, and occasional radio ads plugging businesses. Regardless of all these efforts and an initial growth in business, it seems all those expenses did not result in sustainable growth.

I don't believe the solar industry thrives on the classical marketing approach. TV, radio, and outdoor are costly mediums with little return in this game. So that's something I have steered clear of.

The successful tactics we have deployed are not elaborate or complicated. They are authentic and speak directly to who we are and what we do. Social media has been our firm favourite channel — we ensure we're constantly posting about what we're busy with and upcoming projects we're excited about. This keeps us relevant and top of mind.

Anthony's Commentary

"Authentic and speaks directly to who we are" is doing a lot of work in that answer, and it's someting that resonates with me personally. What Justine is describing isn't the absence of strategy — it's a very specific strategic choice to invest in content that showcases real work rather than manufacture content that performs a branding function.

I'd add one nuance for installers reading this. The reason broadcast media rarely works for solar isn't just cost. It's that solar is a considered purchase with a long decision cycle, and mass-reach media without behavioural follow-up is a leaky bucket. We're not selling pizza here people! Social media works for solar because it compounds over time— every project post becomes evergreen proof when a future prospect lands on your feed. That's a different mechanism from a radio ad, and it's why Justine's approach scales where the old playbook didn't. Bravo!

Q: Where do your best leads come from?

Justine Lee: Our greatest lead generation comes from our clients and suppliers. We receive great reviews and feedback on the installations we do, and those referrals have become one of our greatest sources of new business.

Clients love to deal with us. We have an incredible and capable team — from our strong sales force, to the efficient admin ladies in our office, our world-class installation teams, and of course the technical team. All this combined has led to us gaining an incredible reputation in the industry, leading to amazing leads and sales through word of mouth.

Anthony's Commentary

The supplier-as-referral-source point is one most installers overlook. Distributors and equipment suppliers see which installers do quality work because they see the warranty claims, the return rates, and the technical support calls. When they refer a customer, they're essentially vouching with their own credibility. For installers, being the name a supplier recommends first is a commercial position worth investing in — and it's earned through operational consistency, not marketing spend. This is something you cannot fake.

I'd add one small observation here. Referrals are the highest-quality lead source in any industry, but they're also the slowest to scale and the hardest to forecast. For a business like Union Power with 15+ years of installed base, the referral engine compounds beautifully. For a newer installer or one entering a new market, the mathematics are less forgiving — you need to manufacture trust at speed, which usually requires a more deliberate lead generation layer running alongside the word-of-mouth engine. Both can be true: referrals are the best leads, and most growing installers can't rely on them alone yet. It's like the problem young people experience when job hunting - experience gets the best interest from prospective employers, but what do you do if you don't have experience. I'm not suggesting fake it until you make it for solar (which would be HIGHLY irresponsible) but perhaps if you're a brand new installer you just need to be patient and put in the hours, like Union Power has.

Q: How do you think about brand building versus direct lead generation?

Justine Lee: It's always important to build your brand, grow its loyalty base, and increase market impact. However, ensuring we're top of the consideration list of our suppliers and consumers has been achieved more through relationships and showcasing our work than a typical lead generation campaign.

We have tried lead generation campaigns in the past — the conversions were low. There are just too many solar businesses out there vying for business through lead generation, which misses the human connection and trust factor.

Our brand investment is in our people, our equipment, and our branded fleet of vehicles, ensuring we deliver world-class installations every single time.

Anthony's Commentary

This is the most quietly radical answer in this entire Ask an Expert series, and it deserves thoughtful response.

Justine is describing a view of "brand investment" that most marketers don't talk about: the branded fleet, the uniformed installation team, the admin experience, the quality of the actual work. That's not brand in the advertising sense. That's brand in the real, tangible operational sense — the thousand daily decisions that create the reputation that eventually does the selling for you.

My thought here: I think what Justine is describing isn't "brand instead of lead gen" so much as "brand that makes lead gen unnecessary at Union Power's stage of maturity." For installers who haven't yet built that reputation, structured lead generation may be the option that gets them to the point where Justine's approach becomes possible. But she's right that too many solar businesses never graduate from pure lead gen to anything more substantial — and pay for it later, when CPLs rise and the competitive pressure intensifies. Building the operational brand she's describing is the long game that makes a business fundamentally more valuable. And that takes time, patience, sweat, blood and tears. But worth it in the end.

Q: What's the relationship like between marketing and sales in your business?

Justine Lee: Unlike many companies where sales and marketing work in silos, at UPE we work closely together to ensure the mutual end goal is achieved.

Of course we bump heads from time to time, but for the most part we have good cohesion between the two disciplines. Marketing will often go to client pitch meetings and site surveys, ensuring we're always on the same page. This helps effectively close the deal and market the success of each project.

Anthony's Commentary

Marketing going on site surveys is genuinely unusual and genuinely valuable. It solves the problem Natasha de Koning and Rayan Ramharuk both identified in their Field Notes — marketing and sales operating with different definitions of a good lead, reporting different versions of the truth, and generating friction that the customer eventually feels.

When the marketing director has stood on a roof with the sales rep and the client, the content that comes out of that business is inevitably better — more specific, more credible, more aligned to what actually closes deals. It also means marketing's definition of a "qualified lead" is shaped by the same reality the sales team lives in. Most solar businesses would benefit from even a scaled-down version of this — marketing attending a handful of site visits per quarter would change how they brief campaigns. Authenticity wins every single time.

Q: How do you move a homeowner or business from "maybe one day" to "let's do this now"?

Justine Lee: This is where the great relationship with our suppliers comes in. We're always able to lean on them for product info or guidance at any point. Knowing your product and understanding its strengths and limitations is essential to any selling story.

Through thorough site visits and client meetings, we first try to understand the client's "pain," so we can put together a bespoke solution addressing their core issues and needs.

Being able to simply and effectively communicate the why behind the proposal, in consumer-friendly language, is a key ingredient to our success. We clearly show clients how our system will address their issues while illustrating the long-term financial savings it will provide.

There are occasions when we invite an SME from the relevant supplier to join us in pitch meetings, ensuring no stone is left unturned with the prospective client.

Anthony's Commentary

The phrase "consumer-friendly language" deserves its own poster in every solar business. The industry is saturated with jargon — kWp, inverter topology, string versus microinverter, degradation curves — and installers who can't translate that into what a homeowner or business owner actually cares about (the bill, the reliability, the payback period) lose deals to competitors who can. Put yourself in your client's shoes, always.

Justine's point about bringing a supplier SME into the pitch is also smart for reasons that go beyond technical credibility. It signals to the client that you're not a lone operator pulling specs off a website — you have access to the actual people who engineer the equipment. That's a trust accelerator that costs nothing and closes more deals than another brochure ever will.

Q: Solar is a trust-heavy purchase. How do you build trust before the sales team picks up the phone?

Justine Lee: Beyond our industry reputation and the referrals that stem from it, we pride ourselves on only using Tier 1 products. Through our relationships with suppliers, we're often able to purchase these at great pricing, passing a lot of those savings on to the end user.

We actively promote our conscious business decision to only deal with the top suppliers offering superior industry equipment, with the best guarantees and warranties.

We talk to the fears of consumers — we are all consumers, so we truly understand the huge amount of trust that is placed in an EPC when awarded a job.

Case studies are a great way to ease consumers' minds and give them confidence in the work we do. Nothing speaks louder and truer than facts and figures, so we're always excited to share our success stories with future clients.

Anthony's Commentary

"We talk to the fears of consumers" is the line that separates marketers who are actually doing the work from those who are producing content. A homeowner investing in solar is not thinking about kWh yield. They're thinking what if this breaks in year four and the installer has disappeared? They're thinking what if the salesperson is lying about the savings? They're thinking what if I'm the one who gets ripped off?

Trust-building marketing in solar isn't about how great you are. It's about how openly you address those fears. Tier 1 product commitments, named warranties, visible case studies with real figures, photos of the actual team on the actual roof — these work because they preemptively answer the questions the buyer is already asking themselves. Most solar marketing doesn't. Most solar marketing tells the buyer things they don't care about and ignores the things they do. What Justine's approach does is establish a clear differentiator - Union Power actually cares.

Q: How has the competitive landscape changed — and how do you differentiate?

Justine Lee: This industry has seen the landscape change so many times, it's almost normal.

When load-shedding was at its peak, back in the good old "Stage 8" days, there was an onslaught of the "Solar Bakkie Brigades" — every fly-by-night chap trying to capitalise on Eskom's failures. This hurt the industry, as so many consumers opted for the "cheap" options, which far too often ended up being "nasty" too. It broke consumers' trust in the industry. We know this because we had countless calls from all over the country asking us to please fix these awful and often illegal installations.

Then COVID hit — another landscape-changing event. Here we saw many of the "bakkie brigade brothers" falling off the tracks, but not us. Again we held steadfast and serviced our clients — and often the clients of other companies that had since closed their doors — throughout the pandemic. This helped us further gain consumer trust and build our reputation.

Our strength comes from the years of service we've offered clients through all types of crazy scenarios. We've never faltered, we've never let clients down, we held fast and rose above it all, coming out even stronger at the end.

We are widely recognised for our incredible customer service, both pre and post installations. It's these small but critical elements that set us apart. This is what makes UPE different — and it's what makes what we say, and how we say it, so much more powerful.

Anthony's Commentary

The "Solar Bakkie Brigade" observation is sharp and important, and it's not unique to South Africa. Every solar market in the world has its version — installers who appear when demand spikes, cut corners to win on price, and disappear when the warranty claims arrive. They damage consumer trust across the entire industry, which means established installers spend years paying the reputational cost of other people's bad work.

The differentiation strategy Justine is describing — just staying standing across multiple market cycles — is underrated. In an industry where consumer trust is regularly broken by bad actors, simply being the business that's still there five or ten years later is a significant commercial asset. It's not a marketing campaign. It's operational durability that eventually becomes a marketing story. For younger installers, this is worth internalising early: the decisions you make in a boom about who you take on, what quality you hold to, and how you handle aftercare will determine whether you're still here when the cycle turns.

Q: What role do referrals and word-of-mouth play in your marketing?

Justine Lee: Referrals, reviews, and word-of-mouth are essentially the spine of how we grow. They aren't accidental — they're the natural output of doing the work well, consistently, over a long time. They compound when the reputation is earned.

Anthony's Commentary

Justine addressed this in earlier answers, so I'll add the operational lens. Referrals feel like they just happen, but the installers who generate them at scale do a few things deliberately: they ask for them at the moment of peak client satisfaction (usually right after commissioning), they make it easy to share (a branded thank-you pack, a simple review link), and they close the loop when a referral comes in so the referring client hears back.

Passive referrals are a gift. Active referral systems turn that gift into a channel. Both matter, and Union Power clearly does both well - through truly earned referrals from genuinely happy and satisfied clients.

Q: What are the biggest mistakes you see solar businesses make with their marketing?

Justine Lee:

• Not marketing at all, or not enough.
• Marketing, getting the deal, and never speaking to that client again.
• Talking over clients' heads — industry jargon and a lacking "portfolio of evidence" for clients to see what you've achieved.
• Not including sales in the marketing pitch, and vice versa.

Anthony's Commentary

Every item on this list is worth its own Field Note, but the second one — "marketing, getting the deal, and never speaking to that client again" — is the silent killer in the solar industry. The economics of solar depend heavily on referrals and on upsell (batteries, panel expansions, additional properties). An installer who stops communicating with a client the moment the invoice is paid is leaving the most valuable part of the customer lifecycle on the table.

This is where CRM-based nurture, as Rayan Ramharuk described in his Field Note, connects directly to Justine's world. A 12-month post-installation check-in, a performance report after the first full year, a reminder at the five-year warranty milestone — these cost almost nothing and compound into the referral engine Justine describes. Most installers don't do any of it.

Q: If you were advising a solar installer just starting to take marketing seriously, what would you tell them to focus on first?

Justine Lee: Start small and be strategic. Case studies work. People buy into you before they buy into the product, so gain trust. Great customer service matters. Referral campaigns work. Ensure you have a good website and stay active on social media. Market your team and their capabilities. Ensure your branding is strong and distinct. Work with sales to ensure an impactful, facts-and-figures-based selling story.

Anthony's Commentary

If a solar installer did only what's in this paragraph and did it consistently for two years, they'd outperform most of their competitors. It's not the answer people are looking for when they want a marketing hack — but it's the answer that matches how the industry actually rewards effort.

Every item on Justine's list is a compounding asset, not a campaign. Case studies accumulate. Referral relationships deepen. A consistent social media presence becomes a growing and authentic body of evidence. Your team, once marketed well, becomes recognisable in the industry. None of it feels like a breakthrough in any given month. All of it adds up to a business that can't be easily competed with five years later. That's sustainability in every sense of the word.

Closing Thoughts

Justine's Field Note is the operational counterweight to the first three in this series. Grant, Natasha, and Rayan gave us frameworks for measurement, attribution, and pipeline discipline — all of which matter, and all of which I stand behind. Justine reminds us that those frameworks sit on top of something more fundamental: a business that does excellent work, treats its people well, chooses its suppliers carefully and shows up consistently across market cycles.

No attribution model, however sophisticated, will save a business that ignores those foundations. And no tracking pixel will outperform the reputation earned by a decade of installations that didn't need fixing.

For solar installers reading this series, the integration is the lesson. Build the foundations Justine describes. Layer on the measurement discipline the marketing and RevOps experts describe. The businesses that do both are the ones that scale without losing themselves.

This Field Note is part of the Ask an Expert series on Lopes Advisory, where we speak to practitioners across digital marketing, RevOps, the solar industry, and growth strategy about the questions that matter most to scaling businesses.