With every renewables marketing agency offering video content, how can you stand out? And can you do it yourself? That’s what we’re going to cover in today’s video.

We’re one of the agencies that provides this service. We go out and shoot with clients. Quite often I’ll go and direct the shoot, and sometimes if I’m not on a shoot, Joe will go and direct with the client—which he actually enjoys, being a little Steven Spielberg for the day.

But can you do this yourself? Is it possible? Can you do it on your own, with a small team, or have someone from your installation team hold the phone for you? The answer is most definitely yes. And there are some key pointers I want to run through to get you on the right track and help you get your first video ad out into the wild.

At its most basic level, this doesn’t have to be that hard. You can very easily record a video that gets results, builds traction, generates demand, and even helps fund the next step—maybe working with a specialist agency to take it up another level.

First: do you need expensive kit to make a video that looks decent? Absolutely not. I’m shooting this video right now on my iPhone 15 Pro. It’s not even the newest model. You just need a modern, high-quality phone that can ideally shoot in 4K resolution.

If you’re shooting B-roll—secondary shots that aren’t the main talking-to-camera footage—then ideally you want the phone to shoot at 50 or 60 frames per second. If you want the exact technical settings we use, drop a comment or send me a DM and I can share them. When we first started, we couldn’t afford professional videography, and we didn’t want to push that cost onto clients, so we shot on an iPhone—and we got fantastic results.

That covers the gear question. Now, there are a couple of other things you’ll want.

You’ll need a wireless microphone. People will tolerate lower-quality video, but they will not tolerate low-quality audio. If the audio is crackly or hard to hear—especially on an in-progress installation site with lots of background noise—people will switch off. A cheap wireless mic will make you the focal point of the video and reduce background noise. I’d put more emphasis on audio quality than video quality.

The final optional gear item is a drone. It gives you a lot more versatility. If you buy one that weighs under 250 grams, you typically won’t need a special licence to fly it, and it’s quite easy to learn—like playing a little video game with a controller. Drone shots let you capture angles you can’t from ground level and highlight details like cable routes, trenches, and other technical elements. With a drone and some simple animations, that footage can look fantastic and really demonstrate expertise.

So that’s the gear. What about the content?

When we first started, we went through a very extensive process of scripting every single line for video ads. It was time-intensive, and we were leaning into quantity over quality by trying to harvest as many scripted shots as possible. What we found was that when installers got on site—even with a week or two to practise—they would stumble over the script. It became hard to get a natural, free-flowing performance.

Then we had a realisation. We asked someone to walk us through a system without cameras rolling, and suddenly they were talking naturally—about battery throughput, the app, what the homeowner loved, specific install details, cable work, and even aesthetic decisions like changing conduit colour to match different wall finishes. And we realised: all we needed were prompting questions to guide a cohesive walkthrough from start to finish.

So here’s what I’d recommend, especially if it’s your first time filming or you’re using a phone. Have someone hold the phone and follow you around an installation site while you explain the key components that were installed, why the customer chose them, and most importantly—what it’s going to do for the customer.

That “benefit” doesn’t have to be just savings. It could be that the main goal was to keep the property looking tidy and premium. That absolutely counts as a benefit. And for higher-end residential installs—£15,000-plus systems, and we have clients averaging close to £20,000 per residential install—this type of detail is exactly what those customers care about. They don’t want a £5,000 system on a £5 million house. They want a system that lasts, looks right, and is installed to the same standard as the rest of the workmanship around their home.

So turn up on site, get the phone out, and walk someone through it as if you had a prospect with you—like you’d invited a potential customer to come and see the installation. Speak in the same way you normally would. Be conversational. Use the same phrases and tone you use with customers. Don’t suddenly try to become a news presenter, or force yourself into being “Jack the lad” who’s super funny and charismatic. Just be yourself.

If you already have a successful solar business and you’ve sold systems before, then whatever you said and however you said it already works. So why change when you get on video? You don’t need to.

Now, what about running the ads?

In 2025, you’re lucky because Meta does a lot of the targeting for you. It will figure out who to show the ads to based on age, prior engagement, content behaviour, and lots of other data signals.

You could absolutely take one of these videos, put it into an ad account, allocate some budget, and see what happens. I’d be fairly confident you’d get some initial results.

But a safer option—especially if it’s your first time—is to record a few videos from different sites, post them organically first, and see what gets the most reach and engagement. Then analyse what made the best one perform. Was it a bigger system? A more typical system? Something you said at the start? Or maybe you said nothing at the start and jumped straight into the walkthrough? That gives you insight into what will likely work well when you put money behind it.

There’s loads more I could cover—hooks, calls to action, lead conversion, and so on. But when you go that deep, that’s often the point where you start thinking it might be better to work with a specialist. Because learning everything needed to go from 80% to 100% and beyond takes a lot of time, and you might be better off using that time to sell the solar systems you’re already selling rather than becoming a marketing expert.

That’s where we come in. We’d take you from iPhone-level ads—where you’ve got some early results and a few installs—and help you scale that into a core, reliable deal-acquisition channel by increasing budget and improving the entire creative and funnel system.

Hopefully that was useful, because we get a lot of questions like, “The shoot is expensive,” or “I’m nervous, I’ve never been on camera, and I don’t know how I’ll react with a big film camera in my face.” The best way to overcome that is to get ahead of it and do it yourself with a phone. It takes the pressure off, and you’ll probably get some really good results too.

That’s all for this evening. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.