Solar software company conquers the European market with new positioning and branding

The Netherlands has the most solar panels per capita in Europe. And that is badly needed in the energy transition. Solar panels are becoming cheaper but a long waiting time at the installer is currently the bottleneck for growth and acceleration. Solar Monkey is the Dutch market leader in software that makes installing solar panels faster and more efficient. Thanks to Solar Monkey, the installers are on the roof, and not wasting hours writing quotations or drawing up installation plans.

Solar Monkey started in 2015 as a start-up and has the ambition to become the market leader in Europe. The knowledge and experience in the Netherlands forms a solid basis for presenting Solar Monkey abroad as a premium brand. And so Norday helped Solar Monkey to profile itself with a new positioning, branding, design system and website that underlines what the brand excels at: accessibility and user friendliness.

But that doesn’t mean that Solar Monkey can repeat the lessons learned in the Netherlands in exactly the same way in other countries. In the Netherlands, solar energy grew by 46% in 2022, which is a lot faster than in most other European countries. The Dutch market is mature, and the Dutch are used to digital products. But not all countries have the same tech acceptance. Tuning to the different markets requires flexibility in the strategy, in which we’ve had to come up with a suitable story for each market. In line with the customer experience and embedded in a decisive sales strategy.

When positioning an accessible software brand, you might expect a white website with a safe font and a smiling customer service representative. But we chose not to. We want to firmly position Solar Monkey as an established and premium B2B brand, with a brand strategy that opens up new European markets. We have therefore opted for a distinct style that allows them to distinguish themselves from competitors in the SaaS (software as a service) field, without losing the characteristic accessibility.

We developed an iconic ambitious visual style. You can of course talk about your features and convenience, but everyone already does that already. Solar Monkey promises ‘growth’ and ‘going forward together’ to their B2B target group, and that movement is reflected in the visual style. With an abstract variant of the solar panel as a base. The style is flexible and sustainable: you can create an infinite number of new shapes with it and therefore continue to produce new communications.

We reinforce the accessible appearance through an asymmetrical font, illustrations and honest photography. Not photos of men in immaculate clothing with a radiant smile and arms folded, but of real professionals who are at work on the roof.