Let's TalkLet's TalkFacebook built the solar lead industry, and taught homeowners to distrust it. Solar ads that work now are the opposite of the ones they learned to ignore: honest numbers, real installs and screening before the appointment.
We review your Meta account and forms and trace last quarter's leads to sits, signed contracts and installs, showing how many failed on ownership, roof, usage or credit and what those failures cost. Then we show you which campaigns produced installed systems rather than appointments.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
Years of 'free solar', implied government programmes and too-good-to-be-true savings figures have trained homeowners to scroll past anything that looks like a solar ad. The careful, creditworthy homeowner who would actually go ahead is the most sceptical of all - and the standard ad is written for the least careful.
Renters, shaded or ageing roofs, low usage and failed credit checks make up a large share of unscreened solar leads. Meta's instant forms make them cheap to collect and expensive to work: every one that reaches an appointment costs a consultant's time before anyone discovers it could never proceed.
Solar is often sold on monthly payments, and ads that lead with '$0 down' or loan terms can fall under Meta's financial products and services special ad category - with no age targeting, a minimum 15-mile radius and limited detailed targeting - or be rejected outright. Many installers never work out why their targeting disappeared.
Left to its default goal, Meta finds people who fill in forms, and in solar those are disproportionately the people who fill in every form. Unless installs and signed contracts are sent back from the CRM, the system keeps finding more of the wrong homeowners, faster.
Business outcomes rather than dashboard metrics. None of these is a guaranteed number - where we do guarantee something, it is written into the offer above.
The real deliverables, not a list written to make a proposal look thicker.
Not the general agency pitch. The reasons that only apply to this kind of business.
The buyer worth having has been pitched before and believes none of it. We write ads that sound nothing like the solar ads they ignore: real installs on local roofs, savings shown with the assumptions beside them, no 'free', no implied government scheme. Fewer people click, and the people who do are the ones who go ahead.
Ownership, roof, shading and usage decide most solar deals, and all four can be asked politely before an appointment is booked. We build them into the form and the first reply, so consultants spend their days with households that can proceed - and so Meta stops being rewarded for finding the ones that cannot.
Meta can only optimise toward what it is told. We connect your CRM through Conversions API for CRM and send back sits, signed contracts and installs, so delivery shifts from people who fill in forms to people who become customers. It is the single biggest lever on solar lead quality, and most installers have never set it up.
Every lead followed to a sit, a contract or a failure reason.
Savings and incentives stated with assumptions and dates, nothing a sceptic would doubt.
Ownership, roof, shading and usage, asked politely.
Sits, contracts and installs sent back to Meta.
Instant replies, and education content for homeowners still deciding.
Budget moved to the campaigns producing installed systems.
The parts of this that come from having run it in this industry before rather than from running it well in general.
A short clip of a finished system on a house the viewer might recognise, with the homeowner speaking where they have agreed to, is more believable than any savings graphic. It answers the sceptic's first question - is this real? - before they have asked it.
A savings figure with its assumptions beside it - usage, rates, system size - can be checked, and a claim that can be checked is trusted. It also protects you when utility rates or incentives change: you update an assumption instead of retracting a promise.
Homeowners worried about outages are a different audience from those chasing savings, and battery-led campaigns speak to them directly. Separating the two keeps creative relevant and lets you see which message produces installs in your market.
Solar is decided over weeks. Retargeting site visitors and form-starters with plain explanations - how net metering works where they live, what ownership options mean - keeps your company the trusted source while they compare.
None of our case studies is a solar company. The nearest is a luxury real estate engagement where we built a Meta funnel that qualified every enquiry before a call was booked - 312 booked calls from 1,900+ qualified leads at $41 each, a 19x return across the pipeline, with cost per qualified lead cut by more than half. Screening before anyone's time is spent is exactly what solar Meta campaigns need.
Read the full case studyThey can, but not the way they used to. Homeowners have learned to ignore 'free solar' style ads, and cheap unscreened leads fail at the site survey. Ads with honest claims and real local installs, forms that screen ownership, roof and usage, and CRM data sent back to Meta still produce installs.
Usually because nothing screens them. Renters, unsuitable roofs, low usage and failed credit account for a large share of solar enquiries. Ask about ownership, roof age and condition, shading and usage in the form, and send installs back to Meta so it learns who actually proceeds.
Carefully. Since January 2025, US ads for financial products and services must run under a Meta special ad category with no age targeting, a minimum 15-mile radius and limited detailed targeting, and an ad promoting a financing offer can fall under it. We usually keep finance terms on the landing page.
A way to send later-stage outcomes - sits, signed contracts, installs - from your CRM back to Meta. Meta's conversion leads goal uses that data to optimise toward people likely to become customers, not just people likely to fill in a form. For solar, it is often the biggest lead quality improvement available.
Only accurately, with a date and a source, and never implying a government programme that does not exist. Incentives change and vary by location; ads built around a specific programme go out of date and damage trust when they do.
Real systems on local houses, short clips of your installers at work, and customers speaking where they have agreed to. Stock images of panels and sunny skies look like every other solar ad and are scrolled past.
In cost per install, with cost per sit and per signed contract alongside. Cost per lead is the number that makes bad solar campaigns look good; it rewards exactly the unscreened volume that wastes consultants' time and fills the pipeline with deals that cancel.
Written for owners weighing this up, whether or not they work with us.
This is one part of a bigger service. Here is the whole of it, and the closest neighbours.
No pitch deck, no discovery call you have to sit through. Tell us the situation and we will tell you whether we can help.