Let's TalkLet's TalkAmong the most expensive clicks in local search, in an auction crowded with lead sellers who do not install anything.
Give us read access to the account and your last hundred leads with outcomes. We come back with what share of spend produced leads that failed on roof, ownership or credit, how much went to comparison and lead-seller traffic, and the three changes worth making first. Recorded walkthrough, no call required.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
Lead aggregators and comparison sites bid aggressively on solar terms because they resell the enquiry several times over, and they can pay more for a click than an installer can because their cost of delivery is an email. An installer bidding on the same generic terms is competing against a business model with better click economics and no crews.
Renters, unsuitable or ageing roofs, heavy shading, low consumption and failed credit account for a large share of solar enquiries. Nearly all of it is screenable before an appointment using questions a homeowner can answer, and nearly none of it is screened - so disqualification happens after the click, the appointment and the sales time have all been paid for.
Handed a conversion target of "form submitted", automated campaigns will find the cheapest form submissions available, which in solar means comparison shoppers and incentive-hunters. The reporting looks excellent and the install rate does not move. This is the most common way a solar account is quietly wasted at scale.
Between a signed contract and a working system sit permitting, interconnection and scheduling, and cancellations in that window are common. An account measured to appointments - or even to signatures - will confidently recommend scaling a source that cancels at twice the rate of another. Only installs settle the argument.
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.
Measuring through permitting and interconnection to a working system exposes cancellations and operational bottlenecks that are not the agency's doing and become the agency's number. We would rather own that than report appointments and let you discover the difference in your own accounts.
Adding roof, ownership and credit questions before an appointment cuts enquiry volume immediately and visibly. In a category where a large share of appointments were never going to proceed, that is the correct trade, and we show cost per install alongside so it reads as an improvement rather than a bad month.
Performance Max in a solar account with a form-fill conversion target will efficiently buy comparison shoppers forever. Setting the conversion definition, the value signal and the exclusions first is slower, less impressive on a launch call, and the difference between scaling and wasting.
Last hundred leads through to installed or not, with the failure reason for each. The pattern is usually obvious and unmeasured.
Ad copy, extensions and form logic that surface ownership and roof questions before a sales appointment is booked.
Comparison and quote-collection searches behave nothing like direct installer intent and should not share a budget with it.
Offline conversion import keyed to delivered systems so the algorithm optimises toward work rather than toward forms.
Performance Max and similar campaign types after the conversion target is honest, never before.
Budget follows what produces working systems, which is frequently not what produces the cheapest appointments.
The parts of this that come from having run it in this industry before rather than from running it well in general.
Age, material, shading and ownership are things a homeowner can answer and a satellite check can confirm. Surfacing them early removes a large share of dead appointments and gives you a legitimate reason to recommend a roof replacement first - a better conversation than a surveyor delivering bad news after the pitch.
Cash buyers search payback, loan buyers search monthly cost, lease buyers search risk and providers. Three different queries, three different arguments, and most solar accounts bid them as one and land them all on the same page.
Incentive-related queries attract very high volume and very low install rates, because much of it is research rather than purchase intent. They are worth serving with content rather than with expensive direct-response bids, and treating them as commercial intent is a reliable way to inflate a lead count while flattening the install number.
A homeowner who has had a sales visit will search your company name before signing, and what they find at that moment decides a five-figure purchase. Protecting that search and making sure it lands on reviews and evidence rather than on an aggregator's comparison page is cheap and frequently unprotected.
The closest engagement we can point at is a multi-state clinic network rather than a solar installer, and we will not dress it up. It is relevant for one specific reason: it reached 54,000+ leads with cost per lead down 57% and the lead quality held, which is the exact failure mode of solar paid search. Volume is not hard in this category. Volume that survives roof, credit and cancellation is.
Read the full case studyBecause lead aggregators bid against you with better click economics - they resell each enquiry several times and their cost of delivery is an email, while yours is a crew and a permit. You cannot win that auction on bid. You can win on intent the aggregators are not built to serve, and on qualification that makes each click worth more to you than to them.
Only after the conversion definition is honest and the exclusions are set. Given a form-fill target in a category full of comparison shoppers, it will efficiently buy comparison shoppers and the reporting will look excellent while installs do not move. With install values imported and aggregator-shaped traffic excluded it can work well - the order of operations is the whole answer.
Screen before the appointment, not during it. Ownership, roof age and material, shading and an indication of consumption are all answerable by the homeowner, and asking them in the form or through the ad experience removes a large share of the waste at the cheapest possible point. It reduces the lead count, which is the intended effect.
Installs, even though it is partly outside marketing's control and makes the numbers less flattering. Permitting and interconnection put months between signature and switch-on and cancellations there are common enough to change which sources are genuinely profitable. Reporting that stops at the signature will recommend scaling a channel that cancels at twice the rate of another.
Yes, and it is one of the most commonly missed splits. A cash buyer is evaluating payback, a loan buyer is comparing a monthly payment against a utility bill, and a lease buyer is assessing risk and who they will be dealing with in a decade. Those are three different searches and three different arguments, and a single page makes one of them.
Keywords and copy built around a specific programme need rewriting; keywords and copy built around consumption, rates and payback need a number updated. We write the second kind for that reason. Any specific figure should be confirmed by your own advisers before it goes live, and we will not put one in an ad that we cannot point at a source for.
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No pitch deck, no discovery call you have to sit through. Tell us the situation and we will tell you whether we can help.