Let's TalkLet's TalkHigh acquisition cost, a long gap between signed and installed, and a category carrying a trust problem most individual companies did not earn.
Give us your last hundred leads with the outcome of each, plus access to the ad account. We will come back with how many failed on roof, credit, ownership or location, what each of those cost you, and which campaigns produced the installs rather than the appointments. Recorded walkthrough, no call required.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
Renters, unsuitable or ageing roofs, heavy shading, insufficient consumption and failed credit checks together account for a substantial proportion of solar enquiries. Almost all of it is screenable in the funnel using questions a homeowner can answer, and almost none of it is screened - so the disqualification happens in a sales appointment that has already cost you.
Years of aggressive door-knocking, high-pressure telesales and companies that stopped answering after installation have left homeowners defensive before the first conversation. Marketing that matches the category's usual register - urgency, countdowns, savings claims that sound too round - confirms exactly what the buyer already suspects and loses the people most able to pay.
Incentive programmes, net metering arrangements and utility rate structures change on legislative and regulatory timelines, and when they do the economics of the pitch change with them. Companies still running last year's savings framing after a policy shift are making a case the numbers no longer support, and the correction usually arrives via a complaint rather than via a dashboard.
Permitting, utility interconnection, HOA approval and equipment scheduling put months between a signature and a working system, and cancellations in that window are common. Marketing measured to the signed contract looks healthy while the installed number tells a different story, and nobody investigates the difference because it is operations' problem.
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.
Most solar marketing reports appointments, some reports signed contracts, and almost none follows through to a working system - which is the only point at which anyone gets paid. Measuring that far exposes cancellations and operational bottlenecks that are not the agency's fault and become the agency's problem. We would rather own that than report a number that looks better than your business does.
Countdowns, manufactured deadlines and savings figures rounded to something memorable are the house style of the companies that made this category hard to sell in. We will not write them, because the homeowners best able to afford a system are the most defended against them, and matching that tone loses precisely the buyer you want.
Putting roof, ownership and credit questions into the funnel reduces lead volume immediately and visibly, and it is the right call in a trade where a large share of appointments were never going to proceed. We show cost per install alongside the drop so the improvement is legible rather than looking like a bad month.
Last hundred leads through to installed or not, with the reason for each failure. The disqualification pattern is usually obvious and unmeasured.
Ownership, roof, shading, consumption and credit indication asked before a sales appointment is booked rather than discovered in one.
Savings and payback framed so a change in incentives or utility rates means updating a number, not retracting an argument.
Cash, loan and lease buyers have different objections, different qualification and different economics. One funnel for all three underserves each.
Months between signature and install are when cancellations happen. Structured communication through that window is cheaper than replacing the deal.
Budget follows what produces working installations, 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, orientation, shading and recent replacement are things a homeowner can answer and a satellite check can confirm, and asking them early removes a large share of dead appointments. It also gives you a legitimate reason to recommend a roof replacement first, which is a better conversation than a surveyor delivering bad news after the pitch.
A cash buyer is comparing payback periods, a loan buyer is comparing monthly outlay against their current bill, and a lease buyer is largely comparing risk. These are three different arguments, and most solar marketing makes one of them to everybody. Splitting them is among the cheapest improvements available in the funnel.
In a category where the buyer's default assumption is that they are about to be pressured, recent reviews that describe a calm process and a company that answered after installation do more than any ad. Review volume, recency and how complaints are answered are worth deliberate investment rather than being left to chance.
Incentive and rate structures move on timelines that are usually visible in advance, and a company whose entire pitch rests on the current arrangement has to rebuild its marketing each time. Claims built to be parameterised - the argument stable, the numbers updatable - survive that, and the update becomes an afternoon rather than a rewrite.
The nearest engagement we can point at is a multi-state clinic network, not a solar installer, and we are not going to dress it up as one. It is relevant for the specific reason that it scaled to 54,000+ leads and cut cost per lead 57% without the lead quality collapsing - which is the failure mode this category is defined by. Volume is not the hard part in solar; volume that survives qualification is.
Read the full case studyAlmost always qualification. Renters, unsuitable or old roofs, heavy shading, low consumption and failed credit account for a large share of solar enquiries, and if none of that is asked before an appointment is booked then your sales team is doing the screening at the most expensive possible moment. Moving those questions into the funnel reduces the lead count and improves the install number at the same time.
Drop the devices the category is known for - countdowns, manufactured deadlines, savings figures rounded to something memorable - and be specific instead. What the survey will check, what would disqualify a roof, what the wait between signing and switching on actually looks like, what happens if the system underperforms. Homeowners with the means to buy are the most defended against pressure, and specificity is what reads as credible to them.
It should be an update rather than a rebuild, and that is a decision made when the claims are written. If the argument is "the economics work because of this specific programme", a policy change invalidates the page. If the argument is about consumption, rates and payback with the incentive as one input, the same change is a number to revise. We write the second kind for exactly this reason, and your own advisers should confirm any figure before it goes live.
Installs, even though it is the less flattering number and the one partly outside marketing's control. Permitting, interconnection and scheduling put months between signature and switch-on, and cancellations in that window are common enough to change which channels are genuinely profitable. Reporting that stops at the signature will confidently recommend scaling a source that cancels at twice the rate of another.
Yes, and treating them as one audience is among the most common structural mistakes here. A cash buyer is evaluating payback. A loan buyer is comparing a monthly payment against a utility bill. A lease buyer is mostly assessing risk and who they will be dealing with in ten years. Those are three arguments, and a single page making one of them will convert well for a third of your market and poorly for the rest.
More than most local trades, which is why the qualification work matters more here than anywhere else. The number that governs the decision is not the lead price but the cost per installed system after disqualification and cancellation, and those two together frequently double or triple the apparent figure. We would rather establish that number early and set budgets against it than agree a lead-cost target that does not reflect what a system actually costs you to sell.
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.