Residential Solar Leads

It’s 2019 and every homeowner now knows there are competing zero-down solar installation offers available. It may have been a radical idea five years ago, but those days have gone.

Consumers are in the driving seat and they will decide how and when to engage with us. When they do so, they will usually start with a web search. Again this is a no brainer but it leads to our first tip: web generated solar leads are now undeniably the best source of solar leads.

However, generating your own web leads is not easy. You will see aggregation and information sites like SolarReviews and EnergySage who invest heavily in content creation but still only generate perhaps a few hundred quality leads per day across America.

If you’re a local city or state-level solar installer it’s next to impossible to spend the same amount on fresh content or spend on online marketing to the same level of effectiveness- you’ll need local leads within your service area.

Yes, it’s very hard as the market has become more competitive. Why is the market competitive? The profit margin in the residential solar industry in the US is simply enormous and this has attracted a huge number of players. Any comparison to similar home improvement or major installations will bear this analysis out, or you can just look at international comparisons.

In the US in 2019, the average national solar panel cost is $2.98/watt so an average solar panel system for an 8kw home would cost around $24,000 before tax credits. Similar solar systems are sold in Australia at around $1.20 per watt. To put it another way, you get paid tens of thousands more than you would in one of the sunniest countries in the world.

Why is it like this? The US energy market has an unusual state-led competitive structure and a complex set of tax incentives. In any case, given these kinds of numbers, it’s a no-brainer that so many are investing to attract leads. Consumers and households have been flooded with solar marketing collateral and are now close to immune to traditional outbound mass communication, whether that is telemarketing, television advertising, radio or even door knocking.

Try any solar panel query in a search engine, say asking how to install solar panels. Underneath the paid ads (which will vary by region and precise keyword) the chances are the top non-government sites will include a few names again and again, often SolarReviews and EnergySage or sites they own like Solar-Estimate.

You could take the approach to write and publish your own content on your website, and even optimise your SEO to ensure you rank highly. However, this is a slow game and it can take continual regular work for 2-3 years to get a good enough domain authority so that come up highly in searches. Certainly, you could invest in a better website too- more responsive, better design and layout, smarter widgets. This might help convert some prospects but again it won’t generate a surge of additional leads quickly.

This doesn’t mean to say it’s a waste of time. In fact, if you take a long view it can be worthwhile investing in your website content and deliver a strong return on investment.

Why? Because in the long run organic search positioning can deliver a small volume of leads at a zero marginal cost. Organic leads you capture are more likely to be exclusive to you and have a higher chance of converting sales. So, additional to what you’ll read below it’s worth spending time and energy on a regular basis to set yourself up for strong organic search ranking. Simple Tree Digital can help expedite this process and relieve some of the burden- contact us to find out more about how.

Yes, but this almost always ends with you spending more per qualified lead than simply buying them from a reputable solar lead generation company.

This is because with Adwords you compete for clicks with competitors for the same keywords. New Adwords accounts tend to end up buying the clicks that the experienced advertisers don’t want because they don’t convert to either leads or sales. For experimentation, you should still try setting up your own Google Adwords account and comparing the cost of acquisition you get from other sources. However, if you do choose this option get a professional Adwords manager to track your return on investment.

2019 has seen a busy start to the year for the solar industry with solar leads up 25% over 2018 levels.

However, much of the status quo established over the last 2-3 years is stabilizing. It looks like this:

The biggest generators of organic residential solar leads are SolarReviews, Solar-Estimate (also owned by Solar Reviews), Clean Energy Experts (who are owned by Sunrun) and EnergySage.

Nobody else has any significant volume of organic solar leads. You will inevitably field phone calls and emails from other agencies who claim better volume or even better quality, but these are not likely to work out- they mainly work from out of date databases of leads and have no way of generating new leads.

Given this is the case it is very important that you understand these company’s business models and lead generation processes.

You’ll find there is a trade-off between the big lead generation players- it’s hard to get both volume and quality. Does the site need visitors to enter a phone number or email address for more information? What is the follow-up rate? What is the cost of acquisition and QA? How much are they paying for paid traffic?

The best measure is the data you already have- the amount you spend on them and the cost of acquiring each real lead every month.

However, before you do this it’s essential to have the basics up and running- start optimizing your website for organic search clicks through a slow drip of rich, authoritative content and learn from Simple Tree Digital how to ensure you’re set up for success.