How much do solar leads cost, and is building your own the better buy?

We build websites and run SEO for service businesses, so we're not neutral on that last point. We'll still give you the buying side straight, because you can't judge the alternative without it.

What a solar lead seller is selling

"Solar leads" covers several different products. A company that sells contact data to sales teams lists them roughly like this:

• Shared leads: the same homeowner goes to several installers.
• Exclusive leads: the homeowner goes to you alone.
• Aged leads: enquiries from the same sources as fresh leads that nobody bought when they came in, sold on later.
• Live transfers: a call centre speaks to the homeowner and puts the call through to your salesperson.
• Pre-set appointments: the homeowner has agreed to a time to talk about solar.

The same list names what moves the price: the quality of the lead, where it came from, where the homeowner lives, how much demand and competition there is in the area, and whether the lead is shared. Don't expect a price list, though. A company that sells consent-tracking software to lead buyers rounded up solar lead vendors in June and found that most of them don't publish their prices. You'll have to ask for a quote.

When you do, get the seller to confirm by email whether each homeowner comes to you alone or to other installers too, the oldest enquiry they'd ever send you, and what they do about numbers that never pick up. A price per lead means very little until you know those.

The most a lead is worth to you

Set your ceiling before you compare quotes. Take the gross profit on an average install and multiply it by the share of leads that turn into signed installs. That's what a lead is worth to you. Pay more than that and every install from that source loses money, and once you count your overheads the real limit sits lower still. Our guide to how much a lead is worth walks through the sum step by step.

Work it out for each source on its own. Shared leads, exclusive leads and appointments may close at very different rates for you, and the close rate is what you're really paying for. You'll only know it if you follow every lead through to a signed install. Our post on conversion tracking shows how to count jobs instead of form fills.

Check the consent before you dial

When you call a bought lead, you're the one making the call, so the consent behind it becomes your problem too. As that consent-tracking company puts it, you need proof that each lead agreed to be contacted, because buying from a third party means inheriting its compliance risk.

The rules depend on where you install. In the US, a telemarketing call to a mobile number made with an autodialler or a prerecorded voice needs the person's prior express written consent, and that consent has to authorise the business the call is made for. In South Africa, the Information Regulator's guidance note on direct marketing treats phone calls as electronic communication, so a marketing call to someone who isn't your customer needs their consent first. So ask the seller how and when consent was captured, and whether it covers your company by name. This is general information, not legal advice.

If the leads you're getting feel wrong, our guides to telling a legit lead generation company from a scam and fake and bot leads in your own campaigns cover the warning signs.

What buying doesn't build, and what does

A bought lead filled in someone else's form, on someone else's site. You can turn that homeowner into a customer, but the search that found them and the page that caught them stay with the seller. Stop paying and the leads stop, and nothing you paid for this month makes next month's leads any easier to get.

Building your own starts with the website, because every enquiry from search or ads lands there. When a homeowner finds your site and fills in your form, that enquiry comes to you and nobody else.

The site has to open quickly on a phone and say plainly which areas you install in. Every page should make it easy to call or enquire. Track calls and form fills from the first day, so you can set them against what your bought leads produce. We build sites in hand-written HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript, with no WordPress, and set up Google Analytics and Search Console at launch.

Then search. SEO for an installer means showing up when people in your towns look for solar: a properly set-up Google Business Profile, local citations, and pages for the areas you cover and the systems you install. Google says advertising with it has no effect on where a site appears in its organic results, and that it never takes money to rank a site. You can't buy those positions, which is why they're worth the work. Nobody can promise you a date for them either; our post on how long SEO takes explains what decides the pace.

Ads are for when you want enquiries sooner. Google Ads reach people searching for solar right now. Facebook and Instagram are better at creating interest in a considered purchase like solar, and they need a page built for the offer you're making. When we run them, the campaigns sit in your own ad accounts, the landing page sits on your domain, and the enquiry goes to you alone. That's how our lead generation works.

You don't have to stop buying overnight. If a lead source is closing at a cost below your ceiling, keep it while your site and search build up. Cut the sources that don't, and move that money into the channels you'll own.

Where to start

Pull your recent bought leads and count the signed installs that came from each source. Set that against your ceiling. Then pick up your phone, search for solar in a town you install in, and see whether a homeowner could find your site and call you from it. If you'd like a second pair of eyes, book an audit and we'll review your forms, tracking and search.

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