How do solar companies get leads without buying them?
Short answer
Solar companies get leads without buying them by being the company a homeowner finds during the weeks of research before a quote: pages that answer early questions, a Google Business Profile that shows for installer searches, reviews that hold up when your name is searched, and ads that lead to your own site. It's slower than buying.
Homeowners who find a solar company directly at each point in their research become leads it didn’t buy, because the inquiry arrives through the company’s own website, Google Business Profile or phone number. It’s slow. A solar purchase is researched for weeks, and an inquiry that reaches you today often began with a search made a month ago. The wait buys you a homeowner who chose to contact you, and whose details were sold to nobody else.
The four sources of an earned solar inquiry
Each reaches a homeowner at a different point and asks something different of you.
| Source | Who it reaches | What it asks of you |
|---|---|---|
| Question pages on your site | A homeowner still deciding whether to go solar | Accurate answers, kept current by someone at your company |
| Google Business Profile and the map pack | A homeowner searching for installers nearby | A complete profile, real project photos and a steady flow of reviews |
| Searches for your company name | Someone who was referred, saw a yard sign or met your salesperson | A site and reviews that confirm what they were told |
| Search ads to your own pages | A late-stage searcher in a city where you don’t yet rank | A budget, a page that matches the search, and tracking |
Start with the demand you already create
The first leads to stop losing are the ones you have already earned away from Google. A neighbor’s recommendation, a yard sign in Rancho Bernardo, a truck in a driveway or a salesperson’s visit all end the same way: the homeowner types your company name into a search.
Run that search yourself. You should see your own site and your profile, with reviews that match what the homeowner was told. You may also see a comparison site’s page about you, or an ad from another installer or a lead seller, because Google generally lets advertisers bid on other companies’ names. If the page doesn’t confirm the recommendation, a lead you had already earned fills in someone else’s form. This is work that doesn’t wait on new rankings, which is why I check it first.
Then answer the questions asked before the quote
Most solar searching happens before any installer is contacted, and a page that answers one of those searches meets the buyer weeks ahead of the quote. Each page on a solar website takes one of the questions homeowners search before they request a solar quote and answers it plainly, including who the answer doesn’t suit.
One caution: any page that depends on the utility’s current billing rules has to be kept current by someone at your company, because those rules change and a stale answer costs trust.
Then the installer search
Late in the research the homeowner looks for an installer, and for a local company that search is decided mostly on the map and in searches that name a city. Google ranks map results partly by distance, so a company with an office in Escondido can appear for nearby searchers and fade toward the coast.
Broad searches such as “best solar companies” are largely held by national installers and lead sellers, and I wouldn’t build a plan on beating them there. The realistic ground is the map pack around your office and searches that name a city you work in, plus specific jobs such as adding a battery to an existing system. Your Google Business Profile does most of the work on the map.
How to tell whether it’s working
Record the source of every inquiry when it arrives, and keep that label on it through to a signed contract or a dead end. With a sale this long, form counts mislead. For solar lead generation, I’d also keep any bought leads running while the earned sources are built, and compare them all on cost per signed contract.
I can’t promise how many inquiries this produces or how soon. I measure where you appear today, then change one thing and measure again about two weeks later.