If you are just starting out, buying quality leads from a lead-generating company is one of the best ways to increase sales and revenue for your solar business.
A lot of entrepreneurs like generating their own leads through paid advertising, but there are so many things you need to get right to get a good return on investment.
Although I would never recommend buying leads as your sole means of generating sales, they should make up a healthy part of your marketing mix.
Not all lead generation companies are made equal so I have made a list in order of my top picks to buy solar leads.
Craftjack
Craftjack is one of the fastest platforms at the moment for everything from solar to plumbing and landscaping. Leads are phone verified and because of a strong website presence online, you can be sure the leads generate are from customers actively seeking solar installation. What this means is that all the leads you get are of a higher quality and more likely to pull the trigger on the purchase.
The platform offers leads in the category of solar panel systems and solar water heaters at affordable rates.
RGR Marketing
RGR is another serious source of solar leads. RGR has been identified as a reputable platform due to their ability to provide useful leads to serious prospects.
The company has been able to help businesses in the solar market to improve their results as well as increase their returns within a short time through their leads.
The company has been operating in the solar leads field for more than 7 years and has served several customers who are happy for the services.
By working with this company for solar leads, you are able to benefit from several services which include solid ROI, in-built marketing via Yahoo, Google, emails, and Bing, Top-tier customers service and best lead-based matching system.
Go Solar Quotes
If you are interested in a platform solely dedicated to generating leads for the solar industry then Go Solar Quotes is worth a look. The platform has made its reputation with customers of providing up to date and accurate information on solar installation such as costs, rebates and tax credits. Because of this, customers tend to trust this site to provide them with higher quality installers. That trust is passed onto the installers who by leads from Go Solar Quotes and provides estimate for the job.
Go Solar Quotes gives a real opinion on things like batteries, inverters and whether investing is worth it. They compare various factors such as cost and efficiency, looking at needs of various players in the market in a bid to ensure the best information for the customer and best quality leads for installers.
Through this platform, you are able to slowly boot the performance of your business in a consistent yet sure manner as you use their leads.
Solar Reviews
Whether you are a business or individual and you want to sell solar products or jobs effectively this is a platform you can turn to and get amazing results.
SolarReviews has been rated very highly by customers and installers alike because they provide the best quality information and leads. The cost of lead is good and they offer excellent contact rate of over 70%. This means that the company will also provide you leads via phone.
The company has a 30 to 35% conversion of leads to appointments and 6 to 15% conversion of leads Sales. ROI is also the best.
Modernize.com
Modernize.com is yet another amazing platform for you to buy solar leads. The platform is able to connect to over 5,000 homeowners per week who visit their platform to seek installation professionals.
This is a platform that is able to connect contractors and homeowners with a lot of ease.
The main focus for modernize.com is to ensure the best and fastest contact between homeowners, solar installers and other business players in the market.
By utilizing various digital marketing strategies, they are able to offer instant matching with homeowners, increase success, forge more partnerships through contacting and grow your business.
Solar Leads Club
One of the things that stands out about solar leads club as a source of solar leads is that they are able to give you the power to generate your own leads every week. According to the platform’s projections, is that you will be able to make an extra $10,000 per month of earnings by using their leads.
Solar leads club also offers incentives to their customers to enable them generate more solar leads.
Energysage.com
If you have searched anything solar related recently, you would have surely come across energysage.com.
Founded in 2005, Energysage are one of the pioneers of niche solar leads and definitely are one of the biggest.
Over the years they have refined their services to be one of the best in the country in both price and quality of leads.
Energysage don’t just send you leads and hope for the best, they also provide installers with sales training, market insights and daily support to make sure you get the best out of their leads.
How leads are generated at EnergySage?
The manner in which a solar lead supplier generates their leads is important. There are a lot of company who cold call thousands of homes each day to get customers who are “kind of interested” in getting solar. They then sell these leads to you. Most of the time this customer will be a tyre-kicker and never actually pull the trigger.
There are other lead suppliers who attract people looking are actively looking to get a solar panel system installed.
As you can imagine there is a big difference in these to leads. One is actively investigating solar and the other got a call out of the blue the other day and wants more information.
Before deciding on a solar job lead supplier, make sure you quiz them on how their leads are generated.
How does it work?
There are many different platforms and business selling solar panels and they all seem to have a point of difference. Here are a few things to keep in mind before deciding.
Exclusive leads
Some lead suppliers will charge a premium to send the lead to you and you alone. While it might sound like a great idea, most of the time the customer is going to get more than one estimate, so you might as well pay less for the lead and go with the lead supplier who send the lead to a few local installers.
Choosing a solar lead supplier
The good news about solar leads is you are spoiled for choice, but this also means you have to decide on who you want to work with.
The best lead supplier for you is going to change from business to business depending on the size of your business and the way you run things.
Because all lead suppliers listed above have a different way of doing things such as the way leads are transmitted to you, the speed at which they are gone (some have a first in best dressed type system), the number of competitors and exclusivity, it’s impossible to fully recommend on without knowing about your business.
Buying leads Vs. generating your own
There are some pros and con to buy solar leads and the same is true for generating your own leads.
Buying solar leads
Pro’s of buying solar leads
- Instant business – If you are just starting a solar business, you can go from zero to hero overnight. Gone are the days of slowing building a new service-based business over months or years. Buying leads allows you to make direct contact with as may “hot leads” as you can handle.
- Calculable ROI – With your own marketing, return on marketing spend can vary wildly depending on the medium used and a host of other factors. This can be dangerous for new businesses with little in reserve. Buying leads gives you much tighter margin or error and allows you calculate your return on investment month to month.
- Customer intent – Solar leads providers have great ways of filtering out time wasting customers and aim to send you real customers, ready to install. There is a big difference between a customer phoning up and asking “how does solar work?” to one asking “Do I need 16 or 18 panels for a 5kWh solar system?”. The second customer has done their research, they know they how solar works, what size system they need and most likely the cost, they are key sorting out the final details. These are the customers you want to be pitching.
Cons’s of buying solar leads
- Too competitive – There are some solar leads suppliers who are more focused on making money then providing a quality service, so they will see a job lead to 5 – 10 different local installers. Most customers will get 3 – 4 estimates, but if you need to compete against 8 – 10 other companies, you will struggle to convert customers. This does not happen too often, but you need to be wary of it.
- Too expensive – Although this is not the case for all lead suppliers, the cost can add up quickly if there are monthly fees and lead prices that slowly creep up over time. Be sure to keep your options open and shop around.
Generating your own leads
Pro’s of generating your own leads
- Cheaper – Depending the route you take, generating your own leads can be cheaper. Things like letter box drops and Facebook ads can prove to be cheaper than buying job leads to generate customers.
Con’s of generating your own leads
- Slow going – Doing letter box drops is one of the cheapest ways to generating business, but it will take time to get a return. Customers might call you in days, weeks or months after the letterbox drop.
- Low quality leads – It is hard to calculate ROI if you are just counting phone calls because there are always a lot of time wasters.
- Too expensive – Things like radio spots, Google Ads and local paper listings can be expensive and a lot of the time hit and miss.
- Low ROI – Because most forms of advertising are blanket announcements and not targeted, you will have a lower ROI especially in the cooler months.
How Cleantech Digital can help you
Cleantech Digital provides digital marketing solutions to help solar companies generate their own leads. This take the guesswork out of where to start and what to expect in return.
We work with solar companies of all sizes and our goal is for you to get an unbeatable return on your marketing spend.
Please contact us for a free consultation so we can show you how to grow your solar installation business in the most strategic and cost-effective way in your local city.
In the fight against the climate crisis, Willie Jiang believes that content marketing can push the energy revolution along at a faster pace. Having helped countless brands grow their organic traffic by 10X and became the CMO of SolarFeeds.com, he is sharing his insights with the solar energy industry. If you want to publish your articles on SolarFeeds Magazine, click here.
Solar Reviews is THE worst of the company’s you listed. They charged me $4K for their “fully verified” leads. That 4K bought me 69 jokes. Not a single appointment set. Half a dozen were empty lots, another half dozen were people that sold solar for a living. Several more were non existent addresses. The few that did answer the door had no clue why I stopped by. Not one said that they had asked for a solar quote. I’d expect a few of those after doing this for 11 years but every single one? Not a single appointment out of all those “FULLY VERIFIED” leads. Shelby, our rep swore that each was a customer that asked for quote and she could prove it yet she never did. Solar Reviews is nothing but a complete scam. Avoid at all costs. Modernize is equally as big of a scam. Look them up on the BBB. Nothing but complaints except for the few “positive” reviews that were most likely left by their employees. Do your homework BEFORE contacting any of these companies and you’ll save not only your hard earned money but a whole lot of headaches.
Will be looking for leads asap. By end of month
Looking for leads generation sources by May 1st, 2021.