Google Ads for solar companies

Google Ads is the fastest way for a solar company to generate enquiries and the fastest way to waste money. Solar clicks are expensive because a single close is worth tens of thousands, which means well-run competitors can rationally bid a great deal and the auction settles where only good operators profit.

Before you spend anything

Three things decide whether paid traffic converts, and none of them are in the ad account. Skipping them is how installers conclude that Google Ads does not work for solar.

1. 01Response time under five minutes. You are paying up to $300 for an enquiry; answering it tomorrow is burning it. See speed to lead for solar companies.
2. 02A review count that stands comparison. Paid visitors compare you against the map pack results on the same screen. Arriving with eleven reviews against competitors with two hundred means paying for clicks that were never going to convert.
3. 03A landing page that matches the ad. Not the homepage. See solar landing page best practices.

How should the account be structured?

Keep it simple. Solar accounts fail from over-complication far more often than from under-optimisation.

That is four campaigns. Start with the first and the fourth, add the others when the first is stable and profitable. Brand is often the cheapest converting campaign in the account and is worth running from day one.

Keywords and, more importantly, negatives

The keyword list is obvious: local commercial terms, in phrase and exact match, with your towns. See solar SEO keywords, which applies here too.

The negative list is where the money is saved, and most solar accounts have a thin one. Add these before you turn anything on.

• DIY and research: diy, how to install, how do, what is, wikipedia, diagram, kit, second hand.
• Jobs: jobs, careers, salary, apprenticeship, training, course, hiring.
• Wrong product: solar lights, solar watch, garden, camping, caravan, pool heater, calculator.
• Wrong buyer: free solar panels, grants, government scheme, no cost, renters.
• Competitors, unless you are deliberately bidding on them, which is expensive and rarely profitable in solar.
• Manufacturers, unless you install that brand and the page says so.

Then review the search terms report weekly for the first month and fortnightly after that. This is the single highest-return recurring task in a solar ad account.

Tracking, without which none of this works

1. 01

   Conversion tracking on the form

   Not a page view. The actual submission, imported as a conversion. Without this the platform optimises toward clicks rather than enquiries.

2. 02

   Call tracking

   A significant share of solar enquiries are calls. Untracked calls mean the account is optimising on half the data.

3. 03

   Offline conversion import, if you can

   Feeding back which enquiries actually sat and which closed is what lets the platform optimise toward jobs rather than forms. It is the single biggest improvement available to a mature solar account.

4. 04

   Source recorded through to the job

   So you can compute cost per sat appointment and cost per closed job by campaign. See solar company KPIs to track.

What budget and bidding should you start with?

Start on manual or maximise clicks with a cap while you gather conversion data, then move to a conversion-based strategy once there are enough conversions for it to learn from. Smart bidding on three conversions a month has nothing to learn from.

On budget, work backwards. If a raw lead costs $150, a third of them sit, and a third of those close, a job costs about $1,350 in ad spend. Decide what a job is worth to you, then set the monthly budget to buy a sensible number of them and leave it alone for six weeks.

And be cautious with Performance Max early. It can work well once the account has strong conversion data, and without that it tends to find the cheapest possible traffic, which in solar means clicks that never become appointments. Start with search.