Your website: the one thing every channel depends on
We sell this. Ads, referrals and Google all send people to your site to check you out before they call. If it looks old or says little, you pay for that on every other channel.
A solar buyer wants to know four things fast: do you cover my area, can I trust you, what will it cost, and what happens next. Show your MCS certificate only if you hold one, and check the number is on the public register. Use photos of your own jobs. SolarSave's old site had 21 pages, some of which weren't in Google at all. We mapped 366 real searches to 70 pages before writing a word, and launched with 80. Our standard £600 site is smaller, at 20 pages.
Your Google Business Profile: free to run, and easy to neglect
We sell this too, but it's free to do yourself. Your profile decides whether you appear on the map above the normal results.
Pick the right categories, write a clear description, list every service, add photos from real installs and keep your hours, service area and contact information accurate. Google says relevance, distance and prominence decide who shows up, and more reviews and better ratings help. If you'd rather not do it, we set one up for £297, overhaul yours for £247 or manage it for £147 a month.
Reviews: ask at handover
The best moment to ask is when the panels are on and the customer is pleased. Send one short link, the same day.
Reply to every review, including the bad ones. Don't pay for reviews or hide the poor ones: the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans fake reviews and concealed incentives. If you offer anything in return, say so. Keep a record of each review you copy onto your site.
Referrals: often your cheapest work
You don't need an agency for this. You need a habit: ask every happy customer who else might be interested, and keep a list of who sent you work.
A set programme works better than hoping: ask at handover, after the first bill and at service visits, and team up with heat pump and EV charger firms. A referred buyer will still look you up, so referrals work best with a decent website and reviews behind them.
Content marketing and SEO: slow, then steady
We sell this. Content marketing here means pages that answer what buyers ask, plus the work that moves those pages up Google. Expect months, not weeks.
A few solid pages beat a stream of thin articles. Start with cost, payback, adding a battery to panels you already have, and choosing an installer. Use your real prices and real jobs, because that's what a national site can't copy. Solar energy explainers written for a general reader won't bring you much work: national sites already own those searches.
The honest catch is links. SolarSave's new pages mostly sat on page four to six at first, which is normal for a site with almost no links. Climbing takes time, whoever you hire.
Video: cheap, and hard to fake
We don't make video. You don't need us to: a phone and a short walk round a finished job will do.
Film the roof, the inverter and the customer's own words if they agree. Put it on YouTube and on the page for that job or town. Buyers get to see you know the work, and each clip shows what your jobs really look like. A polished brand film can wait until you've got the basics.
Social media: be regular, and don't expect much
We don't sell social media management. In our view, it supports trust more than it creates demand: people who've heard of you check your page to see that you're real and busy.
Pick one or two platforms. Facebook is a common pick for local firms. Post real jobs, real customers and real problems you solved. If someone offers to run it for a monthly fee, ask how many jobs it brought their last solar client. A good firm will have an answer.
Email: your past customers come first
We don't sell email. The easy win is your own list of customer contacts: people with panels and no battery are the obvious next job.
Follow the rules. The ICO says you can't send marketing emails to individuals without specific consent, unless they bought or discussed buying a similar product from you, had a clear chance to opt out when you took their details, and get one in every email. That exception doesn't cover bought-in lists.
Google Ads and Meta ads: fast, and they stop when you stop
We don't run ads. They can be the right call, especially when your diary is empty and you can't wait for rankings. Our advice is to hire someone who reports cost per booked survey.
Google Ads catch people already searching. Meta ads reach people who weren't looking yet, so expect more tyre-kickers. Send both to a specific page, not your homepage, and count what happens after the click. A solar digital marketing firm that only reports clicks and reach isn't telling you what you need to know. Then read the rules below before you write a headline.
Bought leads: a top-up, not a plan
We don't sell these. They can fill short gaps, and they stop the day you stop paying.
SolarSave told us what they pay: £25 to £35 for an exclusive lead and £200 for a booked appointment. At those prices, our £495 monthly fee equals 15 to 20 enquiries a month, or 3 booked appointments. Compare your own figures by cost per job, not cost per lead. We've gone through the sums in solar leads: buy or build?
Here's one worked example. A year of our website and SEO comes to £6,540: £600 plus 12 months at £495. At SolarSave's prices, the same money buys about 33 booked appointments, or about 187 to 262 exclusive leads. So the search work would have to beat that, and in the first year it may not. The difference is that pages and reviews stay yours after you stop paying, and bought-in enquiries don't. Your own prices will differ, so run your own numbers.
PR: useful later, for links and for your name
We don't sell PR. A local story or a trade article can earn a link and some trust, but it rarely fills a diary on its own.
You can pitch your local paper yourself when you've got a real story, like a school or a farm you've fitted out. Our guide to renewable energy PR says when it's worth paying for. And links from real local sites are part of our monthly work, because they help your pages climb.
After the enquiry: where plenty of the money leaks
We don't sell this either, but no channel works if the phone goes unanswered. Before you spend more on getting enquiries, check what happens to the ones you've got.
Reply the same day, or sooner. Buyers often ask more than one firm, so being first to reply gives you a real chance. Keep a simple list of every enquiry: where it came from, whether it booked a survey, and whether it became a job. Software companies sell tools for this, though a spreadsheet will do at first. Once you've got that list, you can judge every one of the services on this page, and ours, by what it brought you.
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