Facebook ads for a solar installer
A solar company was generating leads by knocking doors and handing out flyers. The same ad budget now produces materially more leads than it did before.
Will, Solar. Recorded December 2020.
Will runs a solar company that started in California and expanded into southern Florida, selling in-house. That last detail sets the whole brief: an in-house sales team needs a predictable volume of appointments, or people sit idle.
Lead generation before this was referrals, door knocking and flyers. Those work, but they do not scale on demand and they cannot be turned up for a slow month. They wanted something digital that could.
They had tried running social ads themselves and it worked for a while, then Covid disrupted it and they could not get performance back. Cost per lead climbed and stayed there, which is a familiar pattern — a self-run account holds up until conditions change, and then there is no expertise available to adapt it.
The clearest result is efficiency rather than volume: on a similar budget they now get considerably more leads. Same money, more appointments, which for a business with fixed sales capacity is the number that matters.
Solar has a harder ask than most lead generation. The conversion is an application, not an enquiry, and getting someone to complete one and then answer the phone is a longer chain than a form fill. That means creative has to pre-qualify, so the people who arrive are actually candidates.
If you are running a field sales team on referrals and door knocking, paid lead generation is the channel that makes volume something you decide rather than something you hope for.
In Will’s words
“Before, we were focused a lot on referrals, door knocking strategies, passing out flyers. We wanted to try something different that was more digital.”
“We dabbled into doing some social media advertising on our own and it worked for some time, and then Covid hit — and obviously we’re not the experts on how to get these things back up and running. We were definitely seeing a very high cost per lead.”
“One of the main things I’ve seen working with you is that we’re getting a lot more leads for our buck. Using a similar budget, we’re seeing a better result.”
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