Google Ads for solar installers: budgets, the campaigns that work, and the ones that burn cash
Realistic cost per lead, the keywords worth bidding on, the negative list that saves half your budget, and how to measure a 60-day sales cycle.
- What to budget, and why less does not work
- The campaigns worth running
- The negative keyword list that saves half your budget
- Free solar ads and why to avoid the whole neighborhood
- Ad copy that filters instead of maximizing clicks
- Landing pages, one per campaign
- Measuring a 60-day cycle without lying to yourself
- What to skip
- Frequently asked
Solar has some of the most expensive clicks in local services. In competitive states a click on "solar panels" costs $12 to $30, and it can be a homeowner, a renter, a student writing a paper or a competitor's marketing manager. Get the structure wrong and you will spend $4,000 in a month, get eleven form fills, book two consultations and conclude that Google Ads does not work for solar.
It works. It requires a tighter build than any other trade on this network, because the waste is concentrated in a handful of query types that look relevant and are not.
What to budget, and why less does not work
Start at $3,000 to $5,000 a month in a mid-size metro. In California, Texas or Florida metros, $6,000 and up.
The reason a $1,200 test fails is not that the budget is small. It is that a long sales cycle needs volume to produce a readable signal. At $18 a click and a 6% form rate, $1,200 buys about 67 clicks and four leads. Four leads in a category where the close rate is 10% to 20% and the cycle is 45 to 90 days tells you nothing. You will turn it off in week three based on noise.
Expect $80 to $250 per lead from search in most markets, and $600 to $1,800 per booked consultation once you filter out the unqualified. That is normal. Purchased shared leads at $100 to $500 are the comparison, and yours are exclusive and warmer.
The campaigns worth running
Campaign 1: high intent installer terms. Exact and phrase match only. "solar installers near me", "solar company [city]", "solar installation [city]", "residential solar [county]", "solar panel installation cost". Set this campaign the largest share of budget. Manual CPC or maximize clicks with a bid cap until you have 30 conversions, then move to target CPA.
Campaign 2: battery storage. Separate campaign, separate budget, separate landing page. "home battery installation", "backup battery for house", "battery storage [city]", "add battery to existing solar". Storage searchers convert faster because the trigger is usually an outage or a utility bill change rather than a payback calculation. Cost per lead is often lower than panels and the buyer is further along. Most installers never split this out.
Campaign 3: service and repair. Cheap, ignored, and profitable. "solar panel repair", "solar panel not producing", "inverter replacement", "solar panel removal for roof replacement", "my solar company went out of business". Clicks run $3 to $8. It brings in service revenue immediately and a large share of those homeowners eventually buy a battery or an expansion from you because you are now their installer.
Campaign 4: brand. Your own name, exact match, small budget. Lead vendors and national sales organizations bid on installer names. Defending your own brand costs a few hundred dollars and stops you paying $200 for a lead you already earned.
The negative keyword list that saves half your budget
Build this before you launch, not after.
- Job seekers: jobs, hiring, careers, salary, apprentice, technician jobs, installer wanted
- DIY and equipment shoppers: kit, DIY, for sale, wholesale, panels for sale, used panels, amazon, harbor freight
- Off-grid and portable: portable, rv, camper, van, shed, generator, off grid cabin
- Research and comparison content: how does, what is, wikipedia, reddit, calculator, worth it, scam
- Free and giveaway: free solar, government free solar, no cost solar, free panels program
- Finance-only: solar loan, solar lease company, ppa company, refinance
- Adjacent trades you do not want: solar pool heater, solar water heater, solar screens, solar lights, solar attic fan
That last group matters more than owners expect. "Solar screens" and "solar pool heater" queries can quietly eat 15% of a poorly built solar campaign in a hot state.
Free solar ads and why to avoid the whole neighborhood
Several large sales organizations run ads implying a government program provides free panels. Those campaigns train homeowners in your market to expect free, and their clicks are cheap because the queries are cheap. Bidding on the same queries to intercept them is a trap. You will pay for a click from someone whose entire frame is that this should cost nothing, and your consultation will be spent unwinding it. Add the free-solar terms as negatives and let those companies have that traffic.
Ad copy that filters instead of maximizing clicks
Your ad should discourage the wrong person. Put the qualifying facts in the headline and description:
- Headline: Local Solar Installer in [County] Since [year]
- Headline: Cash, Loan or Storage. No Door Knocking.
- Description: We design and install residential solar and battery systems in [county]. Free site assessment, written proposal in 48 hours, all install work by our own crews. [X] five-star reviews.
Naming your years in business and your own crews screens out the free-panel searcher and attracts the homeowner who has already been knocked on. In the benchmark report you can see how few solar companies have the review count to say something like that credibly, which is exactly why it works when you can.
Landing pages, one per campaign
Never send solar ads to the home page. Each campaign needs its own page with the same promise as the ad, a form above the fold asking only for name, address, phone and current monthly bill, one photo of a real local install, three reviews with town names, financing options stated plainly, and a tap-to-call number that works on a phone. The website essentials guide covers the rest of what those pages need.
Measuring a 60-day cycle without lying to yourself
The mistake is optimizing to form fills. Google will happily find you cheap forms filled by people who will never buy.
Set it up like this:
- Import a conversion for the booked consultation, not the form fill. If your CRM will not push it, upload offline conversions weekly from a spreadsheet.
- Track sit-to-close and time-to-close by campaign, separately from lead count.
- Judge nothing before day 45. Judge properly at day 90.
- Call every lead within five minutes. In a category with this cost per lead, response time changes your cost per sale more than bid strategy does. See the missed calls guide.
What to skip
Broad match with automated bidding on day one. In solar it finds every free-panel and job-seeker query in the state.
Performance Max as your only campaign. It will spend most of the budget on cheap display and video placements, report a satisfying cost per conversion, and produce leads that do not sit. Run search first. Add PMax later with strong exclusions if at all.
Display and YouTube for direct response. They have a role in retargeting a 60-day cycle. They do not produce booked consultations from cold traffic at an acceptable cost.
Bidding statewide. Set your radius to where your crews actually go. A lead 90 miles out costs you a whole day.
Frequently asked
Should I run Local Services Ads? If your market has them for solar, yes, as a supplement. They are priced per lead and your review count is printed on the unit, so fix reviews first.
How long before I know if it is working? Ninety days. Anyone who tells you 30 has not sold solar.
Can I run ads without a website? No. 13.1% of solar companies have no site, and every one of them is unable to run search ads that convert. The site is the ad's landing surface and the proof the homeowner needs.
If you want the account built and managed, Google Ads is one of the services in the free 14-day trial. We build it in your account and you keep it. Text or call (385) 832-6175.