High-Quality Solar Lead Generation: How to Generate Solar Leads for Your Business 

Generating solar leads is a full-time job.

Closing solar deals is a full-time job.

Clean Energy Experts has over 150 U.S.-based solar professionals working full time to generate qualified solar leads for your team to close.

But what is CEE doing exactly? 

Read below for a crash course on solar lead generation.

How Residential Solar Leads and Commercial Solar Leads Are Generated 

Let’s focus on digital lead generation for now.

There are a handful of major channels in Digital Solar Lead Generation:

1. Organic
2. Search Engine Optimization
3. Search Engine Marketing
4. Display
5. Affiliate

1. Organic Lead Generation Channel

When homeowners come directly to the company website and submit their information, they are Organic Solar Leads. Organic traffic generates free solar leads, which are often the highest converting leads.

Significant company branding and a long-term presence in the industry are typically needed to generate solar leads. Due to this, organic leads typically make up a smaller portion of most companies’ lead mix. 

2. Search Engine Optimization Channel

A search engine’s objective is to return results for websites you will find useful, so you will continue using their service.

Websites compete for the highest ranking on search engine results pages by showing relevant content that engages users. Higher-ranked websites get the most user clicks and generate cheap solar leads. 

This requires intensive website testing and maintenance to keep up with the ever-evolving algorithms search engines use.

3. Search Engine Marketing Channel

Search Engine Marketing is paying to have your website at the top of search engine results. It’s an auction where the company that bids the highest has its website displayed. 

A company must accurately target internet users interested in their product or risk spending money that does not generate leads. 

For instance, targeting users that search for “Solar Panels” may find a homeowner looking for a quote, or it may find you a 6th grader researching a school paper.  

4. Display Advertising Channel

Companies pay websites to display their advertisements, which often appear as banners, text, images, video, and audio. It’s an auction where the company that bids the highest has its advertisement displayed.

The goal is to have an internet user click on the advertisement, which opens a landing page, which gives more details and allows the user to submit their contact information, generating a lead for the company.

5. Affiliate Channel

Buying solar leads from a separate company is considered “3rd Party Lead Generation.” Companies generating solar leads use the previous methods and more to identify homeowners looking for solar quotes. Most generate cheap solar leads and need a second level of verification to become qualified solar leads.

When buying leads, companies are often required to sign a minimum purchase agreement and put thousands of dollars down up front. Up front payments transfer the risk away from the lead generation company and to the person buying leads.

What Sets Clean Energy Experts apart:

Lead generation is indeed a lot of work. Clean Energy Experts can take on the task and help you generate solar leads that become customers and grow your sales. Enjoy these benefits when you buy leads from CEE:

• High-Quality Solar Leads: 100% phone-verified residential solar leads and commercial solar leads
• Strict standards: 50% of raw leads get rejected at our door (e.g., 8-digit phone numbers).
• Diverse Marketing Channels: CEE generates qualified solar leads using all marketing channels.
• Geographic Coverage: Your one-stop-shop for buying leads in any state
• Flexible Pricing: You set the Bid Price when buying solar leads. 
• Full Control: Changes made at the click of a button on CEE’s Lead Manager Portal 
• Client service: Dedicated Account Manager to respond to your needs

Need more information about our solar lead generation services? Contact us today.

How We Help Our Clients Acquire Customers

Clean Energy Experts utilizes all marketing channels to generate leads, offering you wide exposure to homeowners looking for a quote on solar. 

These channels and sources have varying quality when they enter CEE. When the leads leave CEE, they have consistent quality due to our 100% call verbal verification process.

Knowing how a lead source will convert is essential to engineering profitability. Once your team runs a small number of CEE leads, you’ll have a reasonable idea of how our qualified solar leads will continue to perform.

On average, meaning half of the companies do better, conversions are:

• 25% lead-to-opportunity rate;
• 10% opportunity-to-close rate

Is your team better than average?

Top performers close upwards of 50% of leads!

How to Engineer Profitability

Want to use the same financial formula the largest solar companies use to beat the competition and maximize profit?

Clean Energy Experts makes it easy to do. Here’s how:

Once you determine how CEE solar leads perform for your team, you can calculate the maximum price-per-lead.

From there, you set the price-per-lead (also called the “Bid Price”) on each campaign below the calculated max price!

So what’s the first step?

First, calculate the average proceeds from selling a solar job.

The national average is around $30,000, so let’s use that.

Next, calculate the average cost of the solar job, excluding the lead generation cost.

For example: (cost of equipment) + (wages for the sales and install team) + (allocated admin costs).

Many times companies target $25,000 in cost, excluding lead generation, so we’ll use that in the example.

By subtracting the $25,000 cost from the $30,000 in proceeds, you have $5,000 left over.

How much of that $5,000 do you want to keep for profit?

• To keep a $4,000 profit, you can spend $1,000 in lead generation costs.
• To keep a $3,000 profit, you can spend $2,000 in lead generation costs.
• To keep a $2,000 profit, you can spend $3,000 in lead generation costs.

If you perform on average with CEE lead-to-close rates:

• $1,000 lead gen target x 25% Lead-to-Oppty x 10% Oppty-to-close = $25 cost-per-lead
• $2,000 lead gen target x 25% Lead-to-Oppty x 10% Oppty-to-close = $50 cost-per-lead
• $3,000 lead gen target x 25% Lead-to-Oppty x 10% Oppty-to-close = $75 cost-per-lead

Top-performing teams will beat the average conversion rate, meaning they can bid above their competition to win more leads and grow their sales funnel!

How Does CEE’s Flexible Pricing Work?

Clean Energy Experts allows you to set the price-per-lead. Your campaign serves as a silent bid, and as leads are verbally verified, CEE silently auctions the leads.

Nothing active is needed from you; your campaign automatically bids on leads matching your filters.

When your campaign wins a lead, the CEE call agent will state your company name, and the homeowner will agree to having your team contact them. 

Leads will be delivered in real time, based on your delivery setup. 

The only cost is for the leads you receive, never any management fees or setup fees!

Delivery Methods

Every lead speaks with our U.S.-based call agents to confirm their information, then hears your company name and consents to having you call.

As soon as the homeowner consents, the lead is sent out, and your team can receive the lead in four ways:

1. Email – unlimited # of addresses
2. SMS – delivered straight to your cell phone
3. CRM – posting available to any CRM including free setup
4. Live transferred – homeowner stays on the phone while we connect the call to you

Clean Energy Experts is the only solar lead generation company offering large-scale Live Transferred qualified leads across all 50 states.

Live transfer leads take all the upfront work away and allow you to focus all your energy on closing deals.

Would you like to have homeowners connected directly to your phone? Contact us for more info. 

Dedicated Account Manager for Free!

Every Clean Energy Experts Client Account Manager is a veteran in the solar industry, with many having 10+ years of solar experience.

CEE provides every client with an account manager to guide them along the way. You’ll start with a full walk-through of CEE’s Lead Manager Portal, your 24/7/365 control panel.

As you try out CEE’s leads, your account manager will provide guidance, and they’re also available to answer any questions you have along the way. Best of all, you’ll have access to CEE’s analysis team for detailed optimization to maximize your profits!  

We Let Our Leads Do the Talking

Other solar lead-generation companies make lofty claims that rarely come true. By levying “management fees” or additional unadvertised costs, they set the price per lead and front-load the cost.

At CEE, we believe that you should decide the worth of our leads and only pay for those you actually get.