Why register your company with SolarReviews?
We are the highest quality supplier of organic web generated solar leads to the US solar industry.
It is estimated that 30% of homeowners who buy solar in America visit a Solar Reviews website before doing so.
SolarReviews owns 4 websites attracting a combined 7 million+ visitors per year.
Register above with SolarReviews if you want to either set up a profile on our sites, or purchase solar leads.
Q & A
YES… The first way we can do this is by directing you to the source of our traffic, search engines such as Google and Bing. Open a browser with Google and type "best solar companies in [your city]." Does one of our websites, SolarReviews, Solar-Estimate.org, SolarPanel Talk or CutMyBill come up? Try other phrases. We don't always come up number 1 but generally one or more of our sites are on the front page, and this is where all our traffic comes from. Google is smart at knowing that if a consumer is likely to be looking for a quote for solar, they should show them our websites. So it's not just traffic volume, it is traffic quality.
However, this is only half of the story. Where SolarReviews stands a long way above other solar lead providers, is in the call-to-action process that consumers go through to become a potential lead, then the QA process that determines whether that lead is sold or not. The best way to demonstrate the call to action is to TEST our call to action for yourself either here or from any page on any of our websites.
As a CEO of a solar installation company, you can buy solar panels, inverters, racking,
electrical labor, roofing labor, trucks, tools and other things you need at roughly the same
cost as all your competitors. The only ways that one solar company has a long run sustainable
competitive advantage over another solar company is to have a lower cost of customer
acquisition. If you want to run a solar company, being good at customer acquisition and
understanding the economics of it, is your most important skill.
There are two sub-skills involved, first, is running a smooth sales process. Our best customers call leads within 2 minutes of receiving them. If they don't get through, they ring up to seven times over the coming week at varying times (subject to TCPA rules) to maximize the chance of contact. Our best clients actually speak to 80-90% of the leads we sell them and get an in-home appointment ratio of around 35% of leads they buy. However, anything over 25% conversion to appointments is evidence of quality lead actioning. Conversions from sales appointments to closed sales can run anywhere from 30% to 70% depending on the market and the quality of the in-home salesperson. We generally look for 35% appointments with 30% of these converting for a 10.5% lead to sales conversion as evidence of good practice, although it does vary by market.
If you don't know where your business sits with each of these lead metrics...well then guess what?...you're going to be the guy buying the worst leads, from the worst sources, as they will be the cheapest leads out there. Other solar companies that do measure these things don't want them, and that's why the low-quality vendors will sell those leads to you at whatever price you say you will pay for them. (These lead sources are usually also the ones with the highest rates of blatant lead fraud).
The second sub-skill required by solar company CEO's is the ability to differentiate good and bad lead sources. Measuring the metrics above is the most important part of this. If you measure the above things, a fraudulent or low-quality lead source will become noticeable within a week. If you don't measure these things, then it will take much longer to realise and will cost you a lot more to make this differentiation.
In terms of web-generated lead sources, there are really only SolarReviews and EnergySage that have any real volume of organic solar related web traffic in America. If anyone else tells you they have large volumes of web-generated leads, ask them to show you the websites these calls to actions are currently running on. It's not magic, asking questions will sort the wheat from the chaff quickly.
There are two sub-skills involved, first, is running a smooth sales process. Our best customers call leads within 2 minutes of receiving them. If they don't get through, they ring up to seven times over the coming week at varying times (subject to TCPA rules) to maximize the chance of contact. Our best clients actually speak to 80-90% of the leads we sell them and get an in-home appointment ratio of around 35% of leads they buy. However, anything over 25% conversion to appointments is evidence of quality lead actioning. Conversions from sales appointments to closed sales can run anywhere from 30% to 70% depending on the market and the quality of the in-home salesperson. We generally look for 35% appointments with 30% of these converting for a 10.5% lead to sales conversion as evidence of good practice, although it does vary by market.
If you don't know where your business sits with each of these lead metrics...well then guess what?...you're going to be the guy buying the worst leads, from the worst sources, as they will be the cheapest leads out there. Other solar companies that do measure these things don't want them, and that's why the low-quality vendors will sell those leads to you at whatever price you say you will pay for them. (These lead sources are usually also the ones with the highest rates of blatant lead fraud).
The second sub-skill required by solar company CEO's is the ability to differentiate good and bad lead sources. Measuring the metrics above is the most important part of this. If you measure the above things, a fraudulent or low-quality lead source will become noticeable within a week. If you don't measure these things, then it will take much longer to realise and will cost you a lot more to make this differentiation.
In terms of web-generated lead sources, there are really only SolarReviews and EnergySage that have any real volume of organic solar related web traffic in America. If anyone else tells you they have large volumes of web-generated leads, ask them to show you the websites these calls to actions are currently running on. It's not magic, asking questions will sort the wheat from the chaff quickly.
Not understanding and measuring the metrics above is the most obvious. Those that can't measure
the metrics above have no way to differentiate between the highly profitable lead sources and
the unprofitable rubbish. However, there is another common problem that stems from CEO's not
understanding how profitable lead buying is. Owners of solar companies, particularly smaller
family-owned solar companies have an overly emotional reaction to bad leads. Even genuine and
QA'd lead sources like SolarReviews will contain 60% of people that won't buy solar and 90% of
people that won't buy solar from you.
Let me put this to you: If you buy 2 leads per day at $100 per lead for a year and convert 10% (that's nine out of ten who waste your time or tell you to go away) do you think you will have made money? I bet your first thought is no, that would suck, I wouldn't buy those leads...well guess what...that decision will cost you approximately 1.2 million in lost profit over just one year. Here is the link to our solar lead return calculator that shows you more on this. It allows you to put in your own input cost and selling price as well as the cost of leads in your state. Run the numbers at 10% conversion to sales and then run them again at 5%...now you'll probably get why even the busiest CEO's and our busiest clients will always take our call. We make them $10 for every $1 they spend with us on leads.
The second common mistake of solar CEO's is to treat a good solar lead vendor like any other input cost; cheaper is better. While there are solar panel brands you can swap between in your business, there are only two or three companies that have any volume of quality organic solar leads, and they are rare and precious. You need to treat good lead vendors as partners, not as input costs you seek to beat down all the time. If you remember nothing else from this page, remember that advice.
Even after 6 years and almost $10 million invested in our websites, all we generate is 350-500 lead per day around the whole country, of which only 180-250 survive QA to be sold as leads. Genuine solar leads are hard to generate, and it is important to have patience and respect for the few honest lead vendors trying to do this on your behalf. Don't reject a lead or complain about a single bad lead until you have run the numbers on 20 leads because when you do criticize or reject a lead, you go to the bottom of the queue to have leads allocated to you. Over time this will cost you 100 times what the fee was on the one bad lead that made you angry, and usually, when you run the numbers over 20 leads, you will see that you have actually made a huge profit despite the annoying bad leads. It is impossible to curate a lead source to contain no bad leads, as many consumers will lie when they want information but don't want to buy. We set the bar as high as is practical but still a lead is only someone who wanted some information on solar at the time they were using our site. That customer may not be a guaranteed solar buyer, and there's no guarantee they would still want to speak to other solar companies after talking to the first one. (This is why ringing solar leads quickly is so important).
Let me put this to you: If you buy 2 leads per day at $100 per lead for a year and convert 10% (that's nine out of ten who waste your time or tell you to go away) do you think you will have made money? I bet your first thought is no, that would suck, I wouldn't buy those leads...well guess what...that decision will cost you approximately 1.2 million in lost profit over just one year. Here is the link to our solar lead return calculator that shows you more on this. It allows you to put in your own input cost and selling price as well as the cost of leads in your state. Run the numbers at 10% conversion to sales and then run them again at 5%...now you'll probably get why even the busiest CEO's and our busiest clients will always take our call. We make them $10 for every $1 they spend with us on leads.
The second common mistake of solar CEO's is to treat a good solar lead vendor like any other input cost; cheaper is better. While there are solar panel brands you can swap between in your business, there are only two or three companies that have any volume of quality organic solar leads, and they are rare and precious. You need to treat good lead vendors as partners, not as input costs you seek to beat down all the time. If you remember nothing else from this page, remember that advice.
Even after 6 years and almost $10 million invested in our websites, all we generate is 350-500 lead per day around the whole country, of which only 180-250 survive QA to be sold as leads. Genuine solar leads are hard to generate, and it is important to have patience and respect for the few honest lead vendors trying to do this on your behalf. Don't reject a lead or complain about a single bad lead until you have run the numbers on 20 leads because when you do criticize or reject a lead, you go to the bottom of the queue to have leads allocated to you. Over time this will cost you 100 times what the fee was on the one bad lead that made you angry, and usually, when you run the numbers over 20 leads, you will see that you have actually made a huge profit despite the annoying bad leads. It is impossible to curate a lead source to contain no bad leads, as many consumers will lie when they want information but don't want to buy. We set the bar as high as is practical but still a lead is only someone who wanted some information on solar at the time they were using our site. That customer may not be a guaranteed solar buyer, and there's no guarantee they would still want to speak to other solar companies after talking to the first one. (This is why ringing solar leads quickly is so important).
The cost of SolarReviews solar leads varies with the location that the lead is generated in. It
also depends on the parts of the country where solar is less popular and most challenging to
sell; therefore the leads are cheaper. In areas of the country where solar systems are most
attractive, and sales conversion percentages are highest, the leads are more expensive.
Generally speaking the better the conditions for selling solar, the higher the competition that
exists for web traffic and the higher the cost we face to generate leads. When you register your
company above and add a payment method, we display the cost of leads in your service areas.
You then have a chance to continue with lead buying or to pause your account before you are
charged.
Yes, but that's because you didn't know what you were doing. Chances are some scumbag lead
company told you they generated hundreds of leads a day and you agreed to buy some. You didn't
ask them the sites they were generated from; you didn't ask to see the page or the call to
action they used to generate them and guess what?...you got duped. Buying genuine organic solar
leads is very profitable, but the words "genuine" and "organic" can't be taken for granted. Most
people that will ring you up wanting to sell you leads are simply trying to resell aged solar
leads generated by call centers and door knocking in 2012-2016 when such practices were
profitable.
Testimonials
"SolarReviews is an important resource for Minnesota solar customers and solar companies: every year, more solar interested consumers and business owners throughout Minnesota are visiting SolarReviews.com to read reviews of local solar contractors, and to review their certifications and memberships in trade associations like MnSEIA. The value to our citizens and industry cannot be understated"
Liz Lucente, MnSEIA Program Director
"With SolarReviews, it's not about transactional relationships, but rather building your reputation long-term. When our company receives interest through SolarReviews, we know that the customer has read our ratings and reviews, compared them to other installers, and has a genuine interest in doing business with us."
Renova Solar
"Our experience so far has been absolutely amazing with you guys. Very refreshing considering the experience I had with other people and companies in your industry."
Auric Energy
"The HSEA believes that homeowners and businesses should be presented all ways to make the appropriate decision for their solar investment. SolarReviews is a great way for homeowners to share their opinion of local businesses and manufacturers to assist others with making the right choice!"
Hawaii Solar Energy Association
"NABCEP partners with SolarReviews.com as both companies are committed to directing solar-interested consumers and business owners to reputable certified solar contractors. The relationship is built on trust!"
Shawn O'Brien - Executive Director, NABCEP
"As the California solar and storage market expands, customers increasingly want support in finding qualified and reliable solar installers, SolarReviews.com plays an important role in helping California's solar customers find the right partners."
Carter Lavin - Membership Director, California Solar & Storage Association
"SEI has partnered with SolarReviews.com due to their extensive reach into solar installer networks across the country and has grown to be recognized as the #1 website for homeowners to find honest reviews of the companies working in their community"
Chris Turek - Director of Marketing and Communications. Solar Energy International (SEI)
“I have used SolarReviews.com for over 4 years, and can unquestionably say that the quality of lead far exceeds anyone else in the market. The qualification process just plain works, and our lead to appointment percentages are through the roof.”
Kris Sipe - Owner. Sunbadger Solar
"SolarReviews.com has done a great job to match qualified customers to qualified solar installers in New York"
David Magid - Owner. YSG Solar
Video Testimonials
YSG Solar
New England Clean Energy
Renova Solar
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