How to Get More Solar Customers: Free and Paid Routes

Solar installers in the UK get customers from seven places: referrals from past customers, Google reviews and a Business Profile, the MCS installer search, partnerships with other trades, their own Facebook and Google ads, marketplaces such as Checkatrade and Bark, and bought leads. The first four cost time rather than money and build over months. The last three cost money and start sooner, but only pay off if someone replies to each enquiry within minutes.

The right mix depends on what each route costs you per install, counting your hours as well as your spend. Below: what each route needs, a way to compare them with your own numbers, and a script for the first call, because a lead from any route is wasted if that call goes badly.

Where do solar customers come from?

Every route has a cost, even the free ones.

Marketplace terms are from Checkatrade's pricing, where fixed plan memberships run for 12 months, and Bark's pricing and terms, where credits expire three months after purchase.

How do you get solar leads for free?

"Free" here means no ad spend and no lead fees. It doesn't mean no cost: each route takes hours.

1. Get MCS certified, and check your listing

MCS calls itself the UK's quality mark for small-scale renewable energy technologies, including solar panels, heat pumps and battery storage. Its find an installer search lets a homeowner pick a technology and search near them or by region. Each listing shows the installer's phone number, address, regions covered and certification body.

Homeowners have a money reason to look. MCS's Smart Export Guarantee page lists, under eligibility, a system installed by an MCS certified installer using certified products, and says a SEG tariff provider may ask for the MCS certificate. Anyone who wants paying for exported electricity needs an MCS installer, so check your listing's regions and phone number.

2. Set up your Google Business Profile as a service-area business

Most solar installers go to the customer. Google's Business Profile guidelines say a business like that should hide its address, have one profile for its base with a service area, and keep that area within about two hours' drive. You can set up to 20 service areas. Use your real trading name: the guidelines don't allow extra words, so "Solmere Solar" stays as it is, not "Solmere Solar Panels Warrington Cheapest Prices".

Google's page on how local results are ranked names three factors: relevance, distance and prominence. Prominence is partly how many reviews you have and how many websites link to you. It also says: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."

So fill the profile in properly: category, services, hours and photos of real installs, not stock images.

3. Ask every customer for a review, the same way

Pick one moment and stick to it. For solar, a good one is a week or two after commissioning, once the homeowner has watched the app on a sunny day. Google suggests sending a link or QR code. Two rules decide how you ask:

• Google's contribution policy bans reviews posted because of an incentive, discouraging negative reviews, and asking only the customers you expect to be happy.
• Since 6 April 2025, submitting or commissioning fake reviews, or reviews that hide that they were incentivised, has been a banned practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, according to the CMA's guidance on unfair commercial practices.

Ask everyone, offer nothing for it, and reply to what you get, good and bad.

4. Make referrals a habit

Panels are visible from the street, so neighbours ask. Give every customer two cards at handover, and send one message after their first quarter of generation asking whether anyone they know is thinking about solar. If that message is an email or a text, our guide to getting more home improvement customers sets out the ICO's soft opt-in rules for past customers.

If you offer a referral reward, write down what counts and when it's paid, and keep it apart from reviews. A thank-you for an introduction is a referral. A thank-you for a five-star review is an incentivised review.

5. Partner with trades that see roofs and fuse boards

Roofers, electricians, builders doing extensions or loft conversions, and EV charger and heat pump installers all meet homeowners at the moment solar comes up. A roofer about to re-roof is the obvious one: panels fitted while the scaffold is up save the homeowner a second scaffold later.

Agree up front who contacts whom, any fee and when it's paid. The cleanest introduction is the partner giving the homeowner your number, or passing on details only with the homeowner's agreement.

6. Get solar installation jobs by subcontracting

If you're new and your reviews are still building, fitting for a larger installer fills the diary. The trade-off: lower margin, someone else's brand on the job and no review for you. Treat it as a bridge while the routes above build.

What about cold calling and door-knocking?

Both cost nothing but hours. For calls, the ICO's telephone marketing guidance says you mustn't make unsolicited live marketing calls to a number registered with the Telephone Preference Service without that person's specific consent, and you must say who's calling. So screen every list against the TPS and keep your own do-not-call list.

Do Facebook ads work for solar leads?

They can. Facebook and Instagram reach homeowners who aren't searching yet, which is most of them, so enquiries arrive quickly. The risk is volume without intent: a form that takes two taps also takes two taps for someone who's barely interested.

A solar lead generation campaign that works has five parts:

1. An ad that says what it is. No "free solar" and no grant hints: the ASA's lead generation advice covers rulings against solar ads offering funding and grants the advertisers couldn't show were genuine.
2. A form with one or two real questions. Home ownership, roof direction, a bill band and a timeframe filter out casual taps. Our guide to lead qualification questions covers which belong on the form.
3. Consent that covers how you'll follow up. If you'll message on WhatsApp or by text, the form needs consent for that.
4. A reply in minutes. An enquiry cools fast; see speed to lead and WhatsApp lead follow-up.
5. Measuring surveys, not form fills. Tell the platforms which leads booked a survey; see the lead feedback loop.

You control everything and keep all the data, but you pay for every click, and learning what works costs money before it saves any. Our guide to cost per lead vs cost per job compares paying per click with paying per lead.

When does buying solar leads make sense?

When you have survey capacity the free routes can't fill yet (a new area, a new business, a quiet season), someone who can call within minutes, and a close rate you know, so you can tell whether the leads pay.

It doesn't make sense when your surveyors are booked for weeks, nobody can call new leads the same day, or you don't track which source each install came from.

Before you buy, ask whether the lead is sold to anyone else, what happens to a bad number and whether the consent names you. Our guide to exclusive vs shared leads explains the first question. We've compared 13 UK solar lead suppliers on price, exclusivity and returns, and set out what solar leads cost.

How do you compare routes on cost per install?

Put every route on the same footing, money and hours together:

Cost per install = (money spent on the route + hours spent × what an hour of your time costs) ÷ installs from that route

Here's an invented installer over three months, valuing an hour at £40. The numbers are made up for illustration. They aren't POCKLA data, or a forecast for any route.

The free route is cheapest per install but stops at two, because you can't buy more referrals. The two paid routes are close, and one install either way reverses their order: at five installs, the ads cost £740 each. Leave the hours out and you flatter whichever route takes most of them.

To run it on your own numbers, ask every enquiry how they heard of you, log money and hours by route each month, and tag each install with its source. After three months, set each route's cost per install against what you make on an install. Our guide to cost per lead vs cost per job shows which stage is costing you.

What should you say on the first call? A sample solar script

Whatever the source, the first call turns an enquiry into a survey, or doesn't. Here's a short script for Solmere Solar, an invented installer. Change the words until they sound like you, and confirm what the form or a WhatsApp chat already answered rather than asking again.

1. Open

"Hi, is that Sarah? It's Tom from Solmere Solar. You asked about solar for your home in Warrington on Tuesday, and you said evenings suit you. Is now still a good time for ten minutes?"

If it isn't: "No problem. Is tomorrow evening better, or Saturday morning?" Book it and end the call.

2. Confirm what they told you

"I've got your form here. It's a semi, the back of the roof faces roughly south, and your electricity is about £100 to £200 a month. Does that still sound right?"

3. Ask what the form couldn't

1. "What's got you looking at solar now?" Bills, an electric car on the way or a neighbour's panels each point the survey somewhere different.
2. "Is someone usually at home in the day?" Daytime use shapes the system, and whether a battery is worth discussing.
3. "Is any work planned on the roof, or is anything shading it, like trees or a chimney?" A re-roof changes the order of the job.
4. "Is it just you deciding, or is someone else involved?" If there are two of you, both should be at the survey.
5. "Have you had any other quotes yet, and do you have a rough budget in mind?" Neither answer is a reason to stop. Both tell you how to run the survey.

4. If they ask about a grant

"We'd rather be upfront: we're not a grant scheme, so you'd be paying for the system yourself. Installing solar panels on a home is zero-rated for VAT at the moment, though, so there's no VAT on the installation."

That's HMRC's position in VAT Notice 708/6: installing solar panels in residential accommodation in Great Britain is zero-rated from 1 May 2023 to 31 March 2027, then 5%. Check the conditions before you quote it, and don't turn the date into a sales deadline.

5. Book the survey

"The next step is a survey. Our surveyor looks at the roof, the loft, the fuse board and the meter, and it takes about an hour. Could you both be there? I've got Thursday at six or Saturday at ten."

"If you can find your yearly electricity use on a bill or your supplier's app, that helps us size the system. I'll send you a WhatsApp now with the time and the surveyor's name. If anything changes, just reply to it."

6. If they're not ready

"That's fine. When would be a sensible time to check in: after Christmas, or in the spring?"

Check in once, at that time, and stop if they say no. The script never mentions savings figures, today-only prices or funding: each one becomes an argument at the survey.

Where POCKLA fits

POCKLA is one of the paid routes above. We find homeowners looking into solar panels and batteries through our own Meta and Google campaigns and sell each solar lead once, to one buyer. Invalid numbers are returned, with no time limit. The indicative price is £20–£50 per qualified web lead: a range, not a quote, with your exact price agreed on a call. There's no setup fee, no monthly fee and no minimum term (pricing).

Each enquiry is followed up on WhatsApp in your business's name, or by SMS, and reaches your CRM or POCKLA Desk with every answer attached. Calls made from Desk get free call analytics. Commercial solar is quoted separately, on a call.

Bought leads don't replace reviews and referrals. They're worth buying only if your cost per install from them comes in below what you make on an install, and that's a number to measure, whoever you buy from.