Home services / Solar
Solar marketing when the incentive story has just changed.
A great deal of solar advertising still promises a 30 percent federal tax credit. The IRS page for that credit says it is not available for property placed in service after 31 December 2025. That gap between the copy and the current position is the most urgent problem in this category.
What can solar companies claim about incentives now?
The IRS states that the residential clean energy credit is not available for property placed in service after 31 December 2025. Any solar advertising that still promises a 30 percent federal credit is making a claim the IRS page contradicts, and that is a substantiation problem as well as a customer service one.
Incentives at state and utility level vary widely and change frequently, so the workable approach is to reference the programme and link to its own published page rather than quoting a figure that may be out of date by the time somebody reads it.
The category also carries a reputation problem created by aggressive door to door sales and overstated savings projections. Transparency about cost, financing and realistic production is the position that differentiates a legitimate installer.
Audit every incentive claim in your marketing before anything else.
The IRS states that the residential clean energy credit is not available for property placed in service after 31 December 2025. Any solar advertising that still promises a 30 percent federal credit is making a claim the IRS page contradicts. Check current federal and state incentives before they go anywhere near an ad.
This is not a subtle compliance point. A homeowner who signs on the basis of a 30 percent federal credit and then discovers it does not apply has been misled, and the marketing that told them is the evidence.
Read the full breakdown: Audit every incentive claim in your marketing before anything else.Hide the full breakdown: Audit every incentive claim in your marketing before anything else.
The audit is straightforward and should be done everywhere, not just on the website: landing pages, paid search ad copy, social creative, printed material, proposal templates, email sequences and anything a salesperson reads from. Stale incentive claims survive longest in the places nobody reviews.
State, local and utility incentives are a separate matter and they change constantly, frequently closing when a budget is exhausted. The safe pattern is to name the programme, explain in general terms what it does and link to the administering body's own page, rather than quoting an amount.
The same applies to net metering and export arrangements, which have been revised in several markets and materially change the economics of a system. A proposal built on a superseded arrangement is a projection the homeowner cannot rely on.
None of this makes solar unsellable. It makes the honest version of the pitch more important, and it creates an opening for the installer whose figures are current while competitors are still quoting last year's. Results vary by market, budget, competition and other factors. Nothing here is a guarantee of a ranking, a lead volume or a revenue outcome.
A long, sceptical consideration period.
Solar is a high ticket, deferrable, financially complex purchase, which produces one of the longest funnels on this hub.
Homeowners research solar for months. They read about payback periods, look at their own bills, worry about roof suitability, investigate financing, ask neighbours who have panels, and encounter a great deal of contradictory information.
That means the reachable market is far larger than the enquiry volume suggests, and the content that reaches it is educational rather than promotional. How production is estimated for a specific roof. What shading, orientation and pitch actually do. How financing options differ and what each means if the house is sold. What happens to the roof underneath. What maintenance is involved.
Read the full breakdown: A long, sceptical consideration period.Hide the full breakdown: A long, sceptical consideration period.
It also means paid search alone is an expensive way to compete, because it reaches people only at the end of a long process where competition is concentrated and lead costs reflect it.
Attribution suffers accordingly. Somebody who read your content in March and requested a proposal in September will register as a direct visit, and the campaign that caught the final click takes credit for six months of work it did not do. Ask at the first appointment where they first came across you.
Door to door selling created a reputation you are marketing into.
Solar has a well documented consumer protection history: aggressive door to door canvassing, savings projections that did not survive contact with reality, financing arrangements homeowners did not fully understand, and installers who ceased trading leaving warranties unhonoured.
The consequence is a market where a meaningful share of homeowners have already decided they will not buy solar from anybody who knocks, and where scepticism about projected savings is the default position.
Read the full breakdown: Door to door selling created a reputation you are marketing into.Hide the full breakdown: Door to door selling created a reputation you are marketing into.
The counter is transparency that a competitor using the old model cannot match. Publishing honest cost ranges. Explaining exactly how a production estimate is calculated and what would make it wrong. Being explicit about financing, including what the arrangement means if the property is sold. Stating who honours the workmanship warranty and what happens if the installer is no longer trading.
It also means being careful about tactics that resemble the problem. Pressure to sign before an incentive expires, projections presented as guarantees and financing explained only verbally are all patterns an informed homeowner recognises.
The installers building durable businesses in this category tend to be conspicuously slower and more documented than the sales led model, and they say so.
Where solar advertising most often goes wrong.
This category has more regulated claim territory than any other trade on this hub.
- The IRS states that the residential clean energy credit is not available for property placed in service after 31 December 2025. Any solar advertising that still promises a 30 percent federal credit is making a claim the IRS page contradicts. Check current federal and state incentives before they go anywhere near an ad.
- Savings projections are performance claims requiring a reasonable basis. A figure derived from best case irradiance, a static utility rate and a full incentive stack is not a reasonable basis for what a specific household will experience.
- Eliminate your electricity bill is an outcome claim and is almost never accurate, given standing charges, connection fees and periods of low production.
- Payback period claims combine a production estimate, a rate assumption and an incentive assumption, each of which can be wrong. If published, the assumptions have to be stated.
- The FTC's rule on fake reviews and testimonials took effect on 21 October 2024. It covers buying reviews, writing your own, and suppressing negative ones. Every review we help collect is first party, requested from a real customer, and never gated on the rating they intend to leave.
- Any material connection between you and someone endorsing you has to be disclosed clearly and close to the endorsement. Paying, gifting, discounting or employing someone all count as material connections.
The FTC's general requirement governs all of this: an advertiser needs a reasonable basis for a claim before it runs. In a category where the claim concerns somebody's household finances over twenty years, the standard is not a formality.
The arrangement matters more to a homeowner than the panels do.
Solar is usually a financing decision dressed as an equipment decision, and the marketing should treat it that way.
| Arrangement | What the homeowner gains | What they need to understand |
|---|---|---|
| Cash purchase | Full ownership and simplest position | Large up front cost |
| Loan | Ownership without the capital | Total cost of credit and the effect on a sale |
| Lease | Low or no up front cost | They do not own the system, and transfer on sale |
| Power purchase agreement | Pay for output rather than equipment | Escalators and contract length |
Explaining these honestly, including what happens when the property is sold, is one of the strongest trust signals available. It is also the area where homeowners most frequently report feeling misled, which is exactly why clarity differentiates.
What a sceptical homeowner checks first.
BrightLocal surveyed 1,002 US consumers in 2026 across local business categories. Solar attracts more pre-purchase research than almost any home improvement.
SourceBrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey, 2026, base 1,002 US consumers
Solar reviews are frequently written years after installation, which makes them unusually informative and unusually damaging when production did not match the projection. Conservative projections protect the review profile as well as the customer. The FTC's rule on fake reviews and testimonials took effect on 21 October 2024. It covers buying reviews, writing your own, and suppressing negative ones. Every review we help collect is first party, requested from a real customer, and never gated on the rating they intend to leave.
Five pages that reach people before they request a proposal.
Educational content is the primary channel in a category with this long a consideration phase.
Is my roof suitable
Orientation, pitch, shading, age and structural condition. Honest about when the answer is no, or not until the roof is replaced.
What it actually costs here
Ranges by system size for your market, with the variables named. Almost nobody publishes this, which is why it works.
How production is estimated
What the modelling uses and what makes real output differ. A homeowner who understands this treats a conservative estimate as competence rather than as a weak offer.
See the remaining steps: Five pages that reach people before they request a proposal.Hide the remaining steps: Five pages that reach people before they request a proposal.
Financing explained plainly
Each arrangement, what it means for ownership, and what happens at a sale. This is the section homeowners most want and most rarely find.
What happens to my roof
Mounting, penetrations, warranties and what happens when the roof eventually needs replacing. A recurring anxiety that is almost never addressed.
None of these require an incentive claim, which means they do not go stale when a programme changes.
Proposals issued and systems installed, not leads.
Lead volume in solar is inflated by curiosity and by people at the very start of a months long process. Counting them as leads makes every subsequent decision worse.
The panel that describes the business is site assessments booked, assessments held, proposals issued, contracts signed, and installations completed, with the gap between contract and installation tracked because it is frequently long.
Cost per installed system is the figure to manage the budget to. Cost per lead in this category bears almost no relationship to it, because conversion rates differ by an order of magnitude between an educational content visitor and a cold form fill.
Because the cycle runs for months, judge campaigns over quarters and use branded search volume as a leading indicator. When the educational content is working, searches for the company name rise before proposals do.
What a solar lead is worth, and how to tell the marketing is out of date.
LocalIQ's 2026 benchmarks put home and home improvement at an $8.33 average cost per click and a $90.92 average cost per lead. Those are vendor aggregates across every trade in the sector and they vary enormously inside it, so treat them as a way of spotting a quote that is out of range rather than as a target.
Solar sits well above the sector average and the cycle runs for months, which makes cost per lead close to useless. Cost per installed system, measured over quarters, is the only figure that reflects the business.
Read the full breakdown: What a solar lead is worth, and how to tell the marketing is out of date.Hide the full breakdown: What a solar lead is worth, and how to tell the marketing is out of date.
Define qualified by roof suitability, roof age, shading, ownership of the property and financing position. Roof age is the test most often skipped and the most decisive, because a system installed over a roof with three years left creates a problem nobody wants to own.
The compliance surface is dominated by claims. The IRS states the residential clean energy credit is not available for property placed in service after 31 December 2025, savings projections are performance claims needing a reasonable basis, and eliminate your bill is an outcome claim that is almost never accurate.
How you tell it is being done badly: a 30 percent federal credit still in the ad copy, savings figures with no stated assumptions, financing explained only verbally, and reporting that counts leads rather than installed systems.
What we would build.
SEO Content Strategy
Educational pages that reach the long research phase and do not go stale.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Turning research visitors into booked assessments rather than form fills.
Google Ads Management
Campaigns measured on installed systems rather than on cost per lead.
CRM Implementation
Assessment to proposal to contract to installation, with the real timeline visible.
Review Management
Steady collection, which matters more when reviews are written years later.
Your website works alongside the field service software you already run.
We do not replace your field service software, we do not migrate it, and we do not ask you to change it. The site links to it from the places a homeowner is ready to act, and embeds the vendor's own widget where the vendor publishes one. Being plain about the mechanism: that is all it is. Nothing is synced, nothing we build reads or writes your records, and the names below are systems our clients run, not partners of ours. A solar enquiry is a finance decision wearing home improvement clothes. The handoff that works is a savings estimate, not an appointment.
Scheduling, dispatch and invoicing
Your jobs, your techs and your invoicing stay in the system your office already runs on. Where it publishes a booking page or an online payment link, the site points at it, and where it does not the phone stays the primary route rather than being demoted for the sake of a widget.
- ServiceTitan
- Housecall Pro
- Jobber
- Service Fusion
Trade specific systems
Roofing, landscaping and pest control tend to run something built for the trade rather than a general platform, and those often publish nothing a website can embed at all. That is normal and it is not a problem: the handoff is a clearly labelled link and a phone number that rings.
- AccuLynx
- JobNimbus
- Aspire
- PestPac
- RealGreen
- FieldRoutes
Estimating, measurement and job photos
These sit between the enquiry and the quote, which is exactly where most home services enquiries go cold. We do not touch the tools. What the site can do is set the expectation properly, so a homeowner knows whether they are booking a visit or asking for a measurement.
- Hover
- CompanyCam
What we actually change
Not the system: the path to it. Where the button sits on the page, whether it says what happens when you press it, how many taps it takes from a phone, whether it appears again at the point a homeowner has finished reading and decided, and whether somebody who is not ready yet has a second way to reach you. That path is ours, it is measurable, and in most business audits it is the part doing the damage.
Where the handoff is only a link
Some vendors publish an embeddable widget and some publish nothing at all. Where there is nothing to embed and no deep link worth pointing at, the site sends the visitor to your booking page or your login and stops there. That is a perfectly good outcome and we would rather say so than describe a seam we cannot remove. What we can do is make the destination unsurprising, so nobody arrives wondering whether they are still dealing with you.
Get a solar marketing review.
We start by auditing every incentive claim in your material against the current published position, then look at whether your content reaches the long research phase.
One caveat on all of that. These are descriptions of rules as they are published today, not legal advice about your situation. They differ by state and they change, sometimes quietly, so check the current wording with your own counsel or compliance officer before you rely on any of it. Where a rule touches your marketing we write to the stricter reading and send it to you for sign off before anything publishes.
Straight answers.
Can we still advertise the 30 percent federal tax credit?
The IRS page for the residential clean energy credit states it is not available for property placed in service after 31 December 2025. Advertising that still promises it is making a claim the IRS page contradicts.
Audit every surface, not just the website: ad copy, social creative, printed material, proposal templates and anything a salesperson reads from. Stale claims survive longest where nobody reviews them.
How should we handle state and utility incentives?
Name the programme, explain what it does in general terms, and link to the administering body's own page rather than quoting an amount.
These change frequently and several close when a budget is exhausted, which makes a quoted figure a claim with a short shelf life.
Can we publish savings projections?
Only with a reasonable basis and with the assumptions stated. A figure built on best case irradiance, a static utility rate and a full incentive stack is not a reasonable basis for a specific household.
Conservative projections also protect your review profile, because solar reviews are frequently written years later by homeowners comparing actual output against what they were told.
How do we overcome the industry's door to door reputation?
By being conspicuously different and saying so. Published cost ranges, an explanation of how production is estimated, financing set out plainly and a clear statement about warranties and who honours them.
Also by avoiding the tactics that resemble the problem: pressure to sign before a deadline, projections presented as guarantees, and financing explained only verbally.
What content works best for solar?
Educational pages that reach the long research phase: roof suitability, honest local cost ranges, how production is estimated, financing explained plainly, and what happens to the roof.
None of those depend on an incentive claim, which means they keep working when a programme changes.
What should we measure?
Assessments booked and held, proposals issued, contracts signed and systems installed, with cost per installed system as the figure the budget is managed to.
Cost per lead bears almost no relationship to it here, because a content researcher and a cold form fill convert at completely different rates.
Where this comes from.
Primary documentation and published research behind the guidance on this page.
- IRS: residential clean energy credit (opens in a new tab)
- FTC: advertising and marketing basics for business (opens in a new tab)
- FTC: final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials (opens in a new tab)
- FTC: endorsement guides, what people are asking (opens in a new tab)
- FTC: .com disclosures, how to make effective disclosures in digital advertising (opens in a new tab)
- ENERGY STAR: heating and cooling product criteria (opens in a new tab)
- BrightLocal: local consumer review survey (opens in a new tab)
- LocalIQ: search advertising benchmarks (opens in a new tab)
Talk to the team
A short call, a look at how the business currently shows up, and a straight answer on what we would do first.