Do Facebook Ads Work for Solar Installers? (2026)
“Facebook? Mate, have you seen the comments under solar ads? People absolutely slating companies. Why would I put my business on there?”
Fair point, and we hear it constantly. But it is not really the question worth asking.
Facebook ads work for some solar installers and not for others, and the same is true of Google, of directories, and of every other source of demand. The question that actually decides where your money goes is narrower and more useful: for your business, is it cheaper to generate leads yourself or to buy exclusive leads at a known price?
That is an arithmetic question, and there are enough published UK numbers to answer it properly.
Do Facebook Ads Work for Solar Companies in the UK?
Yes, in the sense that matters: homeowners who buy residential solar are on Facebook and Instagram, and campaigns aimed at them do produce enquiries. According to Ofcom’s online research, Facebook remains the most widely used social platform among UK adults, with Instagram close behind. That is the same 30–65 homeowner bracket that buys solar PV.
So “does it work” is not the interesting part. Every installer who has ever tried it already knows enquiries come out the other end. What separates a good decision from an expensive one is what each of those enquiries ends up costing you once everything is counted.
What Does It Actually Cost to Generate Your Own Solar Leads?
This is where published figures get uncomfortable.
Phantom Digital’s UK guide, How Much Do Solar Leads Cost?, puts do-it-yourself Google Ads at £80–250 per residential solar lead. That is the cost of the clicks alone, before anyone is paid to build the campaign, write the ads, maintain the landing page or watch the numbers week to week.
Search and social behave differently and prices vary, but the shape of the problem is the same on both. When you run demand generation yourself you are buying three things, and only one of them appears on the invoice:
- The media. The actual spend. This is the number people quote.
- The management. Either an agency fee, or your own evenings. Both are real costs; only one shows up in a bank statement.
- The learning curve. The first weeks of spend that teach you what does not work. Every account pays this, and you pay it again each time the market shifts.
That third cost is the one installers consistently underestimate, because there is no invoice for it. It arrives as a month of spend with three usable enquiries at the end.
What Does It Cost to Buy Exclusive Leads Instead?
Published UK prices span a wide range, and the range itself tells you something.
| What you are buying | Published UK price | Who else gets it |
|---|---|---|
| Shared directory lead (Checkatrade-type) | £15–30 | Three to five installers |
| Shared leads generally | £20–50 | Several installers |
| Exclusive leads, budget end | From £8–15 | You only, in theory |
| Exclusive leads, premium agencies | £50–150 | You only |
| Commercial solar leads | £200–300+ | You only |
| DIY Google Ads, run yourself | £80–250 | You only |
Sources: Phantom Digital’s solar lead cost guide for the exclusive, shared and DIY figures; SolarPVLeads for the self-published budget end; the 2026 LinkedIn Solar Lead Cost Guide and HelloLeads’ industry guide for shared directory pricing. Overall, UK per-lead prices are usually described as landing somewhere between £10 and £60 depending on source, with premium exclusive supply above that.
Read the table again and the buy-versus-build comparison stops being close. Running your own search ads at £80–250 a lead is at or above the price of buying exclusive leads outright, and you are still paying for the management and the learning curve on top.
But Aren’t Bought Leads Worse?
Some are. That is exactly why the price range is so wide, and why the important question is not “bought or self-generated” but “exclusive or shared”.
Phantom Digital’s guide puts shared leads at 5–10% conversion and exclusive leads at 15–25%. That is the whole argument in two numbers. A shared lead at £20 sold to four other installers has to work extremely hard to beat an exclusive lead at three times the price, because you are quote number four before you have said hello, and the conversation starts on price.
We go through that comparison properly in exclusive vs shared solar leads.
The other thing worth checking is what happens when a lead is wrong. A wrong number, the wrong area or the wrong person is not a lead at all, and whether you carry that cost or the supplier does makes a substantial difference to your real cost per job.
Lead Quality Is a Process Problem as Much as a Source Problem
One legitimate reason for poor lead quality perception has nothing to do with where the lead came from. Leads generated by any demand-generation channel are warm in the moment. A homeowner submitted their details while scrolling during lunch. If you call them three days later, they have forgotten. Call within the first hour and it is a different conversation entirely.
This is worth being honest with yourself about before you blame a source. If leads sit until Thursday, no channel and no supplier will fix that, and buying more expensive leads will only make the leak more expensive.
If you are currently relying on referrals and wondering whether to add a bought lead source at all, why referral-only solar companies hit a ceiling covers that decision first. And if you want to see what predictable volume does to hiring and operations, we cover it in building a predictable solar pipeline.
So Should You Run Facebook Ads?
Run your own campaigns if you genuinely want to own the channel: you have someone who will look after it every week, you can fund several months of learning before judging it, and you want the audience and the data to be yours permanently. That is a real strategy and it pays off for installers who commit to it.
Buy leads instead if what you actually want is booked surveys next month. You get a known price per lead, no learning curve, no management, and someone else absorbs the cost of the enquiries that go nowhere.
The mistake is doing the first thing while expecting the second, spending like a media buyer while measuring like a lead buyer, and concluding after six weeks that “Facebook doesn’t work”.
Where PoweredLeads Sits
We sell exclusive solar leads at a published price, from £45 per accepted lead, which puts us in the middle of the range above on price. One installer per area, never resold, contact details verified before the lead reaches you, and a credit if a lead misses the agreed standard.
We publish the price because the first question on every call is what it costs, and making you book a meeting to find out wastes both our time.
Check availability in your area
Bring your scepticism. We will tell you whether your postcodes are open and what your leads cost. If it does not make sense for your area, we will tell you that too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do Facebook ads work for solar installers?
They can. The homeowner demographic that buys residential solar uses Facebook and Instagram heavily, and campaigns aimed at them do produce enquiries. Whether they work for your business depends on whether you can reach a workable cost per lead after management time and the initial learning period, and how that compares to simply buying exclusive leads.
How much does it cost to generate your own solar leads?
Phantom Digital’s UK guide puts DIY Google Ads at £80–250 per residential solar lead. That is media cost only, it excludes agency fees or your own management time, and it excludes the early spend that teaches an account what works.
Is buying solar leads cheaper than running ads yourself?
Often, yes. Published UK figures put exclusive leads from premium providers at £50–150 and budget vendors advertise from £8–15, against £80–250 for DIY search advertising. The comparison only goes the other way if you can run campaigns efficiently and are not counting your own time as free.
What is the difference between exclusive and shared solar leads?
A shared lead is sold to three to five installers at once, typically £15–30. An exclusive lead goes to one installer only. Phantom Digital reports shared leads converting at 5–10% against 15–25% for exclusive, which is usually enough to reverse the apparent price advantage once you measure cost per installation rather than cost per lead.
Why did my previous solar ad campaign fail?
The most common causes are judging an account before it has enough data, treating a channel as a one-month experiment, and slow follow-up on the enquiries it did produce. Those are process and patience problems rather than platform problems, and they are worth ruling out before writing off a source entirely.