Key facts
- Google Ads management is 10% of monthly ad spend, with a $600 CAD or $450 USD floor built in, and the media cost Google charges directly is never marked up.
- SEO is priced at $50 CAD, or $38 USD, a page, with a required 10-page minimum before any ongoing program begins.
- A solar company's website, built around an instant savings estimate and financing details, is priced once as a project, typically $1,500 up to $20,000 or more.
- An unqualified consult, a renter, a shaded or aging roof, or a homeowner who can't finance the system, burns a closer's whole afternoon with no chance of signing, so screening for those three things upfront matters more than raw lead count.
- Solar interest tracks utility rates and available incentives, so demand can swing with electricity prices and policy changes in a way a lot of other home services don't, and $0-down financing options are often what actually turns interest into a signed install.
What to Budget by Sales Team Size
A solar company running one small sales team can start near the $600 Google Ads floor, with targeting and form logic built to screen for homeownership, a workable roof, and financing before a consult ever gets booked, holding off on SEO until the qualification process is dialed in.
A company trying to keep several closers booked with a steady flow of qualified consults usually lands in the $2,500 to $5,000 range, pairing ad spend above the floor with SEO past ten pages built around savings estimates, financing options, and the specific utility territories the company installs in.
A larger, multi-crew operation covering a wider region typically needs a bigger media budget rather than a bigger management fee, since holding a strong position on competitive terms across more utility territories takes real ad spend, especially where incentives are drawing in more installers at once.
What Each Part of the Budget Buys a Solar Company
Google Ads earns its keep on the moment a homeowner opens a painful electric bill and starts searching. A campaign with roof-and-financing screening built into the landing page and form keeps that early interest from turning into a wasted site visit, while every call and form still gets tracked to its source.
SEO at $50 a page, from a ten-page floor, is where a company builds out the savings and financing content homeowners want to read before booking: pages on system costs, incentive programs, and battery storage. Those pages keep bringing in interest long after they're published, without a per-click cost.
A website's price mostly depends on whether it needs a real instant-estimate tool tied to utility rates, financing calculators, and a gallery of completed installs, versus a simpler site built mainly to support a phone call and a quote request form.
What to Cut First When Cash Is Tight
New SEO pages past the ten-page floor are the safest thing to trim first, since savings and financing pages already published keep generating interest without new ones added every month.
The qualification steps built into ads and lead forms should be protected even under budget pressure, since letting unscreened leads back through the funnel means paying full price to send a closer to a roof that was never going to work.
Follow-up sequences for homeowners who already received a quote are worth keeping funded too, since a solar decision often takes weeks, and a proposal that goes quiet for too long is easy for a family to set aside or sign with a competitor instead.
The One Number to Watch
Track cost per signed install, not cost per lead or cost per consult. A cheap lead that turns out to be a renter or a shaded roof costs nothing on paper but wastes a closer's time, while a slightly more expensive, well-qualified lead that signs is the only number that actually funds the business.
Alongside that, watch how many quoted homeowners are still undecided after a few weeks. A solar company can spend well on generating qualified consults and still fall short on installs if quoted homeowners go cold before signing, since that gap between quote and contract is where a lot of otherwise-good leads quietly disappear.
Related questions
Better-qualified ones, almost always. A renter or a homeowner with a bad roof costs a closer real time with zero chance of signing, so screening for homeownership, roof condition, and financing before a consult is booked usually improves results more than simply increasing the number of leads coming in.
Campaign setup with roof-and-financing screening built into the targeting and forms, call and form tracking so you can see which search produced each qualified consult, ongoing bid management, and a monthly report. The media spend itself goes directly to Google, with no markup added.
Demand can rise or fall as tax credits, rebate programs, or utility rates change, sometimes faster than a company can adjust its ad spend. Keeping SEO running steadily through those swings helps, since organic content on savings and incentives keeps producing interest even when paid demand shifts.
Once closers have real open capacity for more consults and the qualification process is already screening out renters and bad-roof leads effectively. Raising spend before that screening is solid usually just means paying more to generate leads that were never going to close.
A straightforward site with clear pricing information and an easy way to request a quote can work early on. A fuller rebuild, with an instant savings estimate and financing calculator, tends to pay for itself once lead volume is high enough that a self-serve tool starts saving real time on the phone.
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