Installer guide · 9 min read

Solar Marketing Agency UK: A Guide for Commercial Installers

Short answer: a solar marketing agency either builds your brand (website, SEO, social, ads) and leaves your team to turn interest into meetings, or generates leads for you. For commercial installers, the thing worth paying for is a site survey with the decision-maker at a business that can go ahead. TNW Marketing is a renewable energy lead generation agency that books exactly that: exclusive, pre-qualified commercial site meetings, paid per attended booking, with no retainer.

The three kinds of solar marketing agency

"Solar marketing agency" covers very different businesses, and most installers who have been let down by one hired the wrong kind for what they needed. There are three broad types.

• Full-service marketing agencies. They build and run your website, SEO, social media, content and paid ads. They are paid to create attention for your brand. Turning that attention into site meetings is your team's job.
• Lead suppliers. They run campaigns and sell you the enquiries, usually per lead. A lead is a name and number from someone who showed some interest; your team still has to call, qualify and book it, and it may have been sold to other installers too.
• Appointment and lead generation agencies. They do the prospecting, calling and qualifying themselves and hand you a booked meeting. Some charge a retainer for their callers' time; others, like TNW Marketing, are paid per qualified meeting that actually happens.

Domestic and commercial solar need different things. A domestic installer can live on high volumes of homeowner enquiries. A commercial installer needs fewer, larger opportunities with a business owner or finance director who controls the building and the electricity bill, and every wasted survey costs a surveyor's day.

Marketing agency vs lead generation vs pay per booking

The real difference is who does the work between "a business showed interest" and "we are on site", and who pays when that work produces nothing.

Retainers and per-lead pricing both put the risk on you. For the full comparison of those two models, see pay per lead vs retainer agencies, and for how paying per meeting works in detail, read pay per appointment commercial solar leads.

Which channels win commercial solar work

Whoever you hire, ask which channels they will use and why, because the answer should be different for a commercial installer than for a domestic one. Commercial decision-makers rarely fill in a solar quote form on a whim, so the channels that work reach them directly.

• Phone. Still the most direct way to reach the person who signs off the spend and get a straight answer. Our guide to cold calling for commercial solar covers call lists, scripts and the UK rules.
• Email. Scales well when it is personal and relevant, and fails when it is not. See cold email for commercial solar.
• LinkedIn. Good for reaching owners and finance directors by name. See LinkedIn lead generation for solar.
• Paid ads. Work best when they filter for intent rather than collect cheap form fills. Our sister site Solar Surveys UK has a guide to solar advertising.
• SEO. The slowest to build, and it keeps bringing enquiries in once it works. See the solar SEO guide on Solar Surveys UK.
• Public tenders. Schools, councils and the NHS buy solar through frameworks. See commercial solar tenders and frameworks.

Most agencies are strong in one or two of these. An honest one will tell you which, and will show you installers it has done it for.

Renewable energy lead generation: solar, roofing, heat pumps

A renewable energy lead generation agency works across the installs a commercial site might need. The same warehouse that is right for rooftop solar may need roof work first, and the same business may be weighing up a heat pump. TNW Marketing books commercial site surveys for:

• Commercial solar installers: rooftop, ground-mount and PPA.
• Commercial and industrial roofing contractors (see commercial roofing bookings).
• Commercial heat pump installers (see commercial heat pump bookings).

All three work the same way: qualified, exclusive bookings, paid per attended survey.

How TNW Marketing works

TNW Marketing is a UK lead generation agency for commercial renewables installers, founded by Daniel Bell and Roman Steer-Love. We do the prospecting, the calling and the qualifying, and book the meeting into your calendar. You pay for qualified, attended surveys, not for our time.

• Qualified before it reaches you. Every business is checked for ownership (or landlord consent), energy spend from meters and billing, roof suitability and buying intent, and you meet the decision-maker or bill payer.
• Exclusive. Each booking goes to one installer, never shared with two or three others.
• Paid per attended booking. No retainers, no monthly minimums. A booking that does not meet the agreed brief is replaced or refunded. Our show rate is 60%+.
• Written up. Each booking comes with the energy usage, bill spend, location and likely system size, so your surveyor knows what they are walking into.

You can hear 30+ installers describe it in their own words on our video reviews page and in the case studies.

Questions to ask any agency before you sign

1. What exactly am I paying for: time, enquiries or meetings that happen?
2. What counts as a qualified lead or appointment, in writing?
3. Is each lead or meeting exclusive to me, and for how long?
4. What happens to a no-show or a lead that turns out not to qualify?
5. How long is the minimum term, and what is the notice period?
6. Which channels will you use, and who actually makes the calls or sends the emails?
7. Can I speak to commercial installers you work with now, not just read quotes on your website?
8. How will we measure it: cost per attended survey and cost per signed project, or clicks and impressions?

Our guide to solar lead generation companies compares UK suppliers on exactly these points.

When a full-service agency is the better choice

Paying per booked survey is not the answer to everything. A full-service marketing agency makes more sense when:

• You need a new website, a brand or content before anything else.
• You want to build inbound demand over the long term and can wait months for SEO to pay back.
• You mainly sell domestic installs and want high volumes of homeowner enquiries.
• You already have a team of callers who need a steady flow of raw enquiries to work.

Many installers use both: an agency for the brand and the website, and pay-per-booking lead generation for a predictable flow of commercial surveys. Our lead calculator shows how many surveys you need for your install target.