Paid Advertising for Eco / Energy / Heating / Solar — The Practitioner’s Playbook.

SectionThe honest reframe most paid agencies won't tell you

Generic paid agencies sell solar and heat-pump installers a Performance Max campaign with broad-match keywords, a £20-a-month conversion-tracking setup, and a quarterly "report" that shows impressions and clicks. Then the installer's owner sees their bank balance tank for six weeks and quietly cancels.

Eco-energy paid is structurally different from e-commerce paid. The conversion event isn't a sale; it's a booked-survey. The buyer's path from click to install is 45–90 days. The CPC variance across sub-verticals is enormous (solar PV and ASHP can be 4× different). And the most expensive thing a paid agency can do — bid on your own brand — is something they often charge full retainer to do.

This playbook fixes the structure. Read it, run it yourself, or have us ship it on retainer. Same canon either way.

SectionThe eight-point audit we run on day one

Score your own paid account red / amber / green this week.

1. Brand-spend share under 15% — Anything more is paying Google to send people who already know your name. Buy keywords, sub-vertical terms and competitor terms — not your own.
2. Search-term report cleanliness — Last 30 days of search-term-report queries; flag any that wasted £100+ with zero qualified clicks. Add as exact-match negatives. We typically find £1,200–£8,000/month in waste on first audit.
3. Performance Max signal feeding — Customer-match audience uploaded; offline conversion values flowing back; asset groups configured by sub-vertical (not one big asset group); placements excluded for low-intent inventory. Most installer PMax accounts have NONE of these.
4. Sub-vertical-specific landing pages — Each ad group lands on its sub-vertical pillar page (solar/ASHP/GSHP/EV/battery), not a generic "Services" page. Ad relevance scores improve, CPC drops 15–30%, conversion lifts 25–50%.
5. Funded-grant campaigns by scheme cycle — ECO4-window campaigns, BUS-grant campaigns, Smart Export Guarantee changes — separate ad groups, separate creative, separate seasonal-budget allocations. Most installers run grant-related campaigns year-round at flat budget; the right approach is concentrated bursts at scheme-window peaks.
6. Server-side conversion tracking + offline conversions — GA4 + sGTM + offline conversion uploads (booked survey → quoted → contracted → installed). Without this the algorithm bids toward the cheapest event, which is junk leads. With it, the algorithm starts bidding on real customers within 30 days.
7. Survey-to-sale tracking in the platform reporting — Most accounts only track to "lead" because that's what platforms know. Send the deeper conversions (quoted, contracted, installed, with revenue) back via offline conversion uploads. The platform optimises on real revenue, not just leads.
8. Creative emphasis on trust signals + financial argument — MCS number, accredited installer status, customer reviews, finance options, payback period. Generic "Get a free quote" is the cheapest creative; trust + numbers wins this category.

Three or more reds — fix the foundation before scaling spend.

SectionSix productised deliverables we ship per cycle

Sub-vertical campaign architecture. Separate ad groups (or whole campaigns) per technology — solar PV, ASHP, GSHP, EV charging, battery storage, retrofit insulation. Each with sub-vertical-specific keywords, ad copy, landing page and creative. Time to first signal: 14 days.

Server-side tracking + offline conversion uploads. GA4 + sGTM + CRM matching keys + offline conversion uploads pushing booked-survey → quoted → contracted → installed values back to Google + Meta. The algorithm bids on real customers. Junk-lead rate typically drops 30–50% within 60 days.

Brand-spend audit + reduction plan. Strict separation of brand vs non-brand spend. Brand campaigns capped at 15% of total budget; the freed budget redeployed to sub-vertical non-brand campaigns. Net new enquiries up, blended CPL down.

ECO4 / BUS / SEG funded-grant campaign architecture. Pre-built campaigns aligned to scheme calendars with concentrated burst budgets at window peaks. Creative refreshes per cycle. Reporting overlays scheme-window dates on lead-volume charts.

Performance Max audience + signal hardening. Customer-match audience uploaded; lookalikes built; in-market for home improvement audience added; placements excluded; asset groups split by sub-vertical. PMax goes from black-box-loss to highest-converting campaign in the account within 60 days.

Live performance dashboard. Cost-per-survey by sub-vertical. Survey-to-sale conversion rate. Cost-per-acquired-customer with revenue attached. Funded-grant calendar overlay. Refreshed daily, weekly written summary in your portal every Friday.

AI creative-variation engine for ad fatigue. One approved hero photo of a real install becomes 50–200 ad variations across Meta feed, Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Display and Pinterest — same brand voice, same trust signals, different motion + hook + scene. Ships through Higgsfield's Marketing Studio with a brand-locked encoding so every variant carries MCS / RECC / TrustMark visuals correctly. Compliance-flagged copy is filtered before delivery. Cuts ad-fatigue refresh cycles from monthly hand-cuts to weekly 80-variant batches without inflating production cost. Time to first signal: 7 days.

SectionWhat to do this week

Three actions, ranked by leverage. Same first three steps we ship in week one of a Foundation retainer.

1. Pull last-30-day search-term report. Sort by cost descending. Screenshot the top 50. Owner: founder or marketing manager. Time: 30 minutes. The waste is in plain sight. Add the top wasted queries as negatives. Typical first-audit result: £1,200–£8,000/month in identifiable waste.
2. Check your brand-spend share. Owner: founder. Time: 15 minutes. Sum of cost on brand-bid keywords ÷ total cost. If it's over 25%, this is your second-biggest leak.
3. Decide DIY, DWY or DFY for the next 90 days. Owner: founder. See the three ways.

SectionFive questions eco-energy operators ask us about paid

What's a realistic cost-per-survey? £80–£200 across the category, typically: solar PV £80–£120, ASHP £150–£200, GSHP £180–£250, battery £100–£140, EV charging £70–£100. CPS is leading; cost-per-acquired-customer is the truth — typically £400–£900 across the category.

Should we run Performance Max? Yes — but only after audience signals, offline conversions and asset-group splits are live. PMax with no signals is a money pit; PMax with proper signal feeding becomes the highest-converting campaign in the account, typically.

How fast can we expect lead volume to climb after a rebuild? Sub-vertical campaign architecture: 14 days to first signal of intent shift. Offline conversion uploads: 30 days for the algorithm to start bidding on real customers. Compounding signal: 60–90 days. ROAS doubling: typical at cycle 2 or 3.

What's the biggest mistake we'll make running this ourselves? Two things. First, not splitting brand and non-brand spend, and so paying premium prices to reach buyers who'd have come for free. Second, treating Performance Max as a fire-and-forget product; it needs weekly signal feeding and monthly asset-group rebalancing.

Can we run this with the playbook + £750 audit? Yes — most installers can run the campaign architecture themselves with a competent in-house marketing manager. The £750 audit gives you a written red/amber/green of your current account + named-owner / dated next steps. Credit toward first cycle if you sign for DWY/DFY within 30 days.

SectionWhere to go from here

If you want this shipped end-to-end on a productised retainer, book a 30-minute discovery call.

If you'd rather have a senior practitioner reviewing your team's paid spend each week, the coaching plans start at £750/month. If you have a hard deadline (an ECO4 window opening, a peak-season Q1 push), the two-week embedded sprint lands a senior practitioner in your account for ten working days at £3,000 fixed.

Or run it yourself. Read this playbook end to end, run the eight-point audit, ship one deliverable a month for six months. Twice-quarterly office hours are open to anyone using the playbooks.