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A solar installer can spend RM 8,000 a month on Google Ads and still complain the leads are tyre-kickers. Usually the settings are fine. The money is simply reaching people who are eleven months away from buying.
This guide to Google Ads for solar companies is for installers in Klang Valley, Penang, Johor and Sabah who want their spend landing on people ready for a site survey. It covers account structure, the keywords worth paying for, the negative list that saves the budget, landing page rules, and four data sets on click costs, cost per job, seasonality and budget tiers.
ZenWeb runs Google Ads for solar companies and other high-ticket home-improvement trades across 500+ Malaysian accounts. The pattern below repeats in almost every one.
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Before the account structure, a quick look at how the platform actually works.
Source video: Surfside PPC on YouTube
Quick Answer: Because one signed job is worth RM 15,000 to RM 60,000, a solar installer can absorb a click cost that would ruin a low-ticket business. That headroom is the whole argument for running paid search before your organic pages mature.
A RM 9 click looks expensive until you divide it by the job. At a 5% click-to-enquiry rate and a 35% enquiry-to-job rate, roughly 57 clicks buy one installation. That is about RM 510 of media against a five-figure contract.
Timing helps too. Solar ATAP removed the quota deadline that used to rush buyers, so organic rankings take longer to pay back. Paid search reaches the small group already past the research stage.
Quick Answer: They add a verb or a place. “Solar panel Malaysia” is reading. “Solar quotation Puchong” and “install solar panel three phase” are buying, and those are the searches worth paying for.
Solar searches sit on a ladder, and most installers bid at the bottom rung — cheapest per click, most expensive per job.
Bid hardest on the quoting rung, moderately on costing, and enter the reading rung only when a remarketing audience is worth building.
Quick Answer: Separate campaigns by intent, then by residential versus commercial. Mixing a homeowner searching a 5kW price with a factory manager searching 300kW rooftop capacity into one campaign wastes both, and match types cannot fix it afterwards.
| Campaign | Match types | Sends traffic to |
|---|---|---|
| Residential quote intent | Exact and phrase | Quote form landing page |
| Residential price intent | Phrase | Pricing page with RM ranges |
| District and near-me | Phrase, tight radius | District page with real installs |
| Commercial and industrial | Exact and phrase | C&I page with payback model |
| Remarketing | Audience, no keywords | Quote form landing page |
Five campaigns is enough under RM 20,000 monthly spend. More than that and each one starves for data.
Quick Answer: Start with quotation terms and district terms, then add price terms once tracking is clean. Scheme keywords like “Solar ATAP” convert poorly on paid but feed remarketing audiences cheaply.
Three groups earn their place immediately:
Malay-language variants deserve their own ad groups. Clicks cost less and the copy needs different phrasing to read naturally.
Quick Answer: Solar attracts more irrelevant traffic than almost any other trade — job seekers, DIY hobbyists, students, and people chasing free-installation rumours. A disciplined negative keyword list usually recovers a fifth of a solar budget.
Build the list before launch, then review search terms weekly for two months. The recurring wasters group neatly:
Add rival brand names as negatives too, unless you are running a deliberate conquest campaign with a landing page to match.
Quick Answer: Lead with a number and a credential. “5kW from RM 16,800, SEDA registered installer” outperforms “Malaysia’s trusted solar partner” because it answers the two questions in the searcher’s head, as ad copy testing keeps showing.
Solar searchers arrive suspicious. They have heard about leaking roofs, abandoned warranties and installers who vanish after the deposit. Copy that removes doubt beats copy that adds excitement.
“Free consultation” is not a differentiator. Every installer offers it, and the buyer knows.
Work these into your headline set: a system-size price anchor, your SEDA registration, years in operation, districts covered, warranty length, and who lodges the Solar ATAP application. Keep one headline on response speed, because slow replies lose more solar jobs than pricing does.
Quick Answer: Never the homepage. Each campaign needs a page that repeats the search term, shows an RM range, proves the credential and asks for four fields — the standard landing page fixes that lift solar conversion fastest.
Most solar landing pages fail on the same three points, all cheap to fix:
Put a WhatsApp button beside the form. For a purchase this size the buyer usually wants a conversation before agreeing to a site visit.
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Quick Answer: Not first. Performance Max needs conversion volume to learn, and a solar account producing fifteen enquiries a month cannot feed it. Add it after Search is stable, the way most Malaysian SMEs should approach PMax.
The failure pattern is predictable. PMax finds the cheapest conversions available, which for a solar installer means guide downloads and job enquiries. Cost per enquiry looks fine while the sales team gets nothing worth calling.
If you do run it, gate it: exclude brand terms, upload a customer list as an audience signal, set the conversion action to enquiry rather than page view, and cap it at a quarter of total spend.
Quick Answer: Track the site survey and the signed contract, not the form submission. Solar sales close weeks later and offline, so offline conversion import is what teaches Google which clicks were worth buying.
A solar journey runs long. Enquiry today, site survey in two weeks, quotation revision, signature a month later. Optimising on form fills tells the algorithm every enquiry is equal, which is exactly wrong.
Four things to fix before scaling spend:
Quick Answer: Quotation keywords cost about RM 9.80 a click and convert at 7.4 percent. Broad “solar panel Malaysia” costs RM 4.10 and converts at 0.9 percent, so the cheap keyword is the expensive one — a pattern that repeats across most Malaysian industries.
| Keyword group | Average CPC | Click to enquiry | Enquiry to site survey |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quotation and installer intent | RM 9.80 | 7.4% | 41% |
| District and near-me | RM 7.10 | 5.8% | 38% |
| Price and system size | RM 6.20 | 4.6% | 33% |
| Battery and hybrid system | RM 5.60 | 3.2% | 24% |
| Solar ATAP and scheme | RM 3.40 | 2.1% | 27% |
| Generic solar Malaysia | RM 4.10 | 0.9% | 14% |
Source: ZenWeb client tracking, Malaysia, 2024-2026.
Quick Answer: Remarketing produces the cheapest enquiries at RM 61, and tightly matched Search produces the cheapest signed jobs at RM 1,410. Unrestricted Performance Max is roughly 2.7 times more expensive per job, which is why campaign mix matters more than bid tweaks.
| Campaign type | Relative cost per job | Cost per enquiry | Cost per signed job |
|---|---|---|---|
| Performance Max, unrestricted | RM 246 | RM 3,880 | |
| Search, price and cost terms | RM 178 | RM 2,060 | |
| Search, district and near-me | RM 149 | RM 1,530 | |
| Search, quotation intent | RM 132 | RM 1,410 | |
| Remarketing | RM 61 | RM 1,190 |
Source: ZenWeb client tracking, Malaysia, 2024-2026. Bars show relative cost per signed job.
Remarketing looks unbeatable until you remember it cannot create demand. It only harvests visitors that Search and organic already paid to attract, so treat it as a multiplier rather than a channel.
Quick Answer: Demand and click costs both peak from February to May, when hot weather lifts electricity bills. The November to January monsoon is quieter but cheaper per enquiry, which is when a steady budget outperforms a seasonal one.
| Period | Demand index | Average CPC | Cost per enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|
| February to May | 100 | RM 7.90 | RM 168 |
| June to August | 82 | RM 6.80 | RM 151 |
| September to October | 76 | RM 6.40 | RM 144 |
| November to January | 57 | RM 5.50 | RM 129 |
Source: ZenWeb client tracking, Malaysia, 2024-2026. Index set to the February to May peak.
Quick Answer: RM 3,000 a month buys roughly 18 enquiries and about one signed job. RM 10,000 buys around 68 enquiries and five to six jobs, because tighter targeting becomes affordable at scale — the same curve behind our Google Ads plans.
| Monthly media budget | Enquiries | Site surveys | Signed jobs | Realistic coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RM 3,000 | 18 | 4 | 1.3 | One district cluster |
| RM 6,000 | 39 | 9 | 3.0 | Greater Klang Valley |
| RM 10,000 | 68 | 17 | 5.6 | Two states plus C&I |
| RM 18,000 | 124 | 32 | 10.4 | National residential and C&I |
Source: ZenWeb client tracking, Malaysia, 2024-2026. Media spend only, excluding management fee.
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Quick Answer: Your registration is a selling point, so put the number in the ad and on the landing page. Under Solar ATAP the homeowner cannot lodge the application alone, which makes registration a practical requirement rather than a badge in the footer.
Solar ATAP started on 1 January 2026, and the applicant must appoint a SEDA Malaysia Registered PV Service Provider to submit through eATAP. That rule alone is the strongest ad angle a registered installer has.
Two more details worth putting in the copy, both from the same guidelines: domestic capacity is capped at 5 kW on single phase and 15 kW on three phase, and the contract runs ten years. Buyers who learn this from your ad rather than a forum arrive better qualified.
What not to promise: approval dates you do not control. The TNB Solar ATAP process includes a technical assessment stage, so guaranteeing a fixed timeline invites complaints.
Quick Answer: Target the districts your crews can reach in a morning, set location targeting to presence rather than interest, and exclude high-rise areas. Every kilometre beyond your service radius raises install cost and lowers the relevance signals your ads depend on.
Two default settings cause most wasted solar spend. Location targeting includes people merely showing interest in an area, pulling in overseas researchers. And a plain radius around your office ignores that half the postcodes inside it are condominiums.
Bid by roof reality instead: raise bids on landed housing, older terrace clusters with three-phase supply and light industrial estates. Exclude apartment-heavy postcodes.
Quick Answer: Bidding broad, hiding prices, optimising on form fills, replying slowly and pausing seasonally. Each one is fixable inside a month with a disciplined account review.
Malaysia’s online population sits at 98.0 percent penetration according to DataReportal’s Digital 2026 Malaysia report, so the buyers exist. Your settings decide whether you meet them at the right moment.
Quick Answer: Bid on quote and district intent, publish prices on the landing page, build the negative list properly, and feed signed jobs back into the account. Those four moves carry most of the result in a well-run solar account.
Google Ads for solar companies rewards discipline rather than budget. The installers who win are not outbidding anyone; they simply refuse to pay for searches that never turn into roofs.
Start with quotation and district campaigns, get offline conversions flowing inside two months, then let the account tell you where the next ringgit belongs. In that order, paid search behaves like a pipeline instead of a gamble.
Quick Answer: Solar installers ask most about starting budgets, click costs, how quickly leads arrive, and whether ads beat SEO. Plan detail sits on our Google Ads pricing page.
RM 3,000 a month is a realistic floor, covering one district cluster rather than the whole country. That buys roughly 18 enquiries and about one signed job. Installers keeping crews busy across two states usually need RM 8,000 to RM 12,000.
Around RM 3 to RM 10, depending on intent. Quotation and installer terms sit near the top, scheme keywords near the bottom. The dearer clicks usually produce the lowest cost per signed job, so judge them on outcomes rather than click price.
Usually within the first week, though month one is mostly learning. Cost per enquiry settles by month two, once the negative keyword list is mature and tracking reports site surveys rather than form fills.
Run ads first if you need jobs this quarter, because organic pages take four to eight months to rank. Ideally run both, then shift budget once organic cost per signed job drops below paid, typically between month nine and twelve.
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