Kasra Dash: If you're a solar panel company and you're looking for a consistent flow of inquiries built for your business that aren’t shared, this video is for you. Today, we're breaking down what's working for solar panel companies, what's not working, and what you should avoid. I'm joined by James. Take it away. James Dooley: Step number one to grow is optimizing your Google Business Profile. If you already have one, reach out to all existing clients and get as many five-star reviews as possible. Google Business Profile is a great way to generate more local leads. You should also get citations, post regularly, and upload photos on your profile. That’s definitely step one for generating more local leads. Kasra Dash: Step number two, which boosts your Google Business Profile, is creating dedicated service pages for each of your services as SEO-optimized pages on your website. When you do this, not only will your page rank better, but your Google Business Profile becomes more likely to show up for those keywords. So you're indirectly getting more phone calls, too. James Dooley: If you’re looking for more local leads, another option is PPC lead generation—pay-per-click on Google or Bing—targeting bottom-of-the-funnel keywords. The challenge is finding a good PPC agency. There's click fraud, and you must build a strong negative keyword list so you don’t get irrelevant traffic like job applications. PPC can work well, but in the wrong hands, you can waste a lot of money. Still, it’s another way to generate local leads. Kasra Dash: You also have Meta ads like Facebook and Instagram. When someone is scrolling, they might see your ad. You can choose lead forms, which stay inside Facebook. The quality may not be great, but adding more questions improves it. You can also use conversion ads, which send people to your website so they fill out your contact form. So there are different ad types you can use. James Dooley: Another way to grow local leads is organic social media—posting regularly on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, or Quora. Answering questions on Reddit and Quora is powerful. Organic social media is another great way to generate local leads. Kasra Dash: Organic social media is a volume game. You need to consistently upload—daily or weekly. You might say, “I’ll upload five videos per week,” and stick to that. Especially on YouTube and Twitter, consistency drives the algorithms. James Dooley: What are your thoughts on using AI agents—teaming up with someone to use tools like n8n to automate and schedule posts on social media? Everyone’s talking about AI for lead generation. Would you team up with an AI consultant to set that up? Kasra Dash: Yes, you can set up AI agents to crop videos and autopublish to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. But another big area is AI search. People are slowly shifting to search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Grok. If your brand isn’t showing up in those, you’ll miss out on leads. So that’s another major focus for companies. James Dooley: If you're looking for more business leads locally, consider trade-people websites: Checkatrade, Bark, Builder Builder, TrustATrader, Rated People. These platforms can generate local leads. Track your KPIs so you know cost per lead, cost per acquisition, and ROI. Check the links in the description—we compare Checker Trade, Bark, Rated People, and Builder Builder with FatRank. Since I mentioned FatRank, Kasra, what are your thoughts on lead generation companies vs tradespeople websites? Kasra Dash: With lead generation companies, always do your due diligence. Make sure the company has generated leads in your industry before. Have a strategy call. Discuss your budget and your ideal number of leads. Check what type of leads they provide—exclusive or shared. Many platforms like Bark or Checkatrade send shared leads, which creates a race to the bottom on price. Those are the questions I'd ask before partnering with a lead generation company. James Dooley: If anyone’s interested in generating more local leads, head over to FatRank.com. We run a commission-based lead generation service, meaning you only pay a finder’s fee on converted jobs. You pay nothing per lead, nothing unless you get paid. Once you complete the job and get paid, that’s the only time you pay FatRank. But I want to expand further—what are your thoughts on inbound vs outbound lead generation? Kasra Dash: I always prefer inbound. The conversion rate is much higher. The last stat I saw showed inbound converts at about 16.1%, compared to 1.4% for outbound. That’s a massive difference. James Dooley: That's crazy—10–12 times more conversion. With outbound like cold calling, cold email, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you need a lot of volume and more staff. People think outbound is “free,” but there are still costs like email sending systems and sales team overhead. So yes, inbound leads are much better. People then ask whether real-time leads matter—leads delivered instantly after submission. Kasra Dash: Real-time leads convert about 63% higher. Internally, we found that responding within one minute drastically increases conversions. We used to think five minutes was good, but under one minute makes a huge difference—either call them or email them immediately to thank them and gather more info. Some businesses fall short when they’re away for days with no one to pick up leads. That’s something we evaluate when partnering with companies. The best recommendation for anyone wanting to scale with high-quality leads is: fill out the form at FatRank. The team will tell you if you’re a good fit or not, and if you're not, they’ll explain why and what to improve. I hope you liked the strategies we shared for generating more solar panel leads. Head to FatRank.com to see if we can generate solar panel leads for your business. There are many types—warehouse solar, commercial, and domestic. Fill in the form, and hopefully, we can start generating more solar leads for you.