Energy - Local strategy
Challenge:
Grow leads through local Google Ads campaigns on Search and PMax
Approach:
- Market potential analysis
- Landing page creation
- Local Google Ads campaigns
630%
YoY increase in Google Ads leads
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Home / Case studies / Valore Solare
From zero to 223 enquiries a month
How we built Valore Solare's Google Ads channel from scratch for this solar PV installer, scaling spend from €2,000 to €14,000 a month and cutting the cost per enquiry by 40%.
1,506
enquiries generated
€70.78
average cost per enquiry
€106,599
ad spend managed
−40%
cost per enquiry vs. first quarter
The starting point
With Valore Solare, we started from zero
Valore Solare installs solar PV systems and battery storage for homes and businesses in northern and central Italy. When we took over the account there was nothing to build on: no conversions tracked correctly and no leads the sales team could use.
In the first full month of management, October 2025, the account spent €1,909 and brought in 9 enquiries: €212 each. Budget was not the problem.
01
Conversions were not being tracked
The account did not measure quote requests. What ended up in the "conversions" column were technical site events: 15,267 in a single month against 5,467 clicks. Without accurate data, Google's automated bidding optimised towards the traffic that generated the most useless events.
02
The leads that came in were poor quality
On the other end there was nobody genuinely interested in receiving a proposal or a quote. For the sales rep that means wasted calls, and for the company it means writing Google Ads off as a channel that does not work.
03
One approach for very different audiences
Someone searching for "home solar panel quote" and someone looking for a system for an industrial building have different budgets, timelines and objections. The campaigns treated them the same way, with the same ads and the same landing page.
04
Budget too low to get out of the learning phase
With about €2,000 a month spread across several campaigns, none collected enough conversions for automated bidding to work. The cost per enquiry swung between €82 and €212 from one month to the next.
The biggest driver of results was not budget. It was the quality of the conversion signal.
As long as Google's algorithm optimises for events that are not sales enquiries, raising spend makes things worse: it buys more of exactly the wrong kind of traffic.
- Client
- Valore Solare
- Industry
- Residential and commercial solar PV
- Period
- October 2025 to August 2026
- Services
- Google Ads, lead generation
The work
Four steps, in this order
The order matters more than the individual actions. Scaling the budget before fixing tracking would only have meant spending faster.
01
Fix the data
We redefined which actions count as a primary conversion (landing page form, call, email) and separated everything else. Leads flow from the site form to the CRM via webhook, so every enquiry stays linked to the campaign that generated it.
02
Rebuild the structure around search intent
Campaigns that answer different questions: a Search campaign on northern Italy for generic demand, an exact match campaign on high-intent keywords, one dedicated to quote requests, a vertical campaign on one product segment and a Performance Max campaign covering residential and commercial.
03
Match the geography to installation capacity
The campaigns cover northern and central Italy, excluding Piedmont, Liguria and the Aosta Valley, where the client does not install. A lead from outside the area costs as much as a good one and will never become a quote.
04
Scale the budget in steps, not all at once
From about €2,000 a month in the October to December 2025 quarter to about €14,000 in July and August 2026. Every increase was agreed in the monthly review with the client, and only after checking that the cost per enquiry held at the previous volume.
The results
Volume up, cost per enquiry down
From 9 enquiries at €212 each in October 2025 to 250 enquiries at €49 each in August 2026.
Enquiries per month Cost per enquiry (€)
| Period | Average spend / month | Enquiries / month | Cost per enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct-Dec 2025 | €2,167 | 21 | €103.20 |
| Jan-Mar 2026 | €10,737 | 133 | €80.49 |
| Apr-Jun 2026 | €13,339 | 199 | €67.14 |
| Jul-Aug 2026 | €13,934 | 224 | €62.36 |
| Change | +543% | +964% | −40% |
Spend grew six and a half times, enquiries tenfold: every euro invested now works harder than before. In the first quarter an enquiry cost €103; today it costs €62.
Inside the numbers
Search and Performance Max do two different jobs
Search campaigns Performance Max
Cost per enquiry down on both fronts
Over the whole period Search spent €84,889 and brought in 665 enquiries at €127.74 each; Performance Max spent €21,709 for 842 enquiries at €25.80.
PMax brings in more than half the enquiries with a fifth of the budget, but it does not replace Search: it picks up lukewarm demand and works well precisely because Search keeps capturing the high-intent searches, the ones the sales team closes most often. If you only look at cost per enquiry, you move everything to PMax and three months later you have plenty of leads and few sales.
How people get in touch
Breakdown of the 1,506 enquiries by type of action.
Phone and email together account for 19%: in solar PV, some prospects still prefer to talk to someone before leaving their details.
Key takeaways
What we would do on an account like yours
Signal first, spend second
Check what is being counted as a conversion before you touch anything else. If the number of conversions is close to the number of clicks, you are not measuring sales enquiries.
Exclude areas you do not serve
Remove the areas where you cannot install or deliver straight away. It is the quickest optimisation and the most overlooked.
Only scale above 30 conversions
Only raise a campaign's budget once it has passed 30 conversions a month. Below that threshold, automated bidding is guessing.
What is your Google Ads account really costing you?
Conversions you do not trust, leads your sales team cannot close, a budget that rises while quote requests do not. If you recognised your account while reading this page, there is almost always room to improve, and more of it than you think.
In 30 minutes we review your account together: conversion tracking, campaign structure, wasted spend on locations and match types. You will leave with recommendations you can put to use straight away to improve your account's performance.
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