When demand climbs, your own channels look unstoppable. They aren’t.
Search demand for solar in Ireland is up 30% on last year, but it runs in peaks and troughs. It peaked in late spring and has fallen to 46 and is still dropping. Your Google and Meta channels move with that curve. The team you built to install does not.
Leads from your owned channels against what the team needs
- Owned channels (Google and Meta)
- Leads the team needs
- Peak surplus
- Gap third-party fills
Swipe the chart to see the full year.
Demand curve: Google Trends, search interest in “solar”, Ireland, August 2025 to August 2026. Google Trends is a relative index where 100 is the busiest point in the period; it is not a count of searches. The “leads the team needs” line is illustrative, not a measured figure.
The trap
In a rising market, Google and Meta convert cheaply and volume feels endless. Teams get built on that volume. The peak sets the expectation. The trough breaks it.
The reality
You hired for the peak. The team needs a steady lead count every week, not a yearly average. Enough leads in the trough means too many in the peak, and that surplus is the price of never running the team dry.
The fix
Third-party nationwide campaigns run budgets your own channels can’t match, in any county you pick. They carry the troughs, hold you steady through the swings, and add geographic reach. Over time your own search matures and pulls blended acquisition cost down.
Paid media leads convert lowest. Close them anyway: they are what keeps the team full when your own channels dip. Third-party is the cornerstone of the sales operation, not the backstop.
Replace the illustrative line with your own
The dashed line in the chart is a sketch. In your business it is a number you can calculate, and every lead-supply decision should be made against it rather than against last month’s cost per lead. Three inputs set it:
- Weekly install capacity. The installs your crews can complete in a normal week, before overtime or subcontracting.
- Lead-to-install conversion, by channel. Installs divided by leads over the last 90 days, measured separately for Google, Meta, referrals and third-party. A blended figure hides the channel that is carrying you.
- Lead-to-install lag. The weeks between a lead arriving and the install it becomes. This is how far ahead the supply has to be secured.
For example, a team that can complete 10 installs a week and converts 8% of its leads needs 125 leads a week, secured one lag period ahead of the installs they will feed. Plot that against what your owned channels delivered each week last year and the gap is the volume to contract.
The same calculation tells you when to step third-party volume back down: once your owned channels clear the line through a full trough, not just through a good month.
Method. The example figures above are hypothetical and show the arithmetic only. Search-interest figures are from Google Trends for the period stated and will change as the index updates.