Solar energy provider: 88% reduction in cost per lead
In this case study, landing page copywriting reduces the Facebook advertising cost per lead from between $40 and $100 to just $11.66 per lead for a national Australian solar energy business.
That’s a conversion rate improvement of up to 88% overnight — allowing the client to reach as many as eight times more people on Facebook for exactly the same budget.
Any business selling solar panels and batteries in Australia faces significant digital advertising challenges.
- Solar energy is complicated — the consumer needs to understand (or at least not be frightened of) a dictionary of technical terms — “inverter”, “kilowatt-hours”, “photovoltaic”…
- The industry has a clouded reputation. Providers range from highly-qualified installers to chancers who see an opportunity to make quick money by selling cheap solutions to unsuspecting buyers.
- It’s difficult to compare apples with apples even when comparing quotes from reputable suppliers.
- Solar installations aren’t cheap. The average investment in quality solar panels and batteries is around $20,000.
Our client was spending $8,000 a month on Facebook advertising.
Facebook users who clicked an ad were sent to a landing page specific to the state they were in. (State-based segmenting is important in solar because of the different subsidies and rebates.)
The landing pages were converting that traffic into between 80 and 200 enquiries at a cost per lead of between $40 and $100.
Our copywriters were engaged to write more persuasive landing pages for conversion rate optimisation.
By persuading more of that traffic from Facebook to make an enquiry, we would be:
- Increasing the volume of enquiries for our client
- Lowering their cost per lead.
Simplifying the terminology, selling the value
As direct response copywriters, Taleist takes a research-heavy approach.
Research is the greatest copywriting secret of all — because copywriting that doesn’t understand the client’s business, customers and competitors isn’t really copywriting — it’s just words on a page.
Our client had been sending thousands of dollars a month of advertising to pages that were nicely written but were providing lacklustre results.
If we were to optimise their landing page conversion rate with better copywriting, our first job was to explore what the existing landing pages were missing.
1
Understanding the product
Solar panels and batteries are evolving technology.
In order to sell them, you have to understand the product, and copywriting is sales in writing.
As with any copywriting project, we had to immerse ourselves. This time in the intricacies of solar panels and batteries. We did our reading and spent time meeting the client’s experts and electricians to help us go deep.
2
Understanding the customers
Our client had engaged a UX agency that had conducted deep profiles of the target customers.
The customer avatars had different levels of technical understanding and a variety of motives for installing solar. Some were motivated solely by price; others were motivated by doing the right thing.
Our job was to design an approach to the copywriting that would answer the needs of each avatar.
3
Shining a light on the benefits
Our client offers several benefits that no competitor can match. On the client’s existing site these were not highlighted or — worse — not mentioned at all.
We used a number of copywriting techniques to (1) bring the benefits to the forefront and (2) prove them.
Anyone in the industry could make claims for their solar installations — and many of them do make wild claims. That’s why we made sure every claim on the site was backed by abundant proof.
4
Turning up the urgency dial
In our research, we noted that the states with subsidies and rebates didn’t have unlimited funds allocated to their schemes. Nowhere did our client’s existing site mention that there were limits to these funds.
By drawing attention to the ticking clock, we increased the urgency for readers to make contact. No customer would want to install a solar system too late to access the free government money on offer.