Energy Circle

Is Call Tracking a Good Idea for Home Performance Companies?

Alex Eaton — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:45:09 +0000

Evaluating the effectiveness of marketing channels is a difficult game - even once you get a customer to your website and they call you, how do you know to credit that conversion to your hard work with SEO, or PPC, or other internet marketing tactics? As businesses are forced to add more and more channels to their marketing mix it is important to be constantly measuring their success, phasing out what isn't working, and building on those that perform. A lot of the questions we get at Energy Circle PRO relate to this type of measurement, and what we have quickly realized is that tracking calls from your site is as important as form submissions, if not more so. But in the shifting world of local search, where consistency in phone numbers is so critical, is call tracking a good idea?

It can be, but there are also a handful of reasons that you should proceed with caution if you decide to implement call tracking on your site. Read more about why call tracking is increasingly important and how you can ensure you implement it successfully and accurately without compromising the hard work you've put in to build your local search footprint and get visitors to your website now and going forward.

Why Use Call Tracking?

Call tracking can be a very effective way to measure the success of your marketing efforts. Here's how it works:

You sign up with a service like CallRail or LogMyCalls
You create phone numbers and assign them to various channels either specifically or dynamically (i.e. organic search, PPC, direct mail, etc.)
When a visitor comes to your site via the assigned source, the software shows them the tracking number instead of your real number
The software tracks the call back to that source instead of them getting lost in the nether

And call tracking software is not only useful from a channel evaluation standpoint - it also offers a slew of other features that can help your business. Call recording is a common included feature that can help you evaluate your sales tactics and review the performance or salespeople, or even go back and get info that wasn't recorded during a call like a lead's correct address or phone number. They also offer robust reporting options that allow you to see information about the collar and where they are calling from, which is useful for ensuring your leads are coming from where you want them.

What is the Problem Then?

Well, it's pretty simple. From an SEO standpoint, it's absolutely critical that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) is consistent everywhere; on business listings, on your contact page, in your footer, in your header, social media profiles...you get the idea. The challenge is balancing this consistency requirement with the positive gains you make from implementing call tracking software. But if you do it smartly and correctly you'll be able to get all the benefit from a consistent NAP, stay in Google's "good graces," and still gain the insights that this powerful software provides.

When to Use & When Not to Use Call Tracking

The biggest red flag for call tracking misuse is if you are putting the tracking number on any of your local citations. These sources are a critical part of ranking well in local search and it is vital that the information contained on those listings matches up perfectly with what's on your website. This category includes business listings like Google+ Local, Yahoo Local, social media sites...anywhere your business NAP are listed. Do not use call tracking in these places, stick with your real business info.

Using call tracking on your website itself is a bit safer, but you need to make sure it is done correctly. If the search engines start seeing your call tracking number on your site and not your real phone number, it won't be able to give you credit for all those citations you've built around the local search ecosystem. Luckily, both of the options we've presented here for software use some simple yet clever code to ensure that only visitors who came from the correct source are presented with the tracking number. Just follow their instructions carefully and you will be all set.

One caveat is that you want to leave the tracking number on your contact page alone, as well as your in your site footer. These are the most common places that search engines look for this data and you don't want to confuse them at all in these spots.

Have you tried call tracking? Did it work for you or were you underwhelmed? Let us know in the comments.

My Take on the 2013 ACI National Home Performance Conference

Peter Troast — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:37:42 +0000

The 2013 ACI National Home Performance Conference in Denver was a great success. It's one of my personal favorite home performance events of the year and this year was no different.

The richness and depth of what happens at ACI on so many levels--learning, connecting with customers and friends, plotting the industry's future, meeting new people, soldiering well into the wee hours--is so extensive that it's impossible for any one person to summarize it all. Other great recaps of the conference that are well worth reading:

Nate Adams from Energy Smart Home Performance has a great day-by-day commentary of the week
It was the first ACI for Andy Frank of Sealed Homes, who gives a great retrospective on the conference's content... and parties.
Mike Rogers of OmStout Consulting's top 10 takeaways from ACI.
Who'd I miss?

One of the challenges of ACI is the stunning array of workshops and jam packed schedule. A big shout out to Nate Natale and the ACI program crew who put together this year's slate. To a person, I've heard nothing but fantastic feedback about the content, learning and quality of sessions. On the flip side, however, the choices we were all forced to make within each time slot were painful. It seemed, at least for me, that there were always at least three things you wanted to attend.

So, a few highlights for me:

A Maturing Group of Kick-ass Home Performance Contractors

Considering the relative youth of the industry as a whole, it's incredibly encouraging to see an increasing group of well-run, successful, stable and growing Home Performance contractors from year to year. The diversity of these companies, across many geographies and types of programs (or no program at all) is great to see.

What really stood our for me is the number of these more mature, successful companies that were selflessly sharing their business wisdom with other contractors. Shout-outs to Powersmith, Donna Sanders of 106 Greenway, Troy Tanner of Home Energy Detective, Amanda Godward of Ecotelligent Homes, Brad Bartholomew of Bartholomew Heating & Cooling to name just a few. This incredible transparency and open sharing of stuff-that-works is another reason to love the home performance industry and the people in it.

The HVACers are Coming, but Carefully

The HVAC industry has been slow to catch on to the value of ACI and continues to tap dance around the whole-house approach to building comfort, but there are welcome signs that this may be changing. It was good to see some of the major HVAC manufacturers actively in attendance at this year's conference (namely Carrier & Rheem).

Still, while there were some rank-and-file HVAC contractors present, we clearly have some work to do to convey the value of ACI to the thousands of HVAC contractors who don't yet fully understand the potential to transform their business that home performance affords. We'll see what happens next year.

Momentum for Efficiency First

We've long been full supporters (and founding members, ahem) of Efficiency First. In the face of a perceived lack of initiatives at the policy level that would dramatically change the industry, in reality EF is steaming along right under our noses and gaining a ton of momentum. This is true on the national level, but also on the state and local levels, where new chapters are thriving in their communities. The very spirited and comptetitive election for the Efficiency First board also shows that there is a lot of excitement about the organization throughout the industry. Kudos to Coby Rudolph, Allison Weston and the entire board for carrying the flag.

Data Standards!

One of the most exciting developments at ACI was the near completion of the HPXML data standard. The home performance industry has struggled for years to be able to aggregate all of the successful work we've done. And, a key part of this that has been challenging for contractors and auditors is finding an ideal software solution for energy audits. Thanks to the new HPXML data standard, combined with a big push from EnergySavvy to roll our their new Optix product, it looks as if a democratization of energy audit software is underfoot that could take a great weight off the shoulders of contractors, program directors and homeowners.

Home Performance People Are Fun

While it is not true that the delay in getting this post up was because I checked in to Betty Ford after ACI, suffice it to say that it's taken some time to recover. Solving the future of our industry until 3:30AM, and then delivering a workshop at 8:30 the next morning is....well, taxing. But it was a blast. Thanks in particular to the Energy Savvy crew for providing the location and to Steve Byers of Energy Logic for being the pied piper of downtown Denver. If only I could remember the names of those bars and restaurants.

Challenges for Next Year

While I am excited, thanks to the passion of Amanda Godward, for Detroit next year, it may not have the cache of Denver. So we'll need to work hard to keep attendance up. In particular, we need to do a better job of attracting contractors, because amidst all of the diversity of folks who attend, the people doing the work are really the glue of the whole event. Multi-day conferences requiring travel and costly hotels are tough for many small business people to swallow. Despite my passion for the event, my own success rate at convincing folks to attend is not where it needs to be. We need a significant initiative, driven by contractors getting other contractors, to convey how awesome and valuable the event is. Part of this, too, is creating more affordable options for attending. There is a real perception challenge with events in big cities at high end hotels. Lastly, something's got to be done about the trade show, which suffered this year because of it's isolation from the other conference events. I know ACI gets this, and is shackled by the hotel choices for a conference of this size, but something's got to be done differently.

Many thanks to all who attended the conference, participated in the workshops I was involved with, or stopped by the Energy Circle PRO booth. It was a great time and we'll see you all next year!

Get New Customers with Facebook Lookalike Audiences

Will — Thu, 09 May 2013 19:18:33 +0000

Facebook ads can be a powerful tool for independent home performance businesses looking to increase brand exposure and acquire new customers. Now, there's a new feature that allows you to do this even more effectively.

What Are Lookalike Audiences?

Facebook Lookalike Audiences expands upon another feature called Custom Audiences, which allows you to upload customer lists (using email addresses, phone numbers, or Facebook user ID numbers) and target ads to those customers (or prospects). This is a powerful tool in and of itself. You can also segment your lists and create your ads accordingly -- for example, if you have a list of people who have hired you for an energy audit but haven't had any work done, you could create a very specific ad that pushes follow-up work. If you have a list of prospects, you can create an ad that discusses the benefits of an energy audit without mentioning any of the follow-up work.

Lookalike Audiences goes a step beyond, by identifying the characteristics of the Facebook users in your Custom Audience list, and then identifying other Facebook users with similar characteristics (interests, marital status, gender, geography, etc.).

From the horse's mouth (Facebook):

Lookalike audiences let you reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they are similar to a customer list you care about. When you use custom audiences in Power Editor, you can choose to create a lookalike audience that targets people who are similar to your custom audience list. Lookalike audiences help you reach people who are similar to your current customers for fan acquisition, site registration, off-Facebook purchases, coupon claims and brand awareness.

How Are They Useful?

Lookalike Audiences allow you to target Facebook ads towards social media users who are similar to your existing customers. This is a wonderful thing. We know that all businesses have a target market, and while this market differs greatly between building performance businesses (many of you folks go after the high income crowd, many go after the baby boomers, many go after the low-income households in need of basic weatherization, etc.), Lookalike Audiences allow you to identify your target demographic (based on your existing customer base) and market directly to them.

Here's a quick video from Youtube that explains how to use Facebook Ad Lookalike Audiences for your busines

As always, feel free to get a hold of us at Energy Circle PRO for any help with your web marketing efforts. Also be sure to check out our Facebook Marketing Digest for more info about how to use Facebook to promote your home performance business.

SEO Quick-Tip: Respect the Robots, but Write for People First.

Will — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:28:49 +0000

As you've probably figured out, we're big advocates of good content on home performance websites. Whether you're working on your blog, or on your services pages, or your About Us page, or adding fresh content to any other page on your site, it's imperative to have good content to ensure that your site performs as well as it can so that you can get to work fixing more buildings.

But what makes good content?

It should be useful to visitors
It should convey your expertise and professionalism
It should be written with some thought given to SEO

SEO & Keywords in Home Performance

Getting your website to show up in search engines is very important if you want to acquire new customers and keep busy. And using appropriate home performance related keywords and keyword variations is good for SEO and a great think to keep in mind when creating new content on your site.

But it's also important to not be a slave to keywords or SEO in general: after all, what Google is looking for at the end of the day is good, useful content that will be useful to people who are using their search engine. Tricks like keyword-stuffing are easily sniffed out, so it's always best to use natural language that reads easily.

Writing for Humans First

Another reason to avoid overdoing it when keywording your content is the simple reason that it's meant for humans. While the search engine robots will "read" your content to figure out what it's all about and what they should do with it, humans are your target audience. Writing content that reads awkwardly is a good way to send those humans back to Google to find another article that's more useful.

So, write for humans first and you'll be sure to:

Make your content more interesting for readers.
Make your content more likely to gain traction in social media, etc.
Keep readers reading until the end
Increase conversion
Get more business

An example of human-friendly content:

"Our company offers a wide range of energy efficiency services for homeowners and building owners throughout the Boston metro region. If you're interested in lowering utility bills while improving home comfort, contact us to schedule a home energy audit today."

An example of robot-centric content:

"We offer Boston energy audits for homes, home energy audits Boston, commercial energy audits, energy assessment audits in the Boston region. Energy audit Braintree, spray foam insulation Quincy, South Boston energy audit," etc.

Any questions or comments, or for any other web marketing advice for home performance professionals, feel free to contact us here at Energy Circle PRO!

Email Marketing Basics for Home Performance

Will — Thu, 02 May 2013 13:29:51 +0000

Email marketing is one of the most common forms of direct marketing, and it can be a very effective and low cost channel to increase customer loyalty and retention and drive new leads. But for an independent home performance company with a limited marketing budget and limited time, how do you get started without hiring an expensive agency?

You just need to know the basics. Here's a quick "101" run-down of why you should be doing email marketing, how to go about it, and how to maximize its effectiveness so you can keep the crew (or yourself) busy:

The Opportunity

Email is a key piece of your marketing pie, and it offers a lot of distinct benefits. Among those:

A very low cost one-to-many communications channel
A key vehicle to grow website traffic
An easy way to develop and maintain awareness (of both your brand and the home performance process)
With lots of metrics available, it's a great prospecting tool
Good for customer retention and repeat business
A great medium for promotions, sales and special offers.

That said, email by itself isn't a good marketing plan. It should be paired with a strong web presence and a robust overall content strategy. Which leads us to the next point...

Developing a Content Plan

A strong content plan is good not only for email, but for all of your other marketing channels as well: good content can be repurposed on a blog, in a newsletter, on social media, in brochures and other print media, and on and on.

Know Your Audience

This is one of the first rules of a good content strategy. Some content is great for a variety of readers, some works best for prospects who haven't yet had an audit, some works best for existing customers who you're hoping to encourage to get more work done. Consider segmenting your newsletters between customers and prospects, and tailoring your different newsletters to each; but one newsletter going out to one list is also fine - just keep in mind the different audiences that may be reading.

Keep it Manageable

Remember that you don't have to write a novel a week to have a solid content plan. Be realistic and consistent and you'll be in much better shape than if you go all-out for the first month and then run out of steam. A new piece of content every week? Every month? Up to you: whatever works for you works best.

Growing Subscribers

It's okay to start small with your email list. After all, it doesn't do a whole lot of good to send emails to people who are never going to hire you for work (which is why we do not recommend purchasing email lists; they're typically risky and weak). It's best to have a solid list of good customers and prospects who are actually interested in what you have to say. A few ways to grow that list:

Go through lists of existing customers & prospects
Mine your inbox
Business card stacks
Have an opt-in form on your website
Have a sign-up sheet at home shows & community events

A good email list has a healthy balance of volume and quality.

Conversion & Metrics

So once you have a content plan and a strong list of contacts, how do you tell if your email marketing program is working? And what exactly does it mean for it to be working? That depends. But for the majority of home performance companies sending newsletters, the ultimate goal is to get new business. Here's how you turn an email into new business:

There are a number of ways to track your success in doing so. We won't get into all of them -- a custom URL is a wonderful thing, for example, as Google Analytics, but the first step is to see how well you're emails are doing before readers get to your website. Thankfully, the major email blast providers (including iContact, Constant Contact, MailChimp, etc.) have very good feedback. Here's a screenshot from iContact to give you an idea of what that looks like:

Done well, an email marketing program can lead to increased business and an enhanced brand reputation. It's a good investment of time and resources.

If you get stuck or need a hand, feel free to give us a shout, we'd be happy to help.

Energy Audit Software Breakthroughs at ACI

Peter Troast — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:00:06 +0000

One of the issues that has plagued the home performance industry is the availability of software tools for doing energy audits and predicting energy savings. Over the last 4-5 years, software companies have come and gone (some quite suddenly) while programs have spent far too many of their precious resources choosing horses in the audit software arena.

Amidst all this turmoil, the true cost and impact on contractors and auditors has been underappreciated. Switching products, dealing with ever changing financial business models and high costs for generating audit reports have been a significant distraction and challenge. All the while, we’ve been distracted from the most important thing: creating and delivering audit reports to homeowners that convert to home performance jobs.

Now, thanks to the stalwart efforts of some great people in the industry (hat tip in particular to Robin LeBaron at the National Home Performance Council), an emerging data standard called HPXML is about to be in place that should change everything. HPXML, which we wrote about when it was originally announced, should eventually lead to a great democratization of software. No longer will programs be forced to mandate software for contractors and auditors.

Here at the very start of the ACI conference, a big step has been taken by the good folks at Energy Savvy, makers of some of the most sophisticated and widely used software for utilities to run efficiency programs. Their Optix product is now compliant with the new data standard and they have multiple software suppliers (including CEE, Optimiser, Snugg PRO and Auditor) committed to the standard. This should be a big driver of the market. See the full Energy Savvy blog post here.

Finally, the day is in sight where contractors and auditors can focus on doing great diagnostic work, helping homeowners understand the information, and moving the needle on audit-->job conversion rates.

Well done dinos!

How to Engage with Energy Circle at the ACI National Conference

Peter Troast — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:08:33 +0000

The Energy Circle team is excited for another great ACI National Home Performance Conference this week in Denver. Here's how to engage with us at the event.

At Our Booth

Stop by our booth - #319 - anytime to:

Get a no cost, no obligation review of your website
Learn about the roadmap of features and improvements we're making to the system
See how some of the most successful home perormance companies in the country are utilizing EC PRO
Hang out with Energy Circle PRO customers who can give you unbiased scoop on our platform and what it's like to work with us
Meet the newest EC staffer, Bethany Profaizer. She's great!
Discuss any of my favorite home performance topics: marketing, social media, storytelling, lean programs like CHERP, DER's, the Mallett DER project
Drink too much coffee
You name it--we'd love to see you.

My Presentations

My presentation schedule, and what you can expect from these sessions:

Wednesday, May 1: 3:30 - 5:00PM

Client Management Software Solutions for Performance Contractors

Skye Dunning, Dick Kornbluth, Corbett Lunsford, Peter Troast

The four of us will be talking CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and bringing some practical, grounded discussion to the oft asked about topic of how and when to use systems to manage leads, customers and ongoing client relationships. A great panel of folks.

Wednesday, May 1: 7:00 - 8:30PM

Advanced Techniques in Social Media for Home Performance Companies

Peter Troast

An evening session to talk social media in home performance has become one of my favorite ACI traditions. Curious about the latest stuff, like Facebook custom audiences, Google+, Pinterest, social media SEO and more? I'm prepared to discuss just about anything, so stop by, bring beer, and don't worry if you can't stay for all of it. Drive bys are welcome. And don't think this is just for contractors--what we'll discuss will be relevant to programs, trainers, consultants--just about anybody working in home performance.

Thursday, May 2: 8:30 - 10:00AM

Low-Cost Integrated Marketing: Incorporating Social Media, the Internet, & Local Media

Peter Troast

This workshop will cover the gamut of successful approaches to low cost lead generation. Practical, data driven practices that work for home performance businesses in the real world. If you're scratching your head about how the make the internet work harder for your business, this session's for you.

Thursday, May 2: 7:00 - 8:30PM

My House: The Story of an Energy Improvement Project

Steve Byers, Bill Turner, Jim Riggins, Peter Troast, Chris Dorsi, Linda Wigington, Dick Rome, Gavin Healy, Dan Perunko

This event, in the Pecha Kucha format--20 slides, 20 seconds each--should be a hoot. I'll be doing mine on the Mallett Deep Energy Retrofit project, where we overcame historic preservationist opposition and accomplished .68 ACH50 level of tightness in an 1886 rubble basement, balloon framed house. Pecha Kucha presentations are....hard. I'm glad to be sharing the angst with such a great group of friends.

After Hours

The networking and camerarderie always goes into the wee hours at ACI. Best way to follow is via the twitter hashtag #ACIafterDark.

Look forward to seeing y'all!

Structuring Your Website for SEO & Conversion

Will — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:56:38 +0000

Your home performance company's website serves a lot of purposes. It helps with branding, it allows potential customers to get to know your company better, it helps you show off impressive work that you've completed, and on and on. But the primary purpose of a website for an energy efficiency contractor is to get people to hire you to do work on their home or building -- to increase sales and keep you and your crew busy.

Now, the road between someone sitting down at their computer or pulling out their smart phone and filling out a "contact us" form on your website or calling you is a long one and it's full of obstacles. Your job when handling your website, then, is to minimize those obstacles and to make that journey as smooth as possible.

Thankfully, unlike a road (or a house), you can always change a website. It's a living, breathing thing, and it won't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in labor to totally overhaul the thing later on should you so choose. That said, the best time to get your site on track is when you're setting it up: bake in the crucial elements of a strong, search friendly website that drives leads, and you'll save yourself headaches down the road.

Information Architecture for SEO

Your website's information architecture (IA) consists of the pages that will be on the site, and how they will be structured in relation to one another. Unlike regular architecture, you can change it later without too much damage, but there's no better time to get it right than when you're first setting up your website.

We've written a lot about how you can tweak your website to improve SEO. These include simple fixes such as adding fresh content, creating a page for each service you offer, improving your internal linking, creating a service area map, and the like. But setting up your site's IA to optimize SEO in the first place means that these other upgrades will pack much more of a punch when you complete them.

Here are a few things to consider:

Figure out what your core services are, or the services that you're interested in pushing the hardest. Have a page for each of them and have them front and center in your primary navigation. It's much easier to rank well for the term "energy audits" if you have a page on your website called "energy audits."
Think about what your major categories should be (e.g. "hvac," "remodeling," "energy efficiency services") as well as what additional pages will fall into those categories.
Think about keywords when creating these pages: you'll have to make a choice, for example, between "energy audits" and "energy assessments." It's a good idea to figure out the strongest keywords related to your energy efficiency services, and take advantage of that knowledge to gain search traffic. Do the pages that you're creating match up to what people are searching for?
While you're at it, be sure those pages include keywords in the URLs.

Information Architecture for Conversion & Sales

Of course, people visiting your website won't necessarily lead to sales. You need to be sure that once they get to your home page, or your blog post, or your educational page about the benefits of home performance, they know what to do next. Considerations:

What do you want people to do when they come to your website? Most likely, you want them to fill out a form with their contact information; so be sure to include a prominent contact page with a form (and a clearly displayed phone number).
Once again, those service pages that you're heavily focused on ("insulation," "home energy audits," "commercial energy audits," etc.) should be front and center so that they're extremely easy to find from your home page or anywhere else on your site. Consider a strong call-to-action on these pages that encourages people to "sign up now" or "get started today!"
If you offer a lot of services and can't fit them all in the primary navigation, categorize them under intuitive umbrellas so that they're easy to find. (For example, "residential services," "commercial services," or "heating and cooling services," "energy efficiency services.")
Make sure your home page has everything it needs.
People rarely hire businesses they don't trust. Minimize that risk with a good about us page.

This may or may not seem overwhelming, but the long story short is this: a well set-up website with good content throughout not only makes it infinitely more useful to visitors, but improves your chances of showing up in searches, and increases the chances that visitors will become customers.

Any questions, comments or concerns, feel free to contact us at Energy Circle PRO. We'd be happy to help out.

Things I'm Looking Forward to at the 2013 ACI National Home Performance Conference.

Peter Troast — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:30:08 +0000

The ACI National Conference is coming up next week in Denver. It's always a highlight of the year for the Home Performance industry and this year looks to be no different. ACI is always sensory overload on every level, but here are a few of the many topics/themes/memes/sessions and meetups that I'm especially looking forward to at this year's conference:

Crowdsourced Home Performance Storytelling

One of the projects we’ve been quietly working on here at the CirclePlex is a structured approach to gathering case studies of successful projects. Distinct from many of the data gathering projects going on, our objective is compelling, consumer-facing storytelling. Real data, of course, but delivered so that homeowners can grock the myriad benefits of home performance. Although the Energy Circle PRO system already has a fantastic Case Study App within the system (see the CHERP Claremont Case Studies for example), we’re looking to take this to the next level, and at ACI we'll be talking with a wide range of industry thinkers and contractors to move this forward. The concept is a tool that would enable thousands of contractors to submit their case studies in searchable, structured formats for search on their own sites, but also as a roll up to nationally accessible platforms for all to see. A key focus for us is brand and link building for the contractors doing the work.

Planning the Next Set of Energy Circle PRO Features

We thrive on the interaction with the community of Energy Circle customers, and are especially looking forward to talking about the results of our most recent survey of feature/function priorities. Lots of exciting new lead-driving features and enhancements that we're excited to discuss.

Shifting Mechanical Ventilation from Necessary Evil to Customer Benefit and Profit Center

Many of us think of mechanical ventilation as a necessary evil when buildings get to a certain tightness. There’s lots of well-justified skepticism about the bathroom fan solution (where’s that air coming from?) and retrofitting whole house ventilation is, well... just plain hard. But the indoor environment in mechanically ventilated homes is awesome, and I’ve thought for a long time that we’re missing out on selling the benefits of these systems. Why isn't MV more of an end game in and of itself? Why isn't this more of a demand driver on its own? Heck, there's shiny equipment!

Digging deep to figure out the communication, marketing and selling of MV is one of my big areas of focus this year, and there seems to be a real convergence on this topic happening at ACI. In particular, I’m excited for Selling Indoor Air Quality to Customers (which Casey Murphy has agreed to do a version of for the EC PRO webinar series.) Lots of others too: Advanced Air-Sealing Protocol: Transition from Air Leakage to Air Ventilation and Making Good HVAC Design a Reality among them.

The Re-gathering of the Home Performance Market Forum

I was part of an amazing group that convened in Nevada in March to plot the next 20 years of the home performance industry. Really excited to get back together with the group at ACI and keep the momentum.

Bringing the "Lean Movement" to Energy Efficiency Programs

At Energy Circle, we've always been advocates of the Lean Movement, starting with the Agile approach to software development, and in the emerging Lean Startup, Lean Entrepreneur and Lean Marketing movements. It's time for energy efficiency programs to start thinking lean, and not just because of declining federal dollars. Lean is not a starvation diet--it is a consumer focused, iterative, validated, fast methodology that gets more done with less dollars. Lean is....efficient. And isn't that we we all stand for? It is the polar opposite of some of the bloated efficiency programs that have not produced meaningful results. I'm excited to take some of the conversations started in Nevada to the next level.

Software and Standards Meetup

Thanks to the hardworking crew (high five to Robin LeBaron) that has led the HPXML data standard, the industry is poised to start reaping the benefits of this work. We’ll be participating with a bunch of bright minds from across the industry to discuss the current state of these efforts and identify issues and action items to move things forward. Some of the topics include HES, Green Button, HPXML, and there are sure to be more. Our pals at Energy Savvy are organizing this one.

Pecha Kucha

Speaking of storytelling, the Pecha Kucha that is happening Thursday night should be a hoot, and I’m excited to be presenting on the Mallett House Deep Energy Retrofit. If you don’t know about Pecha Kucha yet, it's a very cool multi-speaker presentation format in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each. That equals 6 minutes and 40 seconds per speaker, so it's a very concise way to get a ton of information. There's also one on Weds night for trainers. Great job by Chris Dorsi of Habitat X organizing this year's.

The Twitter Feed

With every passing year, the number of folks contributing to the ACI Twitter feed grows. (It looks like there are multiple hashtags floating out there at the moment--#ACI13, #acinational2013, #aci2013--so stay tuned for the final.) Given that it is impossible to be everywhere, Twitter is an awesome way to follow the event, and it typically includes all types of commentary, insights and discussions that you may not hear "in real life."

Speaking of things you probably won't hear in the buttoned-up official presentations, #ACIafterDark is the way to follow the nighttime shenanigans. Tweets in that feed can get a little irreverent, humorous and racy, especially in the wee hours.

Which brings me to my next point:

The Community

There's no doubt that the community aspect of the ACI National Conference is one of its most compelling features. In a still-nascent industry, it's incredibly inspiring to see the older experts working with the up-and-comers to drive the industry forward in a healthy and thoughtful manner. I love seeing and hanging out with so many Energy Circle PRO customers. There is much to be learned, and everyone at ACI seems to have something to contribute to the conversation. Thanks, in particular, to Mike Rogers, whose 21 Recommendations for ACI 2013 post earlier this week inspired this one and to Steve Byers of Energy Logic, a local Coloradan who has graciously given us his guide to how to have a good time in Denver. The home performance community excels at that.

If you're looking for me, here are the events and workshops I'm delivering or participating in or drop by our Booth: #319.

See you all next week!

Google Places, Lead Gen, SEO and How to Recognize Scumbags.

Will — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:57:15 +0000

We got a call the other day here at the Energy Circle headquarters from an unfamiliar number. On the other end of the line was a prerecorded message that said "Update your Google Places listings for 2013. Press 1 to proceed, press 2 to be removed from this list."

Peter had happened to pick up the phone, and being a huge Google nerd, and hoping it might actually be Google's new phone verification calling back, he readily pressed 1. But it smelled funny, and when somebody finally got to the other end of the line Peter tried to get some information out of him. He wouldn't say his name, he wouldn't say the name of the company he worked for, and he wouldn't say anything else. Scumbag.

For the record, the number is 562-387-1004, it isn't obviously traceable to any company, and there is a long list of internet complaints about aggressive sales from this exchange.

Now, this is a clear case of a shady company subtly inferring that they were Google, using shady practices and pretending to be someone they're not. But in the online marketing world, there are a lot of less clear-cut examples of shady practices. And with local search, SEO and lead gen all being something of a mystery to most small business owners, and the average person in the home performance industry, small business owners are ripe to be taken advantage of. Local search is confusing, and far too many companies are taking advantage of people's fear and ignorance.

Sadly these days, just about everyone with a web site will eventually wind up on a spam phone call list with someone making promises about getting you to page one on Google. As Peter always says in his presentations, when you hear the words "guarantee" and "Google" in the same sentence, run the other way. Beyond the rip off, these scammers can do worse:

You might screw up your local listings (which could have serious repurcussions for your business's success down the road).

Best case, you might just overpay for a service that doesn't do as much good as you were told.

Either way, before you proceed with anybody claiming that they can help you "rank in Google" or whatever, do some research to make sure they're legit.

How to Recognize Scumbags

Make sure you get a company name.
Google them.
Try to find reviews and/or testimonials if you can.
Snoop around on their website (if they don't have one, that's obviously a red flag).
Make sure you can find contact info (phone number, email address, and preferably a physical address). If it's not there, that's a red flag.

Key Questions to Ask

What's your company and where are you located?
Do you work with other home performance companies (or solar, or HVAC, or whatever business you're in)?
What exactly will you be doing?
How much do you know about home performance?
Will you work on our existing website or create a separate one? (Best practice is to use your existing website; otherwise, when the term of service ends, the benefits all disappear.)

Long story short, proceed with caution when it comes to managing your business activities online.

Any bad or good experiences, feel free to tell us all about 'em in the comments.