Speed to lead is why social solar leads don’t convert

▶ 0:00Okay, it is 7.22am and we are back. I've just prepared this video. I want to basically just get over the hurdle of just getting consistent with producing content. So this is it. And I think there's actually a lot of value that can be shared within a few minutes. So this isn't going to be a 26 minute one, in which case I should probably get started. So we're going to talk about speed to lead. So this is basically why you never close social media leads. There's a lot more to it, but this is a huge, huge factor. And even with our clients with the unique style of advertising that we do for them, they are still

▶ 0:29very much vulnerable to the impact of this if it's not done correctly. So what does speed to lead actually mean? It is essentially the time it takes you to make contact with the lead after they enter their contact information and opt in. And the reason it's so important, especially in solar, but it's kind of the case in any advertising on social media, is that there's basically two scenarios. Your ad was the first solar ad that they engaged with, in which case firstly props because you've

▶ 0:59managed to get someone browsing social media to engage with something that they had previously had no interest in, which likely means you were doing something quite different and unique. However, there's the second scenario, which is far more common with social media advertising, especially solar, is that your ad was not the first solar ad that they engaged with.

▶ 1:18The way that Meta's ad targeting works is that now the lead is engaged with some type of solar ad or something in the saving money on energy type of area, heat pumps, etc. They're going to start getting absolutely bombarded with that type of content. And you can see this is a real example of my social media feed. You can see that every third post and every single ad is solar focused and there's, to be honest, there's no ads in there that actually are really drawing my attention and grabbing me. They're busy, they're cluttered, there's no core, you know, real value proposition.

▶ 2:00There's nothing that's building reports or stock imagery or just pictures of the roof. So that's what your prospects or your leads are basically going to be experiencing when you're advertising on social media. And of course, one of the huge problems is lacking differentiation, which is what I just spoke about. And that's why you're getting comments. Like, I don't remember filling that out. Which one are you guys again? What was the price stated in the ad when you maybe you didn't even have a price stated in the ad, but they're getting hit with so many that it's not, you know, it's completely understandable that they're not remembering you.

▶ 2:30Of course, it isn't as much of an issue for our clients because we do stuff like this, but it's actually really creative ads that always feature the owner or a member of the team on the ad itself because that really builds rapport and people work with people. They don't work with panels on a roof, unfortunately. They work with people, they work with, you know, personality. And when people connect with you, that's when they're going to remember you, even if you're a little bit slower to that first touch point.

▶ 3:04But even with those ads, which are completely different to anything you really see within the solar market on social media, there's still significant correlation with our own clients between the speed at which they make contact with the lead and the results that they get, essentially. So we obviously do things that are automated, but what I'm kind of more so referring to here is the time it takes you to call the lead.

▶ 3:30And we get on discovery calls and, you know, we share basically what it takes to qualify to become our client, especially on one of our hero offers where we cover the advertising spend. And we'll say the figure, which is basically that we expect you to call leads within an average of 15 minutes. And that is a requirement for our guarantee because we know just how pivotal it is for the success of the whole campaign.

▶ 3:59And if we don't put that as a stipulation in our guarantee, then we leave ourselves very liable to doing everything right. And just because the client hasn't been proactive on contacting those leads, the results haven't come through. And that's not something we can really help them with. Obviously, in the future, I know some providers do do this, which is absolutely fantastic.

▶ 4:21We'd be looking at actually bringing that call process in-house, but we basically just don't have the resource to do that at the moment. And we've actually found our clients that when our clients understand the importance of the speed, once they're on the phone, they're fantastic. Obviously, they know the technicals of the service.

▶ 4:40They know the specific scenarios. They know the road in which the customer wants to be installed on. They know a neighbor that they installed seven doors down. They're going to be more effective at booking that survey. So if possible, we want them to keep doing the calls. It's just that they need to be fast. So here's the real data of that.

▶ 4:59There you go. So you can see you've got client A on the left here with a 51% call pickup rate, a 33% survey rate, and an average speed to lead of 197 minutes. So just over three hours. You've then got client B in the middle, 54% pickup rate, 46% survey rate. So pretty significantly higher than the first one. And 126 minutes speed to lead or two hours.

▶ 5:25And then on the right, and this is real data from one of our clients, we've got client C, call pickup rate, 75%. Survey book rate, 77%. So if they get 10 leads, they book a survey with seven or eight of them because their average speed to lead is two minutes. So this client gets the notification, they call, no matter what they're doing, and I'm not going to name drop them, but you know who you are, whether it's 9pm at night, whether it's 7am in the morning, whether it's in the middle of the work day, whether they're doing an installation, they call.

▶ 6:01They just get it done. And because of that, they are seeing those kind of results. And that is obviously having a knock-on effect throughout the entire pipeline. So what do you actually do to increase the speed to lead? So the first thing is obviously call faster. Next, things that you can automate. So you can very easily automate SMS, email, and WhatsApp.

▶ 6:21So quick tip, WhatsApp has a far, far higher engagement than SMS ever will. And you can do things that are much more rich with WhatsApp. So you can send media, you can include a button to call you in the message itself. And so we basically send really warm WhatsApp videos that are completely unedited. So a lot of our ads, they have quite an intense editing style.

▶ 6:43But the videos that we just send to leads when they get generated are just this really nice, natural, unedited style. And the pivotal piece of this is that Tom there from Infinite Energy was on the ad. So now the lead is getting through a WhatsApp from Tom that they instantly recognize because that was what they engaged with on the ad.

▶ 7:07So there's connection. There's a seamless customer process. Whereas, you know, what happens with most people that are advertising, they'll use a still image that has no people on it. So it's just got panels and a price. The customer will complete a lead form that looks exactly the same as everyone else's. They'll get an automatic text, potentially, if they're lucky, or a call.

▶ 7:30And there's nothing actually connecting any of the dots, any of the points through. The only thing connecting the different stages is the fact that it's solar. And hopefully solar is mentioned on each stage. So this is absolutely huge. And just basically being unique and showing that throughout the whole process. So, of course, you also need an out-of-hours strategy.

▶ 7:48So a lot of our leads from social media come through out-of-hours. You know, you'll get a lot even like between midnight and 4 a.m. It's pretty crazy. I mean, we've tested taking those times out and just not advertising during those times. But you'd be surprised. Some of them leads are actually really, really good. So we've decided for the time being, we're going to keep them in.

▶ 8:07And then finally, just use a good CRM. You know, there's nothing worse for your sales reps or yourself than when you get a new lead-through. All you're thinking about is, oh, I've got to load up that CRM and then it's going to take ages to load the fields. And then I've got to go onto the notes bit and that's all clunky.

▶ 8:25And oh, no, I'll do it later when I'm on my laptop. That is the worst situation because it's such an easy excuse. And then finally, just, yeah, ensure your approach is memorable because it kind of nullifies the impact of this ever so slightly. So I hope that was useful. Once again, if you want to get a copy of this document as we're building it out, go to the link that's somewhere on this post, offer.sodermasaurus.com slash magnum opus.

▶ 8:48And if you want the implementation of everything that we discuss as we continue to produce content, then go to that same link and just continue in the process and fill out a few more questions. And then we'll be in touch if you're qualified to work with us. Awesome. hope that was useful. Much more content to come and appreciate your time.