Question

Topic: Taglines/Names

Ideas For A New Home Energy Consultancy

Posted by sjohnp on 10/7/2013 at 12:42 PM ET 250 Points
Hello

In short, I am looking for any help and inspiration for a name of a new business idea. The business is a home energy consultancy and will be launched in the UK. With energy costs continuing to rise I'm looking to provide customers with a short survey how they can save considerable sums of money through some very basic changes to their property. Most investments would not exceed more than £1000 and the ROI would aim to be within three to five years. What is more important though is to provide customers with a more comfortable living environment. To help bring the survey to life I would be using thermal imaging to clearly demonstrate how the property is losing heat, assuming that is the case. The short report would detail where the problems are and contain a list of preferred suppliers to offer solutions to the problems identified (better loft insulation, improved wall insulation, install draught proofing to doors and windows, up or down grade boiler accordingly) My aim is to provide a simple, straight-forward and back to basics approach to energy efficiency which can help people live more comfortably and save them some money.

Ideally it would be good to see a name and a tagline to help support the proposition.

Many thanks for any help you can offer

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Moriarty on 10/7/2013 at 1:50 PM Member
    It could be

    Bill Save (and have a character called Bill who always feels cold ... or warm depending).
    Five-a-side saving (top and four sides to a house !!)

    Any thoughts on these?

    We had a business in Cirencester doing loft conversions and so-on, our tagline was "If it's all a bit above your head, call in an expert"
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 10/7/2013 at 3:14 PM Member
    Save Your Energy
    Comfort Home Conversions
  • Posted by sjohnp on 10/7/2013 at 4:01 PM Author
    Moriarty

    Thank you for this and I do like the simplicity of 'Bill Save' as a concept and can see how one could develop a caricature to support advertising and a website. I did a quick look on domain names and billsave.com is currently registered yet bill-save.com is available. Whilst this is early days how important is it to work with a domain which requires a hyphen?

    BTW what happened to the loft conversion business?

    Thanks also to Jay. 'Save your energy' is good but I wonder if it is more of a statement than someone you might call up or respond to a leaflet.

    I really do appreciate your feedbacks so thank you

  • Posted by Moriarty on 10/7/2013 at 5:11 PM Member
    Ahem "what happened to the loft conversion business?" - a rather messy divorce is what happened.

    I wouldn't worry about hyphens these days, anyway, the search engines don't take any notice. After all, it's just another digit to them. It used to be the sign of an affiliate site that would be spammy, but times have changed rather. Billsave is simply used as a 301 (serverside) redirect, it isn't a website as such - my guess is that they wouldn't part with it since Billsaver is active.

    More to the point is what your customers think. The image of Bill sort of just followed, he wasn't planned or anything (well, that's what all the girls say, innit?)

    I must get my display network pdf out - it's about how to gauge a market you've never entered before. It's what I'm up to right now ... next question - do they like Bill Save or Bill Saver???

    Remember that Google's policy has always been quality content and relevance. Anything else - hyphens, backlinking or whatever - comes second to this. That is Google's stated policy and each and every change in its algorithm has been a step closer to this. [There are people who would disagree given they are a commercial organization - but tie your SEO activities in with a serious PPC campaign and you can't go wrong - unless of course, there's no market at all ... ]

  • Posted by sjohnp on 10/7/2013 at 5:15 PM Author
    Moriarty

    I have been thinking a bit more about your initial thoughts on Bill Save and wondered what you and anyone else reading this thread might think of 'Green Bill'. Whilst I agree many people are probably more interested in saving money than helping the environment. Unfortunate but true. Green Bill though becomes a character for saving money on his energy bills first and indirectly is also helping the environment. Any thoughts welcome.
  • Posted by Moriarty on 10/7/2013 at 5:47 PM Member
    There's no reason why the character can't be green - or Irish - or whatever.

    More importantly is to gauge what your market is thinking. What is important to them? If you write down all the questions and all the objections you can think of, you'll have the basis for some sensible market research. If they like saving money, that's fine by me; if a touch of green helps, that's great. You still need to make a living, okay? Believe me, being honest and up front is the first step to a green environment.

    Do you know anything about PPC at all? Even the fundamentals are sufficient right now (like you have an account and you can wade through the ad creation process).

    You can run a PPC campaign that's focussed on your market and get some results very quickly at very modest cost.

    What do you think? If you go to Howie Jacobson's site https://askhowie.com you can get more there. I do have a whitepaper coming up - but my campaign got busy ...
  • Posted by sjohnp on 10/8/2013 at 8:14 AM Author
    I understand PPC is pay per click and guess the more a person clicks on your ad the more you pay? Thus the more succesful the number of the clicks the higher the cost but more leads to you. Outside of that I've no idea how google ad words work and what makes a strong name or names. I did look on Howie Jacobson's site and signed myself up to his newsletter. It has a lot of useful information and help and clearly he knows his stuff. Out of interest how do you go about running a PPC campaign as a means to simply test various name options and propositions? I know you're busy and don't wish to take up more of your time but if you do have any simple ways on where to start that would be great. No rush. I would also be interested to read your white paper when it is eventually published.

    Thanks again

    Steve

  • Posted by Moriarty on 10/8/2013 at 8:29 AM Accepted
    In general you're right. However, Google needs to make money. That means the number of clicks you get is important. Try getting your head around this one: The advertiser in spot #1 is paying 35ct per click - the advertiser in spot #2 is paying $1 for a click ...

    Huh?

    But the advertiser in spot #1 has three times the clicks than the one at #2. Therefore Google makes $1,05 from the advertiser in spot #2 ...

    That's mean!

    Get a great advert and your click price will *plummet*. You'll also soak up the best of the market. Nor do you have to bid high. I've entered markets with click prices of $16 and bought clicks for 50c. I was in spot #3 - the traffic was good and effective. Glenn Livingston is a master of the click through rate (CTR) - standard CTRs are usually below 5%. His standard measure is above 20% and mine is above 10% (anything below that is usually looked on with scorn unless there are mitigating circumstances like a high conversion - but this circumstance is rare, usually a good CTR means good conversion too).

    So get your brain in gear and have some fun. Get Howie's "Google Adwords For Dummies" and peruse with a vengeance. Please note that your landing pages MUST conform to Google's stringent policies. (Okay, they're not so stringent but they are tightly enforced). By the time my paper's out, you'll have a website, landing page and a few thoughts to counter mine with.

    If you want to get my pdf as soon as it's out, pop over to my website and sign up for my newsletter. It'll be broadcast when it's published.
  • Posted by sjohnp on 10/8/2013 at 10:30 AM Author
    Blimey! and guess my first port of call is amazon for "Google Adwords for dummies". Thanks and before I go please send me your website details

    Steve
  • Posted by Moriarty on 10/8/2013 at 11:34 AM Member
    Looks like you got your head around the subject pretty quick!

    You can find my website through my profile page I can't put it here, otherwise Carrie (the moderator) will be incandescent. I'm already #1 on her hit-list ...
  • Posted by sjohnp on 10/8/2013 at 11:59 AM Author
    Get the picture and love your website by the way. I'm not sure I mentioned but we live not very far from Cirencester and just off there now to pick up my son. (Deer Park School). Small world hey.
  • Posted by Moriarty on 10/8/2013 at 12:03 PM Member
    Thanks Steve! Enjoy that traffic and give Waitrose a wave for me!
  • Posted by Moriarty on 10/9/2013 at 4:15 AM Accepted
    Randall,

    taglines do not need to be unique. They do need some uniqueness to them. Just remember what Claude Hopkins did for Schlitz beer: he told the public things that made Schlitz beer special - yet every beer brewer does these things!

    The important part here isn't that someone believes - or not - but whether it resonates with your customers. That's where the creativity comes in. It's like the Readers' Digest postcards that asked which article their readers would like to see in a future issue. Perhaps you know the story, perhaps not. The readers would mark the box on the postcard next to the article they liked and popped it back to Readers' Digest by post. In any case, it was an early use of the internet "split test".

    Huh?

    My point is that if you're truly creative, you can come up with three headlines for your copy that are so different they could be from different planets. Because that's what Readers' Digest were doing. They were split testing an article to see which approaches their readers liked best. They didn't ask the board - they asked their readers, and that a crucial element in good marketing. That it is also the least well understood makes it the more powerful.

    Believe me, when you get really creative, there are only twelve things you can get creative with! It all boils down to twelve motivations (as it were), twelve stories. The real creativity comes from making these things come alive in a way that your readers find engaging.
  • Posted by sjohnp on 10/12/2013 at 4:50 AM Author
    Thank you for all the useful comments and help with this question. One thing I have learnt is you really need to understand your customers and so I will take on board the comments and use my initial jobs to understand what they are looking for from a supplier and how I can then tailor what I do and develop the brand accordingly. Once again thank you and really apprecaite the help.
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