Transcript
Speaker: What's going on Solarpreneurs?
Speaker: Hopefully you're enjoying the episodes, the content, the guests we're having on the show and going out and applying and dominating in the solar industry.
Speaker: Before we jump into today's episode, just have a small favor to ask.
Speaker: Look guys, if you haven't already, please go out and share this show with anyone in the industry.
Speaker: leave us a like leave us a comment on itunes on spotify wherever you listen to these episodes it's how we get this out to more people and just so you know we are not making a dime off this right now so go out and leave us a review and the very least go and share with someone that's what we're trying to do is give back this industry and i'll take it to another level in solar so with that being said let's jump into today's episode with austin lacy
Speaker: Look, in the solar business, there's really only two types of people.
Speaker: There's the ones that crush it, make six, seven, and eight figures, and then there's everyone else.
Speaker: The question is, which one will you be?
Speaker: Over the last four years, we've studied the sharpest solar sales and marketing professionals and how they build multi-million dollar incomes using only the best sales and marketing strategies.
Speaker: So how do these solarpreneurs do what they do and what makes them so successful?
Speaker: This podcast is your answer.
Speaker: Join us and thousands of sales pros, marketers, and entrepreneurs as we take the solar industry by storm and uncover what it takes to sell more solar with less effort.
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast.
Speaker: Top of the morning, solarpreneurs.
Speaker: If you are listening to this in the morning, maybe it'll be nighttime, maybe it'll be two in the morning when you're listening to this, but we don't care because today we have the chatbot and the lead generation extraordinaire, Austin Lacy.
Speaker: Austin, welcome to the show, my man.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker: We're stoked to have you on, Austin.
Speaker: We got recommended by another person we had on the podcast.
Speaker: His name is Russ Ward.
Speaker: He's doing a ton with Real Estate Legion, Solar Legion, and he gave Austin two thumbs up and just said he's crushing it, generating solar leads.
Speaker: And it's specifically using chatbots, but we're going to get into all of that in today's episode.
Speaker: But first of all, I wanted to ask you, Austin, I mean, just checking you out on LinkedIn and everything.
Speaker: I see that you studied jazz guitar at at university in North Texas.
Speaker: And my question is how on earth did you get into digital marketing, all this solar stuff from studying jazz guitar and all that?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So about, I guess it was about four or five years ago when I started getting into digital marketing.
Speaker: You know, I just kind of wanted to, you know, being a musician can be a little roller coaster as far as income, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I kind of wanted to take some of that creative energy and put it into some
Speaker: some weird scientific use online.
Speaker: So I'd heard about, you know, Tim Ferriss and the four hour work week and then like Russell Brunson and other people like that.
Speaker: And, you know, I took a couple of online courses and just kind of got my feet wet and,
Speaker: started doing some digital marketing work for just kind of any clients that I could get and then started to kind of more want to narrow my focus on something I kind of believed in and you know I was always sort of an environmentalist anyway so when solar started becoming popular I was
Speaker: And I had met some people that were in the solar business that needed marketing help.
Speaker: You know, I was just like, this is a great niche that I could, you know, get behind as far as its mission and its, you know, its purpose.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: We've done that ever since.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Well, yeah, when I saw that, I was definitely intrigued because I was a musician myself.
Speaker: And University of North Texas was actually one of my dream schools.
Speaker: Because I knew they had some top level music stuff going on there.
Speaker: But they're one of like the top jazz schools in the country, aren't they?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So you must be world-class.
Speaker: We might have to get you a guitar solo after this.
Speaker: Play some jazz guitar.
Speaker: It's a different episode of just...
Speaker: Seriously, little did our listeners know they would get a show on, a show with the podcast.
Speaker: That's awesome, man.
Speaker: And I don't know about you, but I definitely think having a music background definitely brings some interesting creativity and just kind of hard work.
Speaker: Because, I mean, I'm sure you're jamming on guitar probably all day long practicing music.
Speaker: So in my opinion, all this cell stuff and digital marketing is no different.
Speaker: You're just practicing it and applying it and getting better.
Speaker: So I'm sure it helps a lot.
Speaker: Yeah, and like specifically for jazz, you know, it's very like improvisation based.
Speaker: And I think that...
Speaker: that kind of exercises your brain in a way that forces you to kind of think outside the box and also, you also have to be pretty adaptive and, um, you know, fast learning, not to be braggy, but just like, it kind of makes you have to like, think of not, not the typical solution to things, you know, which is, which can be helpful for digital marketing for sure.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Well, that's awesome.
Speaker: Very cool to hear your background.
Speaker: So yeah, yeah, we'll dive into this, Austin.
Speaker: So I guess, how did you get into the, so solar, you said it's just kind of something you believed in.
Speaker: So just thought it was a good niche and decided to focus all in on that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then did you originally go straight to like, and kind of an agency model or did you start working for a solar company first?
Speaker: Oh, no, it was more just an agency model, yeah, right away.
Speaker: I'm not a solar salesman myself, I just have a lot of friends that are.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: So tell us, how did you get your agency up and rolling?
Speaker: What were kind of your first, I mean, I'm sure you had some struggles and everything, but what were like your first results?
Speaker: How'd you get your first clients and how'd all that go?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: You know, it's always hard in the beginning just to get the snowball rolling.
Speaker: Initial struggles were, you know, reaching out to people, them not knowing who I am.
Speaker: They're like, I don't know, like, why should we believe you?
Speaker: So, yeah, you know, a couple good ways that helped were...
Speaker: you know, just kind of like a free offering kind of a free trial month and then, you know, kind of lowering the risk for them.
Speaker: I think that's a good way for people who are starting out to be getting marketing clients is like, it's not like you necessarily have to say you'll work for them for free the entire time, but it can help sometimes to be like, you know, I'll do, I'll do your marketing for you for a month.
Speaker: And if you are happy with the results, we can continue.
Speaker: And then you can pay me after that.
Speaker: And it's sort of like a, you know, almost like a 30 day trial.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That was, that was, that was kind of like the way that to get over that hump of the, uh, the initial lack of momentum, you know?
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: And then after that, you know, it's easier to get paying clients cause you have like, you know, testimonials, referrals, stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what we're doing with the solarpreneur movement here, we probably have some kind of people that are thinking of doing agencies and marketing it more like that.
Speaker: I know we have a lot of solar reps on here that are trying to generate their own leads and just figure out the whole world of online marketing.
Speaker: just kind of be entrepreneurs, get their own needs, close their own deals, stuff like that.
Speaker: And it's definitely something I'm trying to do.
Speaker: Not only sell my own systems, but be able to get my leads in and basically be my own agency in my company.
Speaker: So what would you say to those people?
Speaker: Let's dive into your process, I guess.
Speaker: What's your main way of getting leads online?
Speaker: Is it Facebook or how else do you generate leads?
Speaker: Yeah, I would say Facebook has been the main source just because it just has so many people on it, you know, as far as users.
Speaker: So the potential traffic volume is one of the largest out there.
Speaker: Think about like Google search or Google ads.
Speaker: only like 3% of people on the internet at any given time are searching on Google.
Speaker: The other 97% is not searching for anything.
Speaker: So if you're only doing Google search, they have really high intent, right?
Speaker: But you're only capturing a small sliver of the people you could be capturing at any given moment.
Speaker: So the good thing about something like Facebook is
Speaker: you know, there's this distinction, they call it between intent-based marketing and interruptive marketing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Those are kind of like the two buckets of the styles of advertising.
Speaker: And Facebook would fall into the interruptive marketing in the sense that you're just coming into their world and kind of reminding them that you exist and, you know, making them...
Speaker: a captivating offer to want to take action and learn more.
Speaker: So the good thing about Facebook is there's, there's, you know, like 2 billion users every, you know, every day and you're capturing that other 97% that you might not be capturing on Google search.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What have some of your results been awesome for companies?
Speaker: I know you've probably gotten a better and better and better as you've worked with a ton of companies now, but if a company starts working with you, what are some of the results that they can expect from that?
Speaker: Yeah, so I mean, you know, in the lead industry in general, obviously it's dependent on the company's sales process as far as, you know, how many of them are going to, the connect rate of the leads, like if the sales people are following up,
Speaker: more than once, which you'd be surprised.
Speaker: I'm sure everyone on your podcasts are not that way.
Speaker: I'm sure everyone's like pretty sharp, you know, because like they're listening to solopreneur there, they already have their stuff together, but you know you know, we've used like software like, like lead owl or other softwares like that to, to have some accountability on our end as well, to see if they're actually even calling the people.
Speaker: And like, sometimes, you know, they,
Speaker: they'll be like, oh, these aren't converting, and then we'll do an audit, and they're not even calling half of the people once.
Speaker: But if they are following up, yeah,
Speaker: basically we've been able to get them as many leads as they want per week.
Speaker: And, you know, they're, they're going to sell at least, uh, you know, a couple of new systems every week that they weren't selling before.
Speaker: And, you know, that can, that can mean five, six figures extra per month in revenue for them, which, you know, they're obviously thrilled about because, um, one of the tough things about solar is, is just like getting away from their unscathed,
Speaker: can sometimes be hard to expand because it's not as scalable as just having a supply of leads coming in.
Speaker: So that can be their bottleneck.
Speaker: And so having that be filled in the pipeline, being more consistent like that can add like five, six, sometimes seven figures if they're a big company.
Speaker: Additional revenue to their bottom line every month.
Speaker: Crazy.
Speaker: Yeah, so if you're a company owner or individual, I mean, definitely consider doing something like this because seven figures onto your business per year.
Speaker: I know that's going to blow pretty much any company up with what you're doing.
Speaker: So for those that want to start learning this, how did you originally, you said you took some online courses, stuff like that, but yeah, how did you figure all this stuff out?
Speaker: Because I know people, and I myself, I'm still a
Speaker: I guess you'd say kind of in the process of figuring it out and optimizing their process.
Speaker: But yeah, what was your thing that you went through to figure all this out?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I don't really want to necessarily mention the names of the courses because I don't want to give them like credit or, you know, be weird with that.
Speaker: But I would definitely say that just the actual specific niche and subject niche you want to be in.
Speaker: Besides the, like obviously find the best online course for that.
Speaker: Like if it's specifically lead gen, what I did was, you know, at first I took a consulting course.
Speaker: Then I also, after that, I found a more specific course that was just for generating leads and maximizing all the different ways of building funnels specifically for lead generation, which I think is an important distinction because sometimes it can be a little bit of a different
Speaker: customer journey you know what i mean um so i would definitely recommend you know finding the best one you can in that and it's definitely worth investing because sometimes you know a thousand two thousand dollars you make that back within a month because it's specialized knowledge instead of what you would learn in like a university you know yeah where most most of the time what you're learning entrepreneur wise in college is not gonna your world results but then the other thing was uh you know just just finding someone who's already doing it and reaching out to them and
Speaker: you know, trying to get a phone consultation with them, trying to get a coaching call, trying to have them become a mentor.
Speaker: I was just pretty ruthless and persistent about that, you know, just annoying people and like being like, you know, offering value to them as much as I can, but also just kind of being like, please like teach me all your secrets, you know?
Speaker: So I have, I have a few mentors that are making seven figures and just, you know, you know, they were always like super helpful and kind of accelerating my path.
Speaker: So I definitely recommend finding someone who's already better than you and just,
Speaker: kind of copying everything they do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, you better watch out, man, because you might have some people pestering you after this.
Speaker: Wanting you to coach them.
Speaker: Because, yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely true.
Speaker: And for those, yeah, for our solopreneurs that haven't figured that piece out, that's the fastest way to jumpstart, I think.
Speaker: What you're trying to do is just finding someone who already has had success and
Speaker: And then paying them.
Speaker: And that's the only way I know I would have had zero success trying to figure this out on my own.
Speaker: But I did the same as you're doing.
Speaker: And probably in a lot more beginning stages compared to a guy like you with your agency launch.
Speaker: But yeah, I've gotten leads.
Speaker: I've closed deals from the leads.
Speaker: So it's definitely been worth it.
Speaker: You pay a couple grand for a course.
Speaker: But I think most solar sales reps should be making at least a grand or two off these leads they close.
Speaker: So it should definitely be worth it.
Speaker: Investing in a course, but no, that's awesome.
Speaker: Definitely agree with that.
Speaker: And tell us some of the, maybe you don't want to share everything, but what's some of the software you use for it?
Speaker: Are you using ClickFunnels and then just Facebook ads or the tools that you use?
Speaker: Yep, so depending on which kind of funnel we're using, if we're talking about like a chat bot funnel or just chat bot in general, my preferred tool is ManyChat.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Just because it's very common and popular and it has a big, and for that reason it has a lot of support available and it's integratable with a lot of things, you know, like Zapier, other integrations.
Speaker: Sometimes,
Speaker: having, even if it's not the best tool, sometimes it's really convenient if it's just the most common tool, you know?
Speaker: Like WordPress might not be the most amazing website builder, but it's available for everything, which makes it, you know, there's a lot of advantages to that.
Speaker: So I think it's just, but you can just choose any.
Speaker: There's like chat fuel, there's active chat.
Speaker: I've heard good things about that one.
Speaker: My tool happens to be many checks.
Speaker: I'd say you just pick one and just kind of like get comfortable with it, master it because,
Speaker: when it comes down to it, it's all really doing the same function, right?
Speaker: Or you can obviously have it coded yourself, but I don't think anyone on here probably is a programmer.
Speaker: I'm not a programmer, so I just, I think you can fast track your way to success by just using tools that are already designed to make the process as intuitive as possible, which is why I prefer ManyChat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So as many chat, is that the main way you're getting leads?
Speaker: Um, so you're launching these ads and you're pushing them all of them just in your chat bot.
Speaker: Is that kind of your main process?
Speaker: Yeah, you can do many chat.
Speaker: Um, you can do Facebook paid.
Speaker: So it'd be like paid Facebook ads straight to a chat bot.
Speaker: Um, you can also have a chat, the chat bot be in all your organic sources, like, um, any, any content sources you have, like if you have a blog, um,
Speaker: where you're pushing content or if you have a YouTube channel, you can, you can be placing your bot into those organic sources and, uh, kind of plugging the holes and capturing some of all that traffic that's already following you.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And take, you can take them through that journey because, uh, one of the advantages of chat bots are they're, they're very like personal and conversational and they feel less stiff, but also the main benefit is that, uh,
Speaker: the open rate can be a lot higher than email.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So like, you know, nothing wrong with email, not saying anything bad about email, but you know, historically email marketing open rates can be on average about,
Speaker: between like five and 30% open rate.
Speaker: Whereas a lot of the time chatbots can get easily over 60% open rate.
Speaker: It's just because mainly the person is getting it straight to their mobile device, straight to their, they're getting it, because most people have messenger notifications on their phone.
Speaker: So they're just, they're going to see it.
Speaker: Whereas email,
Speaker: email people are getting a little saturated with all the newsletters they're signed up to, so it can kind of get buried sometimes.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah, okay.
Speaker: And then for normal funnels as well, if a client is just looking for a normal funnel that isn't chatbot related, it'll be pointing to, again, start at a Facebook ad, point to a landing page, something like ClickFunnels or Unbounce is another good one for a lead gen that we use.
Speaker: I use both.
Speaker: And then a lot of the time we'll also use
Speaker: a survey tool like type form or something that can easily build functional pretty forms that have a good conversion rate.
Speaker: That would be kind of like the tool stack as far as the software stack.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So what's the advantages?
Speaker: I personally haven't tried like a chat bot funnel you're talking about in
Speaker: For those that don't know, I think most people should know, but chat bot, that's just basically a robot talking to you through Facebook Messenger.
Speaker: Many chat is the software you use to set all that up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But Austin, what's your thoughts on, I guess, what's the advantages, disadvantages from just doing like a typical funnel to pushing ads to a typical sales funnel to click funnels or something versus pushing ads to it?
Speaker: a chatbot is it just kind of the response rate or I guess what's the difference and why would you use one versus the other?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker: So typical sales funnel, if you're doing it well, is still great and it'll always work.
Speaker: The advantages that are the pros and cons that are different about exploring the use of a chatbot is like I already said, the open rate.
Speaker: One of the real advantages is that
Speaker: you can have basically as many, the possibilities are endless as far as what journey you're taking them on.
Speaker: So let's say you ask them an initial question in the chat bot, right?
Speaker: Then based on their answers or based on one of multiple answers, you can branch that like decision tree logic out basically infinitely.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: You can basically take them in any direction you want as far as segmenting the exact type of users and where you want them to go.
Speaker: So if you're wanting certain types of leads, it's really great to be able to just ask them very specific questions, branch them off into a different direction, maybe qualify them differently or score them differently as a lead.
Speaker: And so that's one benefit because it's definitely easier to do it that way inside a chatbot.
Speaker: Plus you can use multimedia sources that kind of makes it more engaging, like images, GIFs, all these things that kind of make it feel more personal.
Speaker: And you can do that advanced branching and decision tree logic with some survey tools, but it can be a little clunky and
Speaker: not nearly as intuitive and it's it's a pretty steep learning curve when you try to do it through like a survey tool i think so that's been one of the advantages and then um just another event i guess advantage is like it just it just feels a lot more less like a less like a business and more like you're actually talking to person because one of the one of the things about sales as i'm sure everyone on this podcast knows is like
Speaker: even though you're speaking to the masses, like you want to, you want the customer to feel like you're speaking one-on-one to them and to them alone.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So special.
Speaker: And so they feel listened to.
Speaker: And so they feel like unique.
Speaker: So that's another advantage of it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So if you were to recommend just one way of getting it, would you steer towards using a chat bot?
Speaker: Would you say your results are generally better getting more leads, higher quality leads, just using chat bots?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, the quality is really high when they go through that.
Speaker: The only other disadvantage I would say is like sometimes it can just be,
Speaker: every now and then there's glitches because it's on Facebook's end, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And even with a tool like ManyChat, they'll just have glitches that they can't control or they say they can't control.
Speaker: And so you'll kind of be at the mercy of Facebook since it's like through the Facebook API.
Speaker: So sometimes there'll be glitches where like, even if you set everything up properly, um,
Speaker: the person will maybe get like a duplicate or it won't, they won't go through the flow properly.
Speaker: That's only a small percentage of the time.
Speaker: And then the other thing is like, sometimes if someone's just, just has no experience with any online marketing or lead generation, you know, the, the, the tech side of the chat bot might be a little bit more than just a regular funnel because, you know, there's,
Speaker: the more moving pieces.
Speaker: So if they're a little overwhelmed, sometimes I would say just start with a really, really basic regular funnel.
Speaker: But if they have, you know, um,
Speaker: I would say a good thing that chatbots are great for is sales reps who are even starting out with just generating organic leads, you know, through things like Facebook, YouTube traffic that are, like I said, their blog or their YouTube site, or even just like Facebook groups.
Speaker: You don't have to have a website and that's a huge, huge, huge plus or something because, you know, people can be very intimidated by like having to create their own website,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then build all this out.
Speaker: So you don't have to have a website, which is awesome.
Speaker: And you can, it's great for like sales reps who are just looking to generate maybe, you know, between 10 to 50 new leads a week and just, just point them straight from wherever they're finding them to like their Facebook page and into the bot and then they capture them as a lead.
Speaker: So it's, it's pretty great for that.
Speaker: Yeah, awesome.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's definitely super interesting thing.
Speaker: How long has it been since you, I assume you started doing just typical funnels first.
Speaker: How long ago, I guess, did you get into the chat bot side of things and kind of start experimenting with that?
Speaker: Yeah, not too long ago, about probably, I would say.
Speaker: So you cut out for a sec.
Speaker: Did you say 20?
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Yeah, so it's not too long.
Speaker: It's only been about a year since I started diving into chatbots.
Speaker: Okay, I see.
Speaker: So yeah, walk us kind of through the process.
Speaker: I know you've done this for a bunch of companies, I'm sure, but what's kind of the general process?
Speaker: I mean, you have an ad.
Speaker: And are you testing like a whole bunch of different headlines or what's some typical headlines you use to just kind of attract them even into talking to the chat bot first and then, yeah, where does it go from there generally?
Speaker: I guess what does the bot say to them?
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: as far as like on the ads side of things, definitely, definitely test a bunch of different variations.
Speaker: Like you said, that's like a great philosophy to have.
Speaker: Like your jazz, jazz improv, testing the riffs and all that.
Speaker: Always be testing.
Speaker: Kind of like always be closing, you know, always be testing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So generally we'll try to take like five different conceptual angles.
Speaker: And by that, I mean like,
Speaker: Like the ad might be, you know, one ad might be geared towards environmental savings.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It might be sort of more like, I don't know, fear based, like, you know, uh, uh, respiratory disease, um, caused by coal pollution, you know,
Speaker: a little more on the negative side.
Speaker: And then one might be really happy and positive.
Speaker: Like this family, you know, went green and eliminated their electric bill.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I'm just kind of giving examples off the top of my head, but just conceptual angles that, that the, the idea of sort of the benefit and what the ad is about, pick like, you know, three to five different conceptual angles like that to sort of,
Speaker: give the structure of what the ad copy is going to be about.
Speaker: And they'll pick within those different angles, we'll pick a couple different headlines, variations as well within that.
Speaker: And also like three to five different images for this.
Speaker: So you'll have the exact same ad copy and headline.
Speaker: And you want to pick like, you want to do three different pictures because
Speaker: and this is huge on Facebook, the image is like 80% responsible for the success of an ad, right?
Speaker: Wow, okay.
Speaker: So the hierarchy of the importance of how much it affects conversions is like 80% is the picture.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And next is the headline.
Speaker: And then last is like the actual copy.
Speaker: So you would think that people are mostly reading the, you know, the post, but, and they are, it is important, but it's, it's, it's not the most important thing.
Speaker: The other two things are going to, because, you know, people are, people tend to be skimming, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: especially because they're scrolling through the news feed.
Speaker: So the picture has to be something that captures their attention enough to stop scrolling.
Speaker: The headline has to be something enough, captivating enough to make them possibly want to click, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So then once they've stopped, then they'll read the posts, right?
Speaker: So you kind of want to like,
Speaker: wrap your head around like the actual user process and how they're experiencing the ad.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So you, did you say three to five different pictures for each headline you come up with?
Speaker: Should I have three to five pictures to go with it?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: If you have like a really small budget, you know, you don't have to, sometimes that can end up being like a lot of different ad variations, but if you just pick one or the other, I would say if you just did picture variations and nothing else,
Speaker: That's like, that's a pretty good, like 80, 20 use of your, of your resources.
Speaker: As far as like, you know, you're going to get, you're going to definitely get a difference in impact just from that, just from the, you know, doing three to five image variations.
Speaker: You can, you can do that within the same ad set.
Speaker: You'll just have like three to five different ads inside that ad set that have different pictures and everything else is the same.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would recommend doing that.
Speaker: Yeah, and where do you get your images?
Speaker: Are they just like stock images or where do you usually get your images?
Speaker: Yeah, so as far as like creative goes, I would definitely say try to avoid stock images whenever possible.
Speaker: Just because on Facebook, anything that seems like really polished and corporate tends to not do as well because people don't want to be on Facebook to see that stuff, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I guess the recommendation I would give is like try to make it look as much like Like just an organic post as possible like something someone would post anyway, right?
Speaker: Yeah, like you know a great one is obviously like if you cut if your client has any or if the client or the company has any customer pictures mm-hmm
Speaker: of them holding an electric that's been eliminated by solar or them standing in front of their house with solar panels or even just as silly as it sounds sometimes the picture doesn't even have to have anything to do with what the ad is about like it can just be like two people like laughing and people yeah you know what i mean like as long as it looks like
Speaker: as long as it looks native and looks like somebody took it for social media, the purpose of just being social that can convert as well.
Speaker: You know, sometimes it's just like a guy with a baby with her baby can, can out convert a picture of a house with solar panels on it.
Speaker: They just kind of have to like get creative and experiment.
Speaker: But the one, the one concept that that's like a pattern throughout is try to make it seem native to the platform.
Speaker: And by that, I mean like,
Speaker: something that people would be naturally posting on Facebook, like social pictures of people.
Speaker: The algorithm likes people.
Speaker: The algorithm likes animals.
Speaker: The algorithm likes the outdoors.
Speaker: There's all these like weird things about it.
Speaker: So, you know, I've seen a lot of ads that are like really polished looking like they would be on TV.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that can work on TV, but it doesn't work as well on Facebook because people want authenticity and realness on Facebook.
Speaker: And it's almost sometimes like the worse it looks, the lower production quality, the better it performs just because they're like, oh, this is like a real person.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I trust them, right?
Speaker: It's like the whole trust thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, I've seen some pretty crazy ads and I'm sure you've probably been surprised by what works on Facebook.
Speaker: It's like crazy to see some ads.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Another great thing that works too is video.
Speaker: Like you can just take selfie video from your phone talking about the benefits of the product, talking about the benefits of
Speaker: Solar array on someone's house, but also like what what performs really well is if you can get if if you can get customer testimonials in video form Okay, you can do and this is a pretty cool trick you can you can do a slot like a carousel of of oh, yeah, I've seen that Four different videos of like happy customers talking about
Speaker: your company or, you know, your experience all in the same ad and like the user can scroll through and see these little like, you know, 20 to 30 second videos each.
Speaker: And that's just like a whole lot of social proof and that can perform really well too.
Speaker: So that's like a, that's a smart use of taking advantage of like video and the different possibilities on Facebook ads.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I like experimenting with that, you know?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So have you kind of built up just a library of different images and stuff you use now or every company you work with your
Speaker: you're just kind of using their images and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sometimes it'll be like the, if we're working directly with a client, we'll try to get as many of their own images as possible.
Speaker: Or sometimes, or sometimes it'll just be a, um, a client where we're using our own lead generation solar brand.
Speaker: Um, that's kind of not branded to their company and we'll use our own images that we've kind of compiled over the times you can, uh, you can, I mean, you can get your friends to pose in videos.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: where you know that maybe your neighbors have solar you can take pictures of them you know you can kind of just get creative like how you find the pictures you can definitely find um like some some pictures online on on photo sites like uh shutterstock or things like that obviously try to if they could if the less the less stock they look the better um you can also hire people on like fiverr to just you know take pictures on like selfie pictures if you if you don't if you don't feel comfortable having like
Speaker: your friends.
Speaker: So, you know, there's, there's different ways to go about it, but I would just say like, yeah, just build up a stockpile of things that feel natural and, and real.
Speaker: And obviously anything related to solar is great, but you can, I mean, you can even have just someone,
Speaker: like what we've seen perform well is like someone just holding a piece of paper and like the piece of paper isn't even like a solar bill.
Speaker: It's not even like, and it still like performs really well sometimes.
Speaker: Like, but then we will have like,
Speaker: like we'll have like a screenshot of a bill that's like you know three dollars for that month and it's like a crazy low bill and it's like such a clear benefit of like how awesome solar is and it yeah and then it tanks you know like yeah it like doesn't perform at all because people it's just like too much text and people like even if we circle it and like put an arrow it's like you know
Speaker: colors and like just look how cheap it is like in Facebook if it has too much text in it it might not even approve the ad so there's like all these kind of counterintuitive things so you think one thing will work but you don't really know until you test it you know what I mean so yeah don't be afraid to test weird things that seem like they
Speaker: you know yeah yeah yeah and guys don't get held up on this this part of the struggles i've had is stuff you just said is like feeling oh well this ad's not performing i don't want to take the time to go out and take another picture like figure out what to do next so i'm sure there's other people like me out in the world so to those people i would definitely recommend maybe fiverr or
Speaker: just like if it's a point of procrastination, just go pay someone to take some, some different photos or something.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Because I think people probably get held up on that and just like, you know, quit, quit running their ads.
Speaker: Cause they're out of ideas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Go look at what other people are doing.
Speaker: And then, yeah, if anything, I think a good suggestion is build up.
Speaker: Well, that's what Russell Brunson is all about, right?
Speaker: Just build up your library of,
Speaker: what other people are using, see what else is converting.
Speaker: And then if anything, you can just screenshot those same ads, send it straight to someone on Fiverr and say, Hey, can you recreate an image of something similar to this that you can use as your ad?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: That's a suggestion, but yeah, go ahead.
Speaker: And people on this podcast are probably mostly sales reps.
Speaker: And like you guys have great opportunities to every time you're,
Speaker: every time you do a new install or you've closed a new sale or even just like you're on a property, like examine the property to potentially sell them.
Speaker: So, you know, you could be capturing pictures on your phone of these people.
Speaker: And like, if they're nice, you know, they'll let you take a picture with them.
Speaker: So I would just do everything you can to start like,
Speaker: It's kind of like Gary Vaynerchuk says, it's like document, don't create.
Speaker: Wherever you are, you can be capturing content because like I said, for social media marketing, it does not have to look high production quality and polished.
Speaker: And so you can just be getting pictures like
Speaker: you can be getting several pictures a day while you're just at work anyway, you know, try to try to like almost like switch your mindset to always kind of be looking for photo ops.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Marketing immensely.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think that's something a lot of reps overlook is I know some people do like the pictures after with their customers to have them share it on Facebook.
Speaker: But how about taking it to another level and using those pictures as actual ads or like you said, testimonials with all the psycho customers you had.
Speaker: So then you're not only getting referrals from it, but then you're keeping your pipeline full with new leads.
Speaker: So I think that's, I think that's a money tip right there.
Speaker: You'll see all these great customer testimonial pictures on the website, deeply embedded in like these other, not even the homepage, like these other pages.
Speaker: And it's like, most people won't ever even find those.
Speaker: No, they're too deeply buried.
Speaker: Like slap that on the ad.
Speaker: Like just put, put your strong foot forward.
Speaker: You know, people just want to see other people's experiences and like,
Speaker: It just accelerates trust so much.
Speaker: Seriously, yeah.
Speaker: I think that's a money tip right there.
Speaker: So, Austin, we're running short on time here, but as far as once people get in the chat box,
Speaker: What is it that you're typically like having the chat bot say to them?
Speaker: Is it just basic stuff?
Speaker: Like what's your electric bill or they click on the ad, then what happens next?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, so they usually, it depends on how lengthy you want it and how qualified you want it.
Speaker: But like the most, let's just say like, for example, the most qualified lengthier version, you'll ask them like nine or 10 different questions.
Speaker: And so by the time they're through that, they're pretty interested, you know?
Speaker: So it'd be like,
Speaker: it'd be like, you know, who's your, are you a homeowner?
Speaker: And then, you know, you can, if they say no, you can actually just like branch them into a different area and just kind of be like, oh, this might not be the best option for you, but we recommend these, you know, we recommend these other things like maybe community solar or blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: You can kind of disqualify them.
Speaker: But as far as the regular flow, it'd be like, are you a homeowner?
Speaker: What's your average electric bill?
Speaker: What's your reason for wanting to go solar?
Speaker: which you don't really need, but it's just kind of like helps and it can be conversational.
Speaker: Utility company.
Speaker: And we'll personalize that obviously.
Speaker: We'll ask them their zip code and you can do a thing where after that, it's like, congrats, your zip code is approved.
Speaker: Like you're in one of the approved zip codes just for extra qualification.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then it'll be like,
Speaker: phone number, name, address, um, optional.
Speaker: If they want to upload a, their electric bill straight through the chat bot.
Speaker: Um, and then
Speaker: That's generally where they would, all the main things, and then plus the electric bill, homeowner, basically everything you would need.
Speaker: Average credit score, above or below, blah, blah, blah, if the client wants that.
Speaker: Then they would be a completed lead at that point.
Speaker: A rep can jump in and start having a real conversation so it seems kind of seamless.
Speaker: At that point,
Speaker: they're pretty, they're pretty qualified.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So at the end of it, it's just saying something like, thank you.
Speaker: We'll contact you soon.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You don't do like a scheduling link or anything.
Speaker: You just kind of do a thank you message.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We've, we've kind of tried both.
Speaker: You can, you can definitely put a scheduling link in there.
Speaker: I wouldn't make it like dependent on them completing it, but you can put it like after kind of as like, if they want to do it, that's great.
Speaker: You're just capturing some of those people that are really hot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then, but yeah, they can also be subscribed to it.
Speaker: They're usually also naturally subscribed to an email follow-up sequence as well.
Speaker: Not email follow-up sequence.
Speaker: You can do that as well, but a follow-up sequence on the chat bot.
Speaker: So even when they start the bot, even if they don't finish it, they're subscribed to a sequence for a follow-up.
Speaker: So that can increase conversions as well.
Speaker: But yeah, kind of we've found that like a lot of people,
Speaker: need to talk to someone before they schedule an appointment so like a human they need to talk to on the phone so um we don't worry so much about putting the scheduling in there but like i said it can it can help capture some of that low-hanging fruit yeah
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We had a, I don't know if you know Steve Larson, but he's Russell Brunson's right hand man.
Speaker: We had him on the podcast week or two ago.
Speaker: And what he suggested, I thought was interesting.
Speaker: He's just putting like, not, not even a scheduling link, but just saying you are, we'll put you in the queue to talk to.
Speaker: We're super busy.
Speaker: We'll reach out soon.
Speaker: But if you want to be contacted sooner, here's the number you can reach out to.
Speaker: And then just including like a number on there.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Oh,
Speaker: I don't know if it's anything like that.
Speaker: Yeah, we'll have like the, in the main menu kind of like, that's kind of always there.
Speaker: It'll be like call now or call us, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At any point, if they would rather talk to a human, they can have that option, you know.
Speaker: So that's kind of reach for the customer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they technically become a lead when they press on, when they click on the messenger button?
Speaker: Because you instantly get their email, right?
Speaker: When they click on that?
Speaker: Yeah, you still have to ask for it.
Speaker: But it'll auto-populate when they answer.
Speaker: So if they just subscribe, you won't necessarily just see their email, but it's there for you as long as they opt in.
Speaker: But they're automatically subscribed to the bot so that you can constantly reach back out to them.
Speaker: So they're already subscribed to the bot.
Speaker: And you have their email.
Speaker: if you ask for their email, it'll be like, is this your, can you confirm your email?
Speaker: And it'll just auto populate.
Speaker: Like they don't have to type it in, which is like super seamless and frictionless for them.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And what's your typical ad spend for these?
Speaker: Austin, I know it probably depends a lot on the markets and everything, but what's like the minimum ad spends you suggest?
Speaker: And I guess if you want to get killer results, what's the maximum ad spends and all that and optimizing it.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, obviously, maximum ad spend doesn't exist, right?
Speaker: Yeah, you can spend unlimited, but... Zuckerberg would want you to do that, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm sure he'd be very happy about that.
Speaker: But minimum, I would say, like,
Speaker: You would want to set aside, like if someone's first starting out running paid ads, just kind of dip your toe in the pool.
Speaker: You'd want to have at least like 500 for the month to test with.
Speaker: It isn't always going to necessarily cost that much per month, but when you're first testing, you know, you have to kind of go through a few fails to find a win.
Speaker: That was kind of part of the whole thing we were talking about before about like,
Speaker: testing several image variations, testing several headline variations of what people are responding to, right?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You know, obviously, obviously, if you have a thousand, that's great.
Speaker: But sometimes people don't have that if they're just starting out.
Speaker: So you can definitely do some damage with like $500 a month and be able to have enough like variations that you're testing to, to find winners and kind of like start optimizing things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I would say like under that, it's kind of hard to like have any wiggle room to, to test anything, you know, because if it's, if it's less than that per month, you're almost like, I only have enough budget for like this one ad set or this one ad.
Speaker: And then I just have to keep running this ad, you know, cause, um, but,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then how long before, when would you say that the ads kind of get exhausted?
Speaker: You need to like run new ads.
Speaker: Does that kind of depend on the market too?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker: Or fatigue, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah, that would be mostly dependent on how big the audience is.
Speaker: So like if you're only targeting like one very small zip code, for example,
Speaker: it might have let's say 10,000 to be generous.
Speaker: It might have 10,000 people and not all of them are going to be homeowners, right?
Speaker: And not all of them are going to be like over the age of 25 and probably good candidates for like financing, you know?
Speaker: So of that 10,000, you might only have like 6,000 people be like possible prospects.
Speaker: Generally, you want to have like
Speaker: ten dollars per day for uh per per 10 000 people right okay so like you if you if you only have 10 000 people or less
Speaker: If you're spending more than $10 a day, it's just going to start burning out a lot quicker.
Speaker: And that's when you start getting the ad going down in results.
Speaker: Because what happens is it keeps showing the ad to the same people, and they get fatigued with it, and it kind of gets burnt out.
Speaker: So if you have a really, really tiny audience, you have to keep refreshing and recreating the same ads all the time.
Speaker: You don't want to be doing it.
Speaker: You can do that.
Speaker: It's just kind of tedious.
Speaker: If you want to be doing that, I'd recommend just kind of finding like,
Speaker: as many people like try to find ways of expanding the size of the audience.
Speaker: Like the more zip codes you can target the better and just kind of put them all into the same ad set, you know, cause then you have like maybe a hundred thousand people you're able to target.
Speaker: And then if you have like several interests, you have found work, you know, like they're interested in organic food or they're interested in like farmer's market, that kind of thing.
Speaker: Just, you can consolidate those into the same ad set.
Speaker: And then you have twice as many people, right?
Speaker: So it's like creative ways to kind of consolidate to make the audience big enough to where you can raise the budget and it's not going to burn out so quick.
Speaker: Because then that way you can be having the same ad for like weeks or months even.
Speaker: But if it's too small, it might burn out in literally like two days.
Speaker: And you're like, what happened?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: for sure that's really frustrating so yeah i bet okay well well man you've dropped some uh serious knowledge on us some value bombs so thanks for dropping this all i don't know some people are probably uh probably so overwhelmed with this because you're sorry if it got too technical i was just trying to keep it like high level but yeah no i think we think we did some good stuff but definitely covered a lot of ground here and
Speaker: a lot to think about and I hope people are taking notes on this cause I took three pages and I'm gonna have to go through everything to take advantage of it here.
Speaker: Yeah, I love what you guys are doing at the solopreneur company in general.
Speaker: Like I love the concept of like, you know, taking the sales process and taking it out of like having to be there physically.
Speaker: Like you guys are more all about like doing phone sales appointments and like, or, you know, video chat like we're doing right now.
Speaker: Like, you know, like you can be in the homeowner's home
Speaker: doing an appointment without having to be there and driving around for four hours a day.
Speaker: You know, so I just love that you guys take it outside the box, you know, when it comes to that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker: We're just trying to help people expand.
Speaker: Cause I know I, I mean, I've been knocking on doors for three years now.
Speaker: And I think knocking on doors, I think it'll always be a great way of generating leads and everything.
Speaker: But why not also move online and get leads online, know how to follow up, know how to close people online, know how to maximize your referrals.
Speaker: So yeah, that's where we're trying to create your just solopreneurs that know all the aspects of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Dominate on all fronts.
Speaker: So yeah, but guys like you are definitely, uh, helping us create that.
Speaker: And so that's the last thing we want to ask you, Austin is where, you know, some people are, are a little bit overwhelmed probably and definitely want to learn more.
Speaker: So where can people find more about you and maybe potentially learn from you or work with you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, um, my website, they can, uh, you can book a, book a free call just to discuss like what, you know, where you're at, what you're looking for.
Speaker: at Austin Lacey consulting.com.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We'll link to that.
Speaker: And then, um, there's also, um, there's a, there's a chat.
Speaker: There's kind of a helpful chat box course that created as well.
Speaker: And the link to that would be a, um, like bit.ly slash solar quiz bot.
Speaker: That's like a shorter version of the link.
Speaker: I thought that might be easier.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: But yeah, any, any, anywhere on my website, you can book a column, get on my calendar and, you know, I'll try to help you as much as possible and like diagnose where you're at, what's appropriate, like what you might need.
Speaker: And just even just help you as much as possible on the free call, like, you know, in any way that I can.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Appreciate it.
Speaker: You're adding a ton of value and thinking definitely helped people a lot with what you're doing.
Speaker: I noticed on your LinkedIn, you know,
Speaker: you mentioned that you are kind of moving from doing just the marketing for companies into just giving them the systems and everything.
Speaker: Is that something you're transitioning into more is just charging them like a one-time fee, having all the systems set up and then teaching them?
Speaker: Are you still doing a lot of like the, I guess, retainer model where you're covering everything for them?
Speaker: Oh, that might be from...
Speaker: Couple months ago.
Speaker: We're actually sort of transitioning into more of a cost per lead model for if we're selling leads to companies So so generally like what we're doing is like the course of teaching how to people had like sales reps how to use chatbots for themselves.
Speaker: Uh-huh
Speaker: And then for just an actual regular lead gen, our lead gen side of things, we're kind of moving away from the retainer model and just selling per lead.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And you work?
Speaker: A company model.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's the retainer.
Speaker: Okay, and then for those that are interested, do you do like one-on-one coaching or just teach sales reps to do this?
Speaker: Or is it just mostly companies you work with?
Speaker: For the lead gen side of things, like for selling cost per lead, generally we only do that with companies just because we're trying to do it with people.
Speaker: who can do enough volume yeah but as far as like um one-on-one coaching i'll do that with anyone like we'll i'll teach even if it's just like some some sales rep that just started um i'm happy to do like a one-on-one coaching call with them to kind of show them how to do themselves so awesome yeah cool well definitely linked all that and uh yeah austin you dropped some serious knowledge so thanks for being on the show and uh any final words of wisdom yeah any final words of wisdom you want to give to our solar preneurs here
Speaker: Never give up.
Speaker: And scalability is king.
Speaker: So if you can listen to Taylor and James and find different ways to scale, like doing phone sales, doing Zoom sales, scaling your time, doing lead gen to save time for having to, well, diversifying your streams of income and your pipeline, just scale is king.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Definitely, definitely love it.
Speaker: Well, cool.
Speaker: Thanks again for being on the show, Austin, and I'm sure people will reach out, but thanks again.
Speaker: We'll talk to you soon, my man.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thanks, Taylor.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Appreciate it.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: Hopefully you enjoyed the episode, Solarpreneurs.
Speaker: We're happy to have Austin Lacey on the show.
Speaker: And now it's time to go out and use chatbots in your solar business wherever you are.
Speaker: Next week, we have someone that I saw at Door-to-Door Con about three, four months ago.
Speaker: His name is Leo Sagemann.
Speaker: He is the VP of...
Speaker: for a legacy solar on the east coast over all the reps on the east coast and he's going to go through his story coming from brazil into the u.s to total domination in this industry so you will not want to miss next week's episode tune in on friday and once again let us know if you have any suggestions for improvement or future guests or what topics or anything you like peace
Speaker: Wow, what another amazing episode of the Solarpreneur Podcast.
Speaker: Now, before we take off here, do us a favor and go leave an honest review on your platform of choice or wherever you're listening to this podcast.
Speaker: It helps us get the word out about the Solarpreneur Movement and impact more entrepreneurs, sales professionals, and marketers just like you.
Speaker: And hey, don't forget to head over to Facebook and join the Solarpreneur Group for more daily content
Speaker: It's going to impact you and help you take your sales game to the next level.
Speaker: See you guys in the next episode.
