Continuing Professional Development

Just because you don't want to pay for CPD doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. (You knew that anyway.)

Read books. Do the low-cost online training. Attend conferences. Meet with other local energy assessors and discuss RDSAP 9.82. Record it all.

Just make sure you include why you are doing it, how long it took, and what the success criteria are.

It is hugely frustrating for energy assessors when large areas of our industry are not as professional as we would like. It is your task to drive this from the inside.

Diversify - grow your energy rating business

Yes, it's expensive. Yes, you've not had a return on your previous training expenses.

But are you 'just' a DEA etc, or do you offer a complete energy rating consultancy? The market isn't as sown up as you might think. Just read Building magazine to see the dearth of qualified, accredited energy assessors for non-domestic properties. (Aside: you should read Building anyway. Why isn't there a good printed publication for energy assessors? Could you help run it, and be a thought leader in the market?)

At the very least, go to a briefing session. Understand what SBEM is and why iSBEM is so poor and clunky. Find out what the validity periods of a display energy certificate and advisory report are, and who would want them. Think about becoming an OCDEA for new build properties and see where the RDSAP methodology originated. It might help you think about future RDSAP changes. If you're interested in that sort of thing. And you should be.

Understand the wider industry that you are already an important part of.

PS: Here's a free strapline to your new, multi-sector energy rating business: We rate energy. Sorry if you think that's crap.)

11 Tips for Successful Google Adwords

You might have read on here or elsewhere about SEO and Google rankings. It's unlikely, however, that you will get a significant ranking on Google without some really good inbound links. These are hard to find, and even harder to keep. To maintain a decent Google presence, you might like to consider spending money on Google AdWords. There are, of course, other pay-per-click services available; but Google happens to be by far the largest and is the first place to start.

Essentially, you select the words that you want to trigger the ad, and the maximum amount you are willing to pay. The ads are displayed in the 'sponsored links' section at the top and down the right of the natural search listings. Getting an ad to the top depends on the pay per click (PPC) you are willing to pay compared to everyone else, and the 'quality score' of the destination page on your website.

For Google, if you can create an enticing advert, and when people click buy a product or service from you, you are more likely to increase your ad budget. So the trend is towards more specific ads that don't over-promise. The key for an advertiser is to place highly specific, highly targeted adverts that give visitors exactly what they expect.

Here is a football team's worth of tips to help your AdWords performance.

1. UK Only!
You only sell to clients from the UK, so save yourself wasted clicks by specifying UK only in the account settings.

2. Put your keywords in your ad
If you include the targeted keywords in your headline and description, they will be displayed in bold, e.g. 'Energy Performance Certificates in Bath'. People look for what they have searched for, so make your ads stand out.

3. Get the headline right
The most important part of the ad. This might be the only part your reader looks at, so it needs to say everything. But you only have 25 characters. What about 'Energy performance certificates in Northampton'? Already 46 characters! Luckily, Google knows that EPC stands for energy performance certificate, so you're covered either way. So chopping down to 'EPCs in Northampton' gives 19 characters, giving us a bit more room to play with.

What about 'EPCs in NN2'? More specific to what someone might search for, but not very enticing. At least it gives us even more to put in something a little more salesy. What do people want from an EPC? They want things like speed, quality, value. Picking one of these, that gives us 'High-quality EPCs in NN2'. Not bad - but you can do better.

4. Remove excess fat
Most ad headlines work without some common words like ‘a’ ‘an’, ‘the’, ‘of’. Try and see what you can cut out to make more room for your keywords.

5. Call to action
Tell the reader what to do next (apart from clicking on the ad, obviously). Call for a quote, etc.

6. Test, test and test again
You can create multiple versions of the same ads, and Google will rotate them and show the best-performing ad more frequently. So experiment with your words, with capitalization, with the display URL, etc. Try really bland ads. Try ads filled with jargon. See what works the best. (This is called A/B testing, and there’s a whole series of posts behind it. Maybe another time.)

7. Choose a budget and stick to it
Don’t get carried away. It’s good to know that your ads are working, but don’t go overboard. But…

8. Track your enquiries
When people call or email, ask where they heard of you. (You should be doing this already.) If AdWords is providing lots of enquiries, consider upping the weekly budget by 10% or so.

9. Benefits, not features
You’re not accredited with BRE, or NHER. (Or whoever.) That doesn’t mean much to the reader. You’re accredited with the industry experts. You might be based in Swindon - good for you, but more importantly to the reader, you offer a next day service within the Swindon area.

10. Make the landing page relevant
You don’t necessarily want to send people to your homepage. By virtue of the fact they’ve searched on the appropriate keywords and clicked on your ad, you can assume a certain amount of knowledge and you can cut to the chase rather then hoping they’ll click through to the page you want them to. Question: should you consider creating a bespoke page for people that find you through Google AdWords?

11. Spy on your competitors
See what other energy assessors are doing, and see what the ones that rank well are writing. Can you get any ideas from them?

See also the ads to the left of this post. They are there through Google AdWords - I have no quality control over them. Are they any good? Are they just there because they bid lots of money or because they are actually good adverts? If they're advertising training, it's because they're advertising on the wrong keywords. Something you should be trying to avoid...

Lastly: Good luck!

Image - Does it Matter?

When undertaking a domestic EPC, do you wear business attire? If so, why?

Do you wear overalls?

Do you wear t-shirt and jeans?

Should you be wearing a branded polo shirt? (Rhetorical question.)

Image counts for more than we let on.

Price, EPC Value and Commodities

The main problem with price is that it isn't a problem. People just think it is. The problem is value.

It will take more than price to set you apart. Do you offer a comprehensive, professional service? if you are a domestic energy assessor, do you take the time to explain to the homeowner what you are doing, and why? Do you anticipate any of the RDSAP 'quirks' and explain them, avoiding later problems? Are you polite and courteous? Is it a job, or a hobby?

It was interesting that many of the assessors I spoke to at the NHER/SAVA conference were rushed off their feet with work at what I had thought were high prices - up to £100. Especially interesting when compared to those who are fighting over the £35 jobs.

Charge what you think you are worth. Most people don't care about price. They want a good job done. As the saying goes, you're not selling a commodity unless you want to.

Websites - the basics

In this post we'll try to outline what makes a good, informative, well-structured and (hopefully) successful website.

What is your website for?

Your website is as important as your business cards, letters, appointments, emails, telephone calls and any other way in which you interact with potential clients. At times it will be the only thing anyone sees and can be the first step to procuring instructions.

It is not difficult or expensive to produce or maintain a straightforward site that contains all the information you need. Initially, there are some free options, and when you know what you are doing you can move on to bigger and better things. But let's not run before we can walk - it's always better to learn from the bottom up.

NB: what follows assumes that you have access to your website and can make changes to it, or that you have access to a person who can do it for you. But if not, you might find a couple of tips to help you write for the web.

Essential information you must include on your website

You need to consider what to include for the benefit of your visitors.

• Your name, or the name of your business (what do they call you?)
  
• What services you offer (what can you do for them?)
• Some indication of pricing structure (don't rely on people calling you to find out!)
• Background on the legislation (begin to position yourself as the expert)
• Contact information, including a postal address (you're local! Let's make a deal)

It is perfectly reasonable for a small business to include this all on one page, or a couple of pages. There's little point having several pages with only a paragraph on each - it is irritating for the visitor to have to navigate around to find out how much you charge for an EPC.

Don't be shy - sell yourself

Throughout the copy (the words that make up your site) you need to reinforce why the client should choose you over everyone else that offers your service in your area. You don't have to offer anything different to the competition - you just need to package up your proposition attractively. The web is made up of millions of pages, and the art of writing copy for the web includes a certain amount of 'reassurance' that the viewer has selected the right page for them. Compare these two real examples:

1. We do EPCs in Northants - contact us for a quote. Accredited with NHER.
   
2. We offer a friendly and professional energy assessment service throughout Northampton and the surrounding area. Fully trained and accredited with the leading industry bodies, we pride ourselves on the quality of our work. We can provide a completed Energy Performance Certificate for you or your client's property within 24 hours of visit.

They both say the same sort of thing. Being concise is undoubtedly a noble aim - but don't forget to include all the good things about your service.

If you don't say it, people won't assume it.

Structuring your page using HTML tags

HTML is the basic programming language that is the foundation of all websites. Don't be scared. It is entirely within your powers to learn everything you need to know about HTML on your lunchbreak. You might not even need to know that much; some website management systems do all the hard work for you.

Your website, like any Microsoft Word document, newspaper, book or advert needs to be structured properly. It should be obvious what is the title, what is the main information, what is the supplementary information and so on.

Start at the start

A vital component of all of these things is the title. For a website, this is what appears at the top of the browser window as well as the 'headline' in Google [insert pictures]. Each page has a separate title, so you'd better make it relevant! If you can access the HTML, you are looking for the title tag. Three examples of home page title tags:

1. Untitled document
2. EPCs for the HIP
3. Quality Energy Performance Certificates in York

Clearly the third title is the best, and is successfully venturing towards advert copy territory - a good thing. It helps both Google and your visitors if you include words in your title that people are likely to put into Google - known as keywords. We'll talk more about keywords below and in further posts, but for now it is enough to start thinking about what keywords are appropriate for you.

A quick summary to hook searchers

The piece of summary information that appears below a page's title in Google is called the description, and is a type of meta-data. That is, information that sits 'behind' your website that tells search engines more about what your page is about. So, another opportunity to use your inner salesperson! This time, you're looking for the description tags.

South Lancs Energy Assessors offer quality assured energy performance certificates on homes and commercial buildings in the Manchester and Salford area.

Get in as many of your keywords as you can. If you don't provide one, Google will make one up based on the first bit of text it finds in your site. This is your chance to put what you think is most important.

Moving on - heads up!

Make sure the rest of your page is structured well. Make sure your headings contain keywords and they use h1 and h2 tags. Choose between:

• Rentals
• Landlords - we can issue EPCs for your rental properties

Not too hard to see what's better, is it?

Things to take away

Even if you can't play around with the site's structure, you can influence how your site is read by humans. Make sure you sell yourself!

People will tell you to write for either Google or for human visitors. It is your task to do both at the same time.

In a future post, we'll look at more advanced tactics for larger websites to improve their Google ranking.

What is Evolver?

Evolver is a set of marketing tips for energy assessors.

Evolver might help you gain greater visibility in the energy performance certificate marketplace.

Evolver isn’t quite finished yet – we’ll get a lick of paint and put some pictures up before you come round next time.

Evolver doesn’t take itself too seriously. What’d be the point?

Evolver wants to help energy assessors to help themselves.

Evolver wants to learn from you. You probably know more than we do.

Evolver is, to quote Winston Churchill, a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in bacon.

Evolver will be back next week.