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In Australia, the Federal Government decided to give homeowners with no insulation a grant of $1600 to get their homes insulated. It is a very generous system as most homeowners should be able to get their homes insulated at no or little additional cost.  It was announced a few months back to give people time to plan, and give the industry time to get organised. So what have we seen?

As one of the households potentially gifted with insulation I took the system for a test run.

Well – lots and lots of new businesses have been formed to install insulation. The trouble is that almost none of them have websites, let alone any form of marketing material. They are relying on the Government site with it’s less than useless search facility to send them business.

The Government site was designed by a bureaucrat with no knowledge of how people actually search for something on the net. We never think …  “I will type in AVW Family Trust to find insulation installers in Brisbane”. The message is – you will need to find your insulation installers some other way – don’t rely on the government site.

If you hunt for a particular form of insulation (eg: foil batts or foil insulation – the best option for Brisbane homes) on Google you will find the manufacturers – but very few true installers. This tells me that the insulation installers websites that do exist are not well optimised for search engines.

I checked out the local papers – as I always try to support the local guyus. Zero ads (Remember – this was the first week of the new scheme. I would have expected at least a few ads.) Scratch that as an idea. I had no recall of any TV ads or radio ads – so that was no help.

I raided my business card index from all my networking contacts and events. No insulation installers amongst the hundreds of contacts.

I then blew the dust of the Yellow Pages that had been used as a door stop for the past year, thinking that as a last resort they may be useful. To put it bluntly I was wrong. The ads were great examples of how not to write Yellow Pages ads. Lots of same old same old ads – designed to promote the brand – and not promoting the types of insulation to be installed.

I finally tracked down 3 numbers of insulation installers who installed foil type insulation. Only 2 phones were answered. That left two quotes. Both were professional and turned up when they said they would. One took the time to educate and explain the differences between products in depth – explaining the pluses and minuses and being brutally honest with their products.  The other worked hard on the upsell of many extra features (would you like fries, chips and potato wedges with that).

We ended up going with the one who appeared more honest (if you install y instead of x you may get half a degree temp difference but it will cost another $300).

What is the lesson for other businesses? The ones who will benefit from this new scheme are the ones who are out front beating their drums to grab attention. Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you – get out there!

If you have no idea about the keywords people type into search engines to find you  – get professional SEO help. People use search engines to research products and to find businesses. If you can’t be found on the first few pages – you are not found full stop.

It’s OK to admit the failings of your products. Don’t try and make them something that they are not.

Finally – take a look at my process for finding a business. I really wanted a particular product and was prepared to dig for it.  Will your customers do the same or will they give up at the first hurdle?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

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