Recently Bailey Gardiner kicked off a lead generation campaign for our client Baker Electric Solar. As you may have heard on November 17, 2008 Governor Schwarzenegger signed Executive Order S-14-08 requiring that California utilities reach the 33 percent renewables goal by 2020. By the end of 2010, the utilities must generate 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. Bailey Gardiner has been tasked with helping to generate qualified leads for our client and has put into place a great program to help put the consumer in touch with our local San Diego electrical company. The key to a successful online lead generation campaign is researching, testing, optimizing and utilizing lead management tools.

Research on solar energy starts with the search engines. Users will search and consider up to nine different companies when considering the best option for solar power. Since the space is highly competitive we have decided to utilize Trada to help create efficiencies in our pay per click campaign. Trada is a marketplace designed to allow agencies to work directly with multiple qualified PPC optimizers who are experts at driving leads.

A portion of the media is also utilizing a hybrid CPL and CPM and re-targeting campaign with ValueClick media. This allows for massive exposure at a low CPM while still paying per conversion to generate leads. Top tier ad networks such as ValueClick who also own Comission Junction are great for these types of campaigns.

When doing lead gen campaigns you need to consider all avenues of tracking to attribute conversions to the correct source. We are using Marchex Voicestar for our phone call tracking, Salesforce as a CRM to track lead to sales, and Google’s URL builder to track all the media placements. Oh and don’t forget to place conversion pixels on your thank you page so you can optimize for best performing creative, placements and media.

It’s also smart to test multiple types of messages in your creative. We have generated three campaigns that hit on affordability, trust, and efficiency. Although we know quite a bit about our target audience it is best to test message relevance as some resonate better and convert at a higher rate. It’s always recommended to send traffic to landing pages when your goal is conversion. Use a simple layout that easily communicates the value propositions to the user. Forms need to be simple and above the fold. It’s also a best practice to have no navigation on the landing page until after the user has filled out the form. The objective is to get that basic information that allows for remarketing but also can scrub out unqualified leads.

Lead generation is a science. Agencies who do this well know that the key is testing, optimizing and utilizing lead management tools that allow for data verification, scrubbing and tracking sales. Happy hunting.