Marketing Campaign EnergyFunders

Objectives & Challenges

EnergyFunders was established in 2012 and the growing company looked to expand even further when it partnered with HexaGroup.

The company’s goals included:

• Increasing brand awareness to get in front of more potential customers
• Growing the number of leads and signups
• Increasing investors in the company
• Repositioning itself as an industry leader and accessible to investors outside the oil and gas field

We identified a few challenges. Firstly, the company wanted to further hone its focus to offer oil and gas investments, not general energy industry investments. Secondly, the company’s current messaging on oil and gas drilling and investing in wells was highly technical and filled with industry jargon, making their offerings seem out of reach to non-experts. Thirdly, the website was difficult to navigate for prospective customers to find needed information.

We strategized a number of tactics to reach EnergyFunders’ goals including PPC campaigns, improving SEO, relaunching the website and promoting new collateral.

Website Relaunch

Relaunching EnergyFunders’ website was a strategic move. The company’s previous site lacked clear messaging, a cohesive design and easy navigation, making it hard for visitors to find the information they wanted and to understand the company’s unique value proposition.

First, we distilled the company’s benefits and corporate identity into clear brand pillars for prospective customers to quickly comprehend what the company promised. This also allowed us to create site content around consistent themes and messaging.

HexaGroup took the EnergyFunders logo and elevated their brand identity using their color palette consistently, creating interactive items, calls-to-action and forms to improve conversion rates and user engagement. With a design that enhanced UI/UX throughout, the website was vastly improved with a fresh, authoritative look and feel.

In addition to the interface design changes that help visitors easily browse the EnergyFunders site, HexaGroup designed an improved homepage and complete new interfaces for new tools like the investments catalog, a tax savings calculator and a new chatbot feature.

One of the most needed changes in the new website was the redesign of their sign-up process. We created a four-step sign-up system that informs the user about every step of the process, making it pain free and easy to complete in a few minutes. This improved usability and visitors’ understanding of security, given the sensitivity of the user details and financial information required to participate in the services EnergyFunders offers. Also dramatic were the changes on the redesign of the user portal, with a new collapsible iconized navigation that gives access to extensive information in a visual and intuitive way under any device, desktop or mobile.

This new site featured UI/UX and content enhancements to the website and web app including:

• Brief videos we created to showcase the brand and attract visitors’ attention
• A streamlined design and easy-to-navigate menu
• Clearer calls-to-action to convert visitors into leads
• New premium content to capture more leads

Once the website launched, we didn’t end the optimization process. We implemented heat maps to see where customers clicked (or didn’t click) to convert more customers. We conducted A/B tests to determine effective calls-to-action, and we continued to optimize the menu and user experience based on customer behavior data.

SEO

Many of EnergyFunders’ leads came from organic search engine traffic to their website, and the company set a goal to increase their search engine rankings for strategic keywords relating to oil and gas investing and their target audience. We conducted a full content audit of their previous blogs, on and offline collateral, and website pages to determine which pieces had valuable information for visitors and we could further optimize to rise in search engine rankings.

We collaborated with the client to determine which keywords were highest priority and focused on creating robust content optimized for search engines around each keyword. We created a strategic plan to organize content, prioritize it for search engines and eliminate duplicate content. We also employed strategies such as creating backlinks and using local SEO to increase traffic to the pages and increase its visibility in search engines.

This resulted in the strategic pages consistently rising in search engines’ ranking, even for highly competitive keywords.

The overall average organic rank for EnergyFunders increased by nearly 10% over the course of SEO efforts, though this understates the degree of growth seen in many target keywords.

In tandem with this growth in search engine rankings, EnergyFunders also saw associated increases in organic click-through-rate (up nearly 24%) and organic traffic arriving to the site from high-intent keywords.

Organic Blog Performance

As a key component of HexaGroup’s SEO action plan, monthly blogs were developed and optimized specifically to help capture new segments of relevant search interest. Over the same time (Dec. 18 to Oct. 19), EnergyFunders saw substantial improvements to the volume of inbound traffic earned from their blog.

Featured Snippets on Page One of Google

We made further optimizations to capitalize on Google’s featured snippets, capturing the coveted position for certain searches. Such featured snippets provided EnergyFunders increased brand exposure and helped them to gain a foothold as oil investing thought leaders– all without any clicks.

A Stronger Integrated Funnel

Bolstered by improvements to organic site traffic, EnergyFunders also saw distinct improvements to the efficacy of its multi-channel funnel (MCF). The MCF presents website traffic that encountered multiple touchpoints with EnergyFunders prior to completing a form or other goal, reflecting the value-add of maintaining a strong presence across all major marketing channels.

We refer to goal completions with multiple preceding touchpoints as “assisted conversions.” Over the course of 2019, both the volume and variety of assisted conversions increased substantially. Comparing data from Dec. 2018 and Jan. 2019 to September and October in 2019, EnergyFunders saw two key improvements to their MCF.

Making Social Media Count

As customers increasingly require additional touchpoints with a brand before converting, maintaining an active and high-value social media presence was critical to building a stronger MCF.

Over the course of engagement with EnergyFunders, HexaGroup’s social media management and posting activity lead to major improvements across social media networks.

Business Collateral, Happy Hour and Trade Show Support

Consistent with the new branding and messaging, we also revamped EnergyFunders’ collateral, such as their pitch desk, PowerPoints and trade show materials.

For the 2019 NAPE Summit in Houston, we developed an eye-catching display with a glass-topped barrel with the EnergyFunders’ logo. Their booth also featured an animated video to showcase their projects and highlights of their success. So visitors would remember EnergyFunders, we created printed collateral targeted to different customer demographics.

As EnergyFunders grew and collaborated with more partners, we created print and digital collateral tailored for each of their main audiences – potential corporate investors, potential customers and potential operator partners. This, in conjunction with the new site, allowed them to be seen by even more prospective customers as they grew brand awareness.

EnergyFunders also launched new events such as an investor happy hour and CPA oil and gas investing class, and we successfully marketed the events via Google My Business, social media, targeted email campaigns to draw a crowd to both events.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns

We launched an array of paid search and display marketing campaigns to reach EnergyFunders’ target audience of potential investors. Our primary focus was to drive new accredited investor sign-ups for EnergyFunders’ platform. Over the course of our campaigns, we earned an overall average acquisition cost of just over $100 per lead, with accredited investors comprising approximately 50 percent of the leads.

We developed eye-catching digital and video ads for a variety of platforms, created landing pages to direct traffic and capture leads’ contact information, and strategized where to place ads. After launching campaigns, we continually optimized them to lower the costs per click and increase click-through-rate.

PPC Campaign Highlights

• Supported successful crowd investment campaigns via paid search and social media campaigns on LinkedIn and Facebook
• Drove new user sign-ups for the EnergyFunders investment platform via integrated lead generation campaigns, running across paid search, Facebook and LinkedIn ads
  • Achieved an overall average cost-per-acquisition of under $200 per new accredited investors (after verification)
• Promoted strong multi-channel conversion funnel, with paid advertising holding substantial role during early and mid-funnel stages - not merely serving as a source of last click conversions
• Launched series of video bumper ads on YouTube to reach targeted customer segment of DIY investors; (bumper ads run separately and as a part of sequential ad campaigns)
• Leveraged LinkedIn to promote EnergyFunders-sponsored seminar targeting CPAs to build awareness of investment tax benefits

Proven Methodology. Amplified Results.

At HexaGroup, performance is in our DNA. We’ve spent the last two decades honing a six-step marketing methodology that balances proven best practices with each client’s unique objectives. Armed with in-depth knowledge of the energy, technology and professional service sectors, our team hits the ground running to achieve your KPIs.