Some Surprising Statistics and Creating Unique Website Content
Act cFluent Newsletter, June, 2011 - Subscribe today Subscriber benefits include early evaluation of new products and discounts.
Information for independent insurance agents about issues at the confluence of technology, consumerism, marketing and agency practices. Subscriber benefits include free trial evaluation of new products and programs.
Newsletter Archive
In this Newsletter:
The Quest for Insurance Starts with Referrals
A recent study conducted by AIS Media answered this question: Where are you most likely to start your insurance research? You may think you know the answer (we thought we did too) but the survey findings might surprise you. On the other hand, if you stop to think about it, the survey results probably won't surprise you at all. 37.5% of consumers start their insurance search with...friends, neighbors, co-workers and family. And we wonder why referrals account for 69% of insurance agency new business.
All this is not to say that the search engines are not important - 32% of consumers start their insurance quest there - and for the consumers seeking referrals, the next stop will be the internet (depending on the survey data used, the number ranges from 59% - 75%). So whether you have a website, whether it presents your agency favorably, and whether there are clear calls to action for visitors, are all important. But if you aren't getting the referral in the first place, you could be losing out.
Here's an experiment for you. Have a third party (say, a college student) survey a small number of customers by phone...say, 50 or 100. Have them ask one question: Who is your car (home, business, etc.) with? How many answers will be an insurance company name instead of your agency's name? If company names come up too often, you are missing out on referrals everyday, because that's the same answer your customers are going to give friends and relatives who ask that question.
If your customers think first about their insurance company, then you probably aren't communicating with your customers enough. You also probably aren't letting your customers know you have a referral program. If you don't have a referral program, put one in place today. Small rewards like $10 gift cards go a long way. So do drawings for larger prizes. You can 'actively-passively' promote the program by including a page on your website, a line in your email signature, and a blurb on your phone hold recording.
Eating Our Own Cooking...with Video
At a recent insurance company hosted agency meeting (actually, at several), Confluency handed out Flip HD Camcorders as door prizes. We suggested that one thing winning agents could do with these video recorders was to: highlight the services of an commercial insurance customer in a short video, upload the video to You Tube and then add it to a page on the insurance agency website. Customers could be invited by email to take a look at the video. The benefits? Goodwill (and retention) with the featured account(s), and more website traffic for your agency. Who says coming up with unique web content has to be difficult or can't be fun?
At these same company meetings we ran into people who were providing services that we thought could be really helpful for many agents. So we are eating our own cooking by featuring one of them here.
(Bear in mind, if your 'audience' is behind a restrictive corporate firewall, then they may not be able to view a You Tube video on their work computer. The good news: The video can be viewed on a mobile device, even if that device is a Flash-restricted iPhone.)
Bridging the Gap Between Worlds
Back to that AIS Media Survey again...59% of consumers surveyed said they would sooner visit a website to receive more information about a direct mail offer (post mail) vs. 41% who said they would pick up the phone. So, the right website presentation, call to action and so forth, are important once again. But why not take consumers directly to a page built specially for your print campaign?
A QR code - a type of bar code - will do that. Most smart phones can include apps that scan bar codes...a survey performed by marketing firm MGH found that two-thirds of smart phone owners knew what QR codes were and half had actually used them. Simply using your phone to scan a code will pull up contact information or take you to a web page...like a page designed specifically for your print mailing campaign - bridging the gap between worlds and controlling the conversation. Try it out, if you can scan, by checking out the video this QR code links to:
With Confluency's websites, you can generate QR codes for any use, as often as you want.
Keeping Up with Internet Marketing Technology at the Google I/O Conference 2011
For the second year in a row Confluency sent developers to Google's annual conference for developers, Google I/O. Last year they came back with Android phones that were handed out at the conference. This year, they came back with complimentary Samsung Android tablets. The benefits of this conference are clear, at least for the developers.
But continuing education like this also fuels Confluency's continuous product and service enhancements. Over the last three years we have averaged eight major website enhancements and numerous minor updates. These are automatically added to client agency websites as part of our service. So what's in the wings? Developers attended workshops on page load speed - there is a direct correlation between how quickly a page loads and how much a visitor does on your website. And that correlation extends to lead acquisition. Confluency's websites already are faster than 99% of all websites...and we have some development work in the pipeline to keep them that way. Do you want to test the speed of a website? Check out http://www.webpagetest.org.
What else can you expect as a result of our participation in Google I/O? We recently updated our mobile websites, included standard with every website we do, and you can expect more enhancements in the mobile device arena since nearly as many people access the web with mobile devices today as with desktops and the disparity between mobile and desktop web access favors mobile more and more every day.
We also have some pretty cool updates in development right now...I can't say too much more about them except to mention they will be making use of the new HTML5 standard...if you want to see what HTML5 can do for a web browser, check out some of these applications: http://studio.html5rocks.com/. If you are using Internet Explorer (IE) switch your browser to Chrome (preferred), or Firefox 4; Microsoft and Apple haven't quite caught up on this one yet.
Some Newsletter Changes...
We will continue to publish information here but we have increasingly made use of Confluency's Facebook page and our primary blog, Insurance Agent Web Power. To get the latest in tips and updates from Confluency, you may want to like us on Facebook or visit our blog and set up the RSS feed (if you use that sort of thing).
Meanwhile...here's a few highlights you may have missed...
Building and Controlling Your Insurance Agency's Web Equity (Insurance Agent Web Power Blog)
'Web equity' - fundamental to your insurance agency's visibility on the internet - is influenced by a number of interrelated factors. Most fundamental - maintaining consistency with your agency name, address, phone number and domain (web address) across the entire internet - is a simple place to start but we have noticed a large number of agents who are losing visibility - and business - because this information is not managed.
Top Three SEO Practices for 2011 (Insurance Agent Web Power Blog)
In a video blog post, Google's Matt Cutts highlights his top three things to work on to improve SEO this year. Surprise: page load speed is one of them.
Insurance Agency Website and Social Media ROI (Insurance Agent Web Power Blog)
This post is worth it for the sheer entertainment value of the slide show that accompanies it. The key points: increased website traffic and social media activity are nice, but as business activities both need to result in net new revenue - in excess of your *total* expenditures.
Comments:>> Comments
About This Newsletter - Newsletter Archive
Change Your Subscriptions
Subscribe today
ConfluencySolutions.com/newsletter/subscribe
Unsubscribe
-----------------------------------------------
Act cFluent
Information for independent agents about issues at the confluence of technology, consumerism, marketing and agency practices.
Tell us what you like, dislike, agree or disagree with.
>> tstrong@cfluent.com
About Confluency Solutions
-----------------------------------------------
Confluency Solutions specializes in solutions that generate growth through high customer satisfaction. Easy to implement technology combined with traditional independent agency strengths vault your agency into the ranks of the top performers. Confluency Solutions provides complete business solutions, not just technology. We free you up to compete at an advantage, with any size competitor, in a way that just isn't possible without the right tools and without knowing how best to use them. Confluency Solutions makes the web work.
>> Learn more about us: http://ConfluencySolutions.com
Page Categories: