Visibility: The First Step to Marketing Success

From Confluency's Blog:

Print yellow page advertising has long since ceased to be a cost-effective advertising option for most independent insurance agents. Are online yellow pages directories a good place for your insurance agency to advertise? Probably not. Continue.

What is the Right (Digital) Marketing Mix for Your Agency?

Before you commit to a marketing program and devote limited time and money, start by considering which initiatives best match your target objectives. Continue.

Social Search Wars and Facebook's Graph Search

Facebook and other social media have been growing in importance, and are now an important platform for visibility. Facebook is about to up the ante by including a new search feature. Continue.

Excerpted from Facebook and Around the Web:

Be sure to 'Like' Confluency to keep up-to-date with these and other tips.

What's your mobile personality?

Have a little fun and find out - visit Confluency's Facebook page for a short quiz. Oh, and why not Like Us while you are there? Continue.

3 Rules You Must Break to Expand Your Email List

CAN-SPAM compliance is not something to be ignored, but if you really want to expand your email list, you will need to reduce friction. Continue.

The One Thing Top Auto Insurers Have in Common? An App

A recent survey of the top auto insurers, in terms of customer satisfaction, reveals competition along several dimensions, including coverage options. The one thing 19 of the top 20 had in common was a smart phone app. Continue.

Who Uses Social Media?

The short answer is almost everyone - 67% of internet users, to be exact. While the percentage varies greatly across social platforms like Facebook, Pintrest, and Twitter, you might be surprised by the demographic groups that tend toward one service over another. Continue.

Negative Reviews and How to Deal with Them

There are numerous opportunities for clients to share their experiences with your agency, and eventually, we will all get a bad review. See what Yelp has to say about dealing with those. Continue.

Options and Objectives

Visibility is the first step to sales success. It is hard to create demand for insurance...when was the last time you thought to yourself, 'I sure am in the mood for some new insurance!', or 'That insurance I see in my neighbors house sure does make me feel jealous!' Fortunately, demand is created for us by lenders, state government, and events like claims, premium increases, relocation, and so on.* The important thing is to be visible when that demand is created. Without that visibility, you don't get a chance to quote and win.

Today, we are often conditioned to think about visibility as a search engine issue - getting the right search engine optimization for the right keywords. SEO is an important facet of visibility, but it isn't the only one. The fact is, traditional advertising still matters and there is a multitude of internet-based options like pay-per-click advertising, mobile, social media marketing, and local search optimization, to name just a few. You don't need to be an expert at SEO or web technology, but a basic understanding of your digital marketing options will help you choose a better marketing mix - one that is budget friendly *and* is the right fit for your agency objectives.

Many of the posts linked in the sidebar this month were selected from Confluency's blog and Facebook page to help you make sense of your digital marketing options and deal effectively with the multiple blandishments we receive from individuals and companies who promise to 'make us #1'.

Visibility Counts In House, Too

If your agency is like most, you probably don't have time to stay in touch with your clients the way you would like. But your clients receive overtures from other providers every day in the mail, over the airwaves, and through their mobile devices, laptop, and desktop computers. An insurance company marketing executive mentioned to me in conversation the other day that his company had surveyed 50 of their agents to learn how many contacted the majority of their clients multiple times a year. The answer was one agency. The outlier agency shared that, since they had begun their contact program, their client retention had improved 2%, well worth the extra effort.

In personal lines, the average policies-per-account continues to be low, something that can be addressed through client communication programs (see the related blog post, The Future of Independent Agents in Personal Insurance). Sometimes, in our quest for new clients, we forget that growth can be supplemented and profitability improved, through account sales. Email is still an effective communication tool to keep up with clients but many agencies need to build or update their email lists. While certain practices will result in a better quality list, those same practices can also mean a much smaller list. Striking a balance between size and quality of list often means eschewing some of the practices advocated by bulk email services, as noted in the side bar link, The 3 Rules you Must Break...

I hope you will find the posts selected for this month's articles shed a little light on the mysteries of marketing with digital communication. If you think so (or if you don't), or if you would like to see more information about any topic related to internet marketing, let us know by commenting on Confluency's Facebook or LinkedIn page.

*This a bit of an oversimplification. GEICO and other big advertisers are able to create demand by creating a nagging anxiety that you are paying too much for car insurance, otherwise they wouldn't continue to spend massive amounts of money on traditional advertising.