The Future is Now
Act cFluent Newsletter, August, 2009 - Subscribe today Subscriber benefits include early evaluation of new products and discounts.
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If you aren't using video on your insurance agency website, you are missing a free, compelling option for keeping consumers on your website, and gaining more conversions. How do you do your own video, how do you get it on your website, what should it be about, and what will it do for website conversions? Watch the video and find the answers
I'm going to keep the proseletyzing to a minimum here, there are plenty of others exhorting agents to get blogging, tweeting and Facebooking. It's easy to get started, but figuring out how much time to put into social networking, and exactly what your agency should be doing, is not so easy. But there is no denying that social media is the communication medium of choice for many, especially younger age groups. Consider:
Social Media is where people are congregating, especially Generation Y, and the youngest members of Generation X.
Peak consumer purchasing power (which should mirror insurance needs) happens at about age 50. The oldest members of Generation X - those less likely to be using social media - will be turning 50 in the next few years. So it may not be an immediate concern that your agency isn't on the radar for Gen Y. But as the bulk of younger Generation X-ers and the leading of edge of Generation Y move into their 30's, independent agents will be at a disadvantage if all these consumers have ever known is GEICO, Progressive, and cartoon insurance characters. The time to get noticed is now, and your agency's social media mastery will matter a great deal over the next several years. For a quick distillation of what your agency can begin doing now, without an excessive time commitment, check out the blog post at Insurance Agent Web Power: Putting Your Agency Toe in the Social Media Water.
*source: Common Sense Media http://www.commonsensemedia.org/teen-social-media
We were recently struck by some statistics: 35% of leads contacting Confluency Solutions do so by phone, even though those leads found us via the web. 
We took a quick look at one of our customer agencies who gets a lot of quote requests through their website. For every 2 quote requests submitted through the website, there was a phone quotes request that originated on teh web. And finally, evidence suggests consumers contacting businesses after locating the business on the web are three times more likely to call as contact online when local search is used.
What all this implies is that, just like in the old days, you have to ask callers how they found you to get a complete picture of your website conversions. Or you can take advantage of technology and set up a separate number for landing pages. For just a few dollars a month you can set up a Skype online phone number. You could use Skype to answer and make calls, but you don't have to. You can just use the Skype control panel to automatically forward Skpye calls to your regular line; the Skype call report will tell you how many times the special number was called to give you the number of conversions by phone. This approach will work particlarly well with a landing page, but might not be appropriate for your home or contact page since many people will begin to use the special phone number as though it were your regular insurance agency phone number.
Back in April of this year, Google started including local search results* for more searches. No longer do you have to specify a geographic reference in a search query (e.g., insurance Phoenix). If Google believes there is a local business that could be relevant to search results, they will display local search results. Google does that by guessing your location based on your IP address, or by using your profile information if you are logged into one of their many services like Gmail, YouTube, or Picasa. At the same time, mobile search for local content (you know, people using iPhones, Blackberrys and the like) increased 51% from March 2008 to March 2009.**
The good news is that all insurance agency websites are optimized for mobile use (try it out by adding /m to the end of your agency website address; e.g., http://demo.cfluent.com/m or visit http://demo.cfluent.com on a cell phone.). The further good news is that it is much easier to get a top ranking for local search than for regular old organic search. One key element is the location of your agency to the centroid of the geographic reference, be it a zip code or city name. There's only so much you can do about that, but if you have multiple offices, you should be sure to register each office location with local search and be sure you have a landing page for each location with the office address and local phone number included (contact Confluency if you need to have this added).
Registering with local search services, like Google Maps, Bing and other business directories is a key to ranking well in local search. The more the better, and the more consistent your business information across all these local search registries and directories, the more confidence Google and the other local search services will have about your business listing. Confluency customers can get more detail by accessing the Local Search Primer (in the Insurance Zone -->Manage Your Website -->Best Practice Documents).
*Sometimes referred to as the ten pack - located next to the map and push pins in the upper left of a Google search return
**source: Marketing Sherpa
I have long asked agents I talk to how they are using email for routine communications; the answer today is a little different than it was five or six years ago, but email is still underutilized by most agents for customer communications. 
The major agency associations, the Big I and PIA are seriously concerned about the number of their member agencies that either do not have a website, or have a website that is largely ineffective. And now we have to wrestle with how to use Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. Fasten your seatbelts, because before the end of the year Google has committed to release Google Wave, a truely unique and potenailly revolutionary communication platform.
Google Wave almost defies explanation - you have to see it to really grasp what it is and what could be done with it - and you can, via an hour and twenty minute video of Wave's introduction at Google's 2009 I/O conference. Wave runs completely on a web browser platform, but has the power and functionality of a robust desktop application. Wave allows for easy inclusion of video and images in conversation-interactions called waves. Communication can take place in real time (just about instantaneously), like text or instant messaging on steroids; wave participants can be added to and portions of wave conversations can be made private between individual participants. Wave participants who happen to be offline, can pick up when they show up online, and can catch up on the entire network information interchange, much like a Facebook wall.
Google has made Wave available now to the developer community and will permit open source add-ons and extension contributions, much like the popular Firefox browser. Google also expects to accelerrate the utility and adoption of Wave by permitting 'Wave's' to be embedded in third party websites, and Google will support third party hosted solutions.
The business application possiblities for Wave are staggering: customer service, project management, marketing and branding, are just a few. Google's willingness to include open source contributions and proprietary, hosted implementations should make Wave a robust tool at, or soon after, its release. How quickly consumers and businesses adopt Wave and to what degree remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: it's time for agencies to shore up email communications, website capabilities, and gain a grasp of social media before being overtaken by the next Wave.
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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
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