Monday, March 25, 2013

How to Create an Insurance Agency Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is the set of objectives, strategies and tactics that make up your marketing activities designed to achieve your financial goals. But don't let that definition intimidate you. It might sound like a complicated task, but putting together a marketing plan is basically just answering three simple questions.
1. Where is your agency right now?
2. Where do you want to be a year from now?
3. How do you plan to get there?


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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Mobile Internet Access is on the Rise

The next time you walk into a restaurant, store, mall or airport, take a look around. How many people are on their phones or tablets? How people access the Internet is changing, and it’s changing fast. Some surveys show mobile Internet usage surpassing desktop Internet usage as early as this year. Our insurance website customers have seen a drastic increase of traffic from mobile devices in the past three years.

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Monday, March 18, 2013

5 Myths of Digital Insurance Marketing

For some insurance agents, online marketing is a mythical concept. It's hard to understand and some see it as a waste of time. However, it is not just a passing fad. The Internet has changed not only how consumers purchase goods and services, it has changed how businesses reach those consumers.
Here are five of the biggest online marketing myths we hear from time to time.


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Monday, March 11, 2013

How Your Insurance Website is Losing Money on Google

Or more accurately, how to lose money by not being on Google. It's simple to lose money by not ranking in Google's search results... don't invest in SEO.
When you have a few minutes, conduct an experiment. Go to Google (make sure you're not logged in if you have a Google account), and search for one of your top keywords. If you don't have a keyword, use the line of business you are promoting right now with your city or geographic region if your agency is in a small town. Some examples: "Carrollton home insurance" or "Fort Worth auto insurance." Is your agency on the first page of results? If it's not, you could be losing money.

SEO services can take up a lot of your marketing budget. To determine if investing in SEO makes sense for your agency, you first need to calculate your potential return on investment.


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Tuesday, March 5, 2013

5 More Annoying Social Media Behaviors

In posts earlier this year, I talked about mistakes you can make on social media that were specific to Facebook and Twitter.
Here are five more annoying behaviors that would be a mistake to make when you're trying to develop relationships and build trust on social media. These are not specific to any one social network but can be applied to them all.


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Monday, March 4, 2013

Microdata, an Important Update to Your Website, That No One Will Ever See

In previous posts I have mentioned that search engines are becoming smarter. They are no longer looking for backlinks to determine your website’s content relevancy. They are looking at the content itself. They are looking for data.
Your website is littered with data: phone numbers, product offerings, address information, company facts and figures, employee details and much more. More often than not, the data is placed in the web page HTML, formatted to look good for a visitor and forgotten. 


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