Thursday, November 15, 2012

Why Do-It-Yourself Marketing Doesn't Always Work

Agency owners often have to wear many hats relying on their do-it-yourself entrepreneurial spirit to accomplish the tasks required of running an agency. That spirit can help agencies in many ways, but there is one area to be cautious of doing it all yourself... marketing.

Read More

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Tips for Jump-Starting Your Website

Most of the time, success of a website is focused on Search Engine Optimization efforts. There’s plenty of tips and tricks for SEO that are constantly changing and being updated. But every once in a while, you should feel free to switch gears and just focus on having a website. Consider it your responsibility to the loyal visitor who has found your site by way of a search engine. Here’s a few tips to remember have absolutely nothing to do with SEO.

Read More

Monday, November 12, 2012

How the Layout of Your Website Can Affect Google Rankings

I often discuss how a well-designed website will draw visitors and keep them viewing your pages. Did you know that the layout of your website could affect your Google ranking as well? That’s right, not only does Google look at the content of your website, it now looks at the website’s design, navigation and usability.

Read More

Friday, November 9, 2012

5 Simple Steps to Effective Digital Agency Marketing

Why is online marketing so important? Because consumers rely on the Internet to research anything and everything, including insurance. Not sure you believe it? Check out what the direct writers are spending on PPC advertising. And that's only a portion of their budgets.

If the direct writers are spending that much money to market to consumers online, you know it's not only important, it's effective.


But there are certainly things to avoid.


Read More

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Search Engine Marketing for the Everyday Insurance Agent - Part 2

Previously, we discussed pay per click for the insurance industry and the basics to getting started. Now we will discuss how to improve your ad’s click through performance.

Converting Clicks into Leads


The industry average of converting clicks into leads is 4-7 percent. This means roughly one out of 20 people who click your ad will convert into a lead. For auto insurance dallas texas you would need to spend $35 to acquire the lead. Note that this is just to acquire the lead. Only if you had a perfect closing ratio would the lead only cost you $35. Should you have a 50% closing ratio that lead would cost you $70. A 25% closing ratio would cost you $140. Notice how quickly this turned into a losing proposition? So what can you do to increase the closing ratio of PPC leads?



Read More

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Search Engine Marketing for the Everyday Insurance Agent - Part 1

I speak to many agents about Internet marketing. One subject that always rises to the top is paid search marketing (SEM) or pay per click (PPC). These paid ads show up at the top and right of most search results. These are above the organic free listings targeted by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services. 

Read More

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Generating Insurance Leads Through Your Chamber of Commerce Membership

There are perks to being a member of your local chamber of commerce. For one, research has shown that a majority of consumers prefer to work with businesses who are chamber members.

Besides the prestige of being a chamber member, many small business owners, including insurance agents, join their local chamber of commerce to network and get leads.


Want to make the most out of your membership? Here's how you can generate leads by being a member of your chamber of commerce:


Read More

Monday, October 29, 2012

Earning Backlinks vs. Building Them

The goal of any SEO strategy is to get your website noticed. One of the more important aspects of most SEO strategies is developing backlinks. Backlinks are links on other websites that link back to your site. These links tell the search engines, “Hey, this site has some good info, and I link to it!” Most search engines use this to determine how popular a website is on the Internet. Let us first look at why search engines use this as a primary metric in determining where your website shows within the organic search results.

Read More

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

How Social Media Can Hurt Your Agency's Brand

The insurance industry has begun to embrace social media. It's even become the norm to have more than one social media account. (Heck, we have five Twitter accounts, four Facebook Pages, two Google+ accounts and one LinkedIn business page.)

Social media moves quickly. Poorly managed social media accounts could backfire and instead of building relationships and raising your awareness online you could be hurting your agency. How? Here are six things to watch for and take care of immediately.


Read More