AgencyBuzz, Turning Prospects into Long Term Cutomers

Think Local - Go Global

When it comes to having an Internet presence companies often focus on the global aspects of their website. They want to be on the first page of Google. They want to see their hits go through the stratosphere. They look for the millions of visitors that they will receive from across their state or even the nation. However, when these goals fail to realize, they believe their Internet marketing efforts have been a failure.

Internet marketing campaigns should start small and grow as your results improve. Initially, focus the marketing of your company and website to your local neighborhood. Once you have developed traction, expand your efforts to your community. As you build your presence and hits, develop your efforts to include your city, state, and even country.

By catering your message to a particular market area, you will increase the effectiveness of your website’s true goal, to sell your products. Follow these examples to think locally as you grow globally.

Local Search
The major search engines such as Bing, Google and Yahoo! all provide a service that displays local “yellow page” advertisements at the top of search results. These targeted results are displayed when the searcher localizes their search request. For example, the user searches for “auto insurance in irving tx” ; the search engine will include the local ads at the beginning of the result set. There is no charge to sign up for these services.

Community Events
When your local community has an upcoming event post it to your website as a blog or calendar entry. A perfect example of this is a local parade or fireworks show. People will often search the Internet for detailed information regarding the event such as location, time, and specific events. If you offer the same information as a resource on your website, ancillary traffic will drive itself to your site. If you plan to be in attendance, give in-depth coverage of your offering such as booth or pictures of your parade vehicle.

Local Sports
Be a resource for your favorite sports teams. Display upcoming schedules for the local high school football team. Offer visitors past scores and player profiles from your daughter’s softball team. By continually updating your website content, you will give customers (and the search engines) reason to come back often.

Sponsorships
Does your business sponsor a local organization? Are you helping support your son’s soccer team? Provide a “free” page on your website for the group. Detail upcoming fundraising events and success stories. When people search for the information on the organization, your results could also appear right along with them.

Special Offers
Do you have a booth at the local fair? Are you giving away a flat screen TV? If so, tell the world about it. Release a press release. Create a secondary site that exclusively advertises the giveaway. Develop a catchy web address that people will easily remember. Advertise your company heavily.

Local Web Address
Purchase multiple domain names. Cater each one to a target community. For example, purchase and point the domain name autoinsuranceinirvingtx.com. The search engines will readily display your results when the search term matches your company’s address. Most website vendors allow you to have multiple domain names pointed to a single site.

As you develop your website’s traffic, you can start to expand your target market. As more visitors pay a visit to your site, the search engines will begin to see you as a resource on the Internet. Over time, your presence will grow to the global market.

Are Insurance Agents Benefitting from Twitter

Outbound marketing efforts are becoming easier for consumers to block. For instance, with the release of TIVO, consumers no longer have to sit through TV commercials, "Do Not Call" lists impede telemarketing efforts, and so on. Therefore, many agents are rethinking the way they advertise their agency.

We are receiving reports that quite a number of agents are achieving success by engaging in new marketing techniques referred to as "Inbound" marketing. Instead of sending out costly mass advertising only to receive a few responses, many agents are finding they receive a higher return on their marketing dollar with Value Driven Marketing as a means to get prospects to contact them, thus the term "inbound".

What is "Value Driven Marketing"?

Value Driven Marketing is delivering informative and relevant content to a targeted prospect or customer. It is all about the customer, addressing their wants and their needs.

For example, a common question insureds often ask when obtaining a homeowners policy is "Why is my house insured for more than it's worth?” In a Value Driven Marketing piece, an agent could post an article explaining the significance of insuring their home for the Replacement Cost Value versus the Market Value.

Value Driven Marketing can:

• Get exposure
• Obtain brand recognition
• Turn leads into relationships
• Earn loyalty and trust from customers
• Demonstrate the vendor is an "expert" in their field

By providing value content on your website regularly, you also achieve higher search engine rankings. Search engines thirst for fresh content, especially content informative in nature.

One free tool many agents are using in their Value Driven Marketing strategy is Twitter. Twitter is a social networking service that allows users to post updates about themselves or their business. These updates are received instantly by their "followers" (users that requested to receive the updates). The updates can also be posted publically and are archived, meaning they are searchable. A Twitter account is not required to view the post; therefore, you will often find Twitter posts on major search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

Twitter 101

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that enables users to send short messages, which are called tweets. The tweets can only be up to 140 characters in length and are posted on your profile, your “followers’” profiles, and if you choose, can be posted publicly.

Its application has many uses for both individuals and businesses. On an individual basis, users can quickly broadcast information to their friends and family about what they are up to.

Businesses are using Twitter as a tool to broadcast the company’s latest news, interact with customers, find potential customers, learn what the public is saying about their brand and/or industry, and follow their competition. Author, Bill Tancer of Hitwise, recently published an article in Time Magazine citing “While it is easy to dismiss Twitter as a kid's online chat tool; its real demographics reaches into the business world”.

What Are Some Best Practices/Tips for Using Twitter?

• Post your picture or logo.
  It’s no secret with insurance being an intangible product, what we often find is we are selling ourselves. Add that personal touch by posting your picture.
  
• Don’t be a Tweeterbox. A Tweeterboxer is someone that posts too many messages, in other words, talks too much. It’s a surefire way to get your followers to leave.
  
• Keep your Twitter profile “real” by promoting local community events, other articles your customers may find of interest, and even short stories about yourself and your staff.
  
• Don’t sell. Offer content of value to your followers to keep them following.
  
• For example, answer common questions your agency receives, such as:
  
  Why is my house insured for more than it’s worth? (Replacement Cost)
  Is there a grace period on auto insurance?
  What is non-owners insurance?
  Does my policy cover anyone that drives my car?
  
  The intent is to drive traffic to your website, where the user has the opportunity to learn more about your agency. To accomplish this, post the question on your Twitter profile with a link to answer posted in a blog on your website.

What is a Blog?

Short for "Web Log", a blog is a shared online journal that is frequently updated for the general public's viewing. The Insurance Website Builder has a built-in blog option. The blog system allows you to place unlimited logs on your site. Furthermore, readers have the ability to link your blog to any number of social networking sites automatically through our easy Bookmark widget. Others linking to your site increases your search engine rankings.

Free Helpful Twitter Tools

With the restraint of only 140 characters, often times including a lengthy website link to a blog can present a problem. There are several free sites that create a shortened link that will redirect to your site.

www.tinyurl.com

We used tinyurl.com to shorten a link to an article we posted about employee theft. The link to the article was 98 characters long - http://www.insurancetechnologiescorp.com/blog/role_of_automation_in_preventing_employee_theft.aspx.

We visited www.tinyurl.com and created an alias www.tinyurl.com/EmployeeTheft. The benefit of tinyurl.com (other than being free) is you can often times dictate what the alias link will be; in this case, we were able to choose "EmployeeTheft". However, tinyurl.com does not provide any tracking mechanisms.

www.inek.net

Inek.net will also create a shorter alias for a lengthy link. While with this free service you are not able to dictate the alias' name, you can measure the number of clicks that site receives. Every good marketing plan includes a measurement tool.

While Twitter is a no cost advertising tool, as with any other effective marketing strategy, it takes time and effort. Keep consistent with your posts and make sure they address your customers wants and needs. Also be sure to ask everyone to follow you. Include a signature line on your emails “Follow me on Twitter”. Encourage your staff to ask current clients to follow you, even include your Twitter link on your business cards.

Top 10 Website Mistakes

73% of consumers that shopped for auto insurance in the last year did so online.1 With the population of online insurance shoppers increasing year after year, more insurance agents are using the internet to market their agency. While browsing through many of these sites, we discovered agents are making some critical mistakes that very well could be sending their visitors elsewhere for insurance.

1. Hard-to-Find Contact Information
   Let your customers know how to find you. Be sure to list the agency's name, address, phone numbers, and physical address in a spot that is easily found.
   
2. The Site is Poorly Organized and Difficult to Read
   A visitor should be able to know the name of your agency and the services you provide within four seconds of pulling your site up.
   
3. Services are Not Listed
   Insurance consumers prefer to use one agent for all of their insurance needs. Don't miss this opportunity to cross sell. Let your prospects and your customers know about all of the services you offer.
   
4. Content is Old and Outdated
   Keeping content fresh on your site not only encourages visitors to keep coming back, but also increases your ranking on search engines.
   
5. Privacy Policy Not Posted
   With identity theft on the rise, consumers want to know the information they submit will be well protected.
   
6. Poor Promotion of the Site
   Advertise your site. List your website address on everything from your business cards to your front door.
   
7. Not Cross-Browser Compatible
   According to NetApplications.com, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has experienced a steady decline year after year with their latest market share only being 66%. Check out browsershots.org, a free online service that will provide screenshots of your site in different browsers to verify compatibility.
   
8. No Personal Photo Nor Background Information
   At a minimum, list how long you have been in business, your mission statement, and what makes your agency stand out from your competition.
   
9. Visitor Unable to Communicate Via the Site
   Don't lose a customer because they have no way to communicate with you electronically. Include forms, such as a quote, claim, and payment forms for your client to submit information to you.
   
10. Typos and Mistakes
    A sure-fire way to turn off a customer is with a typo or a grammatical error. Even if your website editor includes a spell checker, still have a second set of eyes review your content.

1 - 2009 comScore Online Auto Insurance Report

Getting Social with your Customers

Undoubtedly, you have heard of the various social networking sites currently dominating the Internet. These websites include big names such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Digg. However, you might not be aware to the fact that these sites can help increase your overall Internet marketing exposure and even drive new customers to your agency.

What is a social networking website?

Social networking sites rely upon the collaborative nature of the Internet. A social networking site allows visitors the ability to contribute content to the website. Since a large group of people supply content, the website becomes a resource of combined knowledge. A good example of this is Wikipedia. Since it’s founding in 2001, volunteers around the world have collaboratively written over twelve million articles in over two-hundred languages.

How can my agency capitalize on social networking sites?

When you create a social page for your agency, the return can be two fold. First, by creating an entry on MySpace, LinkedIn, or Facebook, you provide your agency a secondary website for which people can find and contact you. As you grow your social network, you will open your agency to the vast number of potential customers that use each of those services. Secondly, with every post you make upon your social site, you can place a high-value back link to your agency’s primary site. High value back links can considerably increase your search engine ranking.

List of Popular Social Networking Sites

Each social networking site offers its own specialty and you can tailor your efforts based upon your desired target.

MySpace
www.myspace.com
MySpace is a great place for people to keep in touch with close friends and family. The younger generation of Internet users dominates MySpace’s pages. You should create a MySpace page if you want to target late teenagers and young adults. Keep your page regularly updated with the latest news and stories as it relates to the 18-25 year old crowd.

Facebook
www.facebook.com
Facebook is very similar to MySpace except it includes many adults from the ages of 25 through 50. When you create a Facebook page keep this in mind by offering links to current political news, latest viral videos and of course, your agency’s website.

LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com
LinkedIn is for professionals. Corporate professionals will search LinkedIn to catch up with old business acquaintances or look up a prospective customer. You can even use LinkedIn to find new likeminded employees.

Digg
www.digg.com
Have you ever wanted to declare a link on the Internet cool? If so, Digg is for you. Digg allows you to advertise a link as being beneficial to the web. What better site to “digg” than your own agency’s website or blog? Once you have listed, have your friends and family “digg”-it. To increase your link’s popularity, ask your visitors upon your other social networking sites to “digg” your site even further.

These are just a few of the countless number of social networking sites currently available on the web. Most of these only take an hour or two to setup, so pick a site a week, and tackle it. Once you have completed all of your social sites, link them all together to form a web of sites advertising your agency. Finally, keep your sites up-to-date by placing reminders in your Internet marketing plan.

Developing an Insurance Agency Internet Marketing Plan

Like most agency owners, you have undoubtedly developed a marketing plan for your agency’s offline marketing efforts such as commercials and Yellow Page advertising. While this is an exceptionally good practice, most principals forget to include one of the largest segments of today’s economy, online marketing.

To achieve your agency’s online potential, you must develop an Internet marketing plan. Your plan must go far beyond having a fully functional, interactive website. It must become a comprehensive guide filled with budgets, tasks, and goals. Properly defined plans include most, if not all, of the following elements.

Budget

Your budget should include estimated costs for website hosting, lead generation services, search engine placement services, and pay-per-click campaigns. Going forward, consider placing even more funds towards your Internet budget as online leads often come with a lower cost of acquisition versus traditional means of lead development.

Most agencies in median-size cities can properly utilize an online marketing budget of one to two hundred dollars per month. While these numbers sounds daunting at first, it pales in comparison to the numbers most agencies spend on Yellow Page advertising alone.

Tasks

Creating a task list is critical to building a successful plan. Internet marketing tasks are often easy ten to fifteen minute projects that you will do on a recurring basis. Possible tasks might include:

• Document and report referral sources within an agency management system
• Submit site URL to search engines and social networking sites
• Write an informative customer interest blog entry on your website
• Submit, review and update pay per click terms
• Request link sharing agreements with vendors and partners
• Update your website’s content
• Design, write and send newsletters
• Develop mailing lists
• Update company signage, literature and e-mail signatures with company URL

Many of these tasks you will do on a monthly or even daily basis. In addition to the task list itself, you should include how often each task should occur, who will complete the task, and how long the task should take to complete.

Finally, unlike other marketing efforts such as radio, newspaper, television, or Yellow Page advertisements, which expire once you stop using them, Internet based marketing can grow exponentially. Each task you complete will be built upon by subsequent tasks.

Goals

Your new marketing plan should define your expected goals. As with any plan, your goals should be well defined and achievable. Each of your goals should also include a timeframe for which you want to complete or gauge the goal. Well designed campaigns often take five or six months to build initial momentum. However, your patience will be rewarded.

Start small; initially setup your goals to cover the costs of your efforts alone. Some samples of good initial goals include:

• Have a fully functional website presence on the Internet
• Update marketing materials with website address and value proposition
• Generate ten leads per month from Internet based sources
• Convert three Internet based leads per month
• Increase web traffic by 20%

Once you have achieved these goals, allow your energy to continue and expand your aim by setting newer, more aggressive goals.

Finally, just like the Internet, your plan should constantly evolve to meet your agency’s overall needs. Analyze what works, and what does not. Make adjustments as needed, and once you have perfected your Internet marketing plan, your agency will begin to realize the economic possibilities upon the web.

Got Spam? - Stop Spam

89% of e-mails received by insurance agents today are classified as spam. That means that only one out of every ten emails is a legitimate business communication! Over the course of a year, financial losses can really add up through the lost productivity of you and your employees. However, the greatest threat to computer networks today is from malicious programs such as trojans, zombies, and viruses, which hitch a ride within many spam. Once upon your network, these programs can potentially mine customer data from your systems sending their confidential data to unscrupulous parties looking to steal the identities of your customers!

1/2 the way there.

The traditional way to decrease the number of spam received by an insurance agency is by installing an application that contains a spam blocker. Often these applications are bundled within an antivirus program. These programs do help; however, they are not always the most effective solution for curbing the flow of spam into your organization. These programs require constant updates to keep up with the latest spam signatures and techniques. These updates are rarely kept up-to-date after the initial subscription period expires. Additionally, these programs must download the infected spam to your machine before it can classify it as malicious. This download allows the infected item into your organization unrestricted before the program is able to quarantine the item.

Stopping the Attack

To effectively block spam and other malicious email, organizations are employing a new generation of spam blocking tools. One of the more effective ways being used today is through the use of spam firewalls. Prior to your mail server, incoming mail routes through your spam firewall's gateway which analyzes your mail for spam and other malicious code. Items classified as spam are held for further review within a quarantine folder, thus keeping an infected item from ever entering your organization. Furthermore, the firewall's spam signatures are kept up-to-date upon a single device, no more worrying that all computers are running the latest definitions.

For Insurance Agencies with less than fifty email users, many online providers offer hosted spam firewall protection. For larger organizations, your own spam firewall will easily pay for itself through productivity improvements and decreased downtime.

Insurance Technologies Corporation, Agency website solutions at http://www.insurancewebsitebuilder.com and Agency management solutions at http://www.insuranceproonline.com

Why Your Insurance Agency Needs a Website

A fully functional online presence has become a required asset that every agency should possess. By having a website, you enable your agency the ability to offer your products and services to prospects and customers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Today, a website has to be more than just a business card on the web. It needs to have a complete offering that includes automated customer self-service and informational resources that repeatedly hold the visitors interest.

Beyond Quoting, Offering Customer Self Service

Do you remember walking into an airport and waiting in long ticket counter lines? If so, you have seen firsthand how technology has changed the way consumers interact with business. Less than ten years ago, as you entered an airport, long lines greeted you at the ticket counter. Now you are welcomed by self-service terminals that offer a quick check-in experience speeding multiple customers through at a fraction of the time. No longer do you need to speak to a customer service agent, you can simply do it yourself. Not only does it expedite the customer, self-service lowers the employee resources required by the business.

This trend of customer self-service has begun to spread to every industry, including insurance. It began with online quote requests, via an online form. Next was the introduction of online rating. Recently, companies began offering customer self-service options to compliment the online quoting. These options included online payments and policy self-service.

What started with the carriers has now migrated down to the agents themselves. Whether it be the ability to request an ID card, report an accident or remove a vehicle, your website must offer the customer the ability to service their policy directly. Like the airline industry, this automation of your customer service will appease the consumer's desire for quick service while lowering the overall resources required by your agency.

An Informational Resource

Although banks were one of the first industries to embrace customer self-service through the usage of ATM machines, they were slow to develop their online presence. In the recent years, they have made up for it! Banking websites offer virtually everything these days. Buy stamps, lookup ATM locations, view product offerings, pay your bills, print your statements and even request copies of checks, all from an easy to use website. By providing this complete experience, banks customers return often to this one-stop portal.

An agency website needs to replicate this breadth of offerings by presenting the client access to any services that your agency offers. A complete website should include online glossaries, driving directions, location mapping, current newsfeeds, payment options, and links to useful websites such as credit repair and partner mortgage companies. By offering more features your website becomes a portal for which customers will return repeatedly.

Holding On

Now that your website offers a complete presence, you want to draw and keep visitors upon your site. Provide the consumer an incentive to come back often. Create quarterly giveaways. Offer gift cards for referrals. Provide links to the latest viral videos. The sky is the limit with a website.

Finally, retain your customer's interest, by keeping your site up to date! By updating your site's content, you retain the dynamic and ever changing spirit of the Internet. Buyers will recognize your commitment to technology and will reward you with repeat visits.

Insurance Technologies Corporation, Agency website solutions available at http://www.insurancewebsitebuilder.com and agency rating and management solutions available at http://www.turborater.com

Get Your Site Listed on Local Searches

The local editions of your favorite search engines provide customers the ability to look find agencies from a phone book like feature on the search engines. Some of the newer Local Search systems as found upon Yahoo, Google and Live Search will even list your location on their map displays.

Insurance agents should take advantage of these to help promote their website.

To submit your site to the Local Search for the major search engines, click the links below and follow the prompts as guided. This process takes a combined fifteen to twenty minutes for all three sites.

Google Local Business Center
To get yourself listed on the Google Business Center, click the following link:
http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

Google Local Business Center
To get yourself listed on the Google Business Center, click the following
link:
http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

Live Search Local Listing Center
To place your site on the Live Search Local (formally MSN) business center,
click the following link:
https://ssl.search.live.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx

Insurance Technologies Introduces Additional Companies Through Real Time Rating

Another release I wrote. Thought you might enjoy this.

Insurance Technologies Corporation, a leading provider of insurance rating, agency management, and website solutions, announced the inclusion of standard insurance companies into the TurboRater comparative rating system. Added companies include AIC, Bristol West, Grange, Hartford, Paragon, Progressive, Safeco, and Travelers.

"By enabling real time rating through these companies, we offer agents the ability to retrieve quick and accurate rates through standard companies," says Insurance Technologies Corporation's President Scott Upfield. "When you couple this with a complete offering of non-standard companies, you get a rating solution that will work for any agency."

Using real time rating interfaces, agents can retrieve comparative automobile rates in less than a minute. Mr. Upfield continues, "Through the use of the real time rating features within TurboRater, an agent can quote new and existing business in less than a minute with the knowledge that the provided rates are accurate."

"In addition to these companies, we are actively adding more carriers to our products through the use of real time interfaces," explains Laird Rixford Vice President of Product Development. "As we bring these companies online, rating times will continue to decrease while accuracy increases. Usage of these direct rating services will grow over the next few years as agents begin to expect rates in less than forty-five seconds."

The TurboRater Comparative Rating System is available for agencies in Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Company availability varies by state.

About the TurboRater Comparative Rating System
Developed over twenty years ago, TurboRater has become the gold standard of comparative automobile rating systems. With an easy to use interface, agents can rate and store quotes quickly and accurately with a single system. With features such as website consumer rating, online storage, real time companies, credit scoring, and motor vehicle reports, TurboRater provides agencies the ability rate with confidence. http://www.turborater.com/.

About Insurance Technologies Corporation
Insurance Technologies Corporation is a leading provider of insurance rating and management software to the insurance industry. Founded in 1983 and operating nationwide, ITC has quickly grown with a philosophy of providing quality solutions. Currently Insurance Technologies Corporation serves more than one-hundred insurance companies and over five-thousand agencies. http://www.insuranceproonline.com/