Insurance Journal Forums

Cindy,

You said the Facebook ads/marketing has brought new clients. Can you be a little more specific? Are you absolutely sure this was the exact source of a new client or are you just attributing any client since the ads were placed assuming Facebook directed them to you?

I think D's Insurance Store had a very exact model and his request of the benefits from Facebook went unanswered.

Anyway, I wills stick with Google and adwords.

Hi all,
If you haven't read your IA Magazine for May 2009 you should. cover story - Find us on Facebook.
If you don't embrace Web 2.0 practices you are going to miss out on the younger generation.It is the marketing wave of the future. Our agency was just featured in an online blog discussing this subject. http://lgbusinesssolutions.typepad.com/

The biggest mistake MOST people make when embarking on any sort of marketing campaign is they fail to give it enough time. Patience is required. It will take a minimum of 6 months of serious web 2.0 marketing in order to see the results.
That equates to many blog entries, alot of blasts on Facebook and tweets galore.

Good Luck!
Cindy

typical response of most advertising agencies.

"You have to keep paying for a longer period of time to get it to work".

AND, "We can make up the losses with volume" historically worked for general agencies too!

Mhutch I was thinking much the same...sales job!

One thing that is worthy of conversation...this approach might seem to work better with personal lines sales rather than commercial.

I do not see this effort going very far...too small of a return vrs the expense of maintaining a large effort. However, perhaps one of the arrows in the sales/marketing quiver (think I have that right). Make a small/medium effort as part of a larger attempt to get known.

Personally I think business related "social" networking sites like Linkdin would be better for this ... as those are focused on business persons. But, I have never professed to knowing everything...willing to be wrong.

Here's what I'm concluding after a LOT of study....
First, for an agency, or any business trying to compete on the web with serch engine optimization and maybe pay per click to get known, it's requiring a great deal of effort and time to keep up with key words, phrases and blogs, tweets, content and so on. It's no longer just a few hours per week to stay revelent in the eyes of the search engines and show up at or near the top in a web search. It's almost a full time job position.

Secondly, I've become convinced that geography for an insurance agency plays a big role in how the web impacts acquisition and retention of accounts. Smaller geographic areas, I believe, behave very differently than large metropolitan areas for return on investment. Also, geographic areas where there is a lot of web sophistication seem to be much more competitive on the web than areas of this country that aren't quite as web savvy.

Thirdly, in the area of pay per click, I'm seeing that in larger, competitive states where small commercial and personal lines are areas of bidding, clicks have ballooned to $50+ per click and only the big boys are able to play for top positioning in key words like, 'auto insurance quote' and 'contractor quote'. Enter those key words into Google in a state like California, Texas or New York and you come up with millions of hits, each claiming to offer the attributes of 'price, service and stability'. How's a consumer to choose??!

Finally, the measurement of success is ultimately new business acquired and retained. If the goal is to harvest prospects and their quote requests, then that leads to an ROI for new biz sales. But, if your acquisition cost is going to eat up any first term commission, then you have to bet on the retention/renewal comp to begin making money on the investment. And if the type of client acquired is back on the web for the lowest price quote in six months or a year, then your only hope of ROI is to have a temporary client that suffers no losses, so at least you can make money on the Contingency bonus.

As for the 'new best thing', positioning one's insurance business in Twitter or Facebook, I recently read where Twitter's retention is about 40%, with a lot of newbies finding out that there's either just not enough time or interest to read Tweet's about daily comings and goings of the contact list.

I don't doubt that the poster from the Northeast who is running the blog and web site for her agency perceives success on a measurable basis. I think what makes it work for them is the niche they've carved out for themselves, and many times, the insurance agency consultants vocalize about success coming from niche marketing in certain specialties, rather than trying to be everything to everyone. But that's just my opinion, and other's milage may vary.

And my conclusions are based on being located in a major metropolitan area of California, where the competition is rather cutthroat.

Good luck.
D.

MHutch,
Sorry to confuse you - our media campaign included social media - ie Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress and E-newsletters. We also did some traditional marketing - print display ads in local newspapers.

We are getting definate buzz from our social media efforts - as well as from our traditional marketing efforts. All are cumulative. Can I say that I got a new sale solely because of Facebook? No. But I can tell you that it all combines to make an impression and a perception. Not only are our clients and prospects noticing, but our carriers are.

Again - you need to be patient and give it time. The next generation of buyers are social media gurus - you can either be with them or not.

CD

I am an insurance consultant and I will tell you this about Facebook - I have not had the advertising segment work yet but as it was mentioned before it is inexpensive and as anyone knows in the insurance business you never know when someone will become disgruntled with their insurance, I for one - want to be there when they are ready for a change.

As for the social networking - well, that has been awesome, I just booked a company that has 2,700 employees into my company all because a friend of mine was a friend of a CFO of a major company. I also have set up numerous contacts for business through it and kept in touch with some of my other clients. Because of it's personal nature it allows your personality to shine through so you are more than "an insurance geek ". I continue to use it and I look for people that are interesting to connect with that might offer a business advantage. I have only been actively using it for business for four months - the large account that has transpired out of it was certainly worth my time. Happy Facebooking!

Kudos Andrea!

It is amazing how facebook and twitter are becoming main way of communicating on the internet

Social Media depends on what industry or niche you are coming from. For example, most insurance agents are not that "techy" or internet savvy. Most aspirants or current licensees still want to get licensed or to renew their license in a local school or university. So it is really hard to say that Social Media Marketing is a good tool for your online business.

I like Facebook for personal uses, but am not a big fan of my clients being on my page....unless they find me. That's my personal life, and my random musings about the kids and the husband and the dog are for my friends. Plus, I grew super-tired of the commercial sites I 'liked' posting 3 or 4 updates a day...when you have 200 pages that you like, that's a ton of junk on your page. I hide all the commercial sites that I like, I can find them if I need them, but I don't need to know that today is Tequila Tuesday at Margaritaville.

I personally think Facebook is not somewhere people go to make any serious business decisions, and the lack of a sophisticated presence there is less important than having a nice webiste of your own. I agree folks are more likely to Google an agent than look for them on Facebook.

I agree with Big dog. When I go to facebook, I am just interested in what my friends are doing. Not interested in business dealings.

I would go to linkedin for that ....

I wanted to weigh in the facebook ads ~ I am an active FB user and insurance professional. There is no way I am clicking on a FB ad. First, there is the big virus problem that seems to plague nearly every link (real or imagined). Too many friends have been ‘hacked’ via FB. Second, I prefer a personal referral. I want to know ~ who they are and how they are before I work with them. I recently need insurance for a new purchase and emailed my contacts ~ I got excellent feedback. If you really want to increase market share ~ ask your current clients for an Angie’s List write up or referrals, because I’m not clicking on your FB ad. If the ad looks like it is interesting, then I will Google / Goodsearch the offer to see what it is about…… but I’m not clicking via FB.
Good luck!!

chizcurlz wrote:Social Media depends on what industry or niche you are coming from. For example, most insurance agents are not that "techy" or internet savvy. Most aspirants or current licensees still want to get licensed or to renew their license in a local school or university. So it is really hard to say that Social Media Marketing is a good tool for your online business.

Good post! I agree 100%.

I've been using Facebook PPC for quite some now, and it has brought leads and conversions. It may be a bit costly, but what I like most about it is that the ads are targeted. You basically can choose the people who you want to target. I prefer it over Google Adwords, actually. It is also extremely easy to set up. Another good feature of the Facebook's PPC set-up process is the estimator tool.