For years now, I have had insurance agent after insurance agent admit – sheepishly – that they were not ‘fully utilizing’ their agency management system.  Don’t feel bad – you have company.  Back in November of 2009 Wired.com noted in their Gadget Lab blog that the iPhone App Store Apps hit six digits.  More recently, the NY Times suggested that the average iPhone owner actually uses only 5 – 10 apps with any regularity.  Out of over 100,000.  Yet no one accuses iPhone users of ‘under utilizing’ their devices because the assumption is that each individual iPhone user gravitates to the apps that are most useful for that individual.

Independent insurance agencies have a wide range of feature options, not only with their agency management systems, but with other technology tools like email, websites, and mobile devices.  So, if there is a shortcoming that insurance agents are guilty of, it probably isn’t under utilizing the technology available to them, but rather, the shortcoming may be not choosing the right five or ten tech features that help achieve agency growth and profit objectives.

Snowstorms, Social Media, Your Insurance Agency

Snowpocalypse: When weathermen predict large amounts of snowfall in a short period of time – Urban Dictionary

Snowmageddon: President Barack Obama’s term for the February snowstorm that shut down Washington, D.C.; or End of (school) Days due to an excessive snowfall event.*

What does any of this have to do with insurance?  Surely, if your insurance agency is located in an area experiencing a snowpocalypse, you have an insurance story to tell.  Maybe it’s how your staff were able to work from home to help clients with claims issues, or a heroic trip into the office to be there for your agency customers at a time they might be more likely to need your services.  Making the connection between a weather event and what is going on with your agency, your staff, and your customers is an easy blog or Face Book riff.  You don’t need to write a new chapter for War and Peace every time you post to Social Media.  And who knows what kind of interest your short post might engender, particularly if you can add a photo or video?

*Note:  Snowmageddon was the number 1 trend on Twitter at one point during the February, 2010 snowstorm

What is it that makes Apple’s iPhone, iMac, iTunes, and other products so wildly successful and easy to use.  One suggestion, quoted in a recent NY Times article, is that they are ‘disease’ free; that is, none of these devices is afflicted with ‘featuritis’.

“A defining quality of Apple has been design restraint,” says Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and consultant in Silicon Valley…They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products.

We see insurance agents struggling under the weight of management system features; independent agents have the freedom to represent any insurance company that will sign a contract; to launch a facebook page or twitter feed; agents can build and manage their own websites without worrying about restrictions imposed by one mother-ship product supplier.  But does all this freedom of choice lead to featuritis?  What is the minimum feature set delivering maximum benefit for independent insurance agents?  What do they need from the companies they represent, the marketing programs they choose, website solution and social media options…what is that minimum set of features that is super simple to use and provides the most important set of benefits in such a way that it would make Apple wish they had come up with the answer?

About 18 months ago, Google published a survey that showed that about 70% of the time, consumers finding the name of a business in a print medium next went to the web to learn more about that businesses’ products or services.  These consumers turn out to be highly motivated, with nearly 70% purchasing a product or service – from someone.  Also about 70% of the time (nice symmetry: 70:70:70), those consumers consummate the sale, not online, but over the phone or in person.

Just this week, Wells Fargo published some survey results about their insurance customers and the findings were similar:  customers, particularly those in their 30’s, research insurance online before purchasing.  For simple insurance products, like renters insurance, those consumers are willing to buy online.  But for more complicated insurance, like car insurance, people want to talk to someone before buying.  Spokesperson Melanie Donaghy noted, “when it comes to purchasing, people want an agent to talk to before making the final buy..if auto were as easy as renters insurance we would see more purchases online…”

There are a few obvious take-aways for independent insurance agents:

1.  Lack of a quality website will impair sales (a finding also corroborated by PIA studies)

2.  You should not use your agency website as a barrier between your people and the prospective customer; that is, don’t make them fill out on line forms – give them a choice

3.  You should make it clear on your website that you welcome calls

4.  If you want to measure the sales contribution made by your website, you have to ask call in prospects how they found you or if they visited your website before they called

This Marketing Sherpa Chart of the Week provides an interesting context through which to view your insurance agency website analytics and lead management results.  Not all website inquiries turn into leads, but this chart suggests  that a healthy proportion could, and probably should.  If you are getting a lot of traffic but little sales activity, then some page redesign may be in order.  Of course, you have to be able to track lead sources first, especially since a significant proportion of web-sourced quote opportunities ultimately arrive by phone.

What this chart suggests is that, if you get 100 new visitors to your insurance agency website, 38 of them would graduate to sales-ready lead status; indicators of this might be signing up for a newsletter, staying on  your website more than two minutes, viewing 4 or more pages, or visiting a specific page to view a video or use an interactive tool.  All of this can be measured through site analytics.  Generally, you would define someone as a prospect when you have a chance to quote.  If the chart above is representative of your agency then of the original 100 web inquiries, you would have a chance to quote on about 15 (100 times 38% times 39%); again, these quotes might happen by phone or they might come through the website.  Ultimately, for every 100 new visitors, assuming site design helps people graduate to lead status, you would write about 4 new customers.

Not all visits are new, but if we assume that site visits breas down in a 60% customer visits, 40% new consumers visits ratio, then 500 unique visitors to your website in a month should beget between 8 and 9 new customers.  Additionally, some of your customer traffic should result in new sales as well, particularly if you are directing customers to website insurance resources through links in monthly e-mail newsletters.  We consistently hear from agents that about 1 new policy is written each month from e-newsletter campaigns for each 100 emails.

So, what would a modestly promoted website do for an small agency sending out 500 emails each month?  If 1.5 policies are written for each new customer and that number is added to the customer development policies sales resulting from just the e-newsletters, monthly totals would stack up like this:

14 policies per month from new customers
5 policies per month from existing customers
19 new policies each month purely from web sources

That’s 228 new insurance policies a year; not enough to turn your independent agency into a e-marketing phenom, but generally enough to feed one of your carrier commitments for the year, and the extra $35,000 – $75,000 in commission revenue (recurring, by the way) is a nice addition to the bottom line.

One more thought before I go:  independent surveys performed by comScore and Google all suggest that between 70% and 80% of consumers will go to the web after seeing an ad for insurance.  The more traditional advertising and direct mail you do, the more site visits you should see – if your campaign is effective.  What happens to those inquiries, that is, how many convert to leads and prospects, has a lot to do with landing page design.  So if you are going to spend a significant amount of money on an ad campaign, it makes sense to put a little time into designing and testing a landing page for that campaign.  If you do, you can maintain or improve upon the inquiry –> sales conversion rates shown in the chart and achieve a much higher ROI for a traditional advertising campaign.

A new blog can be set up in a snap.  You can add a Facebook page for your insurance agency in just a few minutes.  Your insurance agency can prove it is in the know by setting up a Twitter profile.  Starting a social media account is easy.  Keeping up your shiny new blog or Facebook profile takes time, so much time, that most blogs quickly fall silent; in 2008 Technorati – the blog devoted to blogs – found that of the over 130 million blogs they tracked, only 5% had been updated in the last five months.

Deriving real business benefit from social media takes even more effort, and likely some cost, despite all the pundits who extol the virtues of this fee medium.  There is no doubt that blogging and Tweeting can add first stage SEO benefits for your insurance agency if you put the time and effort into these communication tools.  But what about the benefit of attracting a legion of loyal friends and fans to your social media space?  This may be most difficult of all for an insurance agency.

This week, Marketing Sherpa published a chart showing why consumers become fans of businesses.  While all of the reasons people friend businesses can be leveraged by insurance agencies, the top two, “Learn about new products and features” and “Learn about specials and sales” can probably be ruled out.

Why Consumers Become Fans of Businesses

( Note:  Max Connectors are defined as people with over 500 ‘connections’)

Insurance regulation prohibits discounts and sales, so unless you can be really creative, you are going to be hard pressed to post any content in this category that will attract a consumer following.  There is plenty of product innovation taking place in the insurance industry, as those of us working in the business know, but new product features and services tend to hold interest only to industry insiders.  That new coverage provision just can’t mesmerize the populace the way the newest iPhone, Windows operating system, or hybrid sports car can.

The remaining two content categories – “Company Culture” and “Entertainment” are probably rich enough to provide a thematic basis for your insurance agency social media content, but regularly posting this type of compelling content isn’t something most of us have been prepared to do.

I’m not suggesting that leveraging social media for the business benefit of your agency isn’t a strategy you should consider.  But I am saying that Facebook and blogging are not money-for-nothing, get-rich-quick schemes.  Social media takes as much time, effort, and expense as other business development options, so weigh your expectations and commitment accordingly.

So, six months behind this blog, Fast Company scrutinizes Dells ‘Twitter-driven’ sales. On the one hand, they note the success of Twitter as a sales tool; on the other, they note, as I did six months ago, that the ‘Twitter-driven’ sales are a drop in Dell’s bucket. It’s true that all Dell’s tweets cost them nothing, but as the article points out, tweeting takes time and there are pitfalls to be avoided. In short, while I think Twitter can be a useful branding tool for insurance agents, I don’t think Twitter is worthy of all the hype. It may be something you fit into your branding arsenal after careful consideration. As a straight up sales vehicle – I think it’s probably a non-starter for insurance agents.

If you want to show up in the top of search rankings for the keyword ‘insurance’, be sure to empty your wallet, hit up all your relatives for loans, and let your kids know they will have to turn in their cell phones and find their own way to pay for college. Here’s a run down of the companies with pages in the top 10 search results for ‘insurance’: State Farm, Allstate, GEICO, Progressive, Insurance.com, esurance, AAA, Farmers, and Liberty Mutual. How does your insurance agency SEO budget stack up against those companies?

But don’t despair, there are alternatives for going head to head against the Goliaths of the insurance industry; the trick is to define the insurance SEO game in terms you can win.

I’m going to explore several options in upcoming blog posts, and I want to start with long tail search. Long tail search terms, not to be confused with long tail insurance claims, are longer keyword phrases. Often, competition is much lower for long tail keywords, and the big competitors are not paying nearly as much attention to them.

Consider that, of the 200 million queries that Google processed in 2004, as much as half were unique. Add to that Google’s 2007 admission that 20% – 25% of all searches were completely new to Google.* What that suggests is an opportunity to capitalize on keyword phrases that will be searched, but that are often missed by the keyword research tools used by big budget on line marketing departments.

There are three simple tactics that insurance agents can use to identify, and benefit from, long tail insurance keywords: 1. Using your staff as a sounding board for new website FAQs; 2. Create keyword ‘demand’ through traditional advertising campaigns; and 3. Use paid search to test out potential long tail search winners. I’m going to tackle the paid search tactic here, and deal with the other two in future blog posts.

Long Tail Search Dressed for Halloween

Paid search can be expensive if you are bidding on common keyword phrases like ‘insurance’, ‘auto insurance’, or ‘business insurance’. The more specific you get, the less expensive the cost-per-click, and likewise, the less competition for those same specific keywords in organic search. Low competition is good, but low competition with zero searches is useless. The trick is to identify long tail keywords that others aren’t competing for, but which also get some search traffic.

Here’s an example. Google’s Keyword tool doesn’t show any data for search results on the phrase, ‘what is uninsured-underinsured motorist coverage?’ But any consumer performing a search using this keyword phrase is clearly looking for some education, and would likely be a high conversion website visitor. The question that has to be asked is whether anyone at all will perform a search using that phrase.  A simple way to find out is to use paid search (in the case of Google, paid search is their AdWords program).

Investing a few hundred dollars over the course of a month or two and bidding on potential long-tail search terms like ‘what is uninsured-underinsured motorist coverage?’ will tell you very quickly if you can get some productive search traffic by optimizing for these terms.  If the search term turns out to be ineffective, your AdWords account will not charge you, and you are free to use your budget to test other keyword phrases.  If you get some click-throughs then you will learn that it may be worthwhile to optimize a few web pages for ‘free’ organic search.

*Excerpted from Aaron Wall’s excellent 50 Kick Ass Keyword Strategies. Check it out for a quick, easy to understand approach to learning what do with keywords.

Poor old email.  Celebrities don’t use it to communicate their fans, and infotainment talking heads encourage viewers to check their Twitter tweets. So is email dead?  Should we send out the funeral service notices?  The chart below tells the tale.

Poll:  How do you share information you receive in email?

Despite the hype surrounding blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and social networking in general, email is still the way most people share information with friends, family, and associates.  Social media is a very, very distant second.  That doesn’t mean that your insurance agency shouldn’t be developing a social media strategy, but the chart should give you a visual clue as to the amount of time you should be spending on that social media vs. gathering, managing and using email addresses.

There is ample evidence that suggest too many options delay decisions and increase dissatisfaction with the choices we make (See Barry Schwartz’s excellent book on the topic: The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less). Enter a new definition of quality, posited in a Wired Magazine article: The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine. The article leads with discussion of the cheap, and easy to use Flip Ultra camcorder. Despite the lack of features, the camera has sold like hot cakes, grabbing a 17% share of the camcorder market in just two years.

Other ‘good enough to get on with it’ products and services cited in the article include gmail and Zoho Writer, a Microsoft Word substitute with fewer bells and whistles (but most of the features you are actually likely to use). Oh yeah, and what about the advantages of a (relatively) unsophisticated, unmanned Predator aircraft vs. a $45 million F-16 (options, including pilot, may cost extra)?

Wired isn’t alone in noticing that cheap and simple solutions are often the best ones. In the upcoming sequel to Freakonomics – called Super Freakonomics – Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner have included a chapter chapter entitled The Fix Is In – And It’s Cheap and Simple.

I think this movement toward ‘good enough is more than effective’ is good news for agency manager perfectionists. Instead of wrestling with decisions about which expensive and complex software or web service to work with, just go with what works, and can be had for little or no money. Here’s a few favorites that insurance agency managers should be thinking about:

For video calls, and free long distance, try Skype. Depending on features you may wish to add (a traditional phone number, the ability to call out to land line or cell phones, e.g.), you may pay a few dollars a month.

And speaking of YouTube, there is no simpler way to get your video converted for streaming and to add it to your website.  We have been using YouTube for a variety of purposes at Confluency Solutions, and set up our own channel a little over a year ago.  Use YouTube videos to explain insurance coverage, the claim process, or to highlight safety issues.  Oh, and the cost – free.

Video email can be free, or you could pay as much as (gasp!) $99 a year.  Eyejot is our service of choice.  At Confluency, we use it for proposal deliveries, conference/trade show follow ups, and to set up renewal reviews.

Email management, CAN SPAM compliance, and newsletter sign ups can be facilitated by several services.  MailChimp is free, as long as your ’subscription’ list is $500 or less.  After 500, the monthly fees are low.  (Your insurance agency might have 2,000 customers, but how many email addresses do you have?)

For web conferencing, including document and screen sharing, try DimDim.  The service is reliable, easy to use, and free for up to 20 attendees in a session.

The list could go on and on, but in my experience, these are good places for most insurance agencies to start.