No One Pays More When They Switch Their Insurance?  Insurance Agencies Need to Quantify Value Propositions

Well, almost nobody pays more.  We’ve all seen the ads touting how much money some insurance company has saved their customers.  For instance:

Progressive:  You could save over $500 on car insurance.
Nationwide:  Save up to $43 every month.
State Farm:  …save $489 on your car insurance.

Independent insurance agents can make the same kind of claims as the large companies with the large advertising budgets for the same reason the large insurance companies make claims of savings – few people switch insurance unless savings are involved.  And agents do make claims of savings -  just not in the same way.  Agents more often make claims in qualitative terms.  Consider these excerpts from some otherwise attractive insurance agency websites:

Independent Agency #1:  Our agents work hard to provide you with the best protection at the best price.

Independent Agency #2:  Our goal is to make sure your family has the best protection at the lowest price.

Independent Agency #3:  We’ve got you covered — at a price you can afford!

Quantitative assertions are far more compelling.  As Marketing Experiments pointed out during their recent home page optimization clinic, people tend to be more skeptical about qualitative assertions.  In a sense, using quantitative statements to back up your value claim ‘proves’ that proposition – at least to a skeptical, page-skimming website visitor.  And that credibility increases web conversions.

Value Statements Aren’t Just About Lower Insurance Premiums

Quantitative support for value propositions, can and should extend to every facet of your agency’s value proposition – especially on the web.  Again, here’s a few more examples from the insurance companies with consumer-marketing chops.

So…you say you are ‘experienced’…how experienced?

GMAC:  …our experience.  More than 60 years of it…

Allstate:  …the support of 75+ years of experience.

You want me to believe that the insurance purchase process is easy?  Tell me *exactly* how easy.

Progressive:  Get rate and coverage options in about 6 minutes.

Here are a few opportunities missed, gleaned from independent insurance agency websites:

Independent Agency #1:  …finding insurance has never been easier.

If you are like me, you probably find yourself asking ‘easier than what?’  Here’s an alternative:  ‘In less time than it takes to make a grilled cheese sandwich, you could save $439 on your car insurance.’  Even though this statement doesn’t provide an explicit quantification of *easier*, we all have an idea that making a grilled cheese sandwich doesn’t take very long.  And given the option of whipping up a gooey cheese delight or saving $439…well, I know what I would pick.

Independent Agency #2:  …we can search more insurance carriers than your typical Agency.

How many companies can your *typical* insurance agency search?  How many companies can your agency search?  The numbers that answer these questions substantiate the claim that Agency #2 can actually save a consumer money.  Without some values illustrating the difference, any claims the agency might make based on superior carrier choice seem thin.

Independent Agency #3:  We value the business of all of our clients; you are not just a number.

Of course you value all your clients, but how do I know your clients feel valued?  It wouldn’t take much effort to implement a survey and quantify how valued your clients feel.  It would be a lot more compelling to be able to say that ’95% of our clients rate their service experience as excellent.’  Confluency Solutions includes a survey tool (and a default insurance service survey form) as part of insurance agency website admin so agents can quantify client happiness.  But there are plenty of free or inexpensive survey tools available, like Survey Monkey, so that any agency can quantify the satisfaction of clients.

Here are some other ideas to help quantify agency value propositions:

• Expertise – the percentage of agency staff with advanced designations like CPCU or CIC.
• Community Involvement – Number of times staff volunteered for community or charitable events.
• Superior Protection  – percent of occasions when the agency was able to increase liability limits while reducing or keeping premiums level.

Arriving at numbers like these for your agency may involve some extra work, but not much.  And the improvement in website conversions and sales will be well worth the effort.

]]> http://www.insuranceagentwebpower.com/2010/09/insurance-value-propositio/feed/ 0 http://www.insuranceagentwebpower.com/2010/08/insurance-agency-facebook-posts/ http://www.insuranceagentwebpower.com/2010/08/insurance-agency-facebook-posts/#comments Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:46:20 +0000 Kevin http://www.insuranceagentwebpower.com/?p=329 Businesses that have products or services to which consumers have a strong emotional attachment.  For instance, a friend of mine runs a business that markets reggae and Rastafarian themed clothing, posters, and other products.  All they have to do is post a song lyric or two to their Facebook page each day and poof! – over 1,000 ‘fans’ and multiple comments each day for each post.

Insurance is harder.  There are two times when the emotional attachment to insurance is strong: 1)  When someone’s premium increases or coverage gets canceled, or: 2) After receiving fast and complete indemnification after a claim*.  Those attachments are at opposite ends of the spectrum – so what’s in the middle?  What is the fodder for those daily Facebook posts  – the song lyrics of insurance, if you like?

I was going to use this blog post to offer up some suggestions, but PC World beat me to it.  Here’s an excerpt from their July article, Secrets to Using Facebook to Market Your Business:

Customers want to be informed and engaged, not pitched and harassed. It’s OK to tie in your products and services where they’re relevant, but don’t simply use the Facebook page as a platform for marketing soundbites.

You can post news or stories related to your business and provide unique commentary or insight. You can also use the Facebook page to provide tips, tricks, or information content. Rather than just talking at the audience, though, try to incite comments and feedback from the members to foster a sense of community with the customers.

*OK, so there are lots of other negative emotional attachments to insurance:  I don’t understand my policy paperwork, or bill; I can’t get anyone to respond to my questions, etc.  In the Yin-Yang philosophy of life and business, each of the negative emotional attachments can also be turned to positive experiences.

I see an increasing number of companies specializing in websites for insurance agents that claim to provide search engine optimization (SEO) with their service.  But almost none of them are really are.  More website providers, maybe most at this point, include what is called a content management system (CMS).  CMS allow regular business users, with limited to no technical expertise, to manage and update their own websites.  Using a CMS, you can add content like images and video, add or edit web pages, and importantly you can control key page elements that search ranking algorithms use to determine page rank relevance.

And while there are differences between the various CMS options out there, most all of them remind you to include those key page elements by providing blanks for page title, meta description, meta keywords, and so on.  But including reminders through a CMS is not the same thing as delivering SEO.  In fact, it’s not even close.  To give you an analogy, think about what it takes to fulfill your tax obligations with the IRS, and at the same time, minimize your tax burden.  It’s easy enough to go online and download a Form 1040, and all the blanks are there.  But possessing a blank tax form does not automatically fulfill your tax obligation, the same way having a CMS with all the web page elements for you to fill in does not mean you have search optimized your website.

Obviously, there are advantageous ways to legally complete your tax forms.  But it requires a bit of knowledge about what is both legal and advantageous to complete your tax forms in such a way as to minimize your tax burden.  And the same is true for your CMS:  a bit of knowledge (and fore planning) are required to fill in your page elements in such a way that your web pages get ranked by Google and the other search engines.

Does it matter which CMS you select?  That question can best be answered by a quote from a recent Marketing Sherpa article, “Overwhelmingly, good search engine optimization with a CMS is really more about how you implement the CMS and not necessarily which CMS you select.”  So, in order to make the leap from CMS to SEO requires a plan and effective implementation of that plan.  A good CMS can be tremendously helpful in implementing many SEO plan elements, but CMS without a plan is no more useful than a blank tax form.

Marketing Sherpa recently posted a chart illustrating the growing importance of local search. As noted here before, most insurance agencies have not

caught on to this business source.  And those insurance agents who have not taken the simple step of claiming and optimizing their local listings in Google, Yahoo and Bing, are losing money because of that.  And that lost income may be substantial.  In the last two days I have had an interesting phone call with a Midwestern insurance agent and reviewed local search results for 41 established insurance agencies.

My Midwest agent mentioned that she had recently picked up a $60,000 commercial lines account.  When she asked the client how they found her agency he said he did a web search and chose the agency with the most professional web site.  Moral of the story:  if you can’t be found, even an astonishing website won’t help you.

The 41 agencies I reviewed are all well established agencies; most have more than 10 employees and are located in a variety of communities:  urban, suburban and rural.  I should note that these insurance agencies are regarded as top quality by their competitors and are highly sought after by insurance companies seeking representation.  All of them have aggressive commercial lines growth objectives.  I did a Google search to see how visible these agencies might be to business insurance prospects in their market areas.  I gave each agency an unfair advantage by using the zip code of the agency location as take from an insurance company agency locator*.  Here’s how these agencies ranked for a search on ‘business insurance zip code’.

Only 7 of the 41 agencies had claimed their listing in the Google Local Business Center; of those, four had a number 1 ranking in the local listing, and two ranked in the top 10, just outside the 7 pack.  34 agencies had not claimed their local listing at all so the information Google ranked on and displayed was derived from third party sources like Info USA.  Two of those 34, who were located in small towns, fortuitously showed up in the 7 pack and another rural agent made the top 10.

Even the agencies that claimed their listing in the Google Local Business Center could have taken greater advantage of the details Google allows businesses to provide, like company representation, key products and insurance coverage provided, photos and video. But the most striking thing about this graphic is that 73% of the agencies just don’t show up (see the red and yellow regions).

Even quality insurance agencies could be competing a lot more effectively for new business and local search is possibly the most budget-friendly item missing from agency marketing repertories.

Insurance agencies can learn more about local search through a free webinar offered by Confluency Solutions.

*Insurance agencies who are providing P. O. box zip codes to directories and agency locators are often not doing themselves any favors with local search.

]]> http://www.insuranceagentwebpower.com/2010/04/agency-search-visibilit/feed/ 1 http://www.insuranceagentwebpower.com/2010/01/insurance-agency-solution/ http://www.insuranceagentwebpower.com/2010/01/insurance-agency-solution/#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:37:56 +0000 Kevin http://www.insuranceagentwebpower.com/?p=234 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?

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

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.

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.

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.