The short answer is yes, of course your insurance agency has friends.  And now, there is a way to count your friends through the number of likes your agency gets on Facebook or the number of Twitter followers you may have.  Confluency Solutions tracks about 6,000 insurance agency Facebook pages and the average number of friends is…(drum roll)…96.*  But whether an agency has 50 friends or 250 friends, there seems to be a limit to social network growth once a certain number of fans has been reached.  Here is a graph snapshot of Facebook friend activity for an agency with 153 fans:

What you notice is the sawtooth up-down activity of gaining a friend, losing a friend.  We see this pattern with most agencies.  Some agencies will pick up five or six new likes in a day, but inevitably, they also lose a commensurate number over the next 30 days or so.  It is a rare thing when we see an agency move beyond a core of their personal social network.  When they do, their graph looks more like this one:

This agency loses a fan once in awhile.  But for every one they lose, they pick up 5 to 10 new likes.  So the question is, what is the difference between what the two agencies are doing?  The goal of social media is to gain new prospects and sales over time through increased awareness of your insurance agency and your value proposition.  So simply having a Facebook page is not enough; you need to build a network and get that network to engage with your Facebook (or other social media) page.  Here are some lessons learned from observing the first kind of agency – the typical graph – vs. the second kind of agency – the exception.

1. Make sure your agency page can be viewed without requiring someone to first be logged into Facebook.  You can make sure your page is public by not restricting any access in your page permission settings.  Right now, the only restriction option are for country and age.  A number of agents have restricted their page to U.S. viewers only; Facebook doesn’t necessarily know anything about where you are from or how old you are unless you are logged into Facebook.  Using these restrictions will keep a lot of people out of your Facebook page and will also make it invisible to the search engines, which is bad for SEO.
2. Make sure you post often enough, but not too often.  Three to five times a week is plenty; three to five times a day is too frequent.  Automatic Twitter feeds can really get you into trouble here, especially if you are tweeting with some frequency.  Celebrities and news organizations might be able to get away with multiple short posts every day, but most of us don’t have anything interesting enough to say that often that people will allow you to stay in their news feed (see graph #1 to support this).
3. Mix up your posts by adding a myth-buster or some interesting factoid once in awhile.  Photos and video get a lot more interest than text posts so try to include this kind of content.  And be careful of sounding too much like a salesman.  People who peruse their news feed aren’t generally looking to buy insurance.  Facebook, and social media in general, is a branding space, not a sales space.
4. Try some basic contests from time to time and restrict participation to your Facebook network.  This will help you get and keep fans.  Contests can and should be promoted within your Facebook page  - with photos and video if possible.

*The average is calculated by first excluding the small number of agency Facebook pages with fewer than 2 or more than 1,000 likes.

What Kind of Internet Marketing Should Your Insurance Agency Be Doing Right Now?

I’m going to vastly oversimplify the exercise of choosing internet marketing components by making these assumptions:

• You know your insurance agency’s target customers, your key products, and your geographic marketing area;
• You have decided upon which traditional marketing programs you will use -direct mail, print advertising and the like;
• You have a budget for marketing and you know how much of that budget is available to you;
• You also know which programs will be implemented in-house and which ones will be outsourced.

So it’s August already…and your insurance agency is coming up a little short on some sales commitments that could cost you some contingency income and maybe some other preferential treatment from one or more of your insurance companies.  Your problem is short term in nature and you need a short term fix.

For most agencies, the main internet marketing options are these:

• Email marketing (in the short term, this would be confined to your current list)
• Local Search Optimization
• Organic Search Optimization
• Social Media Marketing
• Pay-Per-Click (or PPC)

On a relative basis, the costs for reach line up something like this:

Since we assumed you know your insurance agency’s available marketing budget, you may be able to rule out an option or two at the outset.  But budget aside, each program has different lag-time to sales and each program has a different sales production curve as you move to and through program maturation.   The next illustration shows the different lag times as you move through implementation phases:

This should make your choices fairly easy.  In the short term, Local Search Optimization and Email Marketing are probably your best bet.*  If you don’t have a good email list, one that has been updated, then your option may winnow down to just Local search optimization.  But September is right around the corner and your insurance companies, if they haven’t already done so, are going to start talking to you about marketing plans and commitments for next year.  So it’s a good idea to also consider the longer term sales potential of some of these programs.  Relative to each other, that potential over time looks like this:

When you have the luxury of time, return on investment (ROI) should enter into your decision criteria.  The chart below shows ROI ranges for both social media marketing and SEO.  There is some risk associated with each tactic for multiple reasons (I may blog about that later, if someone asks me to).  But the range of risk is something like good-to-great as opposed to horrible-to-good.  Risks associated with SEO and social media marketing are something most of us can accept and still sleep at night.  PPC would appear to be another matter.   PPC can produce acceptable ROI, but because insurance keywords are so expensive, pay-per-click ROI is unacceptably low for many insurance products.

*although as your short term gets shorter your only option may be to purchase leads

I recently attended a series of insurance company events during which one of the vendor presenters repeated this statistic:   85% of insurance consumers start their research with the search engines.  That sounds plausible; the problem is, it’s not true.  A 2010 study by AIS Media found that only 32% of consumers begin their insurance quest with the search engines (not that that’s insignificant, it’s just not 85% – by any method or rounding up).  The number one place where consumers start their purchase research?  By asking family, friends and other acquaintances where they have their insurance.  As noted in Confluency’s June newsletter, this behavior is the reason referrals are the number one source of new business for most agencies at 69%.  But there’s even more.

An article posted by eMarketer today cites data from surveys performed by Knowledge Networks and MediaPost Communications who find that 37% of social media users trust what friends and family say in social media about a product or service.  That percentage is strikingly similar to the AIS Media survey results:  the percentage of consumers who begin their insurance research by checking with friends and family is 37.5%.  And there’s more.

Mobile search is on the rise, but is still less than 10% of all search (that’s projected to change rapidly in the coming two or three years); however, 40% of social media users access social media via mobile devices on a regular basis.  Think about the typical scenario…I’m out shopping, maybe for a car, and the topic of insurance comes up.  Or I’m about to close on that home or refinance and the realtor or mortgage broker brings up insurance.  Or I’m at work, grousing about that that insurance premium rate increase I got in the mail yesterday.  Who am I going to turn to?  If I’m like 37% of the population (or 37.5%) I’m going to check with my friends and family – my social network – and there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to do it on my smart phone by accessing social media.

So the question most insurance agents should be asking is this:  Will my customers’ friends and family see my agency when they engage with my customers through social media? For those agents who have established profiles on Facebook and other social media, and have been engaging their customers there, the answer is probably yes.  For the agents who have not, the answer is less clear.  But I’m willing to bet that the level of referral business will drop for agents who do not engage  in social media.

A lot of insurance agents are reticent about establishing social media profiles, let alone engaging in social media marketing.  But as the slide show below illustrates, you can suffer a social media disaster – even though you aren’t actively participating in social media.  There is some language used in the slide show that I might not normally use here, so if you are squeamish about that sort of thing, skip viewing.  But I hope you will take a look and take some of the lessons to heart.  In particular, look at the insurance promotion hoax starting on slide 29 – an update on George Orwell’s War of the Worlds…

There is a relatively new twist on squeeze pages courtesy of the evolution of Facebook as a business marketing tool.  Squeeze pages, for those of us who may not be familiar with the term, are those web pages that require you to give up your email address, and sometimes other contact information, in exchange for something of value.

Where insurance is concerned, that something of value is generally content – a ‘free’ download’ or access to something on otherwise protected web pages – white papers, top ten tips, and so forth.  I’m not a big fan of squeeze pages, though they do have their place.  But before I go into that, let me address the variation on squeeze pages, as seen on Facebook – so called, Reveal Pages.

Reveal Pages

Instead of ‘squeezing’ an email address out of you, the reveal page spin usually requires you to ‘like’ a business Facebook page before ‘revealing’ the content on the other side.  Revealed content is typically the same as found on squeeze landing pages – free PDF downloads or access to other web content.  Often, on Facebook reveal pages, the new ‘liker’ is entered into a contest of some type.  The visitor is also in more control when it comes to reveal pages, since their Facebook ‘like’ can be revoked with a one click ‘unlike’.

The Key to Making Squeeze Pages Work

The point of both squeeze and reveal pages is to capture contact information – leads, basically, with the traditional squeeze page, a new member of your social media community with reveal pages.  These approaches are used to gather names, phone numbers, and email addresses for further follow up.  Step one in the reveal page scenario is simply the requirement of a ‘like’.  But the reveal page can still require the visitor give up their contact info, just like on a traditional squeeze page, and reveal pages often do just that.  But often the quality of these leads gained through squeeze and reveal pages are poor – bogus phone numbers and special email addresses used just for squeeze pages, abound.

And in some cases, the perceived value of the ‘valuable information’ just isn’t there.  Insurance agency squeeze pages usually come in the form of the ‘seven secrets for saving money on your auto policy’ or some such.  The problem with these ploys is that the information used extract contact information is readily available other places on the web.  The majority of consumers, if  the ‘seven secrets’ are really of interest, will just ask Google to take them to some other website.

But my biggest issue with squeeze and reveal pages aren’t in the pages themselves, my biggest objection has to do with sometimes misplaced priorities.  Most agents don’t get enough visitors to their websites or fans for their Facebook pages.  Quality content is fundamental to solving both challenges, but that content has to be free if traffic is to be active.  So often, unless your insurance agency is in a position to produce a lot of quality content for the web, or have some really exclusive information, content is probably better off published on the web with free and with open access.

Putting the Role of Your Agency Information, Website, Blog, and Local Search in Perspective

A picture is worth a thousand words, as the old saying goes.  In my case, a picture is worth about 10 webinars, 2 guides, 8 blog posts, 3 newsletter articles and more emails and conversations than I could possibly recount.  For years, I have tried to impress the importance of consistency in your basic agency information across the vast internet – and it is possible, in fact very manageable, to control the appearance of your insurance agency name, address and phone number in web directories and local search engines.  Through numerous blog posts, guides and  webinars I have tried to put the relationship and synergy between local and organic search results, your insurance agency website and blog, and now social media, into a comprehensible context.

And now, courtesy of Mike Blumental’s blog on Google Maps and local search, comes this infographic.  Kaboom!  All the many years of trying to communicate how all these work is captured in one tidy graphic.  It does a nice job laying out how the various manifestations of your insurance agency’s web presence fit together and it does a nice job integrating the concepts of search and social.

You can skip on over to full post on Blumental’s blog for a full explanation of the diagram, and I recommend it, but here are a few essential points captured so cleverly in this one image:

• The rings closest to the center of the ‘web equity wheel’ are most within your control – so control them
• Make sure your business name, phone number and website domain name don’t change  – that’s at the very center
• In the second ring, keep track of user names and passwords that access your directory listings and accounts where your business information appears.  I cannot tell you how many insurance agents had a (former) employee set up their Google Places account, later to find they cannot access their information to correct or update it.
• Insurance agency owners and managers should have complete control of your website and blog, so no excuses for not getting your basic business information right here, and no excuse for not promoting the kind of information about your products and services, the way you want.
• N.A.P., as it appears in the third and fourth rings out, refers to your agency name address and phone number, which also appears in the very center of the diagram.  This information shows up again to highlight the importance of controlling this information at the headwaters – those data providers that populate (hundreds and hundreds of) directories and local search listings downstream.  Again I say, to those insurance agents who represent Progressive, take advantage of their List Agent program and will make quality controlling your N.A.P. information a *lot* easier

I’m going to stop there since there is already a thorough explanation of the diagram at Mike Blumenthal’s blog.  But you get the picture (heh, heh, no pun intended).  A few questions I’d like to leave you with:  1.  What kind of progress have you made building your agency’s web equity?  Are you stuck in the middle?  2.  If you are working on your social media presence in rings four and five (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), have you skipped over some of the details in the inner rings?

There are more than a few Facebook time lines that can be found on the web…some, highlight all the often controversial changes to Facebook’s privacy policy, others highlight the meteoric growth in popularity of the social media phenom, and several include changes to Facebook features.

More recently, in February, Facebook made major changes to page layouts including doing away with tabs, announced the wind down of FBML,  but added the ability for business pages to feature ‘likes’ and included a new ‘photostrip’ at the top of Facebook pages.

In the second half of 2010, Facebook added a Places feature, with the ability for Facebook users to check-in to a location with a mobile phone but did away with Facebook Connect.  In all, Facebook has averaged 5 – 10 significant changes per year, all of which require some thought on the part of page administrators and many of which change the way in which insurance agencies use Facebook.

click to see complete infographic

To some, the constant change and Facebook flip-flops are disconcerting.  But not to those who developed a social media marketing strategy before jumping into Facebook…or any other social media channel.  If you haven’t already created a social media strategy for your insurance agency, here are some considerations to help you along that path and minimize the angst of the constant Facebook changes:

1.  Who do you want to reach through social media?

• customers
• potential business customers
• potential personal insurance customers
• age groups, sex, other demographic criteria

2.  What social media do your targets use?

3.  How will your use of social media integrate with your insurance agency website and other marketing and communication initiatives?

4.  Who will be responsible for updating your social media channels and how much time and expertise do they have?

5.  What objectives will you set for social media marketing success and how will you measure those objectives?

Are you thinking about hiring a full time blogger and social media marketer?  According to Socialcast, the median salary for a Social Media Manager is $45,501.  Toss another 20% on top of that for benefits and other head count related costs and the cost of a full time social media manager could be over $54,000 a year.  For most insurance agencies, that means another 200 policies a year have to be written each year just to recover these new costs.  That’s real money and real production.

Facebook and other social media, as I’ve said here before, aren’t sales mediums – they are branding channels.  But an an ongoing expense like a Social Media Manager requires some justification – especially if new personnel costs are layered on top of additional new costs.  Before you foray out beyond dabbling in social media commitment, a strategy and cost justification and ROI method should be put in place.

Source:  Social Cast

Take a look at the chart above and notice that 77% of Social Media Managers have four years or less experience (and probably no experience as an insurance agent).  That means that you may not be able to rely on your new hire to come up with a compelling case for social media return on investment.  Social media campaigning for restaurants, entertainment-based business, and consumer products is not the same thing as social media marketing for insurance.  The principles are the same, but the positive emotional attachment to insurance products and services are different, requiring a different approach and justification for insurance agents who are ready to dip more than a toe in the social media waters.

None of this is to say that insurance agents should eschew social media, only that a well thought through strategy and a way to tie social media success measures (number of fans, e.g.) to increased net revenue needs to be the first step.

Insurance agents, and businesses in general, sometimes have a hard time getting their heads around ROI (return on investment).  Confluency Solutions measures what I would call direct website ROI:  calls, and online requests for insurance quotes; conversions to policies and average commission.  And the ROI numbers are good.  Annual reviews identify areas where insurance agency website ROI can be increased.  These generally fall into three categories:

1.  More website traffic;

2. Higher levels of traffic conversions (% asking for quotes and better quality prospects);

3. Support for other agency marketing and customer development initiatives. The reason many of us have a hard time getting our heads around ROI is that most of these measures (like website traffic, e.g.) don’t have a place in ROI calculations.

Social media, like Facebook and Twitter, are even murkier.  Where do increased numbers of Facebook fans or Twitter followers enter the P and L statement?  The short answer is that they don’t.  However, social media and website activity does contribute to ROI – the measures mentioned in the preceding sentences would fall into the category of ‘transactional precursors’ or what we sometimes call leading edge indicators.  Put another way, if your website visits increase, at some point you should expect a net increase in quote requests, insurance policies written and new sales commission.  Ditto for Facebook fans and so on.

If you are interested in quantifying your insurance agency website and social media activities in a hard-nosed, bottom line way, then take a look at the excellent slide set on the topic from Oliver Blanchard.  Not only does it contain good information, but it’s pretty darn entertaining as well:

God reached his hand down from the sky
God asked Noah if he wanted to die
He said no sir, oh no sir
God said, here’s your future: it’s gonna rain

—Here’s Your Future – The Thermals

Just a few years ago, the very future of internet music phenom Pandora hung in the balance as the RIAA tried to impose it’s legacy cost structure on this legitimate music delivery service, and by extension, every other streaming service. Today, Pandora thrives and legacy music delivery systems, like CD’s and radio are losing listeners.

According to a recent study from Edison Research, listening to the radio longer predominates as a morning activity for 12 – 24 year olds, dropping from 74% ten years ago to 41% today.  In the same time frame, 12 -24 year olds have chosen to purchase 62% fewer CDs.  This age group spends an average of 3 hours a day on the internet, and when it comes to acquiring tunes for their music libraries, they cite illegal downloads or transfers as the 2nd and 3rd most popular means of augmenting music collections.  Between the lines:  we don’t care how you manufacturers and distributors want to supply music, we want it the way we want it, ‘legal’ or not.

To fall back on another popular music reference, the video documentary chronicling former Clash front man Joe Strummer’s Clash history is titled The Future is Unwritten.  That’s not exactly right.  The stats mentioned here lead to some very obvious conclusions.  Here’s your future.

Insurance agents don’t need to drag their collective feet on the way to a prosperous future.  61% of all Americans use Facebook, more than half do so at least twice a day.  And that 12 – 24 age group – your future insurance consumers – they don’t read the papers (only 4% read a paper almost everyday).  You know where your future is, and if you want to do business in the future, you know where your agency needs to be.

Clock radio photo under Creative Commons license http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexkerhead/