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.

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I picked up a new guide to writing web page sales copy about a month ago, and finally, due to a power outage the other day*, I had time to really think about it.  One common ‘hook’ in sales copy – the thing that grabs your attention sufficiently that you scan a little further – is the problem-solution formula.    That’s the most pervasive one, both on and off the web, in insurance sales copy:  ‘Your insurance costs too much and we can save you money.”  It is a hook that works, of course, or else GEICO wouldn’t continue to beat it to death.  I think that is also the easiest one for an insurance agent to latch on to, even though it leaves some of us with the queasy feeling that we are demagoging and commoditizing a service that shouldn’t be a commodity at all.

There is another variation on the problem-solutions recipe that shows up in insurance sales messages.  I’m going to call that the Allstate angle after their recent TV advertising campaign:  “If you don’t have the right insurance, you could find yourself leaving a courtroom bare-chested, the shirt having just been sued off your back.  We won’t let that happen.”  That’s a message that seems to work for Allstate, and many independent agents have adopted that same sales hook.

But as I read the copywriting guide, I was struck  by the effectiveness of using scarcity as the sales hook – you know, “this offer expires at midnight tonight”, or “we only have five widgets left” (a la QVC).  The scarcity message is problematic on a web page – “Look! I just refreshed the page after 2 hours, and there are still ‘only 5 widgets left!”  It also requires a little more thought in an insurance context; I mean, is there a limit to the number of insurance policies that can be printed?

But scarcity does fortuitously present itself from time-to-time.  A recent example here in Florida followed in the wake of State Farm’s announcement to pull out of the homeowner market.  A few of Confluency’s insurance agency customers seized that occasion to let customers and prospects know that their agencies had a number of financially solid markets that could accept State Farm homeowner customers at competitive rates.  They also warned (accurately and honestly), that due to market volatility, they might not have the capacity to place homeowner policies indefinitely.  The message:  procrastinate and increase your risk of not finding quality coverage at competitive rates.  And it worked.  All three agencies that I know of that used this approach more than doubled their new customers over about a two month period.  And then the tumult sibsided, scarcity moved off stage, and new business reverted to normal levels.  But what if your agency could manufacture scarcity and make a compelling case to a prospect for why they should act now?  I think it can be done, and I think it will improve agency bottom line results.  But first, some more background.

Doctors and dentists use a scarcity sales hook when they say they are not taking new patients or they are accepting only referrals (and some agencies work on a referral only basis).  These health care providers may not think about positioning their exclusivity as a sales hook.  A doctor may have a patient maximum imposed by their malpractice insurer.  Or a dentist may simply want to preserve free time and quality of life instead of piling in even more income.  But most always, professional service providers recognize the reality imposed  by time constraints and the necessary trade off:  if I take new patients, I’ll have less time to spend with my existing patients.  Insurance agents face the same trade off.

Suppose your agency were to set a monthly new business quota and then let potential customers know that if they wait too long into the month, they may not be able to become a customer.  OK, I get it.  Who among us is going to say no to a new customer.  But hear me out.  And by the way, this is something we wrestle with at Confluency Solutions; I firmly believe that within the next 6 – 12 months we will limit the number of new customers we take on for the very reasons I am about to explain.

The fact is, new customers cost money; we all know that.  For every quote that converts, somebody had to produce quotes for 3, 4, or 5 prospects that didn’t convert.  And  every quote opportunity was earned through multiple phone calls, emails, and other lead nurturing activities.  All that takes time.  How much?  Four hours per each new customer?  Five?  I don’t know, and it will vary from agency to agency.  The point is, every minute spent acquiring new customers could be spent nurturing incumbent clients.  There are things you do for your customers (or would like to do, if you had the time):  personal annual reviews, claims monitoring, educational safety or risk management seminars, etc.  And we all know that multiple, high-touch, value-added customer contacts result in better retention, more policies per account, and more referrals.**  In short, spending more time with your customers means more income.

All agencies need new customer growth and I’m not arguing against that.  But every agency eventually bumps up against a dilemma, wittingly or otherwise.  That dilemma is encapsulated in this question:  Is my insurance agency producing income from new customers at the expense of income (and better profit) we could produce by developing current customers?  To answer that question, you need to have specific customer development activities and results you can measure.  Maybe your agency does, maybe not.  But for the sake of illustration,  and my only hope of wrapping up this post, I’m going to assume a hypothetical agency does have a customer development program in place and can measure the results.

This hypothetical agency has determined the optimal number of new customers is 20 a month.  Further, the agency recognizes that half those new customers come from referrals.  So the agency decides to set a quota of 10 new customers a month, aside from referrals.  Then they craft a sales hook for their website sales pages and other sales collateral that goes like this:

We want to make sure you are never on your own when you have an insurance claim; our agency wants to be available to answer every question you have, in as much depth as you want; we want to recognize when a change in your lifestyle or business situation requires different insurance.  Because of that, we may not be able to accept you as a customer.  We have to protect the time we need to provide for all our customers’ needs, so we can only accept 10 new customers a month, exclusive of customer referrals.  We hope you understand.  And we hope you contact us as soon as possible, because we really would like to have you as a customer.

Think about the implications of a sales hook like that.  It creates a sense of urgency.  It articulates a value (actually value-added) proposition instead of just doling out the usual ‘we’re all about service’ platitudes.  It communicates to agency staff the commitment behind the kind of service you expect them to provide customers.  It also probably boosts office morale because the sales hook implies that you care about stress and overtime – you want to manage and protect staff time and sanity.

So there it is, scarcity vs. ‘you could save 15% or more’.  The anti-GEICO.  The question is, would you ever seriously consider implementing an approach like this in your agency.  I’d love to know.

*In his book, The Age of Unreason, Charles Handy wrote about the benefits of unstructured time – protecting time for creative development and ideas; in particular he made not of several top performing companies that allow employees 15% of paid time for tinkering on their own projects.  I must confess, that except for sitting around in the dark without electricity for several hours, I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed any unstructured time.

**Of course, not all customer contacts need to consume a lot of time or cost money.  For a short video discussion about how to use a gift card program to improve agency results, check out Agency Resources website.