3 tips to increase agency efficiency with digital marketing

Building a presence online with digital marketing can put your insurance agency directly in front of potential customers. It can help you boost credibility and loyalty, enabling customers to readily think about your agency when they find themselves needing insurance. In this article, you will see how digital marketing really is not difficult when you focus on these three areas.

#1 – Create a Local Presence

Local citations:

One of the easiest ways to get in front of your audience is by creating a listing on Google My Business and Bing Places. They both quickly display the essential information about your agency to potential customers with a simple search. This necessary information helps you to get the point across in search on a listing that pops up, front and center, when searching for local insurance companies.

When creating a listing, you want it to stand out by adding photos and updates. So, make sure to give your profile a nice look, while displaying some personality with your cover photo. Local listings are free, and they help people find businesses in their area. They are like modern-day yellow pages. Therefore, taking the time to create a nice listing will be worth the return on investment.

Local search ads:

Local search ads are another great way to create a presence online. Start by researching keywords that relate to your services. Then, group them by topic and search intent. Think about the reason behind the person’s search when they enter that keyword into a search engine. Every ad group should include highly focused terms, so your ad copy is relative, thereby increasing the probability for high performance.

Also, to make sure you are being wise with your ad spend, bid on long-tail keywords that are questions or focus on pain points. Insurance-related keywords can have ridiculously high cost-per-clicks, so these long-tail keywords will help you to keep the campaign’s cost down.

Make sure location targeting is on for the campaign. Geo-targeting can prevent you from paying for clicks outside of your service area. By narrowing the radius, your campaign will be more focused, ensuring the right people see your ad.

#2 – Audit Your Website

A regular audit of your website can keep your insurance agency seen on the world-wide web. But rather than getting into anything too technical, look at your entire website as someone who does not know anything about you.

The functionality is what your website can do and how it works for your audience. It is a crucial part of digital marketing since this is where your local listings and search ads will be driving traffic.  Here are some questions to ask yourself when auditing your website:

• Does my website meet my agency’s primary purpose and goals?

Any features that are needed to support you meeting a goal should be made a priority when conducting changes on your website.

• Does my website meet my audience’s needs?

Look at what you know about your audience and how that translates into what it means for creating a functional website. One that will provide answers to questions. Those very same questions you were bidding on in Google Adwords.

• What is my budget for ongoing website maintenance and changes?

You want to be aware of any budget restrictions. Your marketing budget needs to not only build an engaging website, but it also needs to support your other initiatives. A good website alone will not get you the return you need since things like search engine optimization can take time to see a return.

• Do I have the content needed for my audience to decide?

People prefer to find answers to their questions through blog posts or articles. Make sure you include content on your website that will help educate them.

• Do I have the ability to capture a website visitor’s information?

Once a person lands on your website, you want to make sure that you are capturing their information so you can nurture that relationship with other marketing initiatives. Therefore, make sure the forms on your website are working properly, include consent to be contacted and that you are being notified when a new person completes it.

#3 – Develop a Framework for Lead Generation

Customer profiles:

Creating audience personas can help you to develop true profiles for connecting with your current and potential customers. Digital tools make it easier for you to learn more about your target audience’s needs, habits and preferences.

Tools like AnswerThePublic and Google Trends help you to learn the questions and keywords people are using in search. Also, review the tools you use on your website to see what types of content get the most traffic. Social media will even tell you what types of posts get the most shares and likes.

Automated emails:

Once you develop customer profiles, create lists within your email software around these profiles. This will help you to create email content that is relative to the reader. There are many tools with automated email follow up, such as HubSpot. You can automate your processes for contact to happen when needed. Every workflow has a trigger, which can be an action in an email or on a website.

Thank you emails:

By incorporating personalization into your email, you can create a thank you email that will have your customer feeling special. Building relationships with marketing tactics is just like building relationships in real life. They require personalized attention.

If you do not include thank you emails within your workflows, you put the relationship at risk. And every insurance agency knows the value of risk management. Therefore, thank you emails can help you to establish trust and build brand credibility.

If you are in the insurance industry and are intimidated by digital marketing, have no fear. These three areas will help you to stay on top of it while gaining a solid presence online.