Ensuring Your Paid Search Campaign Generates Leads

In this ever-competitive insurance industry how is an agency really supposed to get noticed? What key ingredients are needed to execute the best insurance marketing strategy? Do pay-per-click ads actually work?

Astonish Results co-founder and President, Tim Sawyer, recently had the opportunity to join former National Underwriter Editor in Chief Sam Friedman along with agency owners Will Penny, Rex Caton and Nathan Dagley to discuss what it takes to develop a successful paid search approach and strategy.

Sawyer opened the discussion with a striking realization regarding the success of paid search optimization, “99.0% of the time it doesn’t work, and the people that believe that are in no danger of it ever working—belief is the key,” Sawyer said openly.

Will Penny of Penny Insurance in North Carolina couldn’t agree more with the Astonish President.

When Sawyer asked how he felt about paid search Penny explained why the tactic works for his agency, “You got to believe in it, you got to have a process to make it work; you can’t just put stuff out there on the web and expect people to react to it, find you, call you up and beg to buy insurance from you,” stated the agency owner. “We have a very specific process. When somebody clicks on us and that lead comes in our agents react to it instantly”.

Both Sawyer and Penny agree that both speed and mobility are key: the ability to stretch across a community and service the business effectively allows for independent agencies, such as Penny Insurance, to bring a local experience to a much broader geographical base.

Another concept that Sawyer brought up is one that may seem foreign to most—marketing outside one’s market.

Nathan Dagley of Dagley Insurance and Financial Services has developed a strategy that does just that. Marketing insurance in Houston, Dallas and Colorado may seem like a challenge to many, but Dagley and his agency are using paid search to their advantage. “It all comes down to processes,” the Texas-agency owners said. “And timeliness; when somebody calls in we have to be on that phone call immediately. Not only that we have to have scripts that we set aside for people to follow to make sure that there is consistency in that pattern—when you follow a great sales process it ends up getting great results”.

Rex Caton of Caton-Hosey Insurance agrees with the benefit that paid search brings to independent agencies, and explained how he justified the cost. “Think about this for a second, we have seeking insurance for themselves and asking you for it through pay-per-click”. Caton then followed up quite simply with a realization that was sure to hit home, “If you’re spending $5, $ 10, $15 per click, would you spend that if you knew you were going to close and close the right way? Of course you would”.

All in all it’s safe to say that paid search optimization is a powerful, successful tool when utilized in the right way. As Sawyer and Astonish Results are often recognized for saying, it’s all about having the right people and processes; both which are key ingredients for effective paid search campaigns.