Promote Your Insurance Agency Website

First off, I’d like to thank the insurance agents and everyone else who have emailed me with questions and comments. I’m trying to get back to everyone individually. You can also post comments here on the blog.

I’m sure by now you have noticed a theme with the blog. I have heavily talked about the importance of local search engines. Today’s post is a real life example of what could happen to your local listing if you don’t take action.  (I’m not trying to scare you, but this example could just as easily happen to you)

This morning I had my every two year CPR renewal class. In true form I logged onto Google Maps typed in the company name where I was taking my class so I knew where I where to go.

I was able to locate the name of the company by searching for “First Line First Aid, Spokane Valley” I found the local listing for First Line First Aid however, there was a problem, the map had the listing not only in the wrong place but in a different city 35 miles away from where I was suppose to go…

Fortunately I was able to notice that the map location was incorrect before I left the house. This made me think about a couple things. Google has added a new feature where users can “correct” the pin placement on the map. Was this a mistake or a case of a less than ethical competitor moving the location on the map?

How can you prevent this from happening to your local listing on Google?

First off, claim your business with Google so nobody can modify it.

Secondly, double check the location of you agency on all major search engines that have maps.

Google Maps

Mapquest

Yahoo Maps

MSN Live

I went back and corrected the listing so the pin is in the correct location. I took a screenshot of the misplacement on the map:

Click on image to enlarge

Last week I talked about the importance of customer reviews on major search engines. This week I will be talking about ways you can increase the amount of positive feedback your insurance agency has online. Everyday your agency is receiving phone calls, emails, walk-ins ranging from quote requests, change requests, typical insurance questions and more. These are all opportunities to write a policy, up sell a policy or just maintain good relations with your clients. When a customer gives your agency or staff a complement, ask them if they mind posting a comment about your agency on one of the search engines. Generally most of the customers will either have an MSN, Yahoo or Google account already so adding a comment should be very simple for them.

Don’t expect them to do too much work…

Have a template email ready to send them. In your email thank them for their complement and include links to where they can write a review about your agency.

Sample Email: (Feel free to copy or modify this email for your own use)

Dear Joe Smith,

Thank you very much for your kind words earlier today. We greatly appreciate it and strive to do our best to satisfy our clients. If you don’t mind can you please post a comment about us on one of the major search engines; Google, Yahoo or MSN? Doing so will only talk a few moments and will greatly help us out.

You can access any our online listings by using the links below.

Google (Insert link to your local listing on Google here)

Yahoo (Insert link to your local listing on Yahoo here)

MSN (Insert link to your local listing on MSN here)

Once again, thank you very much. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Your agency name,
Your agency website address
Your email.

Once you have that email template ready to use forward it to your staff and inform them about the benefit of sending the email to your customers. Some agencies will even have contests for the person who gets the most reviews posted. A $20 Starbucks gift card can be very persuasive…

Now that you have the template email ready, send the email to your friends and family and have your staff do the same. This is a very good way to kick start your local listings reviews.

Everyone knows how beneficial word of mouth advertising can be for your insurance agency. It is no surprise that potential customers will go to Google or another search engine and research a company or a product before making a buying decision. What is the best way to take advantage of customer reviews? Some agencies have a testimonial page on their website. Having a testimonials page on your site is a good practice and the amount of effort required to add the testimonials is very little. I talked a few weeks ago about claiming your business with Google. If you have not done this; stop reading this post and claim your business. 

Google, Yahoo and MSN Live all have local search functionality. All of them also have an area where they allow users to write reviews about a company. Customer reviews can easily put your insurance agency website above the competition all of which can be done easily and for free. In my example to day, I’m going to use one of my favorite pizza restaurants; David’s Pizza located in Spokane Washington. 

David’s has customer reviews on all three major search engines:  

Google: 

Yahoo: 

MSN Live: 

(Click on any of the images above to view the actual listing) 

What does a pizza restaurant have to do with insurance? Search engines don’t care if you are a pizza restaurant or an insurance agency. They all have a local search area for local businesses within these listings there is an area where business owners can upload photos, post hours and update contact information. The more information Google has about your insurance agency the better. 

User reviews work the same way. If you have 10 of your best customers, friends and family write positive reviews about your agency on the three major search engines your insurance agency website value and position will increase. 

Try to think like a search engine. 

Your local listing has ten reviews and your competitor across the street has zero reviews who do you think the search engines will give more credit to? When a customer writes a review Google knows who they are (You are required to login first) they also know other reviews they have made and can score each user’s reviews based off of the quality of reviews they have made. The more reviews the better. 

What about bad reviews? 

Don’t think it has happened before. Upset customers, someone accidentally selecting one star instead of five stars, competitors giving bad reviews to make their own company look better… Since you have already followed my instructions for claiming your business on Google, Yahoo & MSN Live; you also have the ability to agree, disagree or mitigate your comments.

I cannot stress enough how beneficial this can be for promoting your insurance agency website. 

Next week: How to get more reviews about your agency website. 

All of this talk about search engines started making me think about search functionality inside of agency websites. How useful are they? Come to find out they are VERY USEFUL. I did a survey on insurance agency websites and a couple other non insurance sites and found that 30% of users went straight for the search box vs. trying to navigate for what they trying to find.

Some of the top searches included “Auto Quote”, “Business Insurance” & “Homeowners”

You could spend a lifetime analyzing search traffic only to find out that you pulled out all of your hair before you learned something worthwhile.

Interestingly, users who searched for “Homeowners” were not always looking for homeowners quotes. Many of the users were looking for homeowner FAQs such as “Do I have enough coverage for my possessions (Coverage C)”

Example Search for Homeowners:

http://demo.cfluent.com/search.php?search=homeowners

This goes to show that insurance agency websites need to be more than just quote forms. They need to have information for the user.

Building a search engine for a website is not easy. There are however, a couple free search engine APIs that you can install on your website that will work. The disadvantage of these free search engine APIs is they usually come with some type of advertising. (Hey there isn’t such a thing as a free lunch, right?)

Google’s Search API: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

Yahoo’s Site Search (Requires your site to be hosted through Yahoo)
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/webhosting/addons/psearch/psearch-02.html

Ask.com Search API: http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/add_search_to_site.shtml

A recent newsletter put out by Confluency Solutions recommends adding a separate phone number to your website. Allowing you to track how many people go to your insurance agency website looking for your phone number. This is something that the phone book companies have been doing for years but the price is a lot cheaper if you do it yourself.

Google Grand Central – calls can be automatically rolled to any number (like your normal agency phone line). The service is free, but is not widely available. grandcentral.com

Vonage - Small Biz Basic from Vonage at $40/month (1500 minutes, $0.039 per min after), – You can also get area codes and exchanges for ads you might be running in different market areas. vonage.com

Skype - This service has been around as a computer-to-computer (Skype user) type of VOIP for a long time. More recently Skype added the ability to call land lines and cell phones, and to register a traditional phone number to your Sype account so you can receive calls from land lines and cells. The cost of a traditional phone number is $60 a year; calls can be automatically be forwarded to your regular phone line at the rate of $0.021 per minute. skype.com

There are some advantages to adding a separate phone number to your site however; you will want to be careful not to confuse customers who have been calling the same phone number for years.

You might be tempted to just use a separate phone number on your regular home page, but be careful. Customers will be used to seeing your phone number in other places, and your agency may have had the same phone number for years. Broadly displaying a different phone number on your website will confuse some customers, especially since a large number of your customers will look up your website just to get or verify your phone number before calling.

Quotes source