We’ve been so busy helping clients update their websites, that the time had come to update our own. StartUpSelling has multiple divisions, and we’re pleased to announce that all of our websites are now updated, and invite you to visit them:
StartUpSelling – Insurance Agency Marketing
StartMarketingTech – Web Marketing for Technology Companies
Juris Marketing – Law Firm Marketing, Web Marketing for Lawyers
Our most popular YouTube agency marketing videos are listed below. Our digital marketing agency provides content in a wide variety of mediums to optimize our web marketing reach. We offer video content on both our website and YouTube, leveraging different types of video including: Recorded Skype Interviews, Voice Over PowerPoint and Traditional Videography (on site video with editing).
** Web Marketing for Insurance Agencies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LgnPWU-4sc
** Insurance Agency Websites Best Practices
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxMExKFJii4&feature=plcp
** 2 Minute Sales Pro: The Elevator Pitch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dULKXgek3jk&feature=plcp
For Web Marketing best practices go to StartUpSelling for Insurance Agency Marketing or JurisMarketing for Law Firm Web Marketing.
From time to time, clients ask me about marketing agencies or web development firms that offer extremely low rates for website development. For example, their claim might be: Unlimited pages, not a template site, only $99 a year!
Two things come to mind when I hear this. First, assuming the client doesn’t have to do all the work themselves, how much time can be allocated to help them with their website? If there is a phone call to review goals, target market and basic website needs that lasts about an hour, then a few modest hours for selecting images, colors, esthetics, adding and laying out content and integrating a logo, let’s say that adds up to 10 hours of time (that doesn’t include testing, billing, collection and hosting). Does that mean this company is paying their people $10 per hour, or less, since the company needs to make at least a modest profit.
The second thing that comes to mind, is that ten hours is, or at least should be, insufficient for the creation of a professional business website. Call to actions, integrated blogs and blog feeds, industry news feeds, search engine optimization, keyword density, pull quotes, font selection, header tag selection, sharing “chiclets”, social media marketing integration, custom images and branding should be both utilized and optimized for a professional website, whether your business is an insurance agency, broker, law firm, consulting organization of high tech firm. And lastly there is coding, preferably using PHP/WordPress to ensure optimum compatibility and flexibility. So how can you do all this for $99 (or even $1,000)? It would seem that answer is clear, either very little time is invested – or really low wages are paid (or some combination of both). You don’t need to be a math major to figure out that equation.
For Web Marketing best practices go to StartUpSelling for Insurance Agency Marketing or JurisMarketing for Law Firm Web Marketing.
Web marketing effectiveness can be measured in many ways, from pipeline building, to new business, to leads or general website activity. In some cases, the latter can greatly impact the former, or conversely it can be the byproduct of an effective web marketing plan. In a recent SEO and Social Media Marketing report for one of our insurance agency clients, we noticed a substantial insurance website traffic increase of 62% year over year for the most recent quarter.
This is not to say that the primary goal was to generate more unique visitors, rather that increased traffic was correlated to a well orchestrated digital marketing strategy. Effective web marketing for insurance agencies (or law firms or any professional services firm) begins with a clear and comprehensive strategic web marketing plan. This web marketing plan often includes digital marketing such as eMarketing, Web Seminar Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, blogging, vlogging, video and ePublishing. The end result of these activities translate into improved website visibility, website traffic and more inbound leads.
Another interesting note from this recent Insurance Agency SEO and Social Media Marketing Report showed LinkedIn rising to the top of this agency’s Google Analytics report as a leading referral traffic source. Correctly utilizing LinkedIn for B2B Social Media Marketing can yield significant dividends. How does this East Coast Agency handle the demands for Insurance Agency SEO, Insurance Agency Blogging, ePublishing, Newsletter Distribution, eMarketing, Webinars, Website Video, LinkedIn Profile Optimization and Google Analytics Reporting? Simple – they outsource it to the StartUpSelling Web Marketing Team.
Trucking Insurance Agents need to Sell More & Work Less
Perhaps you own a trucking insurance agency and want to increase your activity. Your close ratio might be good but you don’t have sufficient prospects. Using a baseball analogy, your trucking insurance agency has a Ted Williams batting average but your only playing as a pinch hitter so you don’t have sufficient at bats to build your book of business.
There are two quick fixes for this.
* Refine your Target Profile and Buyer Persona and assemble a quality prospect list
* Outsource a marketing/telemarketing campaign that will yield 20 to 40 “At Bats” per month
A Buyer Persona is a one or two paragraph written description of your ideal buyers. For example: Mike Jones is a CFO with a trucking company between $5 million and $50 million in revenues. He’s held this position at least three years and seeks an insurance agency that understands transportation insurance and offers both coverages and expert guidance. He does not make quick decisions, but is willing to try a new agency if they offer deep expertise and competitive pricing. He can make the decision to purchase, but may seek to validate it with other team members. Once he decides, however, the sale is very likely to move forward.
Telemarketing (Appointment Setting), which can be challenging for general agencies, is effective for vertical agencies like trucking insurance agencies, assuming they have a good list (this can be outsourced) and a good telemarketer (this should be outsourced). We average 5 to 10 appointments per week in the 1 to 20 Power Unit profile, plenty of “At Bats”, so your don’t have to be Ted Williams to build your book of business.
A Simple & Easy Way to Track Prospects
The Prospect Scorecard provides a simple and easy system to qualify, track and rank their best prospects. Salespeople or any business person trying to close business, often refer to prospects in vague terms such as: new, warm, hot, cold, likely, qualified, etc. These terms do little to better understand a sales pipeline or convey likelihood of purchase to other members of the team. The Prospect Scorecard resolves this issue, simply, quickly and easily. How do you use the Prospect Scorecard iPhone App?
On your iPhone or iPod Touch, create a list of the ideal attributes for your top prospects. This might include business type, revenues, location, employees, type of workforce, etc. These attributes are called your Prospect Score.
Prospects: On your smart phone or iPod Touch, create a list of the ideal attributes for your top prospects. This might include business type, revenues, location, employees, type of workforce, etc. These attributes are called your Prospect Score.
Demographic Information: Click on the + button and add the demographic information about each of your best prospects.
Prospect Scores: Click on the Scores button to check off each attribute to determine if your prospect is an in profile prospect. For example, if you have 10 attributes and your Prospect Score is an 9, you have an excellent, in profile prospect. The attributes can be edited and customized for your business.
Quality Score: The Quality Score is an acronym you can create for your business to better qualify if your prospect is likely to buy. Let’s say your acronym is BUD which stands for Budget, Urgency and Decision Maker. If you have all three of these criteria, you have a high quality prospect. If the prospect has a high Prospect Score and a high Quality Score, you have an in profile prospect which is very likely to buy.
The App makes it easy to retrieve, sort, add, delete and rank your prospects, changing the way you manage and quantify your pipeline. For more information on the Prospect Scorecard go to Prospect Scorecard for iPhone. For information on web selling tips, go to Sell More & Work Less. For Web Marketing best practices go to StartUpSelling for Insurance Agency Marketing or JurisMarketing for Law Firm Web Marketing.
IRS Goes Virtual - Your Virtual Success
Even the IRS, a bastion of bureaucracy, has realized the future needs to be virtual as they test video-conferencing for tax audits. This seems like a very logical and more efficient method for the IRS and reminds me of a discussion I had recently with a CPA. He had expressed surprise that an IRS auditor drove an hour to visit him, to ask a few simple questions about one of his clients. These questions were readily addressed in 5 minutes (literally), and the tax man then got back in his car, and drove an hour back to his office. Had this been a web meeting or two-way video conferencing call, the tax man would have saved 2 hours and plenty of gas.
As reported by Blake Ellis on CNNMoney.com today, “In what could be an indication of things to come, the IRS launched a pilot program at the end of last year that allows taxpayers to use two-way video conferencing for assistance with tax questions and problems. The Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent watchdog arm of the IRS, is already calling for the agency to expand to virtual audits. The IRS says it needs to evaluate the success of the pilot program before making a decision. The pilot program is currently being tested in 12 locations, where taxpayers needing assistance can log into a computer enabled with video-conferencing.”
So, if your business has yet to embrace web meetings, video conferencing and webinars over seminars, you may be in danger of falling behind a true laggard, US Government Bureaucracy! When I speak with businesses who still embrace the old cold calling, canvassing, car driving, traffic jam methods of selling, I try to convey the importance of virtual business, but now I have the added ammunition that even the IRS is working on this approach. Good for them – and good for your business too.
For more information on Web Marketing go to StartUpSelling for Insurance Agency Marketing or JurisMarketing for Law Firm Web Marketing. For more information on web selling tips, go to Sell More & Work Less.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/05/pf/taxes/virtual-tax-audits/index.htm?source=yahoo_hosted
Insurance Search Engine Marketing is also known by other names including Insurance SEM, Insurance Search Engine Optimization and Insurance SEO. These terms all translate to the same basic concept, optimizing your Insurance Website for improve Search Engine Page rankings (Search Engine Results Page or SERPs). The goal for insurance organizations, bet they insurance carriers, brokers or insurance agencies, is to achieve organic Google page one r
Insurance Search Engine Marketing
esults, preferably page one, position one. I’m using Google in this case generically, as the same goal is true for Bing and Yahoo. The basics for Insurance Search Engine Marketing are noted below, that said, Insurance Search Engine Marketing is a highly complex initiative, and requires ongoing efforts for both on-page and off-page marketing tactics.
Make sure you do the following on-page basics:
Make sure you Do Not do any of these SEO tactics, often referred to as Black Hat Insurance SEO tactics:
It’s essential that insurance carriers, brokers and insurance agencies perform baseline and ongoing keyword analytics. This can be accomplished with free tools such as Google AdWords or more sophisticated keyword analytics tools such as HubSpot. It is only after this analysis has been completed that the five basic steps above can be implemented. Once the basics have been completed, off-page Insurance Search Engine Marketing initiatives come into play including ePublishing, YouTube Video, LinkedIn, Facebook, Bookmarking and other Insurance Social Media Marketing programs. Insurance SEO results should be consistently monitored and measured, preferably every week, but at least once a month. Adjustments should be made periodically based upon your progress.
For more information on Insurance Search Engine Marketing go to StartUpSelling or JurisMarketing for Law Firm Web Marketing.
Real-World Scenario (Excerpt from Sell More & Work Less)
About ten years ago, I helped a company develop their virtual sales and marketing strategy. Its solution, let’s describe it as a client behavioral research solution, was new to the market and required an evangelical sale. The businesses targeted for this new solution had to be convinced to take a leap of faith and try a new method to analyze their customer behavior. In addition, this method was a completely Web-based, SaaS solution. Evangelical sales are common with technology companies seeking to sell a breakthrough product (e.g., eMarketing solutions, MP3 downloads, cloud computing, electronic reading devices, and even DVRs). The first step in the process was to identify the target market and build a suspect list, just as I mentioned above. The CEO had an insurance background and landed a few insurance company clients. We decided this would be the first niche market to target. How did we build a comprehensive virtual suspect list? We utilized several top 100 industry lists and imported them into a simple Microsoft database. We searched for on-line insurance company listings and added them to our virtual suspect list. Then, we called every one of these insurance organizations (there were about 300 initially targeted). These targeted cold calls resulted in up-to-date contact information, key executives, titles, direct phone numbers, and emails. These were often gathered by offering the suspects an opportunity to attend an informational Web seminar. Within a few short months, the database was quite comprehensive, and the suspect list began to yield a compelling prospect list. Utilizing my Prospect Scorecard system and qualifying acronym, we were able to identify possible buyers, convince these buyers to review the solution in a Web seminar or one-to-one web meeting, and then move them to the qualification phase. Out of the 300 initial suspects targeted, we were able to convince over 150 to review the solution in our first year of sales efforts, and about 20 percent of them purchased within that same year. An impressive result for a self-funded, emerging operation selling 99 percent virtually, without travel or face-to-face meetings and the costs and inefficiencies associated with that model. Today, many years after we helped this client create a target suspect list, they continue to dominate their niche.
For more information on web marketing go to StartMarketingTech, StartUpSelling or JurisMarketing.
eTail vs Retail
Two interesting, albeit expected news reports came across my browser today. The first was about Cloud Computing, with a recent Microsoft study showing a significant increased in paid cloud computing services expected for small and midsize businesses over the next five years. As reported on PR NewsWire, “The research conducted by Edge Strategies includes survey responses from IT decision-makers or influencers at more than 3,000 SMBs in 13 countries.” We’re talking about doubling and tripling of paid cloud services here, an obvious trend even for those who are still unsure about the cloud.
In a somewhat related matter Best Buy announced it will close 50 big-box stores and cut 400 jobs in corporate and support areas. Best Buy will continue to roll out smaller, Best Buy Mobile stores. Best Buy big box stores have been hit hard by the likes of Amazon, with shoppers researching products in their stores, then buying elsewhere based on price and availability. I blogged about this on June 9, 2010 (BestBuy vs Amazon) when I tried to buy an new stereo receiver but was unable to purchase a model with the features needed at Best Buy, ultimately buying it from Amazon.
The casualty list of retailers is getting longer with the likes of Circuity City, Computer City, Linens ‘n Things’ and Borders, and recent challenges for department stores including Sears (A Company Problem or Industry Issue). Best Buy is working hard to reinvent themselves, something that malls and shopping centers may need to work on simultaneously with growing eTail trends and continued challenges for many retailers. No wonder there are so many shoe and sneaker retailers in the malls these days – one size does not fit all in that business. We’ll have to see if Amazon and other eTailers can fill those shoes when it comes to online sales.
For more information on web marketing go to StartMarketingTech, StartUpSelling or JurisMarketing.
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