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.
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.
StartUpSelling is providing a 20 minute educational webinar on how to better use LinkedIn as an executive tool. Whether you’re a Top 100 Insurance Agency, a growing Law Firm, a B2B Tech Firm or a prominent Professional Services Organization, you will find this webinar useful. With a growing base of 150 million business oriented members, LinkedIn is becoming a must have for almost any business executive. From personal profile to group creation and participation, to apps and blog integration, LinkedIn offers executives an important tool for networking, learning, participating and prospecting.
In this webinar, Social Media Experts will review the critical elements to effectively leveraging LinkedIn. This powerful network will help you improve your web presence, find prospects and retain clients. Many Top 100 Agency Executives have yet to use LinkedIn to its full potential. Topics include:
* LinkedIn Profile Enhancement
* Applications and Blog Integration
* Unlocking the Power of LinkedIn Groups
* How to find your Target Prospects
* How to Strengthen Client Relationships
Date: Thursday, March 22, 2012
Time: 12:00 PM – 12:20 PM EDT
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/922627944
One of our bloggers offered an interesting perspective on link building, which has undergone a metamorphosis over the past two years, including changes with the Google Panda algorithm shift. This is true for almost any type of business, whether it happens to be a law firm, insurance agency or high tech company. A few highlights are below:
* Off-page SEO often leverages link development. For many years there was a race to achieve superior link quantity. For the last few years, however, search engines have refocused their algorithms to focus on quality over quantity.
* Link quantity enhances a page’s web visibility, but no longer to a large extent. Link quality is the more important indicator of authority. Authority is a quality assigned to a site by a search engine algorithm to ascertain how much expertise the site has on the topics it covers. Quality links emanate from content-rich, relevant sources, ideally with high page ranks, and promote a site’s authority. It is also crucial that these links be unidirectional (nonreciprocal).
* Even link quality, however, is now being downgraded by search engines relative to the effects of social media activity, content quality, and content freshness. Once the new algorithm shifts for 2012 are fully in effect (for example Google Panda 3.3), we will begin to experience, from a SERP perspective, the full nature of the changes and their impact.
For more information on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), review our many SEO blogs or join our Insurance Agency SEO group on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=3735783
Kindle Fire Product Review
I recently purchased a Kindle Fire, replacing my original Kindle, which had seen increasing use over the last few years. Ironically, the Kindle Fire was purchased at a traditional brick and mortar establishment, as I wanted to check out the size and weight of the device prior to purchase. I use the term ironic, as these types of devices may represent another building block in the future demise of the brick and mortar operations selling them. My decision would be Kindle versus Apple iPad, with size, weight and interface key factors.
My immediate take on the Kindle Fire was very positive. It was larger than my original Kindle, but small enough to be considered a book substitute. I found the screen much easier to read than my original Kindle, and it offered all the advantages of a color display. Two major enhancements included the ability to browse the web and to download apps, including very important and useful apps, such as Angry Birds. The web browser works wherever one can find Wi-Fi access, including HotSpots. The Apple iPad was also very impressive, offering greater functionality albeit at a larger size and weight, at about 21 ounces compared to the 14 ounces of the Kindle.
I purchased the Kindle Fire, selling for $199 as of that time, and was on my way. The Kindle Fire is like having your own personal public library in the palm of your hand. Many classics are free, or very inexpensive eliminating the need to drive to a bookstore or local library. The Kindle Fire, allows users to specifically (or randomly) choose almost any new book sample or classics to read. Striving to mix in some classics with my recent business selections (Blink, Steve Jobs, Moneyball) I also downloaded: Mountain Interval (Robert Frost), Prufrock and Other Observations (T.S. Eliot), Walking (Thoreau), The Wreck of the Hesperus (Longfellow) and Notebooks of Leonardo daVinci. These are not entirely random as the appearance of T.S. Elliot’s character in Woody Allen’s movie, Midnight in Paris, provided the catalyst to review at least one of these works. And that’s one of the great advantages of the Kindle, within seconds of hearing about, or thinking about a book or an author, you can be reading a sample or the actual book. Amazon also offers a Kindle Owners’ Lending Library program ($79 per year) which provides a free library of books (currently about 5,000) and access to a free video streaming service with over 10,000 movies and television episodes. It also provides free shipping on Amazon purchases and is essentially a “no brainer” if you purchase a book or more per month, as the estimated costs would be over $100 per year to do so.
Also notable as the Kindle Fire supports web surfing and downloading and streaming of video. I use the former often, but have not yet used the latter. The Kindle Fire, eReaders and other tablet type solutions are clearly going to change future consumption of content. I’ve seen friends who I would consider “technology laggards” now migrating to eReaders and tablets. The convenience of being able to transport a dozen or more books on any vacation or business trip, sample any book before purchasing, changing font size and brightness to accommodate personal preferences and access to a growing online library are just a few of the catalysts driving behavioral changes. Though not all books are yet available on the Kindle, I’ve seen estimates of 650,000+ and I’m sure this will grow rapidly to accommodate consumer purchasing habits as more people move to eReaders. Bottom line, as of this writing, I think the Kindle Fire is a great solution for almost anyone who enjoys to read.
Sell More & Work Less (on Kindle) Your Virtual Success (on Kindle) Marketing for Technology Companies Law Firm Marketing Insurance Agency Marketing
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