- Agency Website Utilization and Optimization – Most agencies have their own website. In today’s market, it’s not enough just to have one; agents need to make sure that their website is interactive. You can’t get by with just an electronic billboard with a “contact us” feature. Speaking of the “contact us” feature, most of those are merely an email notification to the administrative in box of the agency. With today’s smart phones, an “on call” staff member could be set up to get those emails and screen them for priority responses. Another enhancement could be the integration of an agency call center which could not only respond to the after hour contact us emails, but could also handle after hour and busy office hour calls. Promoting this 24/7 call center service on your web site and in your off line advertising virtually keeps your office “always open” and is certainly a competitive advantage to your agency. Insite Support is a company that provides 24/7 call center customer support for the independent agency channel. You can learn more about them at www.InSiteSupport.com. Finally, your web site must contain relevant and useful content to help optimize local search results, as well as be linked to social networking sites. Social networking sites are helpful, but they do require on-going maintenance, and for those agents that deal in securities, you must be aware of the regulatory compliance issues affecting your interaction on social sites. There are SEO web site development companies that not only build and maintain your site for maximum optimization, but they also integrate other on-line and off-line technologies into your total marketing program. For example many of these vendors offer email cross selling packages, cross sell postcard campaigns and professional resource reference links in their offerings to agencies.
- Increased Reliance on Web Based Leads Vendors – There are many to choose from. As with any service you subscribe to, some are better than others, so buyer beware! There are some important questions that you need answered when shopping for a leads vendor. A) How quickly do you get the lead once the online shopper has requested a quote from the vendor? B) Potentially, how many other agents are getting this same lead from the vendor? C) If the vendor is offering you exclusive leads, do they own and control the consumer portal from which these leads come from? If they don’t then chances are that the leads you are buying are NOT truly exclusive, because you’re just repurchasing a lead that was originally purchased from another vendor. If they claim they do, then ask for proof by asking for the source(s) for each lead type. D) Is your purchased lead data deposited into an agency accessible multi-rater system in order to avoid duplicate data entry? By getting straight answers for these four questions you’ll be ready to compare the benefit to the price you’re paying for each lead. As with any purchase the cheapest isn’t always the best value.
- Greater Use of Online Directories Over the Traditional Printed Yellow Page Listings – As with leads vendors, the number of online directories are growing as is their use by the consumer. YellowPages.Com, SuperPages.Com and DexKnows.Com are just a few examples of this growing list. An interesting point about these examples is how they use similar logic to the printed directories. This approach is not necessarily bad when it comes to paid online searches, but fails to capitalize for maximizing the free search results. The reason for this short fall lies in their design and in how people actual conduct online searches. As you know people tend to be specific in their searches, so the more specialized, or optimized, the directory is built to be found for a specific type of search, the greater the odds of it showing up on page one for localized free search results. An excellent example of this type of specialized directory is CarInsuranceRivals.Com. This directory was built from the ground up to be found on Google for free local car insurance searches. Subsequently, the price to get listed in this directory is a fraction of the price compared to a traditional online directory. I would suggest utilizing both types of online directories, and cutting back on your traditional printed yellow page listings.
- The Integration of Agency Websites with Multi-Rater Consumer Portals – Most multi-rater companies that utilize a web-based real time rating system now offer a consumer portal interface with your agency website. This is a relatively new feature now being offered. I strongly suggest that you contact your multi-rater company to see if this option is now available to you. For those independent agencies that currently don’t use a multi-rater, you need to take another look. Why? Perhaps you used a table base multi-rating system in the past and you justifiably dropped it because of the quote inaccuracies. Today’s “real time” systems don’t have this inherent problem so you don’t lose credibility with your prospects. I urge you to take another look at what’s available today. While you’re at it, make sure you can add a consumer portal to it too!
- The Emergence of Group Owned Consumer Portals with Equitable Leads Distribution Systems This type of online marketing platform is the most recent of all the trends. These platforms share a method of distributing the leads in an equitable manor to local agents, while keeping each lead exclusive to one agency. They also charge a monthly participation fee where much of the money is used to drive traffic to their consumer portal. What really differentiates one group from another are their specific rules for participating in the group. For instance, a group may allow you to participate if you belong to their organization, or if you subscribe to their service.
In closing, you may have come to the same conclusion as me. All of these five trends can be easily utilized and integrated into your agency’s overall marketing program. In fact, by combining and integrating all of these marketing approaches with your off line campaigns, your return on investment (ROI) will be maximized, as you remain open for business 24/7.
