If you’re marketing insurance online now, these are a must listen. If you’re thinking about marketing insurance online and don’t know where to start, these are a must listen.

The first is with Todd Officer

The second is with Scott Kirby

I don’t know if I should be sharing this but after Scott and I were done with the questions I kept the recorder going. Since he was one of my first people to take me up on the course I asked him some private questions about the course to see what I could add or improve. As you listen, keep in mine he went through the raw, unedited version of the course.

Listen to Scott’s damaging admission.

I guess I’ll have to live with this problem. And, as Scott said with his success, it’s something he’ll live with too.

Make sure you take out your pen and take notes. There are a couple small details in here that will slip by if you’re not paying attention.

Let me know what you think below.

Like me, you’ve probably bought leads from a few companies that promised you wonderful, highly targeted leads. Then, after a couple days of working these leads, you realize it would be more fun to climb a cactus naked.

The Game Is Changing

We used to put our real business in the Yellow Pages. Now we have websites as our proof we’re a real business. When I started my agency I had two sites built: a general agency website promoting all we do and a niche site for a target market we were going after.

The other day the Yellow Pages were delivered to my home. I took the photo here to memorialize the event. I don’t think this will be the last delivery. I only hope. Too many insurance agents and business owners will spend a significant amount of cash only to have their ad placed on yellow sheets, shipped to someone’s door and then dropped into the recycle bin. Also, think about all the trees wasted…why aren’t the environmentalists fighting this group now?

The nice thing about the Yellow Pages, and what made them effective, is they were delivered to your prospects door and they sat patiently in your prospects home. Then, when your prospect decided to do that search for insurance your ad was sitting there eagerly waiting to be seen…even if it was on the 5th page of the insurance agents section.

Websites are different. You’ve probably realized no one will visit your website unless you learn how to drive them there. And, if you’re on the 5th page of a Google search result you’ll never be seen.

Oh, The Frustration!

It’s frustrating knowing you’ve spent hundreds, or thousands, of dollars on a website only to get lackluster results. After I had my sites built I started searching for answers. Here’s what I found…

1. There are many people out there selling insurance agents on some sort of online marketing magic but have no experience actually marketing online. Traditional direct mail and offline marketing isn’t the same online.
2. The rest that have experience online don’t know anything about being an agent or what it is we actually do. We don’t need traffic. We need a specific type of traffic from specific people to make it work.

It was frustrating because there is nobody out there that understands how to really market insurance online. I was determined to figure this out because someone has to be doing this well.

The Dark And Seedy Online Marketing Underworld

As I searched around for answers I came into the world known online as “affiliate marketing.” These are people that make their living by referring you and me (and your prospects) to another person’s website. When the prospect gets to the company’s website the affiliate marketer gets paid an “affiliate commission” when the prospect buys something from the website. However, there’s a special network of affiliates that deal with and compete with us in insurance marketing.

These people deal in what’s called the “cost per action” networks aka “CPA Networks.” The get paid when someone takes an action by simply filling out a form online. For example, if I have a company and I want to build an email list to market to, I can contract with a network and they’ll pay the affiliates $.10 to $6 or more for every email address they collect for me. Or, worse for us, the internet lead companies pay these affiliates a price per lead generated from their websites.  Here are some examples from the more reputable lead providers on what they pay these affiliates (click on image to view affiliate payouts.):

Affiliate marketers love these programs because the customer never has to make the decision to actually buy something. The only decision for the customer is if they’re going to fill out a form online. Plus, with these high payouts, they can make a tidy profit marketing across the country. If they get paid $9 per lead and they generate 100 leads per day at a cost of $8 per lead, they’ll make $100 per day with little or no work.

The lead companies have nothing to lose because they’re not wasting money marketing. They only pay when there’s a successful form completion and then they turn around and sell it to 5 desperate insurance agents for $12 each. It’s almost like having a license to print money if you think about it.

How To Use Insider Information

So, I searched out some of the top affiliate marketers and learned how they drive traffic. I took these tactics and started applying them in my agency. Naturally, there were adaptations that have to be made for our industry but, big surprise, they worked. I started getting leads and making money. Many insurance agent friends asked what I was doing but couldn’t get their hands around it and figure it out on their own.

Since I’m only licensed in one state I thought about affiliate marketing through these CPA networks in other states. Why not? I’m driving leads for less than what these companies pay in my state where it’s a highly competitive environment. However, my friends kept hounding me about it.

Reluctantly, I was talked into outlining what I do, how I do it, and each step of the process to share with agents. I’ve spent the last 4 months working this into an extremely simple, step-by-step video series which will be released on May 5, 2009 for a limited time.

Let me know if you have questions about it below. You’ll hear more about it over the next week along with more ‘how to’ training mixed in. I feel much better about this. As my friends know, I love the fact I steal business from the online lead companies and the carriers that sell direct online. There’s a satisfaction I can’t explain to know my fellow agents aren’t being raked over the coals for a simple lead. Now, I hope to train a small army of agents to do this across the country.

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Long live the agent!

Your website should be designed for one type of visitor in mind. If you’re trying to sell insurance, sell one line of insurance. If you work with various types of clients, pick one specific type of client and sell to that client. If you want a site for existing clients to make service requests on their policies, make a site just for servicing your clients.

When having a site built, or building one yourself if you have the knowledge, you need to determine what your goal is for the visitor of your site. Do you want them to call your office? Do you want them to quote online? Do you want them to make service requests?

If I’m your client and I come to your site for service I don’t want to have to hunt for the link to request service. It should be big and bold. More importantly, if you’re selling insurance on your website you need to have a large “Get Quote Here” button or some other easy call to action for the buyer to know the next step.

Also, don’t waste space talking about yourself on the main page. As great as it is that your agency has been around for 83 years, the typical consumer doesn’t care. Did you earn a CIC, CHFC, LMNOP designation? Who cares?

Always keep in mind the internet buyer has extreme attention deficit disorder. And, I mean EXTREME attention deficit disorder. They’re probably searching for information while at work trying to get things done before the boss walks by. Maybe they’re surfing on the weekend trying to get personal business done before the kids start screaming for attention again. Whatever it is, they want VERY fast, instant gratification.

So, if a buyer comes to your site and has to weed through a list of 30 links to get a quote for car insurance, you’re dead in the water. They’ll skip to the next site in a blink of an eye.

Keep you site simple and with a clear “next step” for your visitor. Remove all distractions and set up multiple sites for each purpose. You’ll be surprised what a better conversion rate you get once you follow this principle.

How many times have you been searching the internet and run across something you want to keep for later? The hard part about the internet is finding ways to keep everything organized. If you’re like me, your bookmarks/favorites in your browser is probably filled with sites you don’t remember visiting trying to save that one paragraph that might mean something later.

Well, Google to the rescue. Google Notebook has made a small part of organizing the web, and other notes, a little more easier by adding a “mini notebook” feature to your web browser. All you have to do is download their Notebook browser extension and it adds the Notebook to Internet Explorer or Firefox. Once it’s installed all you have to do is highlight the text you want to clip and ‘right click’ to “Note This” and add to Notebook for you to read later.

The browser extension gives you a small icon on the bottom of your Internet browser to click on and open notebook so you don’t have to go to Google’s site every time you want to access your notes. This makes it extremely convenient and fast.

Here’s some of the cool things you can do with Google Notebook.

Have you ever been reading something online and think, “That would be great to give to Bob when I bring him the proposal?” Maybe your bookmark it, or copy and paste it somewhere on your desktop because you have to leave and don’t have time to properly save and get it ready to give to Bob. Then, when you’re finishing up the proposal you can’t find the notes. Well, with Google Notebook all you have to do is highlight what you want to save, right click you mouse and add it to a Notebook called “Bob’s proposal” and give it the label “important selling point” so you remember why you saved it.

One of my favorites is, when we’re working on a proposal and in one of the carrier websites, I can quickly add a note and it’s saved for me to come back to. I can put the client information in there so I don’t have to keep moving from one browser window to the other or writing cryptic notes on a pad of paper on my desk. Once I enter it in the notebook it’s accessible from all my browser windows with a quick click. Then, if I only needed it temporarily, I can quickly delete it and I’m done.

Another use is for something like this. I decided to save the Google Notebook link to write this blog article when I had more time. I clicked the link and saved it to my InsuranceMarketingOnline.net blog Notebook.

I use it for all sorts of things I want to save. Famous quotes, article ideas for blogs & client emails, business research, things to send to friends and, links to videos on YouTube (only business related videos, really).

Take a tour. Like anything new, you learn the fun details as you use it more. Also, I’m sure there are other options out there but this is just so quick and easy to use, I don’t look elsewhere.

(Image from Flickr at Google Notebook)