How do I even know if it’s working do I you know, I’m not getting. You know tons of leads from it, but I don’t really know how to gauge and that’s what what I want to do for the next.
Several minutes is kind of break down and really answer the question. How do you know if your insurance website is working first off? I want to define what is working well, working would be. Is it providing you a passively flow? Are you getting people that are reaching out to you through your website? Are you providing your prospects with enough information and credibility to educate them to trust you enough to pick up the phone and call you and let them call you to potentially become one of your policyholders right? That is the goal of a website.
What we’re trying to do with the website is educate. You know pay for people to come to our website or whatever. We need to do to get them there and educate those prospects once they get there and then use that information to convert them into a prospect to try and get a meeting for us to sell to get a policy. It’s that simple, okay. So what I want to do is just walk you through. We know how to how to know if it’s working or not, okay, you’d, be surprised.
How many people don’t know what to do they’re just flustered. They built a website. They thought it was field of dreams. They thought, if I build it, they will come and all of a sudden, no one comes out of the cornrows right. So here’s what I want to do. I want to educate you on this, so the first thing you got to do is you got to make sure that you have Google Analytics on your website? Google Analytics is the industry standard, there’s other analytics tools, but I would just recommend Google Analytics when you build a website, it doesn’t automatically come with.
Google Analytics you’ve got to actually put the Google Analytics onto your website and you know make sure it’s the set up. The correct way it’s not super easy, but it’s also not rocket science. If you don’t have analytics on your website and your web developer didn’t help put it on there and you need help. We can help you with that, but it doesn’t matter who helps you with the analytics or you do it yourself or read the tutorial.
I don’t really care just get analytics on your website. That’s the key! Okay! So once you have Google Analytics installed, there’s a couple. You know analytics can be overwhelming, sometimes, especially if you don’t know like what you’re looking at there’s so many different views, there’s so much data. What do I know is good. You know, even if I’m looking at the data, what’s the industry standard without doing ten hours of Education on Google Analytics, I want to try and teach you guys some basics of some screens that I go to every single time.
I’r looking at a website with one of my clients for us to kind of check the vitals. So what I try to do is I try to kind of give a visual of when you go into a doctor’s appointment and you don’t know what’s wrong with you. You’re just saying doctor, I’m sick, I don’t know what to do right. Well, the doctor does certain things he gets his stethoscope out. He checks her ears whatever he does, you know he’s going to do the same thing over and over to start diagnosing the issues.
So I don’t want to walk you through is the quick screens that I feel like give us the best picture at a quick glance if our website is or isn’t working right. So the first thing that we do is we go to the audience overview? Page? Okay, the audience overview page is a general view of all the people that have been to your website in the top right of analytics. You can look at a date range, so you pick the date range that you want to work at work and look under you.
Can also compare and contrast, different periods of time you can compare quarter-on-quarter year or year a month a month. The best thing I like to do is compare a year over here, just because it gives you apples to apples comparisons right. So the first thing that I look at on the audience overview page is that top left number of users and sessions – okay, so 566. You know users and 543 sessions, I’m sorry 703 sessions and then 543 of those 566 or brand-new users.
That means these are people finding my clients website on Google or using paid or whatever they’re doing it’s, not. Just repeat people come to the website over and over right. So I try to pay attention to those over that top line. Number. That number is kind of like the biggest number that we’re going to look at, and I try to look at that as the first number that I compare a month over month. We cover week whatever and I start to see big gains on that number I’ll go.
Try and figure out why or big losses I’ll go, try and figure out why, as well number of page of sessions per user isn’t super important pageviews isn’t super important because actually just a multiplet number of the users and sessions along with pages per session. I would consider that a decently important number, if you can get your pages per session over to that’s the gold standard you want to be more than that.
If you can, but is, is fine, I wouldn’t say it’s a gold standard, but the bar that you want to set to try and get over is about two pages per session: the average session duration. This gives you a summary of how long individuals are staying on your website anything over a minute. Thirty, two, two minute. Thirty is kind of the range that you want to see on average, it also depends on traffic and if you have articles or whatever, but in general I try to see over two minutes now.
The bounce rate is probably the most important thing on this page. Aside from the users and sessions, this tells us how many people went to our website and then bounced away without engaging into our further content. Finding a article, a testimonial and reaching out to us they just came to our website, didn’t like what they saw and bounced an acceptable bounce rate is anywhere from forty to sixty percent.
So your talk whenever you say percent, what I mean is is if you have a 40 percent bounce rate, and that means four out of ten people went to my website and bounced that without further engaging they’ll lower the bounce rate, the better right, that’s important! Okay, you can manipulate and control that bounce rate by having better website pages, more interactive content, better content, etc. Each of your different website pages will have different bounce rates, which gives you a good understanding of you know what page is being more engaged with over others.
Right, the next screen that I go to really quickly is just a geography you know footprint of where my traffic’s coming from. Typically, it’s a a good view, but it kind of gives us understanding of where our traffic’s coming from. Obviously, the bigger darker circles are the the center of our overall traffic and then the lighter smaller circles are are the smaller chunks of traffic. I like looking at that as well.
Most clients do as well the next page that I think is probably one of the most important pages that tells us the most. Is the acquisition overview page? Okay? So if you can find that you go find the date range you want to look at and there’s got a couple of different things that I want to walk through. Okay, what this does is this tells us the overall sources of traffic that equaled our total ethic.
For the month, okay, so what the total traffic number is is saying all of your website traffic came from all of your sources equaled this number. What acquisition overview tells us is okay. You may have had 600 people to your website this month, but here’s the five blogs that they came from and here’s how they interacted independent from one another. So this audience overview page. It gives us a really good understanding of where this traffic’s coming from all right.
So obviously, you have social organic search, direct paid, search, referral, so organic search, obviously is just someone going to Google and go into your website. Social would be social media them going from paid social to your website. Other I’m sorry direct would be. Someone goes into the the search bar of the like the URL and types in your exact URL and go straight to your website without a search engine, that’s direct.
That number is usually manipulated by the like branding that you have, or maybe you know you did an event where you called out your URL and people went to it. Maybe got TV, commercial, running or radio commercial come running and they have your URL on that page. So that’s how that works on the acquisition column. The next column is the behavior column back column is a really awesome bit of information that tells us the bounce rate of the individual traffic, so there’s different traffic sources have different bounce rates.
You always want to expect your paid traffic to have a higher bounce rate than your organic traffic in general. That’s usually an expectation that needs to be set now on the far right column. You have conversions now this is where it gets a little more advanced. You probably aren’t going to be able to figure out how to do your own conversion set up, but what this does is there’s different ways to set up your conversion tracking within Google Analytics, so that when, when your website, users take a specific action that counts as A conversion what I mean by that is, you know that would be like a lead or a phone call or a download a piece of gated content or whatever that looks like most people, honestly, don’t have conversion setup unless they’re working with digital marketing professionals.
But this is one of the main ways that you can tell if my website is working. If I’m getting conversions, let me explain what I mean with the next screen, so this next screen is showing our actual conversions for this particular client. If you’ll notice on May 31st, I think we just started tracking conversion, as of May obviously before that the client didn’t have their conversion tracking setup. So in this particular case, in the last 30 days, they’ve had 30 goal.
Completions go through. These are conversions. These are individuals that did what we wanted them to do on our website. That leads us to a goal: conversion rate, a four and a half percent goal. Conversion rate is just fine, it depends on the traffic. It depends on how many goals we have set up anywhere from four to fifteen percent is typically the range that I see on a conversion rate if you’re below that you need to kind of do some work to manipulate those numbers, because you don’t have enough goal.
Conversion points for them to convert on or you’re, not educating enough to actually get them to the point of conversion right, so you can also break down of the thirty goal. Completions I can label and set up what goal completions. They are because not all goal completions are created equal. So if we have a gated content guide that says your top ten reasons to you know apply for Medicare this year, because here’s the things that are changing or whatever I just pulled – that out of the air, but some type of piece of content, where someone has To give you their information to get their information to get the piece of gated information, then that would be considered a lead, but that’s not as hot as a lead as someone that contacts you through their website or your website.
That says, I want to talk more about your Medicare plan right. Obviously, one is hot versus others, not as hot, but there’s still goal. Completions won’t attract them individually. All right. The last view is just you know. One of the I just wanted to show you kind of how you’re able to work with the client work with the company as a professional to help manipulate and get their their website traffic.
You know raised and more increasing from a top-line level and also increasing from a conversion perspective as well. So before I started working with this client, they had no idea if their website was working or not, they didn’t even know. They just only had a website and they had some stuff going on it. They just had no really what they were doing. They they would make changes, they didn’t know if it was working or not right.
So what we did is, I tried I tracked analytics and what we’re doing on this screen is we’re looking at the year-over-year comparisons of track website traffic, so this particular client is doing google adwords along with some social and then also search engine optimized so year every Year, they’re up a hundred percent, their goal completions, we don’t know exactly how much they’re up, because they didn’t have goal completions installed before I started work with them, but over time we’ll start to be able to develop that benchmark of success.
So this may have been a little advanced for some, maybe not maybe not advanced enough for others. That’s the beauty about digital marketing is that it’s an ocean and there’s always the next level to get to so it’s secure agent marketing. We exist to help the insurance industry, understand this stuff, console and coach along the way to make sure that you can answer the question. How is my website working contact us to our website and we would love to take a specific consultative approach to your specific need and talk about what your potential goals should be and help you set them up and start tracking and start getting to that return on Investment with the website dollars,
I’ve been working with clients all day today on their websites and their marketing and I’ve been noticing some consistent themes that I’ve been helping. My clients through, and I want to just share those with you. So I want to shoot a quick article. It’s really simple! I’r going to give you three quick tips for your insurance website. Okay, so the first tip I want to focus in on is speed.
Alright, so that first important part is speed. Now we’re going to throw up a link on the screen, and it’s also in the description of this article, where you can go. Do Google speed tests all right on your website? All you do is go to that link you put in your URL and it’ll. Give you sort of a rating of one to a hundred on your mobile version and your desktop version. Okay, your website speed is incredibly important.
Okay, there’s a couple reasons: why one it’s going to drastically increase your costs on your marketing efforts if you’re driving website traffic tooth to the page, your Google, if you’re doing, search engine optimization, it’s going to hurt your SEO if you’re doing paid ads, it’s going to Hurt your cost per conversion because people are going to balance instead of actually convert. It’s a very costly mistake, and typically it’s not that hard to fix some people just don’t know that they have a slow website.
So if you go to this link, you type in your URL it’ll give you a rating out of 100 10. If you are looking at that number and it’s red or yellow it’s time for you to make some changes on on that site, speed and do what you can to increase that site, speed right. One of the things that I also want to go through and from a second-place is to make sure that your website is secure. Okay, now this is there’s a lot of you know things that secure could mean, but there’s one specific version that I want to kind of make sure that you’re aware of right.
So if you go to Google Chrome and you type in your URL and you go to your website on the top left, it’ll say not secure if it’s not secure, so if you put in your Google URL, it says not secure. That is a problem. That’s your SSL certification. You need to get that fixed, because Google is starting to highly highly reward secure websites over non secure websites. Also, it hurts all of your paid advertising, etc.
So if you know some people, don’t really know what that is or what that means. But if you see that little not secure before your URL in the search bar of Google, Chrome, you’re you’re in deep trouble, you need to do what you can to fix that. If you need help, we would love to help you out with that. It’s not rocket science to fix, but you could reach out to us and we can kind of talk through it all right.
So that’s the main thing I want to talk about unsecure. The third thing I want to go through is mobile friendly. This is where I’m going to spend a little bit of time on this article, all right, mobile friendly now everybody knows their website needs to be mobile friendly, but is your website mobile, friendly, okay? So we’re going to put a link in the description? That’s Google’s mobile-friendly test and what you need to do is go to that URL put in your website and it’ll give you different versions of different windows to determine.
If your website is mobile-friendly it’ll, give you a rating, etc. Mobile-Friendly is super important. Okay. The reason it’s important is, I just want to walk you through one of my clients, visuals on their Google Analytics to show you what I’m talking about. Okay. So in this, in this image that you’re looking at you’re, what you’re looking at is a 30-day view of one of my clients, websites, obviously not going to share who it is, but they happen to be doing Medicare and Medicare submariners etcetera.
So you would typically think that that’s an older demographic, so these numbers may shock you. It is still a highly a majority of their traffic is mobile as opposed to desktop. So if you look at this in the last 30 days, they’ve had 566 people actually go to their website and check out their services and look at their plans, etc. This is a Medicare, client, okay and they still had a majority 52 % of their website.
Traffic was a mobile, friendly, 40 % was desktop and then tablets was was, let’s see, 8 percent now tablets obviously are like iPads and Chromebooks, etc. Okay, now, what I want to do also is walk through these other columns that you’re that you’re looking at okay. So the next column over is new users. So what you want to look at is you want to make sure that those users are new, because that’s what we’re doing with our marketing efforts? You want new people on our website, not just the exact same people going in over and over / right, but what I want to focus in on is the next column over past sessions, where it says bounce rate on the behavior section.
Okay, if you look at their average bounce rate, it’s 56 percent for these last 30 days, I will tell you that the bounce rate range of being safe is anywhere from forty to sixty percent. I would consider forty percent in a + and sixty percent C. Okay. It’s hard to influence the bounce rate it takes time, but really all the bounce rate means is, is how many individuals came to our website landing page and then bounced out without going through further pages.
So if you’ll notice, the mobile traffic and the desktop traffic have different bounce rates, okay, so the mobile bounce rate was 63 percent, while the desktop bounce rate was 48 percent. What that means is, is that always tells us that when people are looking for googling and googling terms and shopping on their phone, they are very interested in quick responses on their phone, because they’re just going to close out the app or whatever the web browser and Go to something else or back out or whatever so your site, speed and being mobile-friendly is incredibly important and here’s numbers that prove it, and this is actually a very large local medicare agency in the southeast of the country.
Right, you’ll also notice that the average session duration on the far right is vastly different between desktop and mobile right. You’ve got one minute on average of this client that I’m sorry this website is the average duration of the session is one minute on mobile versus three minutes on desktop. So this is telling us that this client really needs to work on their site, speed and their mobile version of their website big time, because clients are going to their website on their desktop and they’re.
Not spending or they’re spending way more time with a desktop than they are on their mobile. These are some red flags we can start working on. This is some of the things that we need to start working on together to improve our overall website engagement rate along with lead flow on this particular client. What was you know, frustrated with the amount of lead that they’re getting from their website, and so we just went to some of these places I showed him comment was going on and now we have an action plan to do that right.
So the main thing I want you guys to really follow through with is those things right: speed, security and mobile friendly. Alright, I hope this article was able to help you guys out. If you get stuck in any of these issues that you don’t really know what to do, you know reach out to us. The courage of marketing is built to help you with these things we do consulting. We do web development, everything and also just for a word of encouragement.
Typically in the industry, people are redesigning their website every four to five to six years, anyways. So a lot of times. These issues can be solved just by redesigning a website, because it’s just time to do so. Your website should be a living breathing thing that you want to reinvest in constantly and it is very standard to be redesigned an entire new website every five to six years. So thanks for your time guys, I appreciate your attention and I hope this helps you guys be successful in your passive lead flow through your website.
It is December of 2019 and we have been through 2019 sa EP, which shook up the industry for sure it was.
It was a crazy, a EP and a lot of my Medicare clients have had hundreds and hundreds of apps that they put in. I know one office of seven people that had two thousand two thousand AP Medicare apps go in just during a EP, and there are seven people in that office he’s doing something. My other clients are doing something that, if you’re not doing you’re setting yourselves up and yourself up to fail.
Okay, so we have a lot of clients across the country that do Medicare final expense, various types of insurance and there’s really three things that I want to kind of break down for you today. One is, I want to kind of share with you what we learned during this AEP and and there’s a couple key components: ok, 2019 annual enrollment period was absolutely totally different than 2018. There was hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that went into digital marketing.
That did not go into digital marketing in 2018. Even what I mean is I’m talking to major carriers, they’re, giving us $ 100,000 projects that are only you know being spent in one particular area of the country, and that was one twelfth of their budget. They spread that out between you, know, multiple different projects and multiple different. You know organizations because the co-op dollars will return from the carrier that they just wanted them to do for digital.
So we had this huge. You know we had these huge projects that were coming across and that business just wasn’t there. In 2018 there was not carriers giving co-op dollars to IMO’s to promote their products digitally. So we had to go through a massive shift of compliance and getting all these articles approved through Aetna and Humana Mutual Omaha and all this other stuff, but I’m telling you guys there’s big money coming in the digital marketing space.
Now, what does that mean? That means it’s all going to get more competitive. That means that in 2020, if you’re not trying to play ball in the digital space, you’re going to get left behind, there is lots of money there is, you have got to know what’s going on and want to make sure that you’re above you know above the Surface of what’s happening, so you know I can tell you right now that the digital marketing space of the insurance marketing world is growing growing growing, and that brings it to my second point.
I know a lot of you guys have made a lot of money and built a business on Direct Mail leads, and I’m not ever going to say that Direct Mail is dead or bad or anything. But I can tell you for a fact. I hear every single week in every single month how the direct mail isn’t pulling like use to the quality elite, isn’t like it used to they’re not getting as much Lisa. These an area and most of the organizations that are living on Direct Mail are using some other form of supplemental lead source to get them in front of the people, so that supplemental lead source is typically one of two things right.
The first thing that they’re going to do is digital marketing leads you, you know just internet leads whatever. That is the second thing that a lot of people do is what’s called live, transfers from from call centers now a lot. Some of these call centers are being built overseas, but any of the big IMO’s and big clients that we work with are winding down their Direct Mail, spins and winding up their Live, transfer.
Telesales leads and winding up their digital leads to fill in the gaps as well, and this is absolutely a trend they need to be a part of. There is no way around it. If you’re living on Direct Mail, only you’ve got to figure out how to get outside of only direct mail and diversify your lead source. Now that does mean that the marketing the digital marketing world is very competitive. I sat down in the conference room of one of the largest insurance company, that’s privately held in the country and I talked to their lead call centre, guy that had a killer, AEP and, I said, hey well where to get most most of your leaves.
You know he told me he said good domains, that’s all he said, and I said well that was pretty cryptic and he’s like. Well, I’m not going to give our secret sauce, but I’m telling you right now even large carriers, who are typically sometimes behind the curve on innovation and adapting to new sort of strategies that guy who runs the call center of the largest privately held insurance company. In the world told me you know two words good domains, I’m telling you guys there’s a massive shift coming if you guys are not getting on board with this in 2020, towards the digital way trying to diversify your lead source.
You you’ve got to get on that board right. So when it comes to tell us telesales or teller leads, one of the things that I found is that a lot of people are doing a lot of tell elites as well. One of the reasons that I feel like telesales live transfers tella leads are working is because I feel like there is such a boom in digital marketing. Overall, that’s fueling. Some of these large call centers that they have huge databases of these aged, leads that they developed on themselves through digital and they’re, really being able to work back past leads then have to buy aged leads from anybody, because they’re developing their own and they’re working through These these leads constantly and they’re able to because of the advent of digital marketing.
You know you’re able to do a marketing campaign with 48 states. If you went drive all those leads that cost per lead could be as low as two three dollars. Whatever that ends up being get into your system, dial it and then what what’s happening is. Is he and the telesales side they’re, typically opening with openers that are taking those leads? And just you know, working through those leads getting through the qualifying questions, the health questions or you wheelchair-bound? You have cancer, you know Alzheimer’s, all all the big ones are in nursing home age, qualify, health, qualify and bank account qualify and once they check the main boxes, they’re then transferred over to the closer’s.
So what I see most big large telesales operations doing successfully is not just dropping leads into closers laps, but dropping leads into openers laps and what they call like marketers or whatever qualifying that kicking it over to the closer on the field sales side. What I see is the same thing you essentially except with appointment, centers, so a lot of times the high high-volume guys that I see that are doing big time volume.
You know fifteen thousand dollars a week of premium. You know whatever that number ends up being. They all have one thing in common and that’s they have an appointment setter that the person drives. The leads into the appointment setter qualifies the lead, sets the appointment and then they’re also implementing other digital marketing tactics that allow that user to then Auto book, an appointment as well, and so that person that’s the actual closer that has the talent of the understanding the Products and can work with the person in the home or whatever that looks like it was actually not doing the dialing and setting it’s more so the appointment center.
That’s doing that for them, so those three things are really really crucial in 2020, if you’re, not if you’re telesales, you’re, not working with openers and live transfers, you’re not doing what the Kings are doing. If you are in fuel sales and you’re, trying to dial your own leads to save money on appointment Center, you’re not doing what the big producers are doing. If you’re trying to work your own Direct Mail leads, you are not absolutely not doing what the the big dogs are doing.
Even the small dogs have kind of moved past that a little bit now. Every time I talk about Direct Mail, I try not to be negative about Direct Mail. It’s it’s still a viable marketing method, there’s still people that live and eat and breathe off that, and I’m not ever going to say that that shouldn’t be the case, but they are all supplementing their Direct Mail with some sort of other system, whether it’s telemarket leads Or you know digital as well, but those are the three kings.
You know you got Direct Mail. I have a client that has that’s a 40 million dollar a year organization and what they do is they actually have a field sales force and an actual telemarketing source. As well, in fact, several new clients that I work with the major insurance carrier that I worked with that I sat down with this week is the same thing. They got field sales and telesales, and I’m telling you guys right now, they’re all using either live transfers.
Digital leads or Direct Mail leads, and for the first time in 2019, Direct Mail is like a clear loser when it comes to tell elites or digital for sure. So whenever you look at the actual premium book with digital Direct Mail and tell elites tell leads, are very high up they’re digital aids are very high up there and Direct Mail is lagging and continuing to lag every single month. Direct Mail is losing market share.
So I I don’t want to scare anybody. That’s actually a good thing for your budget, because Direct Mail is expensive and you don’t need to pay, especially if you’re going to door knock your door. Knocking digital leads are perfect, because these people are opting in. You can get a lead card that looks exactly like what a Direct Mail is, and you can you know you can. You can buy, leads into leads today and get leads.
You know in two days from now visually with Direct Mail you’re three weeks now, there’s a little flexibility. There’s no guarantees it’s it’s very much a risk, but if you’re those are some key key components and shifts that I saw in 20:19 that if you’re not on board with 2020 you’re going to get left behind. So I hope you guys found some value in this. In this content today, we spend millions of dollars of marketing insurance only typically its lead development search engine, optimization website development, getting people in front of people, because we all know that if you can’t get in front of people as insurance agents, you will never sell you’ll.
Never become one of the producers that you that you want to be, so thank you for joining us for this little article. I hope you found some value in this, and this is more of like a big-picture article, but I’m telling you we spend millions of dollars of marketing budget just in the insurance industry, and these are those are the three things that I see absolutely taking you into The future for sure, if you enjoyed that article then check on this article right here, it’s 5 insurance marketing tips that are working right now, it’s guaranteed to help you would be a better insurance.
Marketer I want to do – is break down 5 important tips. The reason I picked these 5 is because, no matter how large or small, how new or old most people that I talk to are missing one of these five tips. Typically
Okay. The first thing you need to understand is: when you have an email marketing plan, you need to make sure that you have some sort of email system. That’s helping you manage these databases. Mailchimp is free, Constant Contact, there’s some more advanced ones like HubSpot. You know those types of deals right. You always want to leverage your email marketing.
When you have a customer base, that’s ready for more information, that’s already your customer, but you can educate, foster their relationship. Potentially cross-sell some other opportunities get in front of their friends. Referrals, send them articles that you’re producing whatever it is. Really. Your email database is a free way to contact your customers and get them the information that they want to see and that they could potentially use to.
You know work with you on a different type of product. That’s how you best want to use email marketing once again, it’s free, it’s one of the best ways to get things moving with your brand
Reading this thinking. Okay, you know: Cody Cody built a six million dollar lead generation company.
He must be a absolute marketing, baller. Okay, also we’ve! You know the the conference. We’re scaling is now the largest independent insurance agent training conference for insurance agents in the industry in the world really very quickly. They have you know the number one YouTube blog and all this stuff, so you would think like I’m just like a marketing legend of the insurance industry. However, I thought that till I met my good buddy Landon.
Okay, he’s a marketing freakin baller! Well, thanks for saying that man a legend and I’m telling you if you aren’t working with us, you’re missing out, okay. So thanks for saying that man, you got a man dude you’re, a UH! You are influence in the industry in the way that you are going about insurance marketing. Well, it’s just different these days. I feel I feel like there’s a massive digital shift.
Yeah, that’s happening. Everybody that I know in the insurance industry is moving into digital in some form or fashion, whether it’s a small percentage that our budget dude or a major percent budget we’re talking to like we’re talking to no joke. Like hundred million dollar companies, Oh bigger than that billion dollar companies every day and they are making massive shifts, it is I mean it’s, a big market shift, that’s happening and that’s causing a lot of issues on Facebook, specifically because that’s right now, the lowest hanging fruit.
Sure in the digital marketing space, but uh yeah man – I mean you know whenever I used to own an advertising agency – that you know we did four million a year in management fees. We had no specialty, though yeah, so you were declining, that’s how we met in the first place and the more the digital marketing world evolves. It’s going to be like the the the lawyer that has to specialize the digital marketer has a specialized.
I can’t imagine if I ever was to compete. If we were ever to compete on a digital marketing project. With someone that didn’t specialize in insurance, we will win 100 percent. That’s easy! It’s totally different when they do specialized insurance. Still freaking win. It’s totally different. Totall insurance marketing is completely different than general marketing, and the reason is is because insurance marketing is 100 % based around leads cost per lead, leave all you leave quality and really that’s not the case for a lot of business industry specifically before we continue to dive.
In I had an idea: okay, okay, I I found I found them reading this already, I’m like holy crap. I want to talk to that dude, okay, correct! Yes right! I mean, and that’s happening correct. It is absolutely so if they wanted to do that, is there like a link that there’s a way yeah yeah we’re going to add it you’re going to click it you’re going to schedule a free strategy session with Landon to talk about the struggles you’re having the Problems and what we can do to fix it, yeah we’ll just go through an unbiased sort of walkthrough of your digital marketing footprint.
Talk about your budget talk about results. Whatever I mean you know, we can do search engine optimization web development, social. Whatever. On that note we’re: how should we pivot, because this interview and how you’re influenced in the industry can go, because this is I’m interviewing? You can go a lot of different ways. Well, you mean for this call this this particular. What I feel like is interesting right now is search engine optimization, the really very interesting.
The reason I think that’s interesting is because one of the biggest things that I hear people say is: how do I diversify my lead source from social, because a lot of people are spending. You know when it comes to their digital marketing budget. Let’s just say: that’s: 20 to 30 % of their overall marketing budget or 50, or whatever most of that is going toward social, and the reason is because the easiest way to scoop up leads yeah right but what’s happening is, is digital marketing principles like search engine? Optimization and good website and blogging and content creation.
That is that’s low-hanging. Fruit: that’s why you see choice mutual and some of these guys that are scooping up hundreds of policies a year and all it is, is a final expense producer that figured out right and when you look at boomer benefits – and you look at some of these websites That are getting thousands of clients a year through Legion on their website through content marketing, you realize that it’s a low bar really in the insurance industry.
Most people are just scooping up the social leads, but they don’t know anything about search engine. Optimization, that’s what I think is interesting right now and we seem to be we’re noticed, I’m noticing a trend of people coming to you saying: hey! We we want to be on the cutting edge of getting thousands. If not tens of thousands of organic leads every year. Yeah well and that’s doable, I mean I can point you to websites that are not that innovative and large that are getting thousands of policies a year.
Just because they’ve been doing SEO for a couple years, and you know it’s not the search engine optimization. The reason it’s not taking hold and the insurance industry specifically, is because it doesn’t provide immediate results. You know, like social does, I mean sheesh you do. A social campaign will be generating X amount of leads in 48 hours, you’re saying right with SEO. It takes time. So so, basically, people a lot of times your hand-to-mouth, but you’re going to do that for so long, not to mention socials, changing Facebook’s, making it tougher where the privacy concern totally it’s more expensive with ap right now and also the holidays.
I mean our cost per leezar increasing, so you want to be diversified, really yeah, I’m a I made one mistake when I started this interview was that you know to us what I’m telling all myself. What do you mean? I didn’t. I just assumed that everyone. That knows me knows you it’s true, and maybe they don’t they may not. Maybe they don’t right so Landon McCarter. He has co-founder and partner with me and secure agent and marketing.
Yes, sir, it’s a marketing company that is is working with at least the top three finally expense call centers in the country yeah. We know that for a fact, yeah we’re actually going. I forgot we’re going to get here in about a couple weeks. I think to meet with a major insurance carrier, that’s doing billions a year in premium yep, and they want us to help them. Look at marketing yeah, which is strong, okay, well, yeah, multiple other IMO’s that we work with yeah or agents field forces whatever.
What why marketing for you to all take it away from that and what I’m introduced you know we did jump ahead. Didn’t we yeah, so you know wellmaybe sumed, you rape at 8 %. I assumed you so well, so why marketing white? Why marketing? For me all right: first off, I got my degree in marketing from Missouri State, so I’ve always been in sales. Sales and marketing go hand in hand. You can’t sell without leads, you can’t get leads without marketing.
So a good salesman has a good marketer on there. In their pocket always or they are a good marketer like if you know we interviewed James Nevins yesterday, you know he’s just a great salesman that understands marketing. Wouldn’t you know he’s have got a successful business. You know, I’m saying it’s like the people. You know marketing and sales skills are the two most important things in growing a large insurance business.
I believe yeah. Maybe you would agree. Oh dude, okay, so you know it’s it’s a it’s a secret sauce. I love marketing because I learned a long time ago and it doesn’t always work out this way. But you know marketing is if I could figure out a way for you to give me a dollar, and I can give you back to you’re going to give me a lot of dollars. I’r saying so well and even to add to that point. I’ve gotten to where I’m so confident in our marketing now that I just increased our budget for inbound lead fall this morning.
By about nobody even knows this, my wife Lauren, don’t even know us by about 120 grand a year okay, this morning, okay, because I’m so confident in our marketing and our processes and our sis. Well, you do. We do get about 250 at about 350. Inbound leads a week of insurance agents contacting us for coaching leads for marketing whatever, where you’re going to be talking about and sharing with people at your SEO master class yeah yeah.
You can put that December 4th yes December, 4th at 4 p.M. But we’ll do a link to that Keith, don’t forget to put a link in the description there and even if they can’t attend they’re, going to get the recording for life just sort of so the Point is you need to be on that if, and you know what I’m going to I’m going to clarify a little bit, if you don’t want thousands of passive leads a year for without spending advertising dollars, then this isn’t for you yeah.
Well, what I’m going to teach on that class? If that’s, what we’re going to go now is there’s I’m going to demystify search engine optimization because there really it’s not as complex as it once was from a technical perspective, meaning you don’t need to have an understanding of web development to know a bulk of what Seo actually is because it is, it is super daunting. Well, you think think about you, think Google and they got the search engine robots that are going to call your sites or looking all these technical things.
And yes, there is absolutely a component of technical SEO and on-page SEO and that’s part of it, but there’s also a major what I call content for strategy and I’ve done a article on content first SEO and that’s how you get results. And I can show you over and over and over examples of the insurance industry. That’s content first SEO that just kills it, and so what I’m going to do is break down and demystify SEO I’m going to teach how to actually how to do it yourself.
For the most part and understand, I always said this 100 times: what is north, I’m going to teach you what North is on SEO, so you kind of aren’t getting led astray by the $ 1.99 social package that you saw. That also does SEO, and that’s all that crap you know, but there’s that’s not North. I can tell promise you that yeah we see so many of those than you even said did we could sell them, but we’re not going to deliver anything.
So, what’s the point is just taking people’s money, so it’s I will teach you how to make. If you can execute what I’m going to say, it’s worth probably eight hundred dollars a month in SEO Wow, you know if you can implement now. That’s the problem. Ten dollars so so that 397 ticket is going to be worth about 96 K over the next ten years. Sure yeah, I mean it’s more yeah because you’re just saving the money in SEO cost, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not picking up those additional thousands of leads for free, exactly that’s not including the business that you close from raids.
I mean I was looking at an analytics account of a search engine, optimization Medicare site that we were doing and I think in one week they were getting like fourteen, like just passive leads through the site which they never got before, and this particular agency that I’m Working with I’ve looked at their Facebook feed and they were bragging that they wrote 38 Medicare policies in two days between two guys.
It’s crazy yeah. It’s all passive leads. There was no like active marketing going feeding that it was. Is they just websites and walk-ins, and all that now they are they’re an existing business? So it’s not like you can just start a Medicare shop and get there, but you know how it goes man you know you got to build. You got to build something and that’s what SEO is is building for the future. Did you always know you would do you visit? Is it in your DNA? You know like just just to be such an influencer and a baller like where’d that come from? No, it’s not the.
What I love is the appreciate you saying you love. I knew that it really. What I find is is, if you want to be a good marketer, you got to go with what’s working and I started in direct mail and then I evolved into digital. I still direct mails great, like I’m, not sure you know whatever there’s a lot of people that make a lot of money on direct mail, but I found that I think I just don’t happen to use any of it well and it’s just not as it’s flexible.
It’s not as you can’t pivot. You can’t adjust you’re like all in on certain budgets that it may or may not work, whereas you know with digital, you can kind of pivot quickly, if you’re, starting to see things, aren’t working so, but also just digital the future. We all know, and so not not to mention more and more. The insurance industry is going towards phone sales, which is you know, multi-state.
Well. How do you there’s no way to reach multi-state audiences effectively unless you’re going to spend tons of money on TV, radio and you’re not going to do that? Direct Mail you’re, not mailing the state, you know saying so your options, even the major players that that you’re, helping and influencing now, as I keep using that word since that’s the name of the show, are shifting well just to give you an example, I mean we.
I two days ago, I met with the lead developer for one of the largest Medicare call centers, and we just collaborated and had fun man like it’s so the industry, so big like it wasn’t like my way, is better than your way and your ways better than My way, so let me let me show you how to do it right. It’s like! No! No! What are you doing? What what here’s my articles? You bring up a good point. Some people have a guy yeah.
Some people have a marketing department, so people have a marketing team, etc, and the good thing about you is that they don’t you’re not coming in to change everything or replace everything replace the internal team. That’s actually helped provide ideas and run alongside the team. It’s difficult for I wouldn’t it was. It is not advised to try and outsource all of your marketing to an independent company.
All the successful relationships that I have there’s a lead manager, a lead, developer, a marketer whatever that I’m just being leaned on as another outside resource, because coach Burt says it all the time you got to have somebody outside of the picture frame to kind of see. What’s going on, and since we do about seven figures of ad spend a month in digital marketing insurance industry, we learn a few things along the way and so not we’re not just working in this one space.
This one industry, this one market, so we’re leaned on quite a bit from what’s going on in the industry perspective you know, and that adds that alone you know. I know we have retainers built out for some of these clients right now that I know they’re not keeping us on retainer because of the cost per lead that we’re driving them, because they could put in to do it themselves. It’s the big ideas that we bring in the shifts that we were able to bring manage the YouTube beta that we got in for one of our clients as well, that kind of stuff.
You know just kind of be able to bring a bigger picture, cutting edge man. Well, it really is it. I don’t know of anybody. That’s spending more per month on marketing and the insurance industry than us I mean. Maybe there is, but how do you get to eight figures in good management? I just grow the book. Man keep it going, you know, it’ll, be there. The market shares there. What’s what’s one thing that as an agent out there that’s reading this and let’s say they have their own agency, their own team, their own office? What’s some helpful tips to provide to them that are looking out and they’re thinking? Okay, this is daunting.
I don’t know what to do well. Maybe it’s this free free strategy session I’ll make it easy man I’ll make it super easy. You can’t do anything without a marketing budget and a percentage of that budget is digital. If it’s not you’re crazy. Okay, so you now, you know how much meets on the bone. Okay, so if you don’t have a marketing budget, if you’re just winging it and like trying to buy, leads here and there like, there’s better ways to get leads, that’s more consistent, yeah you’re going to be saying: what’s what is it about that? Why do agents jump from vendor to vendor linking then the next person’s going to have the secret sauce? We have a joke in our staff where it’s like you know, leads are heroin and you know insurance agents are heroin addicts.
You know it’s just like. I got ta get it. I got to get my leads because at the end of day, it’s that important, it’s their livelihood, didn’t anybody talk to them and how they sell, and so what I think is interesting about insurance marketing. Is that there’s this perception? All of us marketers are all using Facebook, okay. So what what’s the point of bouncing from one guy to the next and round and round about learning anything? Why not like work with people that you trust to like execute a monthly strategy that you can learn from and adjust and pivot and grow and diversify? So that’s that’s one of the things that we try to do with our clients is let the people that want to bounce around, and you know that’s okay, like that.
That’s okay! That’s not like a problem necessarily, but there’s a better way to do it, and if you have a budget, then that’ll get you there, yeah. Okay, on that on that no budget yeah. What what kind of budget they need depends on what you’re trying to accomplish now? Big yard, but in general the way I charted back into budgets is: what’s the amount of lethal that we need and do we need to have short-term or long-term goals, and then we allocate the budget that way.
Even people that are jumping around in buying leads. Would you say they have at least a thousand bucks at least yeah? Always even little producers yeah you got to have people talk to you, you’re buying leads from somewhere you’re buying. You know the main lead sources that I see are telltale transfers, which are fine. I think things are getting cracked down. I see a lot of lawsuits coming down the pipe and a lot of issues there, but it’s still a very valid valid way to get things done.
I think a lot of people bring him overseas right now. It’s kind of an industry thing that I’m seeing, but to me that’s a little bit of whatever anyways, that’s sketchy. You know what I mean like I’m not like yeah, it just seems risky to mean it. You have a big old operation in Costa Rica. You know yeah sure it’s a good idea, I’m sure they’ve ran their numbers, but I see the telesales leads. Direct mail leads or digital leads right now or networking growing your war market, and all that would you agrees or so that okay, so well they’re all if you’re not spending $ 1,000 a month, then you’re, probably not growing your business you’re, probably just working your warm Market and you’re getting by and talking about how the market sucks and if you aren’t you’re spending it on a part time, caller that’s cold, calling so you’re spending it.
You know what I mean like you’re spending it are they are. They, though, are they? I don’t know if anybody knots been in a green a month. I don’t either so on leads or everything and if you’re not like the chance of you being part of that, 2 % is substantially larger and you’re listening right now, you’re like I don’t want to be, you know, so it is a big difference. When you talk to people – and I don’t talk to anybody – that’s a very successful insurance industry that doesn’t have a healthy marketing budget area, zero people – that’s true – I mean, if you’re, trying to work your warm market and do your networking thing only in one city and Try and go to the bee and eyes and all that stuff.
That’s going to get you so far, but you’re not mill scale. You don’t be able to be a big time. What was it about insurance for you? Well, first off I met you and I didn’t really know honestly that I’ll tell this story so, but when I had my, I don’t know this. I have my agency. I told Kody this before I always told my staff, I trained my staff. I said you know. We can do anything, digital marketing, there’s only two industries, I don’t want to touch and that’s insurance and real estate.
I know because I did I just didn’t understand. I didn’t understand the two industries. First off it was so lead oriented. I didn’t get it and then, but now that I’m in it it’s like. Oh my gosh, it’s so fun, there’s so much to the number one marketing influencer in the insurance industry. I hope I am. I don’t know if I am or not I try to eat. I but I I really feel like I have a lot of fun with other guys that are also doing marketing.
I try there’s a lot of us. You know that are good and there’s a lot of people that stink like. In fact, I knew. I know this. This agency, that just got like 20 million dollars of venture capital, will start an insurance industry in insurance agency, and I’m like like what do you need 20 million dollars for like you me did this? We put this together and don’t you’re going to mean it’s like. So so what are you doing with your twenty million dollars like what’s going on here? You know like it’s, because they don’t know what they’re doing yeah they don’t they? Don’t I’m telling you let’s let me learn, but you don’t even say you don’t need 20 million bucks, so I mean you and what you’ve done with your you know, brand and growing and building security.
Marketing together has been so much fun man and to help people out and to get those text messages. It’s like you’re really blessing my family with the marketing campaigns. I’r able to you know it’s just it’s a lot of fun. Talk about the brand aspect. You know from a marketing perspective from your brain, but someone’s out one thing to build a brand like because old school be average age is 59 and a half so yeah the old school people.
Don’t think that branding and I’m not saying needs to be that leader like we, you know we brained along the way, but having a brand having people know you getting attention, putting out content all these other things it it’s almost like, I’m in the insurance industry. So I don’t need, I don’t need it well, that’s like the old school there’s what I would call like axioms that come like when it comes to branding one.
You kind of you kind of get a certain level where your brand is important to you and you have money to invest yeah if you’re a new agent, you really probably are going to have a tough time having any sort of like branding budget because it’s expensive. It’s something you’re, investing your repiy or your sewing into something for later benefit. But if you do your lead development, the right way, then you can kind of brand along the way as a new agent, meaning you can set up a website.
You can push people to that website. You can have your own. You know brand developed that way as a new agent, but there’s a certain point where you hit a level where your brand is important and – and that to me is you know when you start doing, marketing campaigns lead development campaigns with your own brand associated investing in Content search engine, optimization, investing and you know, different various marketing methods that aren’t fully focused on lead cost per leaf.
Yeah see what I’m saying: that’s what I mean by branding, because there’s Mart marketing you have. In my opinion, I’ve got two really ways you go. You’ve got lead development marketing that are only Cape key performance indicator that matters is leap, cost per lead and you got your brand. That’s like I’m getting my name out there, I’m making myself well-known seminars getting referrals that kind of stuff you need to kind of do both.
You know. Yes, that’s how I perceive branding versus lead, dev, I’m trying to get to where I’m personally spending seven figures. Just just promoting me us what we have deprive already are spending more than that depends on how probably so, whenever you count an eight percent. You know at the end of day, you’re going to mean like what. What is that I mean at the end of day when you look at the numbers of eight percent, you know it’s like: what’s your what’s your thoughts on that by the way cuz cuz outside looking in marketing guy well before before we partnered, I was reading your Stories cuz, you were, you know I knew you were in the same town and I’m like this dude got Nissan Stadium like who’s.
This guy think he is what in the whole world, is he doing whose kid you know I was just kind of like, because I was going to be condescending, but I was like yeah. What is this guy doing? Get Nissan Stadium from Springfield, Missouri, and, and now I get it because you know with with this last a person nation that I was a part of, I there’s just something which I went bigger with by the way. Well, whatever, whatever man I, I thought it was awesome, and this year this next year’s going to be ridiculous.
I can have freaking wait. Oh my god do you think I mean you’re you’re, seeing a lot of the risks and stuff and you’re seeing it pay off. Talk to someone out there, that’s, like you, know, you’re able to see it and be a part of it now, what’s what’s what’s there’s let people out there that are scared to take some of those risks. Man! Well, you, don’t you, don’t you, you don’t understand how consumers people work with the people that educate him, and so, if you’re not doing anything, that’s educating your consumers by content or whatever you’re, making a big mistake, because that’s who people are working with they are period.
So, like you know, for instance, if you can offer, let’s just say to Medicare, if you can offer a free three-hour course of how to pick your Medicare plan or whatever. That is and then put it on your website. You know get that content and add value to that person. They’re going to work with you if they go through your your marketing, you know stuff, so you know you got to be able to craft good marketing funnels, you got ta, be able to educate and you got to be able to invest in this stuff, but it Takes money to build a website yeah, so a lot of people are like well.
Do I want to put twenty five hundred dollars into a website, or do I want to put twenty five dollars in the Legion it’s like in the short term, yeah Legion, but you hit a certain point where it’s like you got to get the brand the marketing You know your websites, the chassis of your digital marketing, your social should be part of that as the engine your SEO should be part of that. Your content should be part of that.
Your all your testimonials, if your customers should be part of that, but your website’s, the chassis of your digital marketing, a lot of people, don’t really understand that or they don’t care about that or they don’t get out important. It is yeah. What was the first thing? Random question: what was the first thing? Maybe it says maybe you’re a teenager. Who knows what was the first thing you ever marketed and sold pumpkins seriously.
I was, I didn’t know that I was a 9 year old kid and I was like dad. We my dad had a garden and so there’s I don’t know about pumpkins, but basically they, I guess they come up in the fall or something I remember this. It’s been a while, but my dad’s garden was completely empty in the fall and he’s like dude. I could make you some pumpkins and you can go, sell and I’m like. Let’s do it so he’d plant me a bunch of pumpkins.
I got him in a wheelbarrow and like in the beginning of October. I will bear all the pumpkins from door-to-door and sold them for, like 5 bucks, apiece yeah and I’m making like I’m like a nine year old kid making like a hundred bucks a week in October. So I bought Nintendo’s in like all kinds of stuff, and then I also my mom did swimming lessons. We had. We had pool lessons so like we had a big old pool in our backyard and we had swimming lessons and my mom did like you know.
Hundreds of kids would come through with all the brothers and sisters would come swimming lessons, so I bought, I went to Sam’s and bought bubblegum and soda, and all that I’m just set up a table, and just it was fun man. I even like spending my Nintendo out there. While I was sitting there playing Nintendo and then I was dude. I was making like 30 bucks a day like as, like a probably a 10 11 year-old kid just sitting in my backyard selling the brother and sister.
You know push pops or something so the entrepreneurial spirit, she’s always been there. It’s just. You know it’s. Whenever I hear Jordan Belfort talk about yeah, maybe listen, Jordan Belfort. He talks about how he had this. What was it shaved ice then? He would sell on the beach that was. It was just like that, like I just had this knack for, like you know what there’s so many bored brothers and sisters while their kids other brothers in the pool they’re going to go, get two bucks for their mom.
Just the mom’s going to give him two bucks because they just wanted to just get out of my hair. You know so I was just like raking today. Anna, I was like you know, and I would run out of inventory by the 3 o’clock and it was so fun man. Those were the days dude, that’s awesome, who’s, your who do you listen to the most cuz you’re, someone that listens and reades and maybe just maybe for fun and then maybe also from you know, marketing relieve it or not.
I actually liked Oren Belfort’s content. You know, I think, I think, he’s a sales guru. He has a speaker at 8 % and I but people I first whenever it whenever you said I want to get Jordan Belfort. My first reaction was what what I say do you remember? I was like no way man, I’m like well. No, I member saying like the dude, is not a good dude man like a no respect, yeah. That happened. You mean like.
I don’t really respect the dude like got famous by, like you know, making people and then you I was already dope into his column yeah. So then I got into his content and I was like okay. He actually admits that he was made mistakes and apologized and he’s did his time. They literally present time yeah and he doesn’t like brag about it. He’s, in fact, is, you can tell he’s remorseful, you know and like what the dude’s a Salesman yeah, I’m saying yes, and so I respect his content and I listen to it.
I also just listen to random YouTube articles all the time, I’m probably if you looked at my YouTube, read time. I bet you. I have 13 to 15 hours a week. You know listening yeah, I mean listen to YouTube all the time, so I do listen. Grant Cardone dude, I listen to you, don’t connect as well with him, though no no, but but that’s okay, I mean he’s still got decent content. I I like his three or four-minute articles about him.
Just kind of like have you ever seen this conference table articles where he kind of talks to his team yeah. Oh my gos, those are good. I don’t really love the way he treats people most the way he precedes his chest, pretty hard yeah, and I don’t but whatever you know even says you know, you want to push away half the crowd and attract half the crowd right. I think I’m kind of a the crowd. They attracted me for some reason.
Well, um he’s a super successful guy. So good friends, you know, but yeah I mean really just there’s all kinds of different podcast to listen to. You know I like it’s just random humor. I, like stand-up comedians podcast, so like the fighter and the kid which you probably don’t know about it. You talked a lot about. They did last one that this guy last night, the the Queen’s the Stone Age. It was a really great interview, but it’s just I like people, and so I like listening to their perspectives, I really like long-form content.
That’s why they favorite my favorite content that we do is the podcast and all that cuz. I get to know people and I’ve had a lot of people say that come to work with us that say I’ve readed your articles. I want to work with you. I don’t really know why I just I can just tell that you care and we wouldn’t be able do that without long-form content. That’s it man, it’s true! It’s true! Well, what do you think looking forward in the insurance industry, as we got a couple minutes left? What do you see happen in the next decade? I see a boatload of money going to social media and I see costs increasing extraordinarily, I see our cost per lead.
Extra. The window of social media lead development. It like the heyday is, I think it’s it’s coming, not to an end, but it’s going to be much tougher. It’s just like Google, so, like yeah, Google AdWords in the beginning, they were just printing money. Whoever got into that first, you know just was printing money because it’s like people were like well, I don’t want to pay for website traffic with people understood it.
We’re like oh gosh, I’ll pay for as much as I can get and they and they were getting. You know 20 cent clicks that are now dollar clicks, yeah, you’re saying so that’s coming, and so what’s going to happen is is you’re going to have to diversify your lead source? Like you, you if you think that you can just run lead forms on Facebook forever. You are absolutely wrong like it is not going to happen.
I’r wrong, I’m already seeing a shift. That’s going from lead forms to other ways to use social traffic that are much more advanced, that you’re not going to be able to do. The random person isn’t going to be able to do and I wouldn’t be able to do in, let’s say a thousands dollars to practice of our own stuff. You know so I see social drying up. I see us needing other digital lead sources. I I see, I don’t know, I see the digital wave being more important than ever, but I think it’s going to have to be earned.
I think there’s going to need to be a good website with a good search engine optimization base and with social media. Being a part of that, I don’t think we’re going to be able to just lean on social for our lead development, like that, I’m already seeing it happen where it’s just it’s way or I mean, would you agree that it’s harder now than it has ever been? It’s 44 % add increased just this year, supposedly that is going to continue to happen and you had in order you’ve got to be able to prepare for that because there’s a lot of businesses.
I know that are built around that as like the core secret sauce, and it’s not going to be that way for theirs. It’s it’s it’s it’s it’s unique because most people think I just need to figure it out and have control and do it on my own. But even the biggest places are doing stuff on their own are still using us in some way. Yeah. No, absolutely like. We have a major, but it’s always a great relationship, though too, because we’re not peacocks with our feathers up saying like I’m telling you guys, this digital world changes every three months it does, and so you’ve got to have sharp people around you to kind of like Be able to say I’m trying this, what are you trying, because there’s so many like like for an example, this gigantic call center that I was working with you know I was helping him from the lead funnel to get the inbound call, because I had cracked that Nut but one of things I was struggling with was potential medsoft language and article content, and I’m like what do you think about this article he’s like man? He goes honestly.
I would add this this and this and this and it’s like collaboration, yeah and we’re working and it’s like and before you know it. It’s like with our powers combined. You know, like all of a sudden now we’re killing getting. You know $ 6 leads where he was getting 12 and then we’re getting. You know in $ 1,000 ad spend we’re getting 60 call. Ins in 198 leads or something like that. We’re buzzed before I was getting half that and he was getting half that.
So it’s like you’ve got to like work with people that the whole I’ve got the secret sauce Cody and I’m going to you’re going to have to pay me for this course and I’m going to teach you that course. It’s bananas and you’re going to be you’re. Going to know perfectly and you’re better use it forever, and it’s never going to change. I’r the lead development. Amazing know it just don’t even do it in fact multiple times, if we don’t have people at our retreats that have just paid multiple thousands of dollars for their course and then still had us handle it, because it’s like they make it almost so complex yeah and It is complex, so dude you’re an influencer.
You know what thank you for letting me be. An influencer you’re brought a and you to be with you and on your team has been a lot of fun. Man. We’ve had a lot of fun. We’ve won we’ve taken. Some bruises, but man overall dude we have like had a lot of fun man. Oh it’s been, it’s been like the more you’ve enjoyed the journey reading. This do me a favor schedule, a free strategy session with this dude, okay, click link below yeah, fill out.
Your information yep, let us know your problems, what you’re struggling with and Landy can help ya. We’ll just talk. Do whatever we can. It’s free. You might as well take us up on it landing makar, strange market, thanks to being on your show. Thank You. Man appreciate it bro. Thank you guys, see you next time.
Okay, so how do I know insurance marketing tips that you? I know you want to know? Well, all we do is insurance marketing, so I’m Melana McCarter, the president and founder co-founder of secure agent marketing. All we do is insurance marketing, lead development. Everything we’re one of the you know largest in the country that specialize only in insurance.
So what I want to do is break down five important tips. The reason I picked these five is because, no matter how large or small, how new or old most people that I talk to are missing one of these five tips. Typically, you know you would be surprised. Even large companies don’t have some of these things in order. So the first thing that I want to go through is make sure that you pay attention and build your brand okay.
What do I mean by that? Well, people work with brands and people like you have got to make sure that your identity is passed through your materials, your you know. If you have a presentation, folder your business card, your website, your social media profiles, you have to have that brand developed. There really needs to be a strong brand presence. You need to think through that. What do you want people to feel whenever they, you know, go to your website? What do you want them to think when they go to your website? Do you want to present yourself as buttoned up professional, you know executive or do you want to be casual? You know fun and you know friendly or do you want to be educational or you got to think through that and all those things come through and your brand right so there’s nothing more important when it comes to brand development, then your logo, okay, logos, are not That hard to create you can have your friend do it.
You can do it on your with, with yourself in Photoshop, there’s plenty of free tools that you can use to throw up a logo. You can even go to Fiverr and have somebody throw up a logo for 5. 10. 15. 20 bucks. The main thing that you want to do is make sure that you’ve defined that logo and you put that logo on your business card. Your shirt, your website, everything it needs to be consistent. I can’t tell you how many insurance professionals I see, with 14 different logos between every interaction that I have with them.
They got their logo and there’s email signatures different than the one that’s on their website. That’s different from one of their t-shirt: okay, don’t be sloppy your brand, it really presents you are, and in the insurance business, it’s all about being a professional and driving confidence and then other individual that you’re talking to to potentially work with and having inconsistencies on a Subconscious level it does mess with your buying process.
It’s it’s like having a messy storefront if you were to walk into a storefront another thing that is super important when you’re talking about building your brand is developing. What’s called like a brand board now, a lot of you maybe haven’t heard of a brand board or know what that is what a brand board is in the marketing industry. Creating a brand board is basically one document that is essentially everything that has to do with your brand’s.
So if you have a web developer or a person doing a postcard for you or a person, doing a letterhead for you or a person doing some type of customer appreciation, postcard or email or website or whatever you have one place, that all of your brand key Components are, and so that that designer or marketing professional can then make sure that they’re, not using you, know different logos or different fonts or different colors, you know being off just a little bit, you know is actually a mistake.
So what a brand board is? Is it has your logo and your different variations of your logo? What’s your logo, look like on a white background? What’s it look like on a back background? What does it look like transparent, so you can put on a t-shirt. You got to think through all those things, so the next thing that a brand board has is your font. What is the actual font of your website of your letterhead of everything, a designer needs to know those things also, what’s the color scheme, what are the actual colors that I was to go, look and represent on you know if I was to put one color the Same color on your postcard that you’re just mailing versus your website versus your t-shirts or whatever, that is what’s the actual color number, but that individual needs to know to look it up whenever they’re doing their designing right.
You also going to have textures and images. I’r going to show you an example of our brand board, we’re going through sort of a rebranding process. That’s the curation marketing I’ll show you our branding board right now. If you look it, we have all those L all right so step. Number two: is you want to make sure that you want to implement that brand into your website? Well, if you’ve created a excellent brand board, then it’s really easy to you know if that brand board as a designer, it’s really easy to look at that brand board and then build a website that matches that brand board very easily, because it’s got your logo.
It’s got your color scheme, it’s got your shape. It’s got your images. It’s really easy for a marketing professional to actually build your website. That also is cheaper for you. It shaves off hours of revisions that you’re going to go through because well I don’t necessarily like that, but I didn’t really know why. I don’t like that. I just don’t like it. Well, all that’s solved if you have a brand consistency set and if your web developer comes back with a idea, that’s completely different than your brand.
You could be like no, no, no look. Look at my brand board like what are you talking about? Why would I like purple my color scheme? Is that purple see see here’s my brand right? That’s super important. So your website is what I would say. Like your digital, you know a handshake. So what happens in the insurance? A lot of insurance is done over the phone. A lot of insurance is done. You know there you’re letting people in your home you’re talking you’re, giving your credit card number you’re, giving your you know.
Bank account information, sometimes over the phone to people that are coming to your home. It is super super important that your website is put together. Crisp clean, you know, communicates who you are etc right, it’s really very, very important and moving into 2020, because we, you know the industry is moving towards a digital path where you know we’re not as likely likely to put this way. The trend in insurance marketing is being done more and more over the phone.
So therefore, I’m not having the opportunity to show up in my nice car with my nice suit or whatever you need to have a nice website. That explains who you are that people can trust you right so now, whenever you are talking about your actual website, make sure that you have your main pages built out and you’re really. You know communicating extremely clearly on what you do and who your target audience is cetera.
Okay, so what I mean by that is you want to make sure that all of your pages across your top of your website are broken out so like for an example, you want to have an about us, you know section, you won’t have a page for each Of your main services that you offer so, if you offer, for instance, final expense, insurance, Medicare and Medicare supplement, you want three different. Particular you know pages in your website that talks about those particular verticals and educates to that particular audience, because the person that’s interested in med sup is not the same person, that’s interesting, final expense and the person.
That’s interested in final expense is not the same person. That’s interested in term life, so you want to make sure that you don’t just have one page on your website that talks all about insurance services we offer and then as bullet points or whatever each major service that you have you want to have it have its Own page, all right, you also want to have a testimonials page and then, most importantly, you want to have a blog feed write that blog feeds we’re going to circle back more to later, but that blog feed is super important, because that’s how you create content, you Educate your customers, you actually get a lot of organic website traffic by blogging.
We’re going to get into that here in a little bit step. Number three: okay is going to be set up. Your social media profiles consistent with your brand board and your website. They all the main social media profiles. You know in LinkedIn, Instagram Facebook. They all have an opportunity to design your logo. There’s a header image. You can make that design. Look exactly like your website! You want your website to match your brand and your social media profiles to match your web.
Your website, your social media profiles, are seen as the personality of your digital presence. Your website is like the information. The social media is your personality: okay, whenever you’re doing insurance, business and the insurance industry, we are people, it’s relationships, it’s referrals. Okay, if I believe, or not, like your social media presence, actually matters in insurance. If you you’re in the fear in the insurance industry, you know that there’s a lot of influencers.
In fact, you know Cody Asche is my business partner, built his entire. You know empire on social media, digital marketing, etc. It’s because you took that very serious. When you look at his youtube, header looks exactly like his facebook header looks exactly like his website and it’s all and consistent. That’s not an accident okay, so you know you want to make sure also you’re leveraging those social platforms.
There’s tools that can allow you to schedule posts out. It is important if you’re a producer to have. You know three to four to five potential website posts per week, we’re going to get into how to actually do that here in a little bit. But it’s easy. If you just schedule it, so, if you create some content, just think for 10 minutes on what’s coming up this week, what’s the holiday whatever it is and then schedule out those posts so that you can, then you know not have to do it every day.
Just handle it on Monday morning you got all your post scheduled Poti was scheduled for the month for all that matters right. So that’s a tool that you can actually leverage to not make. It seem overbearing to manage a social media profile. You can schedule. Those point number four for insurance marketing tips. Working right now is you’re going to create some lead development activities. Okay. Now? What do I mean by lead development activities? Well, in the insurance business, you have to actually get people to talk to to be able to make money.
Your lead development is a direct correlation. How much money that you make? Okay, well, digital marketing and social media is extremely powerful to generate leads. You can do it through paid methods on social media. You can do it through organic methods, on social media and content. I’r going to touch on both the first thing you can do is build out. You know marketing campaigns with social media.
We obviously do this for a lot of our customers, so just as an example, if you’re selling, you know statewide, Medicare or statewide, you know final expense. We can be generating leads for five six, seven, eight, nine bucks, apiece per lead of people that are talking to you – can even get down to as small as a zip code to drive those campaigns. Now, if this is all intimidating to you, then you can work with a professional to make sure they’re not blowing through budget, because one thing that will happen is if you’re not super comfortable, is you will waste a lot of money? If you don’t know what you’re doing to try and learn, so we would love to help you with that.
Another thing you can do is organic activity. That constraint leads so that be making social posts. You know that would be creating content on your blog, we’re going to get into that next and just overall creating content and educating users creating articles, doing blogs, just creating sort of content that is built to educate and is built to get the individual to engage with Your content and educate tip number five is produce consistent content.
Now, a good content strategy is really not that hard. You just have to think about it. Okay, so here’s a content strategy that I would recommend this is going to help you with your organic lead, generating activities he’s going to help you with your referrals, it’s going to help you with just becoming an expert in the industry as well. So all you have to do is come up with four blog topics per month.
Okay, that’s not that many release one a week. It needs to be about 400 to 600 words all right once you create that blog topic go and write the actual blog posts. You know for 600 words and then create a vlog, whether it’s on your cell phone or a camera or whatever, and create a YouTube article. That’s talking about the same topic and embed that YouTube article in your blog. Okay, then take that blog content and blog content.
Chop it into five smaller pieces. Maybe it’s just points or highlights of the actual content, whatever it is, and then post those five smaller pieces on your social media platforms throughout the week right then email, the actual blog content to your actual user database as well driving them to more content. To read from your site so that way: you’re covering your social, your blogging, your email, marketing and everything that has to do with content marketing.
It’s not that hard to come up with four blog contents per month and write. You know 1800 words or whatever produce some articles only if do this once a month. You can knock that out in one day and you’d be surprised how many organic referrals you get organic website traffic. You get if it’s all structured the right way and I would just highly highly recommend creating a content strategy, because people work with the people that educate them now.
What I want you to do is make sure that you understand that if you have any problems with implementing any of this, we would love to help you so create your marketing is built to help any of the five. But I will also tell you you also don’t have to pay a professional for any of those five as well. Those are all things that you can do for free. So, if you’re on a budget, do it yourself and get a professional later if you have one to invest in your business, if you feel weak on one of those, five then reach out to us and love to do a consultation with you.
I’r talking about that actual particular project that you’re talking about and help you create your brand board or help create your website or help it create your lead, generating activity. I hope you create your blog content or article content, whatever we do. All of that. As a part of our services, so if you guys found value of these five insurance marketing tips working right now, and we will talk to you, hey guys.
If you enjoyed that article, which I know you did go check out, two of other articles, ones, demystifying search, engine, optimization and the other ones managing online reviews, I hope to see you guys over there.
Most people like Eric was just told that he needed to do more, branding, wise and and content wise. So one of the things I always think through in our business is that one of the things that we do is yeah. We post a lot on Facebook. You know post a lot on YouTube yeah.
I post Instagram and Facebook stories 10 to 15 times a day. Sometimes more, but I was looking at our week. I think it was Sunday or Monday. I was looking at last week and last week we had 13 Facebook posts last week. Okay, eight of those and that’s almost two a day. Most people are not that active. Okay, eight of those were articles. Three of those were live articles and two were graphics. Now our contents always going to be focused on article because people respond to people like the educational content, we’re like a insurance TV in a box right we’re educating 13 on Facebook YouTube, we dropped 13, so we must not have dropped them all on to Facebook.
That would you put on YouTube: we dropped 13 articles on YouTube, weather or articles podcast, long articles, educational articles, tip articles interviews or even shows right. So we did so. We dropped 13 articles on YouTube. If you think about that, you take a step back and you look at over the next. It’s like 52 weeks, okay, even 50 weeks. Actually, if you look, you know what let’s look at, I mean I mean if you look at 13 you’re at at 50 weeks.
You’re at 650 articles, if you take it times 52 weeks, you’re at what an extra 26 so so 676 676 total articles dropped over the course of 52 weeks a year from an SEO standpoint and a Content standpoint, you are going to lead the pack number one. Okay, you’re going to lead the pack welcome to insurance influencers you’re, also going to have that much content. That’s out there and available from an SEO standpoint, what most people don’t understand and what they don’t realize is.
I mean, for instance, assurance IQ is just sold to Prudential for 2.5 billion dollars. I guarantee you a lot of what they were doing was SEO based and traffic based to that site, getting people to let them shop, their term health, insurance, Medicare ho ho monado right, and so what most people don’t think about? Is the long term play everybody’s? Always thinking about the short term and and when you think about the short term, you don’t produce content, you don’t do articles, you don’t have a article team, you don’t even outsource it to someone like us with our media department, because you’re thinking so short term, but If you’re ever wanting like build a brand, have prospects reach out to you, build a team, sell anything that helps insurance people or grow a telesales operation.
Any of those you need a personal brand that drives people to you now, if you’re, not in that group – and I don’t know who isn’t – I guess I mean – maybe maybe maybe there’s you know the agent that just wants to sell insurance forever and and that’s you Know none of those other things are important to them. Then a brand is an important content as an important article is important, but if any of those five things I mentioned are really really really important to you, then having a personal brand, pushing out content being an influencer in your space is extremely extremely valuable and important.
So that’s one of the things that, like we don’t talk about and our industry doesn’t talk about our industry almost frowns on it, because it’s like oh that’s, person’s, fake and they’re, just trying to put out stuff and they’re trying to get attention. Well, no crap they’re! Just trying to get attention right in our world nowadays, it’s all about attention. Whoever has attention gets paid for it right.
We get paid decently well and do a lot of business with agents, because we are a Content leader. We put out more content. Anyone else in our space we produce more articles by far than anyone else in our space, and I’ve been doing it for almost four years, and we’ve got a trail of twelve thirteen hundred articles on YouTube that people are always reading. So when you think about it eventually, your goal is to be an in actual influencer, and if any of those things are that we talked about those five areas, if you’re ever wanting to be any of those, then you have to establish a Content schedule and put Out content, we could do more right, we’ve spent, I’m guarantee you when you add everything up.
We’ve spent over six figures on this room, this studio, because it’s a long-term play for me. There’s I mean most people. People wouldn’t have a marketing staff of one two. Three: four: five: six: seven, eight, nine ten, eleven twelve people, but we do just on the marketing team, because I’m thinking long term right most of the people on the marketing department, don’t drive short-term revenue. For me, let me say that again most of people on our marketing team aren’t driving short-term revenue.
They are built. They are helping us build and grow our message and our following by producing a crap ton of content, which is unique and rare, and some some can say: hey dude, you just learn to do this by reading Grant Cardone. That’s absolutely true. He’s an influencer in his space and I realized that he did all these shows not because those shows have the best content in the world ever, but he puts out so many articles and does so many shows because he’s got like and he’s got like almost he’s Got over 4,000 articles on YouTube now, so it’s hard to not have a massive following when you put out that much content, the content could suck and you would still have a following just because you are consistent and religious with it, and some people will hate your Content some people love it.
Some people resonate with it. Then they’ll keep reading it. So if you ever wanting to like that’s what we’re adding a media branch to our team and how we can actually come on site and blow up your brand record articles of you build articles for you, edit record upload even manage your YouTube. Most of the YouTube blogs in our space are not good, or they have 32 subscribers and and in 12 articles or 200 articles with 400 subscribers and no thumbnails, no tags, no descriptions.
The titles suck – and you know like if some way, if someone’s titling something you know Medicare QA, and it’s not a title right. The point of titles is to find the core message of that article, the most attractive part, the most clicked baby part. If you want to call it that and then title the article that so people want to click on it and read it right, so the podcast yesterday we did we released yesterday.
The day before was about how to write 6000 maker policies in a year. That is a catchy title and it wasn’t. We didn’t talk about that the whole whole time in the podcast, but that was the core piece of the podcast right. So most people are not doing enough. There’s people that I know that are in my network right now and Dylan. I almost want you to use this as a separate little clip. There are people in my network that could be owning their space and 10 Xing, the traffic that they are getting to their brand, but they aren’t and if that’s what, if you’re one of those people reading you’re like do, I know who you’re talking about me.
Then We Need to Talk because yeah we may talk all the time, but if you aren’t leading from a Content perspective in your space, we can help right. If you want to leverage Dylan and key that nobody else in our marking, department and leverage me and the brainstorming, that’s one of the things that we’re focused on doing is helping other people blow up their brand in our space blow up their YouTube, blog, etc, etc, Etc: okay, any other thoughts or points you want to add Dylan at the end of the day, like it’s all about, if you’re ever wanting to build a team, every wanting to grow a brand, an online brand, a call center sell a product to anybody.
You know have prospects coming to you for whatever you sell, then you need to produce content. You need to become a legit freakin influencer. Most of the people there in our industry are not doing it good enough. Okay, so let’s do it better and let’s realize you know we put that we point up. We pumped out 13 articles last week, but Dylan we had what a month ago where he put out like maybe a month and a half before three weeks ago.
Whatever we put out 21 articles in a week right everywhere, yeah, where every about 15 articles a week on YouTube, that is a freaking crap ton of articles right over the course of 52 weeks. We are on pace to put up 780 articles a year over the course of three years we’re putting up over 3,000 articles. That’s a lot of stinking articles right, which is why you need to be thinking about how you can leverage what you’re doing, how you can get more attention, how you can monetize it, how you can stop thinking so short-term start spending, some money and thinking long term And put out content help people, okay, people work with people to educate them, start educating people thanks for reading to influencers.
I love this show. When I keep doing it, I want to keep educating you on how you can blow up your brain. Get more attention turn yourself into a brand. You are a brand and how you can start to help more people by thinking of yourself differently, okay and by putting out a lot more content. So thanks for reading every weekend,
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Today, I am in my hotel room in Phoenix Arizona, just finished the retreat just coming off. The retreat had an amazing time, and today I want to talk a few minutes about promotion, branding and advertising, and that’s something that we went through a lot of on this retreat like SEO like how to promote yourself right how to brand yourself how to advertise yourself In 2019, how to get leads, how to get customers all of those things are things that we went through high level deep dive, all of it for several days.
So one of the things that you need to know when you’re reading insurance agent training today alive is we talked about one thing: everyone always talks about how everything I wear just about is branded. I’m telling you, if you’re not doing this, if you’re not branding yourself right, number one and if you’re not always wearing and promoting your brand, then what are you doing now? I’m not talking about just always throw it in people’s faces right, the hey! I sell insurance house Hill insurance, hey, I sell insurance right, I’m not always throwing in people’s faces.
Hey I trained agent say I trained agent, say I trained agents right or hey, I’m market for agents or hey. We build sites for agents right or hey. You know we generate leads for agents right or hey. I coach, insurance agents we’re not always or hey. We threw a conference for agents, we’re not always putting that out there and throw it in people’s face. So you guys see me do it through article. You see me do it through swag right even on my Apple, read a CA logo, all of it right.
So you guys see me, but also through Instagram stories. Facebook stories random articles right, personal page, I’m not always throwing in people’s faces that hey you need to buy stuff from me. I am focused on educating and providing value. It’s one of the things that we talked about at this retreat. This weekend pay attention now. This is good people do business with people that educate them, who educates you better than anyone else.
The insurance industry and a lot of you do business with us, because we focus on educating you and bringing value to you. Instead of I’m going to shift to give you a little little better lighting here, instead of simply just always preaching, instead of always selling, instead of always pitching instead of telling you’d always buy stuff from me. Instead, I’m telling you the content approach, the marketing approach for 2019 and Beyond is a value first approach, and, if you’re not doing that with the branding of yourself, with with the with with all your social media, with everything that you do, you need to be.
It’s a value, first approach: it’s an educate, first approach and it’s a sell last right. It’s it’s all about! Nowadays, it’s all about how much can I give away for free so that when someone thinks about that topic, they think about me. Most people are backwards like the old way we talk about this a lot at the retreat. The old way is hey, keep everything close to the chest. Don’t tell anybody your secrets, don’t think about everything.
Don’t tell everybody too much right. That’s the old way: the new way is hey. Here’s all that I’m going to provide for free like we do. These shows constantly in articles constantly everything we do. We see how much we can give away and in turn I give so much value so much content that a couple things happen and you can do the same thing in your business and we talk about this a lot at the retreat and if you missed it, I’m telling you I get another one in June you got to be there see, that’s a soft sell in the middle of providing value and that’s okay.
The way you got to approach this today is how much can I give away right? Am I putting emphasis on educating people along the way? Do I provide and bring enough value so that they care and when they think of the services I offer? Will they think of me now they’ll only think of you, if you’re educating them in the right way and providing more value than anyone else in your space, like I feel like, and that’s why we had life insurance agents, Medicare agency owners, P & C agency owners Carriers etc, pay to be on a retreat with us, because we provide the most value from a content and training perspective as much as anybody in the industry.
I give away so much stuff for free because I enjoy it, and I understand that marketing in 2019 that that’s part of it and because of those things, guess what the first in educates them is the person that they think of that they think about training them To think about, buying leads from they think about doing business with. So are you putting the right structures in place? This is insurance agent training.
This is live training on the spot. Are you right now thinking about educating, first, providing value and giving away as much as you can for free? If you look at the course of the 1,200 articles that we’ve put out to the general public to the insurance world over the last three and a half years, no one else has done that. Find me someone. That’s provided more free content to insurance agents, agency owners, IMO’s carriers call centers etc than we do.
But when you that’s, why you? But that’s how you need to think? What do you think about growing your business when you think about when you think about putting your message out there to the world so that when they think about something you have to offer, they think of you think about that approach? How how can you give away so much content, so much value and so consistently, then, when they think about life insurance, Medicare, joining an agency right, recruiting, building a call center right when they think about buying home and auto insurance car insurance when they think about you Know purchasing an annuity when they think about in testing when they think about you, know: ni UL, whatever college funding college planning in any of it when they think about any of these things, who do they think about? Who do you think about who comes to mind? First, when you think about when you think about Medicare and selling Medicare supplements, who comes to your mind first well, what are they doing so that they come to your mind first, and how can you also do those exact same things that they are but better more Value spend more money, pump it out more and do it more consistently so that when someone thinks about Medicare’s subtly Medicare supplements, they don’t think about them.
They think about you. So today I want I want you. I want this to be a thought-provoking episode of insurance agent training that gets you thinking about. How do you advertise market brand and promote in 2019 so that later on, in the later on in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2020 to 2023, 2030, 2040, 2050, even 2060? They think of you right so that that’s the message for today hope you receive it. Well hope you have an incredible rest of it hope you have a dominating week think about the things that you can do to be top of mind and help a lot of people, and the first way is to get around people that inspire you.
That motivates you that challenge you, that you can learn from pay to learn the things that you need to know. That’s one big takeaway, big secret. I that I put out to the world all the time, because I paid to learn the things that I needed to know to scale my business. That’s why this retreat! That’s why the five people that paid to be on this retreat took away so much value. They were blown away so think about how you can implement this in your business right now and forever, so that you dominate your niche of this industry for many years to come.
Thanks for reading interest into training, I hope you have an incredibly an awesome day. We’ll see you tomorrow for phone phenom appreciate you guys,
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I wanted to take a few minutes to shoot a couple sort of articles, that of topics that I’m getting questions a lot from. So if you guys don’t know, you know we deal with thousands, we I think we have 14,000 final expense Medicare. You know life insurance agents in our in our database, and so we get questions every single day by the multitudes and every time I can kind of notice a theme of questions.
I really try to realize. Okay, there’s an appetite for this, so let’s just go ahead and address it on a article. So today I want to discuss a topic that I think is really interesting, that I want to walk through, and that is: should you as a final expense or insurance life insurance producer? Should you be using social media? Should you be using your personal page or you, should you be using your business page to make your engaging content so, first off, I want to kind of explain they both have their place and let me try and explain what I, in my opinion, what you should Be doing and 2019 and going into 2020 now before I give you this article and content, I want to give you guys a quick disclaimer.
I am NOT a licensed insurance agent. I do not have a book of business on the insurance front, I’m just the marketing guy that works with Cody on all his stuff, and I just work with insurance producers all day long. I think today, you know I’ve got six meetings with individual producers or large. You know insurance, you know IMO’s or whatever it is, and so I just kind of have my ear on the ground on what’s going on in the insurance world.
So this is my opinion, but I’m going to give you my opinion on this. So one of the things that I believe is important for you guys as individuals, is to really activate your personal social media page and use that as a business asset. Now, what I mean is is don’t, don’t always be selling, don’t be sitting there and like pitching your products all the time. Another mistake that I see people do is, I feel like they try to use fear as a tactic, to incite like a call to action with some of their memes, that they post or some of their content, that they post like make sure it’s positive.
So like what I mean by that is is a big mistake is, I think, trying to say something like you know this person’s, you know loved one passed away and they didn’t have life insurance and I met with them a month ago and too bad for them. Obviously, no one would say it in those words, but that’s kind of the heart of what the message was and I don’t think that’s wise. I think you need to be positive and uplifting and communicating stories doing Facebook live articles with people that you’ve helped in a positive way.
Try not to go down that negative path of like of the fear-based sort of you know. Look you need to be protected or else kind of language. That’S probably not ideal, because there’s enough of that negativity on Facebook, I would just rise above that, if you can, you know not just negativity on Facebook, but you know at all social media. So what I try to do is I try to understand that my customers, I I’ve always friend, I basically never unfriend or defriend anybody.
I think I’m almost of 5,000 friends, which is the cap, but until I get to 5,000 I’m pretty much just anybody that wants in you can you can come in I I am immediately turned off if someone pitches me right off the bat or whatever or tries To give me to partner with them or something just like you guys would as well. So you know one of the things that I’d like for you guys to try and work on on your personal sort of Facebook.
Page is, I think you should add your clients to your Facebook feed. I really do because a lot of times these individuals, one of the things that we’re fighting as you know, Medicare or you know final expense or life insurance or whatever we’re fighting that losing you know keeping business on the books and, if you’re, starting to post things About your family and how you’re coaching your son’s basketball team and how you had an exciting family reunion – and it’s like you know if you can bring people along that journey of how you’re a family person it kind of it kind of relates to those individuals.
And I feel like you’re staying top of mind with them without actually having to like potentially email them. You know directly or reach out to them directly, etc. So I don’t have any data to say those that are active on social media tend to keep business on the books, but I believe that is the case, and it is true based on feedback that I’ve been given, and I believe that is something you should pay Attention to so, I try to separate my social media posts into three main categories.
What I try to do is make sure that, no matter what I’m always exuding like fun and exciting things and showing behind the curtain of Who I am as a person an example, if you guys were to go to my Facebook feed last week, I think, or Week before last, I got a jury summons and that initial sort of you know jury summons, like gosh. I got to take a day and I may take me a week to get to this jury, so my initial reaction was how do I get out of this, but as I started to think and reflect on that, I thought it was a good important way to Kind of show really just share some insight on the whole experience and just help.
People understand that maybe haven’t been into a jury, summons situation. How I was looking at the situation and by doing that, I felt like I was able to show a portion of who I was as a person as well, and so I made like a pretty long, lengthy Facebook post about my experience with jury summons and my Perspective on that – and I ended up getting quite the engagement on that actual Facebook post and when you go through and you look through the people that read my story that I posted to went to.
Instagram read my story there and actually engaged in the actual Facebook post that I made. I bet you 40 percent, if not more than that of people that I actually liked and commented on, that actual page was clients or people that I’ve done business with in the past or people that I would consider you know influencers in who I care that you Know I want to be in front of meaning I respect and there’s mutual respect there.
It’S not just Uncle John and cousin Nathan and you know cousin mark and all those guys did engage you know in my stuff, but a good 40 50 percent was clients. So I feel like by me allowing people to come in behind the curtain, of who I am as a person and and walking through I’m a father, I’m a husband, I’m a you know a believer I make you know these these posts. That kind of show me as a person, so that’s one core sort of pillar that my social media stands on.
Another thing that I do quite a bit is, I try to make people laugh from. I just feel like social media sometimes gets a bad rap for being negative. I mean good grief and it’s about to get even more negative with 2020, with these elections coming it’s about to be a cesspool of negativity and everybody. What’S going to end up happening? Is people are going to kind of like get annoyed and start just looking at it less? Because it’s about to be this horrible situation of the Democrats, hating the Republicans, the Republicans saying the Democrats and Trump always debates who won? Who didn’t win? It’S about to be a nightmare.
Okay, and what I mean by nightmare is is there’s some people that like enjoy that dialogue and all that, but good grief like raise your hand if you’ve changed someone’s mind on Facebook arguing. So I try to just stay as far away from that as I can and be short. If someone wants to call me out on anything, you know, then I’m short with trying to defend myself and just kind of say. I guess we just unfriend me or whatever cuz you know, so I tried it like make people laugh.
I do that by like posting memes and just kind of having fun so and then I also talked about business successes and the growth that we’re seeing and the winds that we’re experiencing and just I try to like keep it all positive. You know like, for instance, you know, there’s, there’s business struggles that sometimes I can you know potentially maybe share, but I’m always sharing the upside of that struggle that we went through I’m never just using Facebook as a platform to vent.
Now I made a huge mistake: he was five six years ago where I just used Facebook. As like this platform, I think some people can end up using a soapbox there’s because really, if you were to think about it, there’s no other place for you to reach a thousand people. And then, then, your facebook feed right now, like you, couldn’t just go reach a thousand people if you wanted to okay. So what ends up happening is is subconsciously, whether you realize or not.
If you have a topic that you’re passionate about you’re, usually going to go to Facebook and project that – and I always try to like I’m not saying you got to be friends with everybody and you know even guys like Grant Cardone or whoever will say you know, You need to have such a strong position that you repel after your audience and attract another half further, I’m okay with that. I’M not saying that’s wrong, but I just don’t think it’s wise, because I have people that I love and respect and care about deeply that are staunch on the other side of the aisle from where I was and that’s great like I want to hear their opinions.
I want to hear their ideas. I want to hear who they are as a person, because they’re, not bad people, and just because we disagree doesn’t mean we have to like you know, butt heads, especially on social media, where everyone can see it. You know. So it’s like you know, I believe that you know I try to walk that line of being you know, I don’t want to be politically correct, like in in terms of like who I am as a person in one-on-one conversation is, is one thing but Who I Am on social media? I try not to be very like divisive, because I feel like that, doesn’t help anybody and it only hurts like I’ve.
Had some people say you know I’m doing business with you because I, like you, know your your personal perspective and I was when I was a little bit more armchair politician if you will, but I’m sure I’ve pushed people away as well, and so I just try To be friends with a lot of people and not anti anybody, so that’s how I would recommend using your social media as a individual insurance professional, because the insurance business is a relationship game, more people, you get in front of the more people you can impact, and So, on the flip side, I’m going to shoot a next article on how to use your your professional page as opposed your personal page.
So thanks for listening, I hope this is an OK format, for you guys, a little more casual conversation of just my opinion. You know like and comment if you, if you agree and fulfill free to comment, if you disagree, I would love to have a open dialogue with you. So hope you have a good afternoon have a great day guys
I wanted to do a article on search engine optimization. I want to do a little bit deeper of a dive. I’Ve done several SEO articles in the past. I had a good conversation last night with a genius SEO guy that I highly respect in the in the space, and we were kind of talking through some things, just kind of being marketing, guys discussing the ins and outs of what I’ve learned.
What they’ve learned and the one thing that I found was that everybody kind of has their own different flavor, but I will tell you that search engine optimization has changed vastly over the last five or six years. I mean what I want to do is kind of give you an overview to make sure that you kind of know what search engine opposition it optimization is how to actually go after those keywords that you want organically and then really just kind of build towards.
You know getting an organic ranking on Google to try and get that traffic that you don’t the pay for per click or pay for by lean with social etc. So the first thing I want to do is just kind of break down what I would call like. A Content first, what a lot of us say is content first SEO strategy. Now what I mean by that is is I believe that your website content is the chassis at which your search engine optimization is built upon, meaning I don’t care how great you’re out you know your external links are your reviews? Are your conversions that you’re getting through Adwords or whatever you’re getting that does have a factor in your domain Authority? If you don’t have a lot of educational, unique content pages on your website, you’re not going to ever be able to be ahead of someone.
That does and also has those things. So the first thing I want you understand is that content website content is highly important. Now, what is website content well website content would be the individual pages that are on your website, so I’ve done articles on the on the past on this on the past, talking about foundational content versus supplemental etc. But one of the things I want you to understand is that you really need a to be working towards a large website from a Content perspective from a page number perspective.
So one of the first things that we do whenever we go into analysis of a competitor and try and figure out what they’re doing to get you know so many dating quotes a day. I’Ve got a Medicare prospect right now. It’S getting 200 quotes a day from their organic SEO. Now they’ve been doing this for years, but that’s a huge number. I think I think they tell me 2000 policies a years what they’re getting from their organic.
You know website just passively. That’S those numbers are bonkers. Like right, so obviously, if we can understand and crack that code, then it’s a big big part of it. So content is: is the chassis of your SEO now there’s other things that are going to matter, but the main thing with content is that it’s unique in that it’s structured, the correct way with Google search console and that your pages are structured.
The correct way you got all your page titles set up all your meta descriptions set up h1 set up, your keyword, integrations, etc. There’S lots of ways to manage that, but you know just make sure. That’S that’s key, so every page in your website needs to be structured correctly from the meta data perspective and then once you get, you know a content strategy where you’re creating content, there’s other things that that we’re all noticing as SEO is out there that are really Affecting the overall organic listings, absolutely one of those things is just articles.
Okay, one of the things that I am seeing more and more and more and more is that those websites that have highly integrated articles, along with either transcripts below the article or actual, like blog posts, with the article embedded that matters to Google. If you, if you’ve noticed, Google has actually pushed organic listings, sometimes below the recommended articles, why do you think they do that? Well, let’s think about it.
For a second, if you’re googling a keyword on Google – and there is a article that explains that keyword better than a website, would then would Google rather give you the article or someone randoms website? Well, of course, they’re going to try and give you the article, because it’s makes sense for the user, but it also gives Google paid think about it. Every eyeball that goes to YouTube to look at articles on their actual platform is a potential eyeball to advertise to for their impressions.
So what Google is doing is actively moving up different queries, search queries based the note that, based on the nature of the search query, if it’s very informational – and there are articles that are tied to that, there give me those recommended articles above even the organic listings, Which is crazy, like that’s something I didn’t even see coming two years ago, so you know I’ve done millions and millions of dollars of search engine optimization across different industries and now that I’m in one specific industry, which is the insurance industry, I’m seeing that article is Making a big difference, it really is so that’s one of the things I want to talk through.
The next thing that I want to talk through is inbound links. Now this is a interesting conundrum. Okay, because Google has stated that they don’t want you to buy links. I don’t want you to engage in link building services, but there’s two main things that you got to pay attention to when it comes to link building one, the domain Authority and the content of the website. That’S linking to your website matters a ton getting a doggie daycare website to link to your life.
Insurance page is not going to help you in any way getting a Medicare gov link to your website will matter. I mean that’s huge okay, the thing that I don’t love about working link building into into SEO strategies is one. Unless it’s a major SEO strategy, then you want to do that, but for basic SEO strategies linking isn’t controllable or sustainable, meaning. I can’t guarantee myself X amount of Link’s for X amount of budget, so it’s difficult for me to really put resources towards it, because I’ve had clients and projects where we’ve tried to build links and we’ve done like hours and hours and hours and hours and hours Of work – and we only got one or two links done and it’s hard to quantify that as a return on investment, so snippet, it’s typically been something.
I’Ve tried to stay away from, not to say that inbound links aren’t like important, but it’s something. That’S it’s difficult to manage, but if you can get inbound links, of course, they help your domain authority, especially if that inbound link is a relevant website to the content that you’re trying to drive right. That’S that’s the key, so inbound links still work now. I will tell you that six, seven years ago the link wheel and link pyramids and all that stuff.
That was how you did SEO it didn’t really matter about your website as long as other web sites were linking to you as an authority, Google would give you that domain. That’S not the case anymore and just think about it. Would you rather go to a website that has a bunch of links tied to it on the backside or we really go to website it’s educational, informational answers, the questions that you’re looking for for that particular you know viewing session on the internet.
You know the answer to that. So does Google so they’re optimizing the backend smoke and mirrors away from search engine optimization? That’S why I still believe content first strategies are highly important. The second thing that I’m noticing that’s working out for SEO big-time is reviews. I had a client bring this up to me yesterday and reviews believe it or not do provide a somewhat of a link, but but there’s systems out there, where you can actually get reviews and reviews.
Well, let me try and explain this whenever you’re looking at search engine, optimization, you’re, typically doing things that are helping the search engine, robots, crawl, your website and rank where you deserve to be ranked, based on content based on domain Authority based on all the metrics that Are involved on getting on the top of the list, but you also have to tailor to your users your actual people that are looking at your website to get information and potentially opting in in the form of a lead.
So one of the things that reviews does is it really heightens the engagement of the user because it adds social proof to your overall. You know domain Authority, but also the individual. That’S looking through that, if they see that 14 people in the last you know 22 days have given you positive reviews, 5 out of 5 stars, then that’s absolutely going to be a factor for the user to determine if they’re going to opt in or not so.
But what is interesting is is that we’re finding also, and that reviews actually helped on the organic SEO site, as well as the user experience as well. I had always really kind of been under the impression that reviews were mostly user experience and less search. Engine optimization and the algorithm I’m seeing and based on what colleagues are telling me is that they’re actually merging the two you know together so, but what really ends up being the truth of search engine optimization is really just building a resource for people to educate themselves.
On whether it’s review content articles other websites that are linking to it as an authority as well, that is how you win the game in 20. You know 20, 19, almost 20, 20. So with a good search engine, optimization plan, I you shouldn’t like never ever ever. Do those $ 1.99 SEO bullcrap deals? All they’re doing is they’re taking 200 bucks a month for five months. Until you realize it’s not working, then you cut it, but you’ve paid them a thousand dollars and you just cut your losses.
Do not do that to do SEO the right way, and you know these in 2019, you have to have unique custom content written by human beings. You can’t even really spend content. You can’t figure out a way to bring in a bunch of content. That’S already written not going to work, it’s got to be custom and unique. You’Ve got to try and shoot and work towards articles, and you got to try to get to the point where you’re actually soliciting reviews, whether that’s through an email sort of acquisition.
After the customer, you know signs up with you hey. How did we do? Would you mind filling out this review platform, whatever you’ve been going into some sort of paid service? That would help your reviews would be something that you could think about to help your overall organic SEO. So those are the three things that I feel like have been supplementing the content first, but I really believe that your website content is the chassis that your SEO was built on.
As long as you can focus on those three things, you don’t have to do all these three also by the way. This is something that you have to do usually internally, it’s difficult to have an external company produce articles articles for you, because it’s usually your content. That needs to be on that article, but typically, this is where the SEO company can thrive. That’S what we focus on a lot is unique custom content and then coach on the reviews, coaching, the inbound links coach on the articles and just kind of provide some insight on what that looks like.
So we obviously do SEO for insurance. Only the interesting part about SEO is if it’s content first, that means you need to know what the heck you’re talking about about Medicare. We spend all day long talking, Medicare final expense, life, insurance, health insurance, long-term care, disability, all these insurance, because all we do so our copywriters only write for insurance, so we kind of know what infographics to produce what content to write etc.
So if anybody hires and unspecialized marketing agency anymore you’re silly because you need to be starting to find just like lawyers are doing, you don’t go, find a general attorney if you’re a criminal case, you go find a criminal lawyer. Well, I’m starting to actually refer other industries to my colleagues and they’re, starting to refer insurance people to me, because digital marketing is becoming such a huge part of people’s marketing budget and I used to own a jack-of-all-trades marketing agency.
And if I was competing with myself. Ten months ago, I today would just I laugh at how I would approach an insurance prospect, because it’s so different than how the general world operates from a digital marketing perspective. Please please please, even if you don’t hire secure agent marketing, if your insurance hire someone that specializes in insurance marketing, because it’s a big difference between how the general you know the general world markets, that’s that’s the truth, so I hope you guys found some value out Of this content, I try to kind of have to have these articles, be very educational, focused my goal.
I’Ve always said this. If you guys follow our content, I want to help you guys understand what is north there’s so much garbage information out there. That is just like people chasing rabbit trails that this don’t even make sense people that aren’t experts in anything trying to give advice, just it’s just bonkers. So what I hope this article can do is give you understanding of how SEO works in 2019.
And you know what guys this is going to change in six months. Also, it’s going to work more differently. Every six months, Google updates, the you know every more than six months. Google is updating how they are. You know, tracking websites etc. So I would HIGHLY encourage you guys to you know: take this model run with it and really don’t listen to any of the bye links and buy this or blah blah blah that just doesn’t really work anymore.
It’S got to be content. First, you need content and in order to even get to that point, you got ta have a website which we also can build as well. So hope you guys found value in this today and we’ll see you again on the next time.
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