Just over a year ago I made the jump from captive to indy. I am a producer with my own office for an independent company. I had a successful first year so now they are willing to spend some marketing money to make it grow even bigger. Ive been doing this long enough to know there's no magic bullet so just curious if anyone has marketing suggestions that work for you? I thought about doing a $25-$50 weekly referral drawing and putting my picture with the drawing winner in the local newspaper's every week. I thought that might generate more referrals plus get some brand recognition in the paper's. Also a lot of my business comes from mortgage lenders. I know theres a program like this already but I thought about sending out cards to my insured on behalf of the referral source so the lender can potentially get more referrals. Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.
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People buy insurance on the Internet. Spend your money there...
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Congratulations good to see other people coming out of their first year strong. I'm in the same boat I just had my end of year in December and am working with a 20k marketing budget. I don't know which company you work for or what they are providing you so I may not be relevat but I opted to spend my money on beefing up my website.
I started out the same way you did by leveraging referral sources (car dealerships in my case) as my main source of income. However, I don't like the idea of my success being based of the performance of other business. I still have a few car lots on the roll call but I stopped prospecting new ones in order to focus on in house lead generation.
Now I don't know your situation so I can't tell you what to spend your money on but I can share my mentality on how to spend it.
With $10k you should definitely invest in marketing that continues to generate leads/referrals even after the 10k is gone. For example, i have a website that has been averaging about 5k+ / month for about 6 months. I'm reinvesting 5k / month into an SEO firm in hopes of generating 10k-15k / month from the website when they are finished. Even after I stop paying I can reap the fruits of my 20k long after its gone.
I'm not suggesting you get a website. I'm urging you to find a way to purchase an asset with that 10k instead of just finding 1 time marketing tactics.
Let me know what you decide I'm genuinely interested.
I started out the same way you did by leveraging referral sources (car dealerships in my case) as my main source of income. However, I don't like the idea of my success being based of the performance of other business. I still have a few car lots on the roll call but I stopped prospecting new ones in order to focus on in house lead generation.
Now I don't know your situation so I can't tell you what to spend your money on but I can share my mentality on how to spend it.
With $10k you should definitely invest in marketing that continues to generate leads/referrals even after the 10k is gone. For example, i have a website that has been averaging about 5k+ / month for about 6 months. I'm reinvesting 5k / month into an SEO firm in hopes of generating 10k-15k / month from the website when they are finished. Even after I stop paying I can reap the fruits of my 20k long after its gone.
I'm not suggesting you get a website. I'm urging you to find a way to purchase an asset with that 10k instead of just finding 1 time marketing tactics.
Let me know what you decide I'm genuinely interested.
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Hate to break the news to you but a well performing website requires continuing investment (of money, time, or both) not just a one time nut. Insurance and legal services (asbestos) are the most competitive search terms on the web.
You have a pretty big budget, you might be better off hiring a full time employee to do SEO. You could get at least 200 quality man-hours per month of link building and SEO for $5K per month. You are not going to get that hiring a firm.
With that budget, you would also find some success with targeted PPC and your ROI is easy to monitor. With PPC you know you'll be on page 1. With SEO, for a search term like "insurance" you may never reach page 1, even $20K later...
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Of course it's a continuing investment, i never said it wasn't. But with the right strategy rankings can last even if the funding doesnt
Yeah but you won't get the same strategy and results. This is like saying you could hire the guys outside of home depot to build your mansion instead of an architecture firm.
I didn't post to ask for advice, I posted to speak with someone else in a similar situation. If I took your "expert" advice, I would probably be in the same situation as you.... trying to give someone advice on a situation they have never been in. I'll keep expanding on what works for me and you keep doing whatever it is you want to do.
You are the epitome what's wrong with this forum of "experts"
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I think the last sentence is harsh, if you don't like the advice, don't take it. No one is forcing it down your throat.
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Clearly I struck a nerve. I wan't looking to do that. It was obvious he has been listening to SEO sales pitches for some time.
I'm sure he won't have a problem finding an SEO firm to take his $20K.
Good Luck to you Mr. Walker.
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The best ROI on the PL side is from directly schmoozing referral sources. $800 a month on golf, lunches, gift certificates, etc can make you are lot of friends in the RE and Mortgage industry. I have had my best luck with loan processors. They are overworked and under appreciated so a little goes a long way.
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