Using AdWords for exposure

First of all, did a nice Coventry app. I actually did it a few days ago but I just got it faxed back today. This was a referral, lady who wanted all copays - couldn't grasp deductibles (I tried my best) and with Coventry in MD almost everything is a copay and she can get an affordable rate with a low deductible. Coventry doesn't have online apps in MD yet.

Now....AdWords - tried it about two years ago - lacking results as a lead generation tool. Very expensive now to get 1st page ranking - over $4 a click and too much junk. That being said I did indeed make a profit off the campaign. You'll think you're getting exclusive leads but what you'll see is many people hit multiple sites. Also, unlike internet leads which can be returned for credit, you not only pay every time someone clicks your site, but all the quotes with no phone, no email or uninsurable.

This is something different. When I type in the names of local towns there's almost no ads. That's because people who advertise use the product's keyword - like "smithville maryland furniture." It's pretty expensive per click to run those targeted ads. You can try to plug in 10 cents but your account won't go active.

However, not hardly anyone's advertising just using "smithville maryland" keywords since it doesn't generate targeted traffic for their product. But I'm after the exposure. So now for 10 cents a click I'm on my town and all surrounding town's searches. This is exposure, not lead generation! If you want a little exposure in your locality just Google your city/town and see how many ads are on the page. In my town and surrounding towns it's zero to 2 ads. Because of that Google basically is taking what they can get, meaning it's very cheap.

All this will be is people searching their home towns and simply seeing my business name. I could care less if they click. If they don't I have free exposure - $5 to activate an AdWords account. If they click they click - at 10 cents per click I'm golden.

Banner's up and missed opportunity

My banner's up! I did a search for my local towns and turns out one company owns "localtown"maryland.com." I actually went to this site when I first moved here and Google searched it. Now you can't be better bang for the buck than this - $25 flat per month and I'm listed in every single city and town in PG county: http://www.glenndalemaryland.com/local-businesses/metro-lookup.html?Statevar=MD&MetroCountyvar=Prince+Georges&mcpick=County&includesubs=on I'm in the "local" section.

This kills PPC (pay-per-click) since you have to worry about competitor abuse - despite Google saying they have click fraud under control. Yeah....right. This can be clicked 1,000 times or none - $25 per month, over 50 different local cities and towns. It's just great exposure and one leg of advertising. Also goes to show just how cheap this can be. Again, this is more about building name recogintion then thinking my phone's gonna ring from these banners.

Also a missed opportunity. We have the Coffee News: http://coffeenewsbowie.com/ - which is just one large double-sided page with local events and happenings and it's put out free in a ton of businesses. I've seen it a hundred times and thought "I should stick an ad in there." Well, I called today and as you can see, my competitor certainly didn't wait. I called and they have a "no competitor" rule so I have to wait until they choose to stop advertising. (the circled ad says "Afforable Health Insurance" and they're independent. )

Business breakfast

I had my community business network breakfast this morning - this wasn't the chamber of commerce - that breakfast is the 27th. I live in a very large community and they have their own group.

I was very pleasantly surprised. It was nothing I feared it would be. Everyone was just fantastic. We had nine people show and all of them ran home-based businesses; lady who made wedding and b-day cakes, photographer/videographer, dog walking/sitting service, personal training coach, etc...The highlight was the lady who ran a pole dancing business. That's right, she books a party at your house - girls only - brings a pole and they have a "girl's night out" pole party. Now....that alone was worth it to show up:-)

Basically, everyone shot the shit. We all have kids and we mainly talked about schools, sports and our kids. Very low-key, very relaxed, very fun. Everyone got 5 minutes to talk about their business. I was second to last and after I talked about what I did it was a 30 minute conversation. I now have 4 appointments from the nine who showed up. Not bad. I also booked the photographer since the last family portrait we had done was when my son was 4 - he's 6 now. Oh, and a real estate agent was there an announced that she desperately needed some part-time home-based admin help. So now her and my wife are talking - looks like a done deal. All nine of them told me I should run a seminar at the community center. I'll call today to see how I'd set that up.

Gets better. The chairman of the Piney Orchard (my community) HOA was there and talked about the monthly newsletter for all 2,500 residents and the lack of ads. What ads? We didn't know we could put ads in the newsletter! Yep....a whopping $20 gets an ad in monthly community newsletter. That's a done deal. See...this is the kind of stuff I just would never know about unless I got active. Plus, what else am I doing at 7:30am anyway? I'm up at 6am every day so it's no skin off my nose.

In other news, I got a lovely email today from the HOA of Piney Orchard Millersville - about 15 minutes from me. I put up doorhangers about a month ago and now that's all banned. It most certainly wasn't banned when I put them out and I just got off the phone with them. Everyone's fine and despite what the letter said, no specific complaints were directed at me and I do NOT put flyers on mailboxes! They knew that. However, from now on, as the letter states, no more anything on doors or a nice little fine will occur. Not a problem at all. It's not just me - no pizza menus, Chinese food menus, or anything on the door at all.

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Why don't we advertise?

I don't know of a single independent agent who advertises. I know a few (very few) financially successful agents who either buy shared leads or telemarketed leads. That being said, I'm sure there are many independent agents out there who are advertising. Why don't we hear from them? Probably because they're actually busy.

I've done some ads and local stuff in the past; ran a small ad for $250 in a regional paper - got about 6 calls and closed a deal. I didn't run the ad again. Why? I made around $500 off that deal and netted $250. I not only should have renewed, I should have placed it in three more papers. Over time that ad would have pulled more and more. Our problem? We are looking for immediate return.

I did a health fair in 2004 - ran about 4 hours and got around 5 deals from it. The table cost $150 and I made around $4,000 off it - but I got those deals over the course of the next six weeks so psychologically it didn't appear as if it was successful. I'd say $150 returning $4,000 is successful. But at the time my focus was on tomorrow; get me leads today that will result in deals tomorrow. Basically, a short-sighted marketing plan. Here are things I've been heavily researching:

Advertising

*Local ads are cheap. Stay local. Regional and states ads are very expensive and your ad gets lost with the other 100 ads and has no impact.

*Advertise on all your local websites. Search "your town" on Google and chances are your town or city has pages you can put links or ads. In my area they are very cheap. On top of getting some leads you're building name recognition.

*Look for advertising opportunities in local businesses. Local restaurants might have ad space, in my area you can advertise on shopping carts, etc...

What you're looking for is the "compounding" factor. It's not that one ad in the local paper, it's not the ad on the shopping cart or the ad on your community website - it's finally people putting it together: "Oh...so this is where I go for health insurance." Or you're talking with a prospect and they say "Oh! I just saw your ad!"

The irony is you can do all this for less than a lot of agents spend on leads. I know agents spending $500 a week on leads. That same money could go extremely far in your locality.

I think what it all comes down to is fear. Fear that you'll have ads everywhere and no calls, no business. What you're failing to realize is health insurance is a huge concern. And article I read last year said health insurance is one of the top three concerns among small business owners.

Issues with turning prospects into clients are mainly trust and legitimacy. Once those two issues are solved I personally believe business will explode. You solve both by having a strong community presence backed up by a good ad campaign. Word spreads by servicing your clients well. You think you're getting referrals from someone you pressured? You think they want their friends and family to go through that?

The only people who will refer you are people who "buy" from you, not people you "sold." This is why I think referrals in this biz are very lacking. They are nowhere near the levels they should be. Agents in this biz after 5 years should be able to live just off referrals. They obviously don't because they must "sell" their clients. Prospects didn't seek them out - they were hunted down. The problem? Most agents must sell their prospects to make a living because they are not in contact with enough people who simply want to buy.

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Assurant is insane

Got back from my appointment a little bit ago - very smooth. She owns a home-based child care business and we had a great meeting. She signed up and it already instantly approved. I'm also stunned that the deal I put in this morning is already approved! That was technically a standard issue since the surgery that corrected the endometriosis was just over three years ago (which is standard according to the guidelines) and hypothyroidism which is standard.

So we have a nice busy day, ran two closed two, both business owners and $6,540 in AV for $1,635 in commish today.

Could I have just done this all in my office? Maybe....maybe not. The point is this: Would you work a nice solid day, meet with your clients with none of them being over a 20 minute drive for $1,635? I would. I'm done today - been done for over an hour, wife is downstairs making dinner and tonight's spent with my family. No phone calls, no following up, no emails, no nothing. Call people, set an appointments, go meet 'em.

Anyone reading along, this is just my system. You can do what you like and if it ain't broke don't fix it. For newer agents or for agents who who are trying to make this work for them:

*Only work exclusive leads. Generate them B to B, flyers, telemarketing, community involvement, trade shows, fairs.

*See all of your clients

If you do those two things you'll have a very nice life. If you try to to figure out a lazier way to make it work then:

*You'll spend your days chasing down people who don't want to talk to you.

*You'll constantly be defending yourself and have to warn clients about competitors

*Years from now you'll be at your computer waiting for your next batch of leads to come in.....that is, if they're still affordable or if that one "good" source you're using doesn't go under

*You won't be signing up business owners

Busy, and love'n it

Almost 4 years into this biz and I was definitely in a rut. I simply work best when I'm extremely busy - kinda the "objects in motion..." thing. I also do poorly when I find myself bored. And let's face it - are any of us gonna do marketing tasks we simply don't enjoy? I'll telemarket if I have do, but it's nothing I looking forward to. Is it effective? Sure. Same with internet leads - they're also effective. I always wrote business off leads but again, not a task I really enjoyed.

I'm not a fan of hunting people down who don't want to hear from me. I'm less of a fan of talking to prospects who aren't business owners. That doesn't mean all of my clients will be owners. But if you're not, then you can pick up the phone and call me. I'm not hunting you down. On a scale of 1 to 10 my patience is -2 for people who really don't want to use my services.

But now that I've shifted gears I find myself getting very busy and my attitude has picked up significantly. I met with and signed up the owners of the auto repair place this morning. I had that meeting last week but they rescheduled. Because I went there I was introduced to two of their employees who also want coverage. Also, not a shot in the world I'd have signed them up online. Husband 50, wife 47, both smoke, wife on a med, recent surgery and recovered endometriosis. We went over plans for 30 minutes. Now I'm outta here around 3:30 today to sign up the owner of a day care.

I know the local focus will work however that assumes you have a very large community. I'm not sure what I'm doing could be pulled off in "small town" America - maybe. I'm between Baltimore and Wash DC and the business community is simply huge.

The title of is is branding an agency starting with $200. I have yet to spend that. I had some marketers and only one logged in any real amount of hours - not $200 worth. Aside from that I've been telemarketing and quite honestly, working on old leads. These were people I tried to sign up online who I'm now scheduling meetings with. That will pull me through nicely on top of referrals and chamber of commerce events until I get into advertising and renting space at local events.

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Absolutely positively on the right track

I had an offer I couldn't refuse to try out an internet leads source - basically free leads. Still, I said no twice but they called me and I gave in. What the heck...some free leads. Well....here we go, typical junk. Basically, all young girls, almost calls straight to voicemail and it wouldn't matter anyway to end up closing that very sough-after $88 a month premium. I actually have two of these working, then will promptly cancel the leads. What an insane waste of time to call people all day and hit voicemail.

These are:
*Not business owners
*Not looking for health insurance (looking for quotes which is much different) *Under 30 years old

Now for the polar opposite, I got listed today in my chamber's directory and got a call. Very nice lady ownes a travel agency (above pic) and her rate is through the roof - she's 63 and paying over $1,200 a month for coverage with decent health. So we compare a bevy of leads coming in which are junk and I have to hunt them down or my phone ringing from a business owner who wants health insurance. Hmmmmmmm. Toughie.

I also signed on as a volunteer today to help man the art & crafts booth my chamber is holding on the Sat. the 29th. After I signed up I was told that I can bring a flyer or any give-away to put in a bag that everyone gets when they enter the fair. Very cool! I also signed up for a business newtorking breakfast at 7:30 on the 27th.

And for all of you who are following along who are still hooked on the idea of 100% of your business coming from shared leads, my question is - what will you be doing in 5 years? Most likely, the same thing I'm doing; kicking myself in the ass that I didn't create a strong local presence years ago.

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