It is acknowledged that video content is now very much an important part of a company’s marketing mix. It is engaging and a quick and efficient method of communicating sometimes very complex messages. 

Video is being used for ‘explainer videos’, tutorials, product teasers & demos as well as thought leadership. Like all digital media it provides ROI metrics, be that number of views, number of leads/clicks, audience engagement, brand awareness.

Within the insurance sector, where products can be intangible, video (as well as podcasting) is being used effectively as a method of sharing thought leadership allowing topics to be explored that relate to the risks and benefits of products and services being offered. Some are integrating video into their brand creating a programme series in order to develop brand awareness. Both engage with current customers and hook new ones.

Just because I can record a video on my phone, it doesn’t make me Steven Spielberg

Due to advances in technology, over the last 18 months, consumer demand for video content has soared, and so has the demand for mobile video editing tools. However high-end produced video is still edited using professional tools such as Adobe Premiere, Adobe, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro.

This demand has seen some insurance organisations start to have a go at creating their own video content, the challenges being realised are ensuring they get good sound quality and the ability to edit the filmed clips into a polished final piece. A quick look at video posts on LinkedIn illustrates the varying degrees of success companies are having.

What does it take to create a successful video and how much does it cost?

Because on the face of it, it may seem easy to shoot your own video, you can understand why some companies can be reluctant to commission a professionally filmed and edited video due to the perception of cost v ROI. If you weigh this up against lack of engagement, missed opportunity and the brand value loss of a poorly produced and executed video, it might not cost as much as you think.

Cost will depend on a lot of different elements and most of them are inextricably linked. It is not true to say that duration is the over-riding factor. A 30 second ad can be more expensive than a 2-minute promotional video subject to what is involved and needed.

There are generally speaking 5 stages to making a video and what goes into each stage determines overall cost:

• Planning: developing ideas, creating the storyboard, defining the budget, defining and agreeing the message. Do you need music, voiceover, animations, if so, how many?
• Pre-production: setting out location, writing scripts, agreeing number of cameras, shots, equipment and use of brand guidelines and number of filming days required.
• Production: Actual recording days, recording both sound and filming. Whether it is shot indoors/outdoors will also make a difference. How many cameramen are needed (if live action), how complicated are the animations (if animated)?
• Post-production: Editing to get rid of any mistakes, cut and refine angles/takes. Additional of subtitles. Creation of short promo clips (if required and agreed). Creation of final output in the relevant format for your website, video platforms and social media channels.
• Distribution: Upload to your social media channels, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, TikTok etc. Then the pre-release promotion of the video which will require work too.

Your agency, in collaboration with you as the one commissioning the film, can ensure that the video fulfils its purpose and ensures that elements such as the use of logos or a branded video sting are correct and that the integrity of the agreed storyboard is maintained. They should take on most of the heavy lifting for you, once the scope of the project has been agreed. You will still be a key part of the project, but not the starring role – the experts will make sure that the final video is the star. Clearly your involvement is required but by leaning on your specialist partners, it allows you to concentrate on the important day-to-day aspects of your job which is another reason people have been hesitant in using video as time needed is seen as an inhibitor.

DIY does no harm or does it?

This is difficult question to answer – and a pragmatic approach would suggest it depends on the nature of the video, the style in which it will be filmed, the amount of editing required and its application.

A quick social media post may be acceptable due to the very transitory nature of the medium and possibly the content but, for more formal ‘talking heads’ interviews on company websites, does the ‘DIY’ approach risk undermining your brand and the video itself?

With the development of AI it is inevitable that many organisations will look to film their own video but where possible working with your agency to support you in this will increase the success of the video. While some platforms such as Vimeo include editing products, your agency should be able to do this relatively quickly and inexpensively saving you resource and time costs in learning how to use software whilst ensuring the final piece is correctly branded and output to the relevant resolutions and dimensions for how you intend to use it.

Research shows that attempts to reduce costs by undertaking your own video production does indeed harm your hard-earned reputation. The results from statistics gathered by Brightcove reported by Stormhunter state that 62% of survey respondees are more likely to have a negative perception of a brand that published a poor-quality video experience. Furthermore 60% said a poor online video experience would dissuade them from engaging with a brand across all of its social media platforms and 23% would hesitate to purchase from the brand having had a poor-quality video experience.

A blended approach would seem to be the way of having your cake and eating it – by all means shoot your own video if you are working within a budget or time constraints (and make sure you get really good sound quality! as poor sound will sink your project before it is even launched) but lean on your agency to help you with the production and branding as this can help it stand out amongst the thousands of others on LinkedIn.

The time and money needed to produce a quality video that enhances your brand when you use specialists compared to time you will need to dedicate to create something yourself will be money well spent as you will never know how many other videos you create that visitors to your site don’t watch as a result of a bad experience.

In a guest blog for youTalk-insurance, Ben Moore, General Manager at QuoteSearcher analysed vital data which highlighted that valuable new business opportunities could be being missed by UK based insurance brokers.

It’s one thing to implement a lead generation strategy, but what’s the point if you switch off at 5:00pm?

The fact is, a huge section of your potential customer base don’t look for insurance during the day, they’re busy working. 

However, that moment when they’ve finished work, sitting at home with a cup of tea, wondering whether they could be saving money is the time they’ll start looking.

Lead generation is a science that involves 24/7 care and attention, but we all know that won’t be possible, particularly now with the pandemic slowing down production and reducing capacity in a lot of sectors.

With out of hours enquiries increasing, are you leaving money on the table?

Out of hours, out of luck?

Before the Coronavirus hit the UK, there was a more equal split in terms of lead volume traffic over the course of a month. We could see that it was 5050 – working hours and after hours. However, since the pandemic started, this split has changed to 6040, with the former being out of hours enquiries regarding our main insurance products. This is a 5% increase over last month. Let’s break it down.

If your working hours are 9:00am to 5:00pm Monday to Friday, you are really only working a third of the day. If you spread this across a whole year, given that there is a rising trend of out of hours enquiries, that can mean losing out on a lot of money. Similarly, waiting for leads to come in over the weekend as opposed to setting those leads up over the weekend is quite a different animal indeed.

Why the increase in OOH?

There are a number of reasons why out of hours enquiries are increasing. Six out of ten UK businesses had just three months’ worth of cash flow at the start of the pandemic. This, compounded with the sharp and significant fall in domestic and overseas sales as lockdown measures were implemented, led to a governmental intervention that has never been seen before in the United Kingdom. In fact, up to a million businesses could hit the wall by the end of 2020.

This meant that businesses have had to work harder and smarter during regular working hours. The change in the market, as well as the government’s restrictions have left businesses owners with little to no choice but to adapt in order to overcome the issues. With business interruption being at the forefront of people’s minds and the uncertainty that everyone is facing, insurance can get pushed to the backburner in favour of simply getting money in the bank to put food on the table. 

From our perspective, insurance brokers have been extremely brave and have adapted well to the changing market, with some even accelerating growth which is no mean feat. Historically, however, the lead generation perspective shows that after-hours insurance leads were seen as the runt of the litter simply because they do not coincide with the working hours of most brokers. This is a dangerous bias, causing brokers to leave a lot of potential business on the table, or to hand it straight to a competitor that does value after hours leads.

So, how can insurance brokers change their tune?

We have seen that brokers who have implemented new technology and working habits have maximised their revenue over the Covid-19 period. Automation, for example, could handle the prequalifying stage and send on out the personalised messaging needed to nurture the lead and set up that all-important call.

With lead volume drop-off being a real concern for most brokers, tapping into after-hours leads in the right way could deliver a handsome yield and help set you apart from your competitors.

It’s worth mentioning that being a 24/7 broker doesn’t mean you will have to work 24/7. It means that you will be in a position to process and guide potential clients at a time that suits them, which in turn maximises your effectiveness. If you look at lead generation simply in terms of cost, you will inevitably be doing yourself a disservice, whether you are doing your own lead gen campaigns or working alongside a company like ourselves here at QuoteSearcher.

Alongside cost, there are other areas that need to be factored into your thinking:

• Timing – Are you able to help when the client needs it? If they make an inquiry at 1:00am, can you track and convert quickly so they know they are being thought of?
• Personalisation – Are you able to personalise your approach? Do you have immediate messaging in play and can you personalise the offer?
• Reputation – Are you seen as adaptable? Do your processes help convey trust and transparency – both vital elements during these times. Are you reliable enough to help the clients, regardless of risk, and when they need the risk insured?

A QuoteSearcher case study

Through our platform, a broker from the Midlands landed a 20+ vehicle fleet at 11:00pm. He had told us that the MD had been so busy looking for new suppliers for his steel fabrication business that he could only find the time in the late evening to look at his fleet insurance. 

The broker had the right set up to deal with the afterhours lead and guided the potential client through automation to set up a call at 10:00am the next day, which led them to turning the quote into a sale. 

Alternatively, we were approached by a brokerage who had historically run all their lead generation inhouse; they had built a Quote Engine and are specialists in wheels-based commercial insurance.

During the pandemic, their go-to playbook for running PPC campaigns to feed the Quote Engine had hit a snag. The volume of potential visitors, compounded by the rise in cost on PPC, had made it harder and less cost effective to compete and convert potential traffic.

An example for courier insurance

As restaurants and other establishments could no longer open their doors to the general public or had to have a delivery service for those who didn’t feel safe to venture out, they had to adapt and adapt fast.

The knock-on effect of the increase in delivery drivers, meant that while the taxi business had stalled, people who were in a position to be delivery drivers jumped on the opportunity.

This then raised the bidding cost on pay per click and diluted that the overall effectiveness as there were too many similarities and variables.

How we managed to help the insurance brokerage

We were able to help them through our ability to filter traffic. Our system, which is unique to QuoteSearcher, can segment and match potential clients to brokers requirements. This cuts out a lot of wastage and makes the leads more scheme specific.

The actual ‘spend’ the broker used up in a campaign was lower than their overall spend on in-house lead generation. In turn, they found that they converted more and the money saved allowed them to further enhance their services and look at insurance products that they could encompass in their offerings.

We all know that things have changed in almost all industries, and the need for quality insurance is present everywhere. The main question is: can you afford to leave out of hours leads on the backburner, when your competitors may have put real actionable processes in place? Leaving money on the table is bad for business, especially in the current climate. We suggest being a 24/7 insurance broker in a 24/7 world.

If you would like to get in touch with Ben to find out how Quotesearcher are helping insurance brokers to generate new business leads CLICK HERE, leave a message and youTalk-insurance will pass your enquiry on 

Jasmine Handleigh, Media Executive at youTalk-insurance, shares details of three useful technology platforms aimed at helping members of the broking community stay connected 

In these challenging times, it’s perhaps now more important than ever for insurance brokers to stay in touch with their customers, colleagues and insurer partners.

In light of the UK Government's advice to practice social distancing for the next three weeks, here are 3 FREE and easy to use different websites and applications to help you stay connected with your customers, colleagues, friends and family.

SKYPE

Skype is a free service that allows you to have audio or video meetings with groups of up to 50 people. To use this service the person you are contacting also needs to have a Skype account. 

How to set up Skype in 3 easy steps:

Download the Skype App onto your desktop computer or mobile

Create a Skype account using either your email address or phone number

Add contacts by searching a person's name or email address (only once a person has accepted your request on Skype will you be able to contact them)

To download Skype on to your desktop, click this link https://www.skype.com/en/get-skype/.  

To download the Skype mobile phone App, click here if you have an Apple iOS phone https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id304878510

If you have an Android phone click this link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skype.raider

ZOOM

Zoom is another free service that allows you to have audio and video meetings.

Unlike Skype, the person you are contacting does not need to have a Zoom account, which might make it easier to use.

With the free Zoom account, you can enjoy unlimited one on one meetings and can have meetings of up to 100 people at once. However, the free account is limited as meetings with over 3 people are limited to only 40 minutes duration.

If you have a bigger team and require longer meetings, the Zoom upgrade is £11.99 a month.

How to set up Zoom

Create a Zoom account with your email address

Download the Zoom app

Press the start meeting button and then the invite contacts button to create an email chain with instructions and a link for people to join your meeting

To sign up for Zoom click this link https://zoom.us/

To download the Zoom mobile App, click here if you have an Apple iOS phone https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/zoom-cloud-meetings/id546505307 

If you have an Android phone click this link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=us.zoom.videomeetings

HOUSEPARTY

House party is another a free service available on desktop and mobile that allows you to video chat with up to 8 people at once.

It’s less business focused and perhaps considered to be more social and could be good for virtual team get togethers. 

Those you wish to have meetings with will need to set up a Houseparty account.

How to set up Houseparty

Create a Houseparty account using your email address and phone number

Verify your phone number

Link your account to your contact list as well as Facebook so you can invite your contacts

Invite your colleagues also by searching for their username or email address

To sign up for Houseparty on your desktop click this link https://app.houseparty.com/login

To download the Houseparty mobile phone app click here https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/houseparty/id1065781769

If you have an Android phone click this link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.herzick.houseparty

Insurance brokers arranging business insurance for SMEs might be missing a cross-selling opportunity if they forget about miscellaneous Professional Indemnity, especially at a time when the new economy is booming and new forms of work are emerging.

Of course, brokers are perfectly acquainted with specialist PI policies. When approached by a solicitor, a surveyor or an accountant, they will think PI straight away. That’s quite natural when some professional bodies require it or when it’s a must-have in those occupations to win contracts. However, many other roles can benefit from PI cover.

The main purpose of any PI policy is to cover claims arising from a breach of a duty of care owed to clients or others. That means this type of policy is relevant to any person or business providing advice, service or designs to clients who could lose money as a result of their negligence. Policies also cover breach of confidentiality, defamation, loss of documents or dishonesty of employees. And, let’s face it, many white-collar jobs are exposed to these types of claims, whether they are well founded or not.

So, if a client is buying office contents insurance, the broker may want to consider professional indemnity. The same goes if they are arranging public liability or employers’ liability cover, and perhaps even directors’ and officers’ insurance.

This could all be of particular value to one-man bands and small businesses that couldn’t take the financial blow of a costly claim.

It is also especially relevant for people who don’t fit traditional work models – for instance, consultants or people with multiple activities – or, perhaps even more so, if they work in emerging sectors like coaching, web design, programming, social media or some obscure venture.

Miscellaneous risks

PI cover will pick up claims in four main areas: negligence, intellectual property (IP), defamation, and breach of confidence.

Negligence disputes can be expensive. A mountain bike instructor was sued for millions of pounds after one of his pupils – a lawyer – fell on his head and was left paralysed. He’d told the beginner rider to cycle at speed down a slope.

Intellectual property claims may include unwittingly infringing someone else’s IP, for instance by playing copyrighted music in your YouTube video outside of ‘fair use’.

Social media and blogs are fertile grounds for defamation, like when this vegan vlogger claimed another vegan vlogger was performing sex acts on camera.

As for breach of confidence, consultants often have expertise in one specialist area, hence tend to advise clients from the same sector. A slip of the tongue or a mis-directed emailed might reveal a competitor’s trade secret.

Hyphenated careers

With more and more people having multiple jobs, or an activity on the side of their main occupation, the market for miscellaneous PI is expanding.

The Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed (IPSE) recently stressed how the internet has enabled more varied working. Its latest figures show that over 300,000 self-employed people in Britain are working two or more jobs.

The BBC reported on those side hustles turned fully fledged businesses by profiling so-called ’Slashies’, including a dog groomer/crochet tutor/security guard. Difficult to be more miscellaneous, and probably quite rare.

Perhaps a more common profile will be of a multi-talented individual starting an online business from home, possibly as a coach or a consultant – and definitely needing professional indemnity.

Brokers are perfectly placed to identify these new customers and give them advice about the type of cover they need. They’ll probably find there is something on the side for them too.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”  Charles Darwin.

Today’s business landscape is much changed from that of even a few years ago. The amount of information that is available to the average insurance broker today would fry the brain of some of their predecessors, but that doesn’t mean that modern-day brokers are making the most of the opportunities that are out there. Even some of the primary ways of utilising social media and search engines such as Google can play their part in capitalizing on the information opportunity. Here are some of the tips of the social media trade ranging from the “must haves” to the rarer, more unorthodox beasts in the guerrilla marketing jungle!

Increase your information flow

Keeping your ear to the ground has always been an essential skill for insurance brokers. These days though just using your ears isn’t nearly enough to give you a business advantage. You need more information and ideally you need it curated so that you don’t have to spend lots of time sifting through it to see what is useful.

Google Alerts is a fantastically powerful and free service that allows you to get emails containing the results from a Google search either as soon as the information becomes available, or on a daily basis or weekly basis. This is massively useful for keeping up to date about key clients or carriers.

Most people know about LinkedIn, but are you making the best use of the service? Make sure that you are following the people, companies and groups that are of interest to you or your company. Spending time in LinkedIn groups when you have a few minutes may pay you dividends, particularly if the groups are places where your clients and their peers go to ask questions. Being an insurance broker has always been about being knowledgeable about insurance. With tools like LinkedIn groups you’re now able to demonstrate your knowledge, attracting people to you and your firm from a far wider audience than ever before.

Guerilla marketing

Not all the information you gather might be about clients and carriers. You can also get information about your competition and in some cases might even be able to influence clients of your competition to consider your company.

An example of this approach is using Twitter to follow the name of a competitor preceded by a # (the company’s hashtag). Very often someone an unhappy customer will write a tweet about it followed by a hashtag (this adds context in a very concise way). Capturing this kind of information allows you to know what people are saying about your competition, allowing you to create guerilla marketing campaigns to draw attention to such feedback.

Some organisations might choose to reply to some of those tweets promoting your organization. Be careful with this approach though, it can backfire.

Facebook Live is making live streaming events an affordable and effective guerrilla marketing platform. It could help brokers to schedule important events, such as the launch of a new product or service or even something as simple as a Q&A session where policyholder and insurers can find out more about your business.

Reddit marketing can really pay off for smaller broker marketers as it is divided into countless sub-reddits, which are, essentially, online content sharing forums with niche communities. Sub-reddits can range in topics from classic muscle cars and High Net Worth individuals or holiday travel images to a country-specific political discussion such as Brexit. If you provide a service that you find innovative, there is almost certainly a sub-reddit for it.

Digital transformation

Digital transformation might sound like a something to do with video editing. It is actually about helping organizations transform to adapt and take advantage of the digital business environment that we operate in today. The broking world has adapted to the rise of the direct insurance model and the aggregators and will no doubt continue to thrive in the world of digital. The pace of change is speeding up, however, with the baby boomer generation flocking to Facebook in greater numbers while today’s younger Snapshot users are now making their first car insurance purchases. So, it is time to adapt to change by making use of the latest cost-effective guerrilla marketing, which are not as complex as you might think.

Fifth Step helps organisations implement their digital transformations, improving the efficiency and agility of businesses operating in the modern insurance environment.

With over 3,500 insurance brokers in the UK, many of these companies rely on the use of search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC) to drive sales through Google, Bing and other search engines.

There are around 550,000 monthly searches for the term ‘car insurance’ on Google, not to mention the 50,000 for ‘van insurance’ and 22,000 for ‘bike insurance’ – plus all other kinds of insurance related keywords with thousands of monthly visitors. (Source: Google Keyword Tool)

This creates a highly competitive environment where digital marketers bid ferociously for adverts in top positions (PPC) or use a variety of techniques to climb up Google’s organic search listings (SEO).

Some insurance brokers will use in-house digital marketing teams and others will outsource to specialist freelancers, agencies or companies. But the question begs: How do you know if you are getting the right returns?

Why you might not be getting the best results

As an insurance broker, all you want to see is good enquiries coming through and to make a profit on your digital marketing spend. Above all, you want to see some sign of growth, which for PPC would be lower cost-per-clicks and higher conversion rates and for SEO, you just want to see your rankings going up for more and more keywords. If this is not the case, then you are not getting the right returns and we explain why this might be:

Who you use – Obviously some practitioners are more experienced than others and in the fast-moving world of digital marketing, those researching and using the most up-to-date techniques will yield the best results. Using a local agency or experienced consultant should give you the best possible return compared to outsourcing your SEO and PPC to the Far East which might be cheaper, but come with shadier practices and lead to potentially volatile results.

User experience – If you are generating a lot of traffic through PPC and have good search results through SEO, you also need to ensure that you have a good user experience on your website. It is vital that your landing pages are conversion-driven and include things like content, videos, trust signals, contact information and data capture forms to maximize your chances of making a sale. Simply adding phone numbers and forms to your landing pages could increase your conversion rates by 30% and all of sudden, your digital marketing is starting to pay for itself.

Margins – To truly measure your return on investment, you need to look at your margins and how you value for a visit, enquiry, quotation and new business sale. Digital marketing can be very measurable, especially PPC, and if you know exactly how much you are spending per month, you should be able to calculate how many enquiries you need to break even and be profitable.

Insurance related keywords are expensive on PPC so you want to make sure that you are getting the most out of each click such as capturing data or using remarketing to capture that user’s attention again.

If your margins are too low, you may need to reassess your relationships with the insurance providers and the products on offer.

What you should be expecting

Your PPC strategy should always provide you with immediate and constant traffic which you can manage according to your budget. SEO is considered a more long-term proposition, because it can take several months or even years to rank for highly competitive keywords in the insurance industry.

However, once you start to rank well for SEO, you will find that your cost per click and cost per acquisition reduces significantly and is far cheaper than PPC. So ideally, you want to see your PPC bringing in steady traffic, but long term, you want to see your SEO rankings improving as this will be more cost effective long-term.

Furthermore, you want your SEO specialists to be adding value to your website such as regular content, videos and links as this is physically adding to your site and can be used for several years to come.

Are the days for PPC numbered?

Looking at the trends for other competitive industries such as loans and gambling, PPC advertising on Google is becoming more expensive, with some firms needing to pay £20 to £50 per click to be on page 1 for their target keyword. This questions whether the cost for insurance PPC will follow suit and how this will impact profit margins.

Moving forward, insurance brokers will need to optimise their PPC campaigns and websites to get the lowest cost per acquisition possible. They must also look at ways to improve internally such as providing quality customer service and the right product for the customer whilst keeping within the regulatory guidelines.

Ends

Mark Wright is the founder of Climb Online, an award-winning digital marketing agency that was co-founded with Lord Sugar. Mark and is currently working with Be Wiser Business Insurance.

To get in touch with Climb Online click here and provide your contact information

Since starting my own SEO and PPC agency in January, I get asked all kinds of questions about digital marketing – How do I get my site on page 1 tomorrow? This person says they’ll do the same thing for half the price. Why should I trust you?

For those that aren’t involved in digital marketing on a daily basis, the premise of getting your company on to page one of Google can seem like dark arts or black magic.

This is particularly common for the insurance industry. The competition is so high due to the volume of potential customers and number of insurers, brokers and news articles fighting for positions. Subsequently, Google had no choice last year but to release a specific algorithm for insurance-related keywords.

My company Climb Online offers SEO which stands for search engine optimisation. You will need to optimise your website in certain ways in order to rank on Google for the search results with the white background. The alternative is to pay for adverts on Google which show at the top of search queries and on the right hand side, usually in an orange or yellow background. This is known as PPC as you 'pay-per-click' and get charged every time someone clicks on your advert. Managing PPC requires expertise as you have to bid on hundreds or thousands of keywords and work within a budget.

Since working on the SEO for Andover-based Call Wiser for almost a year, we have learnt a thing or two about what it takes to rank on Google for insurance keywords and phrases.

So I would like to address some common myths about SEO and PPC and what you should look for when hiring a digital marketing agency.

If it’s too good to be true, it probably is – SEO is considered a long-term proposition because Google needs to get to know your site and your brand before it trusts you enough to show you to the public.

 If a company is offering quick results, be cautious. It can take around 3 months for your site to rank significantly better on Google but given the level of competition for insurance keywords, it can take up to 6 to 12 months.

“Don’t leave your digital marketing to a bedroom DJ” – You probably get a daily email from someone saying ‘Greetings of the Day! I can offer search engine optimisation for your website.’ These are individuals either working out of their bedrooms or giant centres in Asia that have purchased your data, mostly likely from a hosting or domain name provider.

 If the email you have received hasn’t come from a proper company and the email address ends with something like yahoo, gmail or hotmail – send it to your junk mail.

Why does every company recommend something different for my website? – Google update their algorithms regularly and bring in new practices that will help your website rank on Google. So it is common for some individuals or companies to be more up-to-date than others. Ask your company what they think about these algorithms because using old techniques could lead to your site being penalized and removed off Google for a number of weeks or months.

Is Search Engine Optimisation dark arts? – Some people think it requires a bit of magic to rank well on Google. In reality, Google is regularly telling people what they are looking for through webinars and blogs.  In practice, they want websites to offer a good user experience – so this means adding regular useful information on your website, making sure your site is mobile friendly, adding images, videos and if you can get some PR to your website, even better.

What should I look for in a PPC agency? – Ideally you want a company that understands your budget and what results you are looking to achieve. The cost for bidding on Google for terms like ‘car insurance,’ can cost you a minimum of £5 to feature on page 1. So if you have a budget of £100 a day, you could be done by lunchtime.

Everything on PPC is measureable through Google Adwords, the platform where it is managed. So a smart PPC agency will have a good understanding of your budget and focus on measuring results and reports accordingly.  

You might be a car insurance company or broker, but lets make sure that you’re not the one being taken for a ride!

OK, this may seem like on odd question to pose on a site hosting hundreds of clips from dozens of insurers, viewed by thousands in the industry, so there’s an element of preaching to the converted here.

But elsewhere in the market, there’s still some hesitancy about video’s place in marketing strategies. Even among the biggest players, there are a few who have yet to take the plunge or barely dipped a toe in the water.

Talking to insurers of all sizes, the reasons vary from misconceptions about the likely budget, skills and resources required to create quality video content, to uncertainty about the technological limitations or appetite of a broker audience.

But just as big institutions have adapted to make the most of social media, so they are coming to realise that strategy and agility are more important than big budgets and Hollywood production values.

No blog is complete without a list so here are some tips for producing video content that is both affordable and watchable:

Length matters – youTalk-Insurance founder Paul Handleigh recently blogged about making insurance marketing more ‘snackable’ and video is a prime example. It can be difficult getting complex messages across in under two minutes, but longer videos get fewer views and proportionately less of them is watched, so keep it short and sweet.

Charlie didn’t bite your finger – While video abounds with big numbers (YouTube often talks in billions) a B2B explainer about your claims process is not going viral. To set realistic expectations, think about how many recipients opened and read your last broadcast email, as opposed to how many you sent.

Do or DIY – While the technology needed to make decent video is now in most of our pockets, the quality expectation has also shifted. Customers don’t expect all a company’s video to look like its TV campaigns anymore. Authenticity often trumps polish so, with a little professional training, businesses really can shoot and edit themselves, making video far cheaper and much more timely.

Only in it for the SEO – Original video content certainly boosts search performance, but that zombie statistic about sites with video being a zillion per cent more likely to appear on Google’s first page of results is misleading. Correlation is not causation. SEO is a benefit but shouldn’t be your rationale.

Ready for your close-up – Few organisations would let an employee even talk to customers without proper training, but senior figures are often put in front of camera with no professional guidance whatsoever. A few hours of coaching will make for more confident, natural and, ultimately, watchable delivery, and will be more than repaid when it comes to filming and editing.

Work it baby, work it – Uploading to YouTube and waiting for viewers is a bit like printing a brochure and leaving it in your stationery store. Industry specific sites like youTalk-insurance will get far more views and more valuable ones. Like any marketing activity, you get out what you put in, so embed, email, update, post, and tweet.

The extent to which insurers have embraced video may vary from one to the next, but the amount of video content that their customers are viewing is only going in one direction.

Those of you that have worked in the insurance industry for a long period of time will remember the days that customers used to come visit your branch to arrange their insurance policies.  This would usually include filling out paperwork (by hand!) and potentially even calling up and talking to actual human beings in order to arrange a policy.

Then came the Internet.  Soon, customers were able to visit your website and purchase a policy online.  However, this is where customers started to become savvy: now it only took them a few minutes to get a quote from home they could start comparing companies – a fact quickly cottoned onto by price comparison websites which customers now flock to in their thousands on a daily basis.

Today the insurance industry is facing a new change thanks to the introduction of what has aptly been named “FinTech” (financial technology).  Even though technology for financial institutions has been around for a while now, over the past few months investors across the globe have been pumping billions of pounds into web startups that specialise in technology such as Big Data, analytics, mobile and security.

These days it’s uncommon for an insurance broker not to have some kind of online presence, however unless you have some experience in online technology it can often be daunting knowing what options are right for your business.  Over the years QuoteSearcher has utilised a number of online marketing strategies including SEO, PPC, social media, affiliate programmes, conversion rate optimisation, quote form development and web design (to name a few!)

Having had years of experience in online technology I believe I can safely say that investing in FinTech is something that most, if not all, insurance companies may want to consider in the near future.  FinTech takes the technology we already have one step further; for example Big Data and analytics will provide lead generation companies greater understanding of their customers, their behaviour and therefore their likelihood of converting.

As someone who runs a lead generation website I have found data invaluable when it comes to ensuring that our leads not only have the possibility of converting but also providing a profit.  Data enables brokers to better understand the buying habits of numerous demographics, such as whether they prefer to buy via a desktop, tablet or mobile, and then target these demographics accordingly.

However, FinTech goes one step further than traditional online marketing.  Since users have been able to purchase financial products online there has always been the concern that financial details won’t be safe online – a worry that companies such as PayPal has capitalised on massively over the years.  Now, FinTech startups are creating new technology with cybersecurity at its core, enabling customers not only to purchase financial products online quickly but also securely.

Brokers who are looking to lead generation sites such as QuoteSearcher to bolster their businesses can therefore benefit massively from the introduction of FinTech.  As QuoteSearcher has spent years integrating online technology solutions with traditional brokering we are excited of the possibilities that FinTech offers both us and our partners.  Watch this space!

Ben Moore is the General Manager of QuoteSearcher – a free to use insurance comparison website partnered with niche business insurance providers across the UK.  To find out more about our services follow Ben on Twitter @BenMoore_QS or email ben@quotesearcher.co.uk

With the growing realisation amongst more enlightened insurance marketers that good old advertising has its limitations, many are looking to produce ‘Thought Leadership’ articles around hot topics that seek to educate and inform both existing and potential customers. 

This is surely a good thing as it helps companies that engage in this activity to flex around their intellectual prowess on a given subject and sees them respond to the age old marketing question ‘what do you want to be known for’.

At the same time target consumers have never been faced with such a bewildering amount of content to read and digest.  Unless they are working in the luxury goods department, most business people in the year 2015 tend to be very time poor and probably would admit to having a pile of ‘must read items’ either saved on their computer or sitting on the corner of their desk.

Insurance marketers should consider…

Big reports, guides, white papers (you get the gist) are great but their production I suppose counts for naught if they are not read.  Now I am not suggesting that this thought leadership marketing collateral should not be produced, after all it is a great way of sharing useful and important information.  What I do advocate is giving some thought to making the content ‘SNACKABLE’.  

A great recent example of Snackable content was produced by AIG who have recently published a comprehensive report 'Cyber: Joined up?'.  To accompany this report they also produced a punchy press release that set out all the need to know facts with an invitation to the reader to download the full report – See this link here Greater board engagement vital in relation to cyber risks says AIG 

What is Snackable content?

Snackable content items are short-form, easy to read articles that get to point quickly and deliver key messages and need to know facts, without the waffle.  Think of a well written executive summary.

Producing Snackable content does not mean that you should abandon the production of longer pieces, reports etc. I am merely suggesting that you should produce a shorter version and give your customers the choice.  Where you do this I would expect that you would include a link to your full report should a customer want to read more.

Snackable content production is all about giving your customers choice and giving your business another opportunity to secure brand engagement.

The concept of Snackable marketing content lends itself incredibly well to the very immediate and fast moving browsing nature of Social Media where grabbing attention and securing engagement in a massive sea of noise is essential. 

In short, punchy, relevant and easy to understand marketing content is easier to share and the more your content is shared the more you will have shaped a positive perception of your brand, you never know it might even lead to more enquiries.