Standing out online is crucial for any independent insurance agency. BrightFire offers two powerful solutions within our Search Engine Marketing service — Website Visitor Retargeting and Search Engine Branding — that can boost your agency’s brand awareness, gain a competitive edge, and make the most of your marketing dollars.
In our latest 20 Minute Marketing Webinar, Molly Leonard, BrightFire’s Content Coordinator, explored Website Visitor Retargeting and Search Engine Branding in depth and shared actionable insights into how these two Search Engine Marketing solutions each work to increase visibility, protect your brand on Google, and help your agency thrive online.
BrightFire’s Website Visitor Retargeting & Search Engine Branding
Watch the webinar, read through the full transcript, or jump ahead to the section you’re most interested in to explore our Website Visitor Retargeting and Search Engine Branding solutions within and see what’s possible for your agency’s brand awareness.
- What is Website Visitor Retargeting?
- What is Search Engine Branding?
- Paid Ads & Your Current Customers
- How to Measure Ad Performance
- How BrightFire Helps with Search Engine Marketing
Watch the Webinar
Additional Questions?
If you have any questions about what we discussed in the webinar or BrightFire’s Search Engine Marketing service, please schedule a personalized consultation with a BrightFire Sales Advisor.
Webinar Transcript
Welcome everyone! My name is Molly Leonard, and I’m the Content Coordinator here at BrightFire, as well as your host for today’s webinar. Thank you all for joining us.
In January, we covered BrightFire’s Social Media Refreshed with New Look & Tools. If you missed it or any of our previous webinars in the 20 Minute Marketing Webinar series, you can access the whole series on-demand by visiting brightfire.com/webinars.
Our goal with these webinars is to provide you with digital marketing advice and discuss current digital marketing topics in a brief 20-minute format, followed by a Q&A period to answer any questions you may have. If you have questions during the webinar, please use the Q&A feature. We’ll do our best to answer all the questions that come through; otherwise, we will personally reach out to you afterward.
Today’s webinar topic is Boost Brand Awareness with BrightFire’s Website Visitor Retargeting & Search Engine Branding. Standing out online is crucial for any independent insurance agency. BrightFire offers two powerful solutions within our Search Engine Marketing service — Website Visitor Retargeting and Search Engine Branding — that can boost your agency’s brand awareness, gain a competitive edge, and make the most of your marketing dollars.
So today, we’ll explore Website Visitor Retargeting and Search Engine Branding in depth and discuss actionable insights into how these two Search Engine Marketing solutions each work to increase visibility, protect your brand on Google, and help your agency thrive online.
Today’s webinar is being recorded, so everything we discuss will be saved and emailed to you in the next business day or two so you can watch it later on demand.
Lastly, we do have a couple of polls for today’s webinar. When launched, the poll will pop up on your screen with the question and response options. Every poll is anonymous. I’ll give you roughly 30 seconds to share your response, and then we’ll discuss the results with the group.
About BrightFire
Before we dive into today’s topic, I’d like to share a brief background on BrightFire, since we have a mix of current customers and agents that are new to BrightFire attending today.
So BrightFire began by providing insurance agency websites in 2000. And over the years, as the digital marketing needs of insurance agents grew beyond just agency websites, we added new services, including:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Local Listings Management
- Reviews & Reputation Management
- Social Media Marketing
- Search Engine Marketing
Our goal with any of our services is to make it as easy as possible for your agency. So everything we do, from onboarding and setup to providing customer support for years to come, has a done-for-you approach focused on taking the burden off of your agency. Our digital marketing experts set up and manage everything for you with all of our services so you can save time, focus on what you do best, and grow your business.
Currently, we work with over 2,500 agencies nationwide, and our first agency customer, who joined us in 2000, is still a BrightFire customer today.
With that background on BrightFire, let’s get started.
What’s Ahead
Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, offers independent insurance agencies the opportunity to increase their website traffic and brand awareness by bidding on local, relevant keywords to serve ads to their ideal audience. A recent HubSpot report found that paid ads boost a business’s brand awareness by 80% on average.
Because you only have to pay when a user clicks on your ad, when you launch an ad campaign and start gaining impressions, your agency doesn’t have to pay anything. Instead, you’re getting free visibility while consumers are in the early stages of researching insurance companies and getting warmed up to your brand.
Since studies show that consumers need to see a brand roughly seven times before they will take any kind of action, using paid ads to set your local independent agency up for success by repeatedly and consistently getting in front of consumers online can be vital to standing out in the competitive marketplace against those larger names in insurance.
While there are several types of paid ads you can run, today we’re going to zone in on two types of search engine marketing solutions that can effectively boost your agency’s brand awareness and help your agency compete online. We’ll first talk about Website Visitor Retargeting, followed by Search Engine Branding. We’ll talk about how your policyholders come into play with your ad campaigns, as well as how you can measure the effectiveness of your ads.
Then, we’ll briefly cover how BrightFire’s Search Engine Marketing service can help your agency with these two strategies so you can save time and make the most of your marketing dollars.
What is Website Visitor Retargeting?
So first, let’s talk about Website Visitor Retargeting. If you pay attention to your website analytics, you’ve likely noticed that the number of people who visit your website is much greater than the amount who contact your agency for a quote.
In fact, studies have shown that the average conversion rate for insurance agency websites is just 1%–3% (Pathmonk). Pair that with the fact that 97% of visitors who leave a website do not return (RankTracker), and it may start to feel like your website isn’t very effective in generating leads for your agency.
But that’s where it’s essential to consider your overall marketing strategy and ensure you’re combining multiple marketing strategies to gain better results for your agency. Website Visitor Retargeting serves ads only to people who have previously visited your agency’s website. These types of ads aim to get back in front of consumers who are in the process of researching insurance agencies and already know about you to encourage them to return to your website and take a desired action like getting a quote or calling your agency.
Studies show that people who return to a website have a 73% higher chance of making a purchase than new visitors (Gravitec), so retargeting ads can help your agency improve your conversions while boosting your brand online.
Google’s Display Network
By showing up on thousands of other websites within the Google Display Network almost immediately after a consumer leaves your website, retargeting ads will help your agency boost your brand awareness while significantly expanding your reach online. The Google Display Network comprises over two million websites, from T-Mobile and the New York Times to several weather and news channels.
Chances are, even for those of you who don’t recall being served these types of ads, you’ve probably been targeted by them at some point in time. Retargeting ads are everywhere and can significantly help your agency win back lost opportunities by targeting people who have already visited your website, reminding them of their interest in your agency, and encouraging them to return and take action on your website.
Compared to other types of ads, studies have found that retargeting ads can increase the likelihood of conversion by up to 70% because these consumers are already familiar with your agency and much more likely to engage with your brand’s ads than an agency they’ve never heard of.
What is Search Engine Branding?
However, Website Visitor Retargeting isn’t the only type of ad to consider. Search Engine Branding ads are crucial for local independent insurance agencies interested in protecting their brand from competitors online.
Also known as branded search ads or brand name bidding, these types of ads are shown in search engine results when a consumer searches for your agency’s name. It might sound odd or unnecessary to bid on your agency’s name, but the benefits that these types of ads often provide can far outweigh the cost of running the ads.
With that in mind, let’s talk about some key benefits of running a Search Engine Branding campaign. The first is that branded search ads can help ensure your business appears at the top of the search results when someone types in your agency’s name. While it may seem like a no-brainer that you would already show up first because of your organic SEO efforts, there may be other agencies with very similar names, like the list of results shown on the right here.
Additionally, competitors may try to get in front of your target audience by bidding on your name. Bidding on your own agency name can help you protect your brand on Google, monopolize the search results, and prevent the competition from directing your prospects and policyholders to their websites.
Search Engine Branding ads also boost your brand awareness and give you greater control over your brand messaging. That’s because you can highlight the products your agency offers and the key benefits of working with your independent agency in the ad copy, which may not automatically show up in the description of your organic results linking to your homepage.
A great example goes back to the screenshot shown on this slide. If you’re Turner & Associates, there are three other insurance agencies showing up above you in the organic search results. By running a Search Engine Branding campaign that includes “turner insurance agency” as a keyword, you could jump to the top of these search results and potentially gain a lot more exposure and web traffic.
Finally, another major benefit of branded search ads is that they are often very cost-effective. Because your agency’s name will have much higher relevance and lower competition than keywords like “Houston auto insurance agency,” your cost-per-click will generally remain fairly low. So, running these types of campaigns is often an affordable way to protect your brand on Google.
Paid Ads & Your Current Customers
Now, let’s discuss what’s important to consider regarding your policyholders when it comes to Website Visitor Retargeting and Search Engine Branding ads. The odds are that many of your policyholders will visit your website and search for your agency by name on Google. So, they will likely be served ads from both your Website Visitor Retargeting and Search Engine Branding campaigns.
While your initial reaction may be to exclude policyholders from your campaigns or pause your campaigns altogether if you notice this happening, I would encourage you to consider how this benefits your overall marketing strategy.
Maintaining high policyholder retention rates is crucial for your agency with so many other agencies competing for your customers’ business and policy renewals often occurring multiple times a year. When consumers know their policies are coming up for renewal, they will likely start searching online for better rates if they aren’t happy with their policy, and many of those other agencies that are competing for your customers are going to show up.
By running retargeting ads and branded search ads throughout a policyholder’s time with your agency, you are constantly reinforcing your brand. You’re reminding them as they browse the web that your agency is there to help them if they have any questions. You’re re-engaging them and encouraging them to keep their policies up-to-date or consider bundling additional policies with their current ones to potentially save money. And you’re protecting your brand from having the competition take over prime real estate on the search engine results pages when a customer searches for your agency to make a claim or call your office.
At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that being present online and running ad campaigns aren’t always about making conversions happen. It’s crucial to also focus on staying top of mind and keeping your policyholders content with your agency for years to come because acquiring new customers is exponentially more costly than retaining existing ones. And as a local independent agency, you also know how important long-term relationships are to gain even more policyholders through referrals.
All that to say, you shouldn’t be afraid to run ad campaigns that will be shown to your policyholders.
How to Measure Ad Performance
It’s one thing to talk about what Website Visitor Retargeting and Search Engine Branding are and how they can boost your agency’s brand awareness, but it’s another to actually be able to determine whether your paid advertising strategies are working for your agency.
So, let’s discuss how you can measure the effectiveness of your Search Engine Marketing campaigns. The images shown on the right are screenshots from the Search Engine Marketing dashboard of My BrightFire, which is our convenient portal that provides customers with the insights they need in order to understand how all of their BrightFire services are performing.
So, the first metric you should measure is the number of impressions you receive, or how many times your ad was shown to consumers. Remember, you only pay when someone clicks on your ads, so impressions are free brand awareness your agency gets to enjoy.
You should also measure how many clicks your ads receive, no matter if the consumer clicked on the phone number in your ad to call your agency or clicked a link to visit your website.
Next is the click-through rate, which measures the percentage of how many people clicked on your ad by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions you received.
Another beneficial metric to monitor is your average cost-per-click, which is the average amount you pay for each click on your ad. Then, of course, you’ll want to measure how many conversions you received, which details how many users submitted a form on the landing page they were directed to after clicking on your ad or called your agency.
The cost-per-conversion is the average cost of acquiring each returning visitor who converts, and the conversion rate is the percentage of retargeted visitors who took a conversion action on your website.
I mentioned earlier that for first-time visitors to insurance agency websites, the average conversion rate typically falls between 1% and 3% (Pathmonk), but with Google Ads in place, you can see conversion rates for consumers requesting quotes online are higher.
Finally, you should measure how many phone calls you received from users clicking on the number displayed in your ad.
It’s also important to note that while Search Engine Marketing is one of the fastest digital marketing solutions for generating leads, it may take a few months to start seeing your desired results. That’s because new Google Ads campaigns go through a learning period of about 30 days.
During a learning period, your ads go through several experiments to gather data on clicks and conversions, which can cause inconsistent results in the early stages of the campaign. From there, the data collected can be used to optimize your campaigns more easily and improve the performance of your ads to see more consistent results.
Additionally, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes to your ad campaigns, including your keywords, budget, ad copy, ad design, and landing pages. That’s why BrightFire recommends allowing 90 days to analyze trends in data that may emerge from the learning period. This can help determine which combination of those factors works best for your agency’s goals and budget so you can more accurately understand how your campaigns are performing.
How BrightFire Helps with Search Engine Marketing
That wraps up our presentation! If you’re ready to boost brand awareness for your agency but maybe don’t have the bandwidth to do so, or you’d like to leave it to the digital marketing experts, BrightFire’s Search Engine Marketing service is available. Our Google Ads certified experts can help guide your agency on which solution, or combination of solutions, best reflects your goals and budget.
Our team of digital marketing strategists and web and graphic designers are experts in writing effective copy, designing eye-catching graphics, and ensuring everything is optimized based on your agency’s goals and target audience.
After we discuss your agency’s needs, we’ll be equipped to recommend a Search Engine Marketing solution that will meet those needs and help you stand out locally against other agencies and the biggest names in insurance.
We provide everything you need, including the setup for the solutions of your choosing between Website Visitor Retargeting, Search Engine Branding, and/or Google Paid Search. You’ll also receive copywriting, graphic design, custom ad design, a custom landing page for each campaign, call tracking with local phone numbers, click fraud detection and protection, BrightFire’s budget planner, and a reporting dashboard that you can access at your convenience to manage and monitor all of your BrightFire services.
How to Get Started with BrightFire
If you’re new to BrightFire and would like to take advantage of our services, you can sign up for any or all of the three solutions within BrightFire’s Search Engine Marketing service for just $150 per month per $1,000 ad spend.
So for example, if your agency’s monthly advertising budget is between $300 and $1,000, your monthly management cost will be $150. If you have a monthly budget between $1,001 and $2,000, the monthly management cost is $300, and for monthly budgets of $2,001 to $3,000, the monthly management cost is $450.
Our Search Engine Marketing service and other digital marketing services don’t have setup fees, contracts, or user fees, and they also include a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Our onboarding process is designed to take the burden off of you as much as possible and consists of two 30-minute phone calls. During the initial consultation, we’ll determine your goals and target audience. Then, our team of experts will configure your campaign appropriately. Typically, we can launch your ads within a week of your onboarding call.
As a thank you for attending today, we’re offering a $50 promo to webinar attendees. You can receive a $50 account credit for signing up for any solution within our Search Engine Marketing service. This promo ends next Wednesday, April 2nd.
To get started and receive your $50 account credit, simply schedule a personalized consultation with a BrightFire Sales Advisor at brightfire.com/contact-sales and mention your webinar attendance.
Q&A Session on Search Engine Marketing
That concludes our presentation on Boost Brand Awareness with BrightFire’s Website Visitor Retargeting & Search Engine Branding. Now we’ll head into our Q&A session, if anyone has any questions!
As a reminder to our attendees, we’ll do our best to answer any questions that come up. If we aren’t able to address your question during the webinar, someone from BrightFire will follow up with you via email to answer it.
How many leads should I expect each month?
That’s a great question, and the answer varies for every agency. The amount of leads you’ll receive is based on a number of factors, including the type of insurance you’re advertising, how much website traffic you’re currently getting, the area you’re targeting geographically, your budget, and more.
How do I know what my budget should be?
Another good question, and again, one that will vary for each agency based on what your goals are. I recommend scheduling a personalized consultation with our team at BrightFire to discuss your agency’s needs and objectives. From there, they can help determine what lead generation may be possible for your agency with different monthly budgets in place.
Additionally, if you are interested in running search campaigns targeting a specific policy, we compiled performance data from over the last several years to create a budget planner for agencies to estimate how many leads are typical for a specific budget. You can view the planner by visiting the Search Engine Marketing page on our website.
Well, I think that is all the time we have for questions today. Thank you to everyone who submitted a question.
Upcoming 20 Minute Marketing Webinars
Our next webinar in March is “Time-Saving Website Integrations Every Independent Agency Should Use.”
Running an independent insurance agency means wearing multiple hats and managing several responsibilities simultaneously, leaving little time for inefficiencies. That’s why your website should be more than just a digital storefront—it should be a powerful tool that streamlines your workflows, empowers your team, and enhances the customer experience.
In this webinar, we’ll explore essential website integrations that save your agency time and help simplify operations. We’ll also discuss how BrightFire’s Insurance Agency Website service provides everything your agency needs to sell more insurance while working smarter, not harder.
This webinar will be held Thursday, May 29th, at 2 PM Eastern or 11 AM Pacific.
You can reserve your spot at these webinars by visiting the webinars page on our website at brightfire.com/webinars.
So that does it for today! From me and the rest of the BrightFire team, we’d like to thank all of you for attending.
