BrightFire is excited to introduce our revamped Pay-Per-Click Advertising service, now known as Search Engine Marketing. Designed to improve insurance agencies’ online visibility, boost engagement, build brand awareness, and encourage your online prospects to take action, Search Engine Marketing has a great deal to offer independent insurance agencies.
In our latest 20 Minute Marketing Webinar, Content Coordinator Molly Leonard discussed how BrightFire’s refreshed Pay-Per-Click Advertising service can expand your agency’s digital marketing strategy.
Search Engine Marketing Offers Three Solutions
Watch the webinar, read through the full transcript, or jump ahead to the section you’re most interested in to discover the three solutions offered within BrightFire’s new Search Engine Marketing service.
Additional Questions?
If you have any questions about what we discussed in the webinar or BrightFire’s Search Engine Marketing service, please schedule a call with sales.
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 July, we covered Local Listings Messaging Made Easy with BrightFire’s Messaging Inbox. 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 of the questions that come through; otherwise, we will personally reach out to you afterward.
Today’s webinar topic is BrightFire Relaunch: Pay-Per-Click Advertising Is Now Search Engine Marketing. We are excited to introduce our revamped Pay-Per-Click Advertising service, now known as Search Engine Marketing. Designed to improve insurance agencies’ online visibility, boost engagement, build brand awareness, and encourage your online prospects to take action, Search Engine Marketing has a great deal to offer independent insurance agencies.
In this webinar, we’ll discuss how BrightFire’s refreshed service can expand your agency’s digital marketing strategy. We’ll also break down the three solutions offered within our new Search Engine Marketing service, which are Website Visitor Retargeting, Search Engine Branding, and Google Paid Search.
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, you’ll see the poll pop up on your screen with the question and response options. Every poll is anonymous, and we’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 the details of our revamped Pay-Per-Click Advertising service, I’d like to share a brief background on BrightFire, since we have a mix of current customers and agents who are new to BrightFire attending today.
BrightFire began by providing Insurance Agency Websites in 2000. Over the years, as the needs of insurance agents grew, we expanded our digital marketing services beyond agency websites to also include:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Local Listings Management
- Reviews & Reputation Management
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising, now known as Search Engine Marketing
Currently, there are over 2,500 independent agencies across the nation using at least one of BrightFire’s digital marketing services.
So with that background on BrightFire, let’s get started.
Why Revamp Pay-Per-Click Advertising?
As a certified Google partner helping insurance agents with Pay-Per-Click Advertising for over 20 years, we’ve seen a lot of changes to both the insurance and digital marketing industries.
For example, the sheer volume of people searching online for insurance has drastically increased. In fact, looking at just the last five years, ThinkAdvisor found that during the pandemic in 2020, online auto insurance shopping rose by 49% compared to 2019. People discovered the convenience of shopping around and comparing quotes online, which led to a stable, long-term shift in how people want to shop for insurance.
To best adapt to industry changes, BrightFire has revamped our Pay-Per-Click Advertising service, now known as Search Engine Marketing.
Our refreshed service aims to help bolster agencies’ visibility online and boost brand awareness, so they can more effectively stand out against some of those larger names in insurance in the search engine results pages and gain more targeted traffic to their website.
Regarding the name change, we believe Search Engine Marketing better encompasses and details what agencies are signing up for and can expect to receive from the service. While Pay-Per-Click Advertising indicates the benefit that agencies only have to pay for their advertising when a user clicks on it, Search Engine Marketing better explains the long-term benefits that agencies who sign up for this service will receive.
BrightFire’s Search Engine Marketing offers three optional solutions to help agencies expand their overall digital marketing strategy in different ways and increase their agency’s visibility online to different target audiences.
So let’s break down each of those three solutions, starting with Website Visitor Retargeting.
Website Visitor Retargeting
If you’ve ever visited a website to learn more about a product or service and left only to start noticing ads for that same product on other websites soon after, you’ve been retargeted! And I’d be willing to bet that whether you realized it or not, pretty much every single person on this webinar today has been retargeted before.
In March of 2023, we presented a 20 Minute Marketing Webinar that dove into everything related to retargeting for insurance agencies. If you missed it, I highly recommend you go back and watch it on-demand to gain a deeper understanding of them. It was called, “The Rule of 7: How to Win Your Website Visitors Back.”
For the purpose of today’s discussion, I want to focus more on what BrightFire’s Website Visitor Retargeting solution can do for your agency and your website visitors.
Often used interchangeably with the word remarketing, retargeting allows your agency to get in front of people who have previously visited your website either from Google searches, social media, email, or customer referrals, and then encourages them to come back and take action, whether that be getting a quote or contacting your agency.
It also helps expand your overall digital marketing strategy by making the effort you put into your other online marketing channels more effective. For example, if your agency is active on social media and links to your website in your posts, when people click your social media posts and visit your website, they will now be retargeted and encouraged to come back to your website as they continue browsing the web.
Retargeting can be very beneficial for your agency since most website visitors aren’t ready to request a quote or contact your agency the first time they visit your website. In fact, studies show that potential customers must see a brand an average of seven times before converting.
Additionally, your current customers can benefit from retargeting as you remind them to ask about additional coverage they may need or they might make policyholders aware of new products your agency offers. Seeing your agency’s name and services across the web often will also help boost brand awareness and help them recall your agency over others when it comes time to renew their policies.
By combining Google’s display network with your BrightFire website, we can target people who have previously visited your website, serve them eye-catching ads that remind them of your agency and services for months to come, and provide them with a quick way to return to your website to get a quote.
Google Display Network
In our Website Visitor Retargeting solution, your graphic ads that BrightFire experts design for your agency will be shown on some of the most well-known and popular websites on the internet. This list here is just a small sample of websites included in the Google Display Network, from T-Mobile and New York Times to several weather and news channels, among others.
Search Engine Branding
The next solution offered in BrightFire’s Search Engine Marketing service is Search Engine Branding.
So, if you have searched your insurance agency’s name in Google and noticed that the top results were not linking to your agency’s website, then this solution might be best for you.
Designed to boost brand visibility and secure more brand protection on Google for agencies, Search Engine Branding targets keywords specific to your agency’s name so you can monopolize the search results as much as possible when someone is looking for your insurance agency by name.
With Search Engine Branding, when someone searches your agency’s name in Google, your sponsored ad and website link can now show in the search results, beating out other agencies with names the same or similar to yours. This will also start to replace some of your competitors who are bidding for your agency’s name.
By outbidding your competitors in the search results, your agency can protect that valuable space above the organic search results and gain a better chance of connecting your prospects and current customers to your website.
Google Paid Search
The final solution offered in BrightFire’s Search Engine Marketing service is Google Paid Search. To make sure we’re helping agencies reach their ideal customer at the right time in their insurance buying journey, while they’re actively searching for insurance quotes, your Google Paid Search campaign will bid on localized industry keywords relevant to the services your agency offers.
With Google Paid Search, you can promote your agency and services on Google search results pages even when consumers don’t yet know about your agency.
And even though not every Google user will click on your ad, impressions are free! You only have to pay when someone clicks to visit your landing page or contact your agency.
So while consumers are doing their initial research, browsing Google for an insurance policy, and getting ready to take the next step toward getting a quote, your agency is getting more visibility and awareness. This also helps increase trust, credibility, and brand recognition with your ideal audience, which can also result in more lead generation over time with repeated impressions as consumers opt to request a quote from your agency.
That wraps up the three solutions offered within BrightFire’s Search Engine Marketing service.
BrightFire’s Search Engine Marketing Service
With three great solutions to choose from, we understand how daunting it can be to get started with Search Engine Marketing on your own, not knowing which solution your agency should use to best improve your online visibility and boost brand awareness.
Should your agency start by retargeting the people who have already visited your website? Do you have a lot of competitors ranking in the search engine results pages when you search your agency’s name, leading you toward focusing on Search Engine Branding campaigns? Should you start out gaining more visibility and brand awareness for localized industry keywords so you can get more targeted traffic to your website? A combination of the solutions may even be the right fit for your agency.
Through our new Search Engine Marketing service, BrightFire’s Google Ads certified experts can help guide your agency on what’s best for you and your 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 have discussed your agency’s needs, we’ll be equipped to recommend a Search Engine Marketing solution that will meet your agency’s specifc 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 Search Engine Marketing
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.
Agencies must have a monthly ad spend of at least $300 per month per campaign, and no more than $3,000 per month per campaign.
Our Search Engine Marketing service and other digital marketing services don’t have setup fees, contracts, or user fees and 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 our new Search Engine Marketing service. This promo ends next Wednesday, October 2nd.
To get started with BrightFire, please visit our website at www.brightfire.com or give us a call at 888-778-4393. On our website, you can submit your purchase, start a live chat with us, or schedule a call with a BrightFire expert.
Q&A Session on Search Engine Marketing
That concludes our presentation on BrightFire Relaunch: Pay-Per-Click Advertising Is Now Search Engine Marketing. If anyone has any questions, we’ll now head into our Q&A session!
As a reminder to our attendees, we’ll do our best to answer any questions that come through. If we aren’t able to address your question during the webinar, someone from BrightFire will follow up with you via email to answer your question.
Which solution would you recommend we start with of the three?
This is a really good question, but a tough one to answer without knowing much about your specific agency and your needs. In general, I would say that our Website Visitor Retargeting solution is one that guarantees that the people you’ll be targeting already know about your agency and are actively looking for insurance. They will also likely be closer to converting because they’re visiting your website again, and if you remember us talking about it earlier in the webinar, it takes people about seven times to see a brand before they decide to take any kind of action.
So if your agency gets good foot traffic to your website, that might be your best starting place. But ultimately, I would recommend you schedule a free consultation with our team so that our digital marketing experts can hear your concerns, understand your goals, and best guide you on what’s right for your agency.
Why do you have a minimum ad spend?
That’s a great question! It has a lot to do with what we’ve seen work well for independent agencies in the 20+ years we’ve been executing and monitoring paid ads for them. Generally speaking, agencies need to spend at least $300 per campaign per month to be able to compete online and beat out their competitors for certain keywords with Google Ads.
Our recommendation also takes into consideration the studies that found search advertising spending is on the rise in 2024, by hundreds of billions of dollars. Cost per click also continues to increase, so to help your agency successfully rank for the keywords most relevant to your agency, our Search Engine Marketing service requires a minimum ad spend of $300 per campaign per month.
Well, I think that is all the time we have for questions today. Thank you to everyone who submitted a question.
Upcoming Webinars
That wraps up our webinars for 2024. We’ll be taking a break for the holidays and ramping back up in January of 2025.
Until then, I encourage you to continue learning by checking out all of our webinars in the 20 Minute Marketing Series and watching any that you may have missed. You can view any of our webinars on-demand through 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.
