Is your insurance agency thinking about using web seminar marketing to improve lead generation in the coming year? Usually a webinar initiative is accompanied by a supporting insurance eMarketing campaign. Web seminar marketing is a great idea for most B2B oriented agencies, start by asking these top 10 web seminar marketing questions: 

1. What are the quantifiable and measurable goals of the insurance webinar program?
2. How many  eMarketing Campaigns per month should be sent?
3. Should I use graphically rich HTML emails, text emails or multipart mime?
4. Should I send emails out using my Outlook or a cloud computing eMarketing solution?
5. Should I enable click through tracking on my eMarketing campaigns?
6. What is the best duration for a webinar and what type of speaker should I use?
7. What type of topics work best?
8. What type of webinar technology should I use, and can I record my webinars?
9. If the webinars are recorded, should I post them to my website, YouTube or both?
10. Should I offer live Q&A and/or instant polling during the webinar. 

And if you're looking for expert guidance on a webinar and emarketing initiative, contact the insurance agency marketing team at Insurance Agency Marketing or call (518) 222-6392 for a one to one insurance agency marketing review.

Insurance Agency Marketing – Continuous Refinements for Agencies Large & Small

As our party of four entered the security gate of our Marriott hotel, we inserted a key for entry. Below the key slot, was a simple reminder. Call Pizza Hut for room delivery, dial extension #4141. A tiny marketing refinement from a mega corporation. Shouldn't Marriott be more concerned with branding, vacation club sales, airline promotions and other major marketing initiatives.

The little reminder worked on us, as we called room service and ordered pizzas as soon as we got back to the condo. Pizzas, chicken wings, a large salad and a bottle of Pepsi arrived promptly from the Pizza Hut located at the Marriott Vacation Club. This is a good example how minor marketing refinements can have a big impact on any business. This corporation took the time to add a tiny sign to a security gate, resulting in a new order. Insurance agency marketing can and should work in a similar way. Beyond the major marketing initiatives, such as:

• Insurance Agency Websites
• Web Seminar Marketing
• Insurance Agency eMarketing
• Social Media Marketing (LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Twitter)
• Insurance Blogging
• Insurance Agency SEO
• Telemarketing and other direct Insurance Lead Programs

There are many other refinements for agencies seeking to move to the next level:

• E-brochures (including your Insurance Agency Overview)
• Insurance Agency Microsites and Landing Pages
• Agency Client Testimonials and Case Studies
• Digital Email Fulfillment, E-collateral
• Insurance Agency Value Proposition Video (agency home page)
• Line Specific Agency Videos (website and YouTube)

These small refinements can make a big difference to your agency. They can help your agents land that new client and improve your close ratios. Visit StartUpSelling, Inc, and learn about our Territory Exclusive Premier Marketing Agency Program Insurance Agency Marketing. Or call (518) 222-6392 for a one to one agency marketing review.

Trucking Insurance Agency Marketing & Lead Gen Workshops

StartUpSelling’s insurance agency marketing team is offering complimentary one-to-one Insurance Trucking Agency Marketing and Lead Generation Workshops. Your trucking agency will receive expert marketing guidance, as we share ideas to help fill your pipeline in 2014. StartUpSelling’s senior marketing team has worked with dozens of trucking agencies to develop lead gen programs, setting up appointments with fleets of all sizes.

These workshops are for Trucking Agency Principals, C Level Executives, VP Level Executives & Marketing Executives. They will be conducted in a 30 to 60 minute web meeting, a one-to-one meeting between our insurance agency marketing team and your trucking agency executives and marketers.

The StartUpSelling marketing team will review your insurance agency marketing plans and trucking lead initiatives. This can include:

• Email Marketing Strategy
• Lead Generation Strategy
• Appointment Setting, Telemarketing, Leads
• Prospect List & Email List Generation
• Webinar Marketing
• Website Updates 
• Blog & Content Strategy
• eCollateral & Brochures

To reserve your slot, call (518) 222-6392 or http://www.startupselling.com/contact.html. Or for more information on Insurance Agency Marketing or Insurance Agency Leads, visit our website: http://www.startupselling.com/

Insurance Agency SEO - Follow vs. No Follow Links

Ho do Follow and No Follow Links apply to insurance agency websites? What impact do these have on insurance agency SEO? Read on for a brief explanation. Follow linka should always be advantageous for your insurance agency search engine optimization (Insurance SEO), while any link that is an external website should be a Nofollow link. This is important for your insurance SEO to help your agency's “SEO Juice”.  A “follow link” is a typical HTML link showing users that the text is hyperlinked. Follow links, sometimes called “Do Follow Links” tell search bots to crawl and index your links. A formal definition follows: Nofollow is a value assigned to the “rel attribute” of an HTML element to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link. A “rel attribute” is the relationship between the current document and a linked document. Here are some simple insurance agency SEO examples.

Follow link:

<a href=”http://insuranceagencyPDFexample.com“>XYZInc Insurance Agency</a>

The link can be any URL an agent wants users and search bots to follow/crawl.

Nofollow link:

<a href=”http://www.carrierlinkexample.com“ rel=”nofollow”>XYZ Insurance Carrier Site</a>

Both text and hyperlinks are visible and clickable for users, but search bots will not follow the link. Remeber, agencies would likely want their original content to be followed to another page of their insurance agency website, bu would not want to benefit their carrier. Some refer to this "benefit" as “SEO juice”. Agents should use “Nofollow” links for outbound links for carriers and other websites that are not directly benefiting their own insurance agency website.

For more information on insurance agency search engine optimization, or territory exclusive insurance agency lead generation, visit StartUpSelling's website or insurance agency marketing blogs.

Insurance Agency eMarketing and Webinar Checklist – 101 Check Boxes And Counting

Last year I wrote a blog about our growing insurance agency eMarketing checklist, which at that time has 95 separate tasks to ensure a successful insurance agency eMarketing and webinar marketing campaign. Insurance Agency eMarketing is an important aspect of a successful Insurance Agency Marketing plan. Today, that list has grown to 101, a catchy albeit non transcendental number of steps. The blog was very popular and the updated version is listed below.

As a best practice, it’s a good idea for insurance agencies to create checklists for complex marketing tasks. This is hardly an innovative idea, as we see checklists used for everything from packing for a trip to cooking a favorite recipe to more complex tasks like the preflight checklists for pilots. Seven years ago, we created our first checklist to help ensure the creation of a successful insurance agency webinar, and the eMarketing campaign associated with these webinars. Our initial insurance eMarketing checklist was very helpful and quite thorough, with almost four dozen tasks to be checked off to ensure a successful campaign.

Today, eight years later, that same insurance agency eMarketing checklist has doubled in size. Some of these checkboxes are very simple, bordering on the ultra simple and mundane (spell check for example); others are more complex and take some time and consideration to proceed (Bayesian Poisoning). For example, here are just a few of our checkbox items (not in any particular order) which we must ensure are “checked off” to ensure our insurance agency eMarketing campaign and webinar will be properly executed:

1. Create or use alternate domain name
2. Check all links in the test email
3. Spell check, then spell-check again in Word
4. Add speaker photo and bio to insurance agency webinar landing page
5. Create automated welcome message for the specific insurance webinar
6. Avoid rush words (within or outside of contextual syntax)
7. Watch out for Bayesian Poisoning, phrases which will inadvertently set off spam filters
8. Create two different email subject lines for the a split test eMarketing campaign
9. Schedule split test, send test emails for both split test samples
10. Select final email based upon split test open and click through statistics

Of course this is only ten out of our 101 check list items for a successful insurance agency eMarketing and insurance agency webinar campaign. Additional important check boxes including everything from the review of email bounces to the number of characters in a subject line. Granted, eMarketing and web seminar campaigns are an art and a science, but these days, there is plenty of science to be applied. Turning your campaigns into carefully planned events will help optimize the success of your insurance agency eMarketing and insurance agency web seminar program. http://startupselling.com/insurance-agency-marketing.html

Weclome to my Insurance Agency Web Marketing Blog

Welcome to my insurance agency web marketing blog. In this blog, we'll discuss:

• Insurance Agency Web Marketing
• Insurance Agency eMarketing
• Insurance Agency SEO - Insurance Search Engine Optimization
• Insurance Agency Web Seminar Marketing
• Other Insurance Agency and Insurance Agent Leading Edge Marketing Methods

Look for weekly blogs on these and other topics including virtual business and insurance agent marketing tips. For more information, visit StartUpSelling's insurance agency marketing blogs, or read Sell More & Work Less.