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Duct Tape Marketing blogger Jim Jantsch recently presented a handy matrix for understanding the pros and cons of various lead generation methods.
The three methods he talks about are advertising, public relations and referrals. Each of these, he says, is essential to any business, although the three approaches have their own strengths when looked at in terms of cost, credibility and control—what he calls “the three Cs.”
There are two huge, stubborn and expensive problems that plague our health care system.
1. Patient records are not (for the most part) electronic, making managing and transferring those records laborious and ridiculously costly. (Paperwork makes up 21 percent of total health care costs.)
2. Lacking information and resources, consumers cannot easily make their own choices when it comes to getting (or forgoing) care. This is why consumer-driven health plans, such as health savings accounts, haven't been the health care panacea they were supposed to be.
Maybe, just maybe, The Google can solve these two huge, stubborn and expensive problems that plague our health care system.
Their solution (well, I'm unsure if their stated aim is to solve these problems, but I do know that Google likes to think big) is Google Health, a free online tool that enables you to upload your health records and share them with health care providers.
Yes, it's scary, but we may as well give in to the reality: Google already knows almost everything about us. Why not just fill in the remaining gaps (if there are any)?
Learn more: www.google.com/health
Bankrate, our new parent company, recently ran a poll question on their web site that asked consumers if they had previously bought an auto insurance policy online.
The results reveal a population that is very comfortable using the internet to shop for auto insurance. A plurality of respondents, 143 people, have purchased a policy online, finding that they could “compare prices with ease.”
Nonetheless, about a quarter of those polled (23 percent) still want a more personal, human-powered transaction, choosing the “No. I want a real agent by my side” option. About 28 percent selected “No, but I’ve shopped online.” (The no is in reference to whether they’d purchased a policy online.)
[Insert shameless plug for online lead generation here]
In all seriousness, I will say that the poll shows that online leads are an important arrow in your prospecting quiver. People are going online more than ever—if not to buy, then at the very least to compare prices.
Because it's a Friday before a long weekend and you're not really looking for sales and marketing tips ...
Here's to having an accident-free weekend. Have fun and see you back here on Tuesday.
This post on driver distraction, from the Insurance Information Institute’s blog, made me think of all of the multi-tasking agents out there, who doubtless talk while driving and maybe—yikes!—compose text messages behind the wheel.
Nationwide finished their second annual report on driver distraction, and the results are sobering. “Almost all Americans believe they are safe drivers, yet almost three-quarters guilty of distracted driving,” says Nationwide. Distracted driving includes (but is not limitied to) talking on a cell phone, writing text messages, fiddling with the stereo, and eating. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says that driver distraction is the culprit behind nearly 80 percent of all traffic accidents.
Worse still, 90 percent of respondents to the Nationwide survey say that DWD (driving while distracted) will become a bigger problem with advancing technology (as in gadgetry).
And if you don't think talking on a cell phone is a hazard, consider this study from the University of Utah, which found that talking impaired driving ability as much as drinking alcohol.
[Related: Dial 'D' For Driver Distraction]
P.S. The University of Utah study also concluded that hands-free devices do not reduce the danger associated with talking on the phone.
Every company has tiny glitches that keep it from running like a well-oiled machine. Streamlining your business not only makes your job easier but makes it simpler for customers to do business with you. So what can you do today to eliminate some of the hoops your future customers may not care to jump through.
Get a web site.
If you don’t already have one, it may be time to invest in a simple, but user-friendly web site for your clientele. Each year more people turn to the internet to make purchasing decisions. Being present on the web lends you a little credibility in a cut throat industry. Try Word Press or Website Baker to create your own. Or hire someone to help you get started and then train someone in your agency to handle the updates.
Web site layout should be simple, clean and easy to navigate. Company information and information articles about your products and services should be easily reached and helpful.
Read Anatomy of a Successful Web site Parts One and Two
Be easy to reach.
Where is your contact information on your web site? A contact us section should be accessible from the navigation bar at the top and the information should give several options for reaching you.
Once they’ve called, don’t make them go through three or more menus. Try to fit the options into one menu And think about increasing your customer service staff to handle high call volume at certain times of day.Give your customer service staff a break by incorporating an FAQ section that you update regularly with new questions your customers are asking. Many consumers actually prefer to find the answer online instead of calling.
Give more payment options
Are you driving off customers by complicating the payment process? How do you require your customers to pay? If you currently ask them to send cash, check or money order via the USPS, you might be. Many people prefer the ease of automatic bill payment offered by larger insurance companies.
But even a small agency can set up this handy service. Automatic bill pay, or automatically withdrawing the premium amount from the policyholder's checking account not only helps clients avoid the hassle of paper mail but also helps to ensure you receive the payment on time. Automatic bill payment can even reduce your overhead by eliminating many administrative duties.
Offering online payment on your web site makes the process even more convenient for consumers. Learn how to use Pay Pal to take online payments.
People do not like parting with money, so make the process as painless as possible and keep them buying from you.
Don’t let obstacles you can eliminate cause prospects to change their minds about doing business with you. Give your customers a break with a few small tweaks.
For years doctors who made mistakes got this advice from insurers and lawyers: “Deny and defend.” Admitting mistakes, it was thought, would embolden patients and encourage lawsuits.
Indeed, that’s the advice that insurers and lawyers still give doctors. And guess what? It doesn’t work.
Recently doctors have begun saying—gasp!—sorry when they screw up. The result, according to anecdotal evidence presented in this article in the New York Times, is that malpractice lawsuits have dropped—significantly.
The reason? Sorry diffuses anger. It doesn’t, except in rare cases, arouse greater ire. However, not saying sorry usually will, at the very least, inspire litigious thoughts.
The success of the new approach reveals that anger—not actual injury—is a huge motivator behind lawsuits. Diffuse anger, and you’re more likely to escape the courtroom.
The same holds for every other service—insurance included. Say you’re sorry, and you’ll most likely be rewarded for your candor. This shouldn’t be a novel idea—we’re taught to own up to our mistakes and apologize in pre-school. Somewhere along the way we got sidetracked.
Progressive formed a case study for a Harvard Business Review article about being a successful (read: profitable) services company.
Frog Design called attention to two of their, um, progressive (lower-case p) strategies, which seem altruistic on first glance. In fact, they are shrewd policies that end up saving the company money while generating great PR.
How it makes Progressive look good: Swift attention gives Progressive the ability to legitimately boast that it makes high priority of its policyholders’ safety and convenience.
How it saves them money: Cuts down on fraud. Ethically challenged policyholders are less likely to come up with a whopper if they know a claims adjuster is en route.
How it makes Progressive look good: Not only does it make them look confident that they offer the best value, it makes them look transparent and noble when they don’t have the lowest rate.
How it saves them money: They are so confident in their underwriting formula that if another competitor offers a lower price, they can rest assured that they (the other company) screwed up and will be saddled with a policyholder who is a liability.
So is Progressive brilliant or what?
The subject of today’s post comes from the pages of the Harvard Business Review, by way of Frog Design (and a tip of the hat to my former colleague Megan for pointing me to Frog Design, whose site I have since added to my RSS reader).
We're featuring a new article (written by yours truly) over at the Agent Resource Center on how to procrastinate less. (Note that it’s not about how to stop procrastinating altogether. That would be an unreasonable proposition.)
But I’m sure you don’t need to read it. I mean, people who read blogs aren’t the procrastinating type, right?
Another brilliant take-away from the recent Bankrate Partners Conference, and Lee Rainie, is this YouTube video.
Mr. Rainie studies how the Web is changing our ecosystem and our lives. This video, created by Michael Wesch, a teacher of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, is fast-paced and probably needs to be watched a couple times, but the ending, and gist of it, is easy to understand. Try it out.
Yes, the economy is acting like your schizophrenic uncle. Yes, there seems to be a natural disaster every day.
While there’s no silver lining for the latter, there is for the former: if you’re a enterprising and innovative agent, these times of uncertainty allow you to pull ahead of the pack and demonstrate your marketing ingenuity.
Which brings me to the title of this post: Walking in the park with my dogs the other day, I noticed a web site address had been written on the pavement in chalk. Coloradopetfitters.com was the address. It occurred to me that this was a perfect example of contextual marketing. Contextual because I was in a park that is, on most days, a veritable Russian circus of dogs and dog-lovers. Talk about targeting your ideal market!
Here's another anecdote: A local State Farm office offered free pumpkins (last fall—I meant to blog about this earlier). You didn’t have to talk to anyone to get a pumpkin. They were just there for the taking. The office, in return for the pumpkins, was given a hefty dose of goodwill that will pay dividends for a long time to come.
The problem with times of uncertainty is we tend to tighten up. We become more fearful and less apt to take risks. Instead of grabbing sidewalk chalk or setting out three dozen pumpkins, we tense up, and our sales pitches get more strained, marred by nervous energy.
The challenge is to take that energy—that anxiety over our less-than-stable economy—and channel it into something new.
Whether it's my dad asking me why people use Facebook or my own curiosity about what meme actually means, I put together the answers to the internet-related questions people have asked me recently.
Why do people use Facebook?
More people every day set up their own Facebook page. If you aren’t familiar, Facebook is a social networking site that was created by a Harvard undergrad with some friends. At first it was only open to individuals in college, which is why many people opted for it over the similar MySpace. But in 2006 it opened its doors to all, and has seen tremendous growth since then.
Not just young adults use this site now; it really is a social network for all age groups and walks of life. Most people will tell you they use sites like Facebook, Myspace, Orkut (Google’s version) and even LinkedIn to stay in touch with people—family, friends, former colleagues. Like any social network, its purpose is to allow you to easily maintain a set of connections online. This way, you are able to keep up relationships (albeit somewhat superficial) with people you would have likely lost touch with.
What is a wiki?
A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses them to contribute or modify the content, using a simplified markup language. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is probably what you think of when you hear the word wiki. However, wikis are used in many businesses to create intranets for knowledge management.
What is a meme?
A meme is a unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Memes can be tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing-fashions. Memes move through a culture like a virus. Most recently, the term meme has been used to explain cultural phenomena transferred from person to person via the internet. Web sites that gain a cult following, videos that receive over a million views and marketing ploys like Career Builder’s MonkEmail are all examples of internet memes.
What is an RSS feed? And why would you want one?
Think of your mailbox; your postal worker brings all of your magazine subscriptions right to your door. So you don’t have to go to various stores buying one magazine at a time. And occasionally, you get a complimentary subscription from a publishing company hoping to get you hooked. Well, an RSS feed is an online version. Basically, an RSS feed is used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts, making it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special area where all content is stored. If you’re interested in getting one, Google Reader has an excellent platform. Oh yeah, it’s free.
I hope this answered some of your most pressing internet questions, or at least will give you something to discuss around the dinner table this evening. Either way, occasionally brushing up on what’s happening on the web helps you to stay ahead of the curve.
Bankrate.com, which is InsureMe’s parent company, held its partner conference this week. Bankrate.com is based in Palm Beach, Florida, so the conference was held at the historic Breakers Resort. Turquoise ocean, pounding surf, flower blossoms in abundance, and blue skies. 
The keynote speaker was Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Since 1999, this organization has examined how people’s internet use affects their families, communities, health care education, work place and political life.
Raine presented data about how the internet has changed our ecosystem. One set of statistics stood out for the insurance industry and online shopping. Over 50% of the population now has broadband internet access from the home and 1/3 of the population is getting financial information online. But what he sees is a merging of methods for shopping. More and more people are window shopping, performing comparative shopping online. However, after shopping, they expect to go to a physical place and meet with real human beings. Research online, but close the deal in person. He also has determined people researching financial information online are willing to be influenced. This bodes well for the independent insurance sales person. Help people find you online, but then meet with the consumer and convince them to buy your products.
Another strong take away from his research was a listing of ecosystem changes; none of these are profound but taken as a group, it gives a view of how our world is changing. There is an increasing:
• velocity of information
• number of venues to get information (phone, IM, iphone, ipod, lap top, email)
• ability to filter in or out just the information we want
• voice – meaning now everyone has one (for example, blogs like this)
• continuous partial attention (we are always plugged in to everything and rarely give our complete attention to anything)
and
• social networks. I have always thought independent agents would benefit most from an insurance agent social network. We blogged about the Sexy Insurance social network last year, and there are insurance forums springing up. I hope we see more, and in the past, we even thought we could help in this area. Please comment with social networks you are using and we’ll publicize them so more agents can get on board.
Raine is a captivating speaker and he is much younger looking than other bloggers have reported. (can’t trust all bloggers for certain). Previous to joining Pew, Raine was managing editor of U.S. News & World Report.
Gas prices are up, rice prices are up. And there is talk of a downturn, a recession or worse.
So if the current economic climate lasts throughout 2008, how will you protect your business? Here are some bits of advice from several successful business people.
Eliminate unprofitable customers. Evaluate the profitability of each customer. If you have a customer who demands a lot of attention and time, but you see little in return, it may be time to let them go.
Severing unprofitable or exhausting relationships can, after the initial fallout, boost your company's revenues by allowing you to focus more time on gaining new business. Read more about Customer Evaluation Scoring.
Keep in close contact with your customers. Show them that you care. They are also experiencing the downturn. Understand how their business is being affected and look for ways you can help.
According to Gregg Landers, director of growth management consulting at CBIZ Accounting Tax & Advisory Services, “Lasting relationships are built in hard times. And look for new market opportunities, recognizing that when the business climate changes, customer needs will change as well. That may mean new markets will open up for you,” he says.
Amp up sales to land more customers. Jay Siff, CEO and founder of direct marketing firm Moving Targets and Loyal Rewards, has told his clients to literally steal customers from their competitors, if they want to see their companies grow.
"The pie is shrinking and the successful small business is going to have to win a bigger share of that shrinking pie," he says. One way to do this is to give your customers a better consumer experience. He also advises his clients to reach out to the new community members. “You should have an active campaign to greet and bond with them," he explains.
Spend on hiring. Tom Gimbel, CEO of Chicago staffing and executive search firm The LaSalle Network, says business owners should continue hiring during a recession.
He explains “It's easier to invest training time for new hires during slower growth periods. Employees that are fired during a recession will have to be re-hired—which costs companies a lot more money in the long run," he says.
He also suggests actively recruiting people who have been laid off by your competitors and score some talent. "This is a great time to find top performers who will help bring your company to the next level," he says.
Keep marketing. During a recession, the first things to go in many companies are marketing and advertising. It’s difficult to track these efforts and prove their worth, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have value. Dan Feder co-CEO of Five Point Capital, an equipment leasing firm whose clients include many small businesses, says "The first instinct of many businesses is to kill the marketing expense. What they don't realize is that could make things worse."
He adds, “If you can't afford a full-blown marketing program; choose cheaper alternatives such as e-mail marketing, blogs, public relations, and online newsletters.”
And finally, stay positive. Feder encourages his clients to recall the power of positive thinking and don’t give up. "Think of ways to bring in new types of customers, maybe partnership opportunities, or new products and services. Many businesses stop doing things that will help them grow in fear of the recession, and then do just that—stop growing," he adds.
Hat tip: Business Week
We’re in the process of shoring up our email standards here at InsureMe, and our current area of focus is the signature, that last bit of text after the signoff which tends to be either
• too dense with information (or too spare);
• overly colorful (or overly bland);
• unnecessarily blighted with fine-print legalese; and/or
• completely ineffectual from a marketing perspective.
If you’re like most people, you don’t notice other people’s signatures except in rare occasions, when (a) you need to find a phone number or (b) the person’s signature cries out for ridicule (see: bad clip art, comic sans font, color magenta).
But the signature is—well, it can be—an important element of an electronic transmission. Moreover, it can
• provide necessary information;
• convey, through typography and imagery, your personal and/or corporate brand; and
• advertise (casually yet effectively) your products and services.
Why don’t people notice signatures? Because people create them as if they’re not meant to be read. They’re often static and boringly utilitarian. LinkedIn, the social networking site for business professionals, understands what the email signature can achieve. The company often closes its email messages with a short line of text that promotes the company or its users, or offers a tip on how to use a feature or take advantage of new offering.
Here’s another reason to have a signature that works for you: studies reveal that postscripts—P.S.s—are among the most widely read parts of text, up there with headlines and image captions.
If you’ve ever been to a career coach, it’s likely that he or she has cautioned you against putting too much personal information in your resume: it’s extraneous detail, the conventional wisdom holds, and you might give a potential employer a reason to discriminate. He has the second-largest collection of what? Let’s put this weirdo’s application in this pile.
The same is true for email signatures—feel free to add personality, but do it at your own risk: not everyone has your taste, sense of humor, religious affiliation, etc. In general, consider your audience and the relevance of any additional information, and remember this maxim, as elucidated by copywriting legend Donna Baier Stein: “Response is the end goal of everything you write.” You may be a big Nietzsche fan, but ending your messages with quotes from “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” probably won’t help you sell more policies.
Brevity is also important. Purists will say that your signature shouldn’t be longer than four lines. I disagree with that prescription because it follows the signatures-are-meant-to-be-ignored line of thinking. Still, things are getting out of hand if you’re including your ham radio callsign and/or MySpace page URL.
Well, it’s time to wrap this post up, so I’ll close with a plea: if your signature has Comic Sans type, please replace it with one of the other 100 typefaces available through Microsoft Office. In all seriousness, it’s time to start thinking of the signature as valuable real estate that can tirelessly work for your cause.
[Hat tip: Cassie]
[Bonus reading material]
• Information Week article on signatures (includes a lively comment thread)
• Lifehacker blog post on e-mail sign-offs (also with lively comment thread)
• Wikipedia entry on "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
As an agent you probably use some industry jargon from time to time. The internet also has its own vocabulary. And even though this may not be your native tongue, it is worthwhile to at least be familiar with some of this terminology as it’s becoming ever more prevalent in all professions. Not only that, being a tech geek is considered cooler than ever. Adding some of these acronyms to your vocab definitely won’t hurt your cred with the younger generation.
Internet Terms to Know
SEM: Search engine marketing is a form of internet marketing that tries to promote web sites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). Some methods include search engine optimization, paid placement and paid inclusion.
SERPS: Search engine results pages. These are the pages that appear when you type a search term into Google, Yahoo, or MSN.
SEO: Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) via natural, or unpaid, search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the closer to the top of the page a site is presented in the search results, or the higher its rank, the more searchers will visit that site. Some efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users.
PPC: Pay per click is another way that web site owners attempt to drive traffic to their site. PPC considers what words people use when searching for certain things. For example, when searching for life insurance, a person may type “life insurance,” find life insurance,” “looking for cheap life insurance,” and so on. Web site owners bid on those key words and key word phrases. The higher the bid, the closer to the top of the page the ad appears. These results will show up in the sponsored listings, or the ads to the top and right of the page.
Algorithm: You may remember this from your high school math class, but search engines also use algorithms, albeit much more complicated that the ones you studied in Trig. Google, Yahoo, MSN and all the rest use algorithms to determine where a site will be presented on a SERP. Some pieces of the algorithm are known. For example, sites that have unique, relevant content, can be easily navigated and have the correct HTML rank higher. However, there are many parts of the algorithm that remain a mystery, which is SEO and PPC involves a lot of guesswork.
Spidering: A web crawler, sometimes called a web spider or web robot, crawls the internet in a methodical, automated manner. It’s all very sci-fci. But many sites specifically search engines use spiders to create a copy of all the visited pages so they can be processed by the search engine. This is how the search engine knows what to display when you type “flavors of coffee” into the search box. Crawlers also check links on a web site or validate HTML code. This is how a search engine determines which sites have better quality content, so that it can display these sites higher on the SERP.
Ok, I think that’s good for today. I don’t want to bog you down with too many terms. But, in an increasingly web-based society, it’s useful to understand some of the things going on behind the scenes on the internet. So every time you aren't sure of a term's meaning or how something happens, look it up. One of the great things about the internet is how easy it has become to learn something new.
According to The Gerontological Society of America, the brain loses tissue from your 30s onward. Studies have shown that aerobic exercise actually improves cognition and overall cerebral health. Yet another reason to stop using that treadmill as a clothes rack.
But beyond physical exercise, how can you keep your brain sharp well into your golden years? Scientists believe that exercising your brain can create synapses that will help you maintain your mental acuity as you age.
Her are a few tips courtesy of wikiHow.
• Learn. As people age they tend to think they are unable to learn new skills. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, learning a language, how to play an instrument or to use a computer program not only keep your brain young, but keeps life interesting…and keeps you marketable.
• Play. Games and puzzles like crosswords, Sudoku, Scrabble and computer games keep those synapses firing.
• Read. Reading often and a variety of books, magazines and newspapers increases you vocabulary and exercises your brain.
• Remember. Try to memorize things whenever possible. Keep a grocery list in your pocket. But before you reach for it, try to remember what you wrote on it. Memory is one of the first things to fade if you don’t use it. And with cell phones and computers to recall contacts and to-do lists, people use their memories less and less.
• Test. You thought the only tests you had to worry about were in your CE classes. Use computer games to test memory and attention and watch it improve as you train it. This will give you the encouragement to keep at it.
• Write. Writing is not only cathartic, but it helps you to organize the thoughts in your brain and to take ideas and synthesize them into something tangible.
• Meditate. Spend time each day quietly sitting. Clear your mind of the clutter and just be. Just five minutes of this type of reflection a day can help you become a more relaxed and centered person.
• Eat. The bad fats you consumer not only clog the arteries in your heart. Studies have shown that your brain can actually become clogged with the plaque-like substance ordinarily found in unhealthy hearts. Foods with Omega-3 fatty acids boost intellectual stamina. Think of fish, nuts, tofu and squash as brain food.
• Calculate. Skip the calculator and attempt simple math functions mentally.
• Switch. Use your left hand instead of the right or vise versa and exercise the opposite side of your brain.
Exercising your brain can be part of your everyday activities. And when you're the one reminding your kids where they left their shoes, you will be happy you didn't take your brain for granted.
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