SEO or PPC for Your Insurance Agency? Why the Answer Might Be Both

Working in the insurance industry, you know firsthand how important it is to cultivate relationships with clients. It's often your ability to personalize the insurance transaction that brings them to the point of conversion and beyond into customer loyalty territory. While many agents feel that they have mastered the art of nurturing these relationships, there's one vital component that doesn't always get the attention it deserves - your digital presence.

Today, the average person travels a great deal of their customer journey online, and those looking for insurance services are no exception. Gaining visibility and knowing how to connect with clients in the digital world is a necessity. Take for example that Google alone processes 10 billion searches every month. Yes, you read that correctly - 10 billion.

If you're like most businesses, you want to know how to get a few of those 10 billion queries pointed in your direction. Maybe you've dipped your toes into the waters of digital marketing and know that it's a complex process, but we're going to break it down into simpler terms here. There are basically two paths to digital success - SEO and PPC.

SEO and PPC stand for search engine optimization and pay per click respectively, and they're the two acronyms that dominate digital marketing. In essence, SEO and PPC have the same end goal - to bring high quality leads to your door and encourage them to convert. However, the approach and process involved in each is very different.

So, when it comes to marketing for insurance agents, which one wins the gold star? There's no simple answer to that question, but let's dig in and discover the solution that's best for your agency.

Insurance SEO for Success:

The most obvious difference between SEO and PPC is that SEO is a toolbox of strategies that increase your online visibility and traffic organically, where PPC is about developing a paid ad strategy to generate results. When it's put like this the difference seems pretty simple, but it's actually much more complex.

To illustrate, let's start by talking about the many components of SEO. Basically, everything about your digital presence plays into SEO - from the quality of your website and backlinks to content creation and reputation management. SEO is far reaching and optimizing it is no easy task.

We can thank our friends at Google for these complexities. Google wants its users to have the best possible experience, which means providing the most relevant results when someone conducts a search. The problem is that each time someone enters a search Google has to sort through billions of sites and webpages to bring up a selection of the most relevant results. If they don't do a good job their users are less likely to count on them.

Google does a great job of accomplishing this. The next time you do a search take a look at the number of results they produce in the blink of an eye - pretty impressive, right? To make this magic happen they use a combination of more than 200 separate ranking factors to determine not only which pages are going to be of the most interest to the user, but also which ones are authentic, secure and trustworthy. How a site ranks among this factors determines their placement in search results, with an appearance at the top of page one being the primary goal.

In an industry that's as highly competitive as insurance, SEO is by far the most effective strategy for elevating yourself above the crowd. It's how you grab the attention of those clients who are just beginning their searches of have specific questions about insurance. SEO is important for creating a positive digital experience, especially within your local market.

If SEO has a downside, it would be that it's often slow moving. Not only do you need to rely heavily on analytics but building in all the features of SEO can take some time. Plus, while results from SEO are consistent it's not uncommon for it to take several months to really start seeing them.

PPC for Insurance Businesses:

On the other hand, we have PPC. While there are definitely some complexities to PPC, it isn't nearly as far reaching as SEO. With PPC, you create ads based on a very targeted audience and powerful keywords. With the right strategy, your ads appear in front of an audience that's most interested in connecting with your agency. Paid ads are highly visible, and you only pay when a user a clicks on them.

The audience you target with PPC is slightly different. The goal is to connect with a very specific client - the one who is most likely to convert. After all, you're paying for each click so you don't really want your ad to be in front of an audience that's only clicking because they're bored.

PPC is perfect for targeting customers with very specific insurance needs - for example, a PPC ad with a geographical modifier that appears to promote homeowner's insurance in an area with a high rate of new home construction.

The advantage to PPC is that it generally produces fast, measurable results. Where you're waiting for weeks or months to see some action with SEO, it's common to see results from PPC within a matter of days.

SEO or PPC - Which Is Best?

Too often we see insurance businesses making impulsive decisions on which route is best. For example, a new, small agency might feel that PPC is out of their budget, so they don't even consider it. Likewise, an agency with a sufficient budget might be hungry for results right now and jump into PPC without giving much thought to SEO.

Honestly, which one you chose depends on your individual marketing needs and goals, however they almost always perform better together.

PPC and SEO complement and enhance each other. It's practically impossible to gain traction online without a strong SEO strategy, but PPC can help generate the type of instant visibility that your agency needs to stand out. PPC and SEO go hand in hand and with the right strategy you can see optimal results from both.

Work with a Digital Marketing Expert:

Are you interested in learning how SEO and PPC can help your insurance agency stand out in the digital world? We're the digital marketing agency with a focus on insurance businesses just like yours. With a comprehensive approach that includes local SEO services, we can help you gain the traction and visibility you deserve. Contact Confluency Solutions today to learn more.