KIA&B 2016 Volume 21, Issue 1 | Page 7

Display ads are a branding tool. They are not meant to drive inbound leads. Display ads get your logo in front of consumers. Which, for well established brands such as GEICO or State Farm, makes complete sense. For small businesses, the impact of display ads is negligible. If you’re interested in immediate results and are willing to pay, my suggestion would be Google pay-perclick ads (different from banner ads). Depending on the line of business you’re interested in, these Google payper-click ads can have a higher cost. That being said, there is no better way to drive new business opportunities to your agency than Google pay-per-click. Mixed with a solid website (and blog), Google pay-per-click ads can work incredibly well. 3) Make sure work gets done How many times have you started a marketing initiative only to have it languish when something seemingly more urgent came up? The problem is, we never get back to unfinished projects. We’d rather process a car change than write a blog post or create a video which could help drive new business to the agency. There is no better way to drive up the cost of digital marketing than starting a project and never finishing it. Take ownership of agency growth and make sure the work gets done. 4) Create once. Promote often. We waste a lot of time coming up with new ideas. New ideas are tough to come by. The only way I came up with my 100 questions answered in 100 days was to harass my friends, family and clients. No. Don’t waste time trying to come up with new ideas. A better method is to use the good ideas you’ve already had and repurpose them into new forms of content. WE’RE CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF BEING YOUR TRUSTED PARTNER IN INSURANCE Take your most popular blog post, do a spin-off video and post to YouTube. Take that same blog post and republish to LinkedIn Publisher, Facebook Notes and Medium. Then create a Slideshare document out of major points of the post and share that on social media. These are just a few of the ways you can create once, but promote over and over again. 5) Hit Publish You’ll never generate revenue from content you don’t publish. You can spend a lot of time, resources and capital in the creation process, but if you never hit publish it’s all for nothing. Your spelling will never be perfect. Your sentence structure will never be perfect. Your video lighting will never be perfect. Your graphics will never be perfect. There is no way to know which piece of content generate a flood of new inbound leads and which will be a complete dud ... until you hit publish. So hit publish. the rub Here is the gameplan: Use the everyday interactions you have with clients and prospects to generate ideas. Turn those ideas into content. Promote the holy heck out of each piece of content. Use digital advertising to accelerate the growth and expand the reach of your highest performing content. Rinse. Repeat. Place your next risk with us to find out why Kansas agents trust and prefer MIDLANDS: midlandsmgt.com/products Ryan Hanley is the Head of Agency Nation, the insurance industry’s leading resource for sale, marketing and automation strategy. As a former independent insurance agent and Certified Insurance Counselor, Ryan has worked with hundreds of insurance clients. REBECCA DEYOUNG 405.206.8582 [email protected] |January-February 2016| KANSAS INSURANCE AGENT & BROKER 5