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DIGITAL MARKETING PLAYBOOK Independent Insurance Agencies’ Guide to Selling Online Created by: Independent Insurance Agents of Wisconsin
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Table of Contents Topics to be Tackled Stage 1: You Can Do This!
Pages 8-9 Stage 2: Creating a Marketing Plan & Refining Your Message Pages 10-12 Stage 3: Starting Your Website Pages 13-14 Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites Pages 15-24
Stage 5: How to Improve Your Digital Footprint
Pages 25-33 Stage 6: SEO and Search Result Focus Pages 34-37
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Introduction This guide was created for you, an independent insurance agent, to improve your digital footprint. Within the guide you will find a variety of stages, including step-by-step instructions to create, establish and refine your overall digital presence. Expanding your digital footprint can be a daunting task, but with this guide, you should have all the necessary tools to get your agency in front of the eyes of the modern-day consumers. Today’s online-focused consumers want instant access to what they’re looking for. To get their eyes focused on your agency’s website at the right time, you’ll need an established digital footprint.
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WHO WE ARE
EVAN LEITCH
KAYLYN STAUDT
Evan is IIAW’s Technology & Risk Advisor. He graduated from UW-Madison with majors in Marketing and Risk Management & Insurance and has experience working in marketing departments at a regional insurance carrier and with business-to-business marketing at a national organization. Evan’s marketing experience includes marketing strategy and analytics.
Kaylyn is IIAW’s Marketing & Communications Coordinator. She graduated from Northern Illinois University with a major in Journalism. She has experience working as a columnist and digital editor for a newspaper. She also has experience in digital marketing and content marketing in the hospitality industry. Kaylyn’s marketing experience includes social media marketing and content marketing.
Technology & Risk Advisor evan@iiaw.com
Marketing & Communications Coordinator kaylyn@iiaw.com
If you have further questions or need clarification on anything in this playbook, please reach out to the IIAW by emailing Evan or Kaylyn or by calling us at 608-256-4429.
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WHAT WE’LL COVER
Creating a Marketing Plan
Running Successful Social Media Sites
Improving Your Digital Footprint
SEO & Search Results
Let’s get started!
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Why do you need a successful digital marketing strategy? • Google drives 96% of mobile search traffic. • Facebook is the #1 social channel used by marketers, with the highest return on investment • When it comes to delivering content and securing audience engagement, LinkedIn is the most effective social media platform. •86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps • The most common publishing cadence for social media marketers is 3-4 times per week. (Source: “The Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2020”, HubSpot, 2020)
Still not convinced? We know that larger, direct-writers in the insurance industry advertise on Facebook and Google. (Just think about how easy it is to get an instant car insurance quote.) With proper advertising, social media engagement and a website, you can create a customer experience unlike any other insurance writer. The best part is - most digital marketing is free! The biggest investment is time and attention. Don’t worry if you don’t have a website, a marketing message, a graphic designer or a designated marketing staff. This playbook will provide you with all of the information necessary! If you have further questions or concerns about digital marketing, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
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Stage 1: Planning & Preparation Starting any new endeavor can be daunting. When you start a new project, it can be easy to let it slide and ignore the maintenance. With proper planning, commitment and attention, you can create and maintain a successful digital marketing footprint for your agency.
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Stage 1: Planning & Preparation 1. Create expectations
5. Check out your competition
First, create expectations for yourself and this project in going digital. What is your end goal? When do you want to achieve that goal? What are all of the areas you want to focus on? What are the areas that you may be better at than others? Make the expectation internally that certain tasks will be easier and quicker to complete while others may be more time consuming and challenging.
As you begin, it’s important to review what competitors are doing. A simple Google search of “Insurance quotes in [your city, Wisconsin]” should be done first, what agencies are shown? If you go onto your competitors website, is there anything they do that you like or see any opportunities based on their site? Spend a few minutes on Facebook and see if the other agency is active on Facebook, if they are interacting with followers and what their engagement strategy looks like. You can gain ideas and also find opportunities where competitors are lacking.
2. Break things down into checklists and easily digestible tasks
You may have the goal of creating a website, adopting every social media channel and engaging daily with your followers. The only issue is that this goal will be hard to achieve if it is not broken down into mini goals for each day or week. Your digital footprint and digital marketing portfolio will not be created in a week. It takes time to build up a successful digital marketing strategy. It helps if you create checklists, specific mini-tasks and keep on top of your progress toward your end goal.
3. Stay organized As you are starting your digital marketing journey, make sure to stay organized whether that means creating a new folder on your desktop or, if you like physical copies of documents and reminders, having a new folder on your desk. This will help keep all things related to digital marketing organized and remind you to stay on top of different tasks.
4. Set aside time each day to focus on digital marketing Setting aside time each day to focus on digital marketing creates a habit of investing time into digital marketing and can help make sure that marketing needs are not ignored. You may want to set time on your calendar (30 minutes each day) or decide the first 30 minutes each day is spent on marketing. Either way, you are showing commitment to this need.
6. Begin thinking about your unique selling proposition Marketers may ask, “What makes your business unique?” In doing so, they are essentially asking what your unique selling proposition (USP) is. In essence, it’s what your agency specializes in or offers that makes it unique. Maybe it’s a level of service, it’s a specific niche market or some other focus of your agency. You will formulate your USP and positioning statement in the next stage. You will have to think about your target audience, your point of difference and supporting statements for backup. This is the foundation of creating a successful marketing plan and strategy.
Now, you’re ready.
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Stage 2: Creating a Marketing Plan and Refining Your Message A major step in running a successful business starts with creating and implementing a detailed marketing plan. What’s a marketing plan? Simply put, a marketing plan is a plan of action for how you’re going to target your customers.
Stage 2: Creating a Marketing Plan and Refining Your Message 1. Write down your USP and positioning statement Your unique selling point or proposition (USP for short) is what makes your business unique and different from any other competitor. What is one thing you do that customers care about that your competitors don’t do or are not as good at doing? When writing your positioning statement, you will need to have this USP or point-of-difference clearly established. Once you have your point of difference, complete the sentence to create your own positioning statement. To (target market), (your business name) is the one (product category) that (point of difference.) For example: the positioning statement for an insurance agency in Madison, WI would be... To individuals and businesses in the Madison, WI area, ABC Agency is one insurance agency that offers new clients an easy way to request and receive a quote within one business day. (It could also be... that offers an efficient and thorough coverage review process on new and renewal business by using thorough checklists and personalized review calls.) It’s all about what sets you apart! 2. Evaluate your agency’s strengths Your agency needs to determine what sets you apart from your competitors. Run through your strengths and develop goals on how you plan to use those strenths to your advantage. Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself after identifying your strengths: • How can I further develop and showcase my strengths? • What do I offer that gives my agency a competitive advantage? • Who would be interested in learning more about your strengths? 3. After creating your business goals, it’s time to understand your target audience. To achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself, you’ll need to know who you want to address and what their needs are.
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When creating a digital marketing plan, it’s important to describe and outline your target audience. You can reference your positioning statement which should include a short description of your target audience. Your target audience are your ideal clients and customers. As an insurance agent, you likely sell both personal and commercial, as well as life and health so your audience may be quite broad. However, the location of your audience will be an important piece of preparing your marketing content. You may describe your target audience as individuals, families, business owners and commercial businesses in XYZ city or a certain area. This will help you create social media campaigns and ads, as well as pick out keywords to include on your website. When picking social media platforms to utilize, remember to pick platforms where your target market is active on instead of picking platforms that you like the best. For example, you wouldn’t advertise to families on LinkedIn, as that is a business/professional page. A personal insurance ad would be better received on Facebook. 4. It’s time to put this all together You can create a written marketing plan (recommended) or you can write down notes about your target audience, positioning statement, strengths, etc. Either way, this information is important to think about. For more details on writing your marketing plan, review these sites for descriptions and templates. HubSpot: Everything You Need to Write a Marketing Plan with Examples Marketing Plan Template AddThis Academy: The Ultimate Marketing Plan Template Downloadable Template
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Stage 2: Creating a Marketing Plan and Refining Your Message According to the same study by The London School of Economics and Political Science, the average age of users were between the ages of 18 and 29 and 33% of users were between the ages of 30 and 49. There are many other social media platforms that may be applicable to your agency. However, for starters these are the core four social media sites that can help to target a majority of your audience.
5. Decide which social media platform would be best for you and your agency.
6. Now that you’ve outlined your positioning statement, goals and target audiences, it’s time to develop a content calendar.
Twitter: Plan your Twitter posts to focus on more global and trending topics. According to Omnicore Agency, 38% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 29 and 26% of Twitter users are between the ages of 30 and 49. Twitter is another great option for targeting your target audience.
A content calendar is great for keeping you on track with your digital marketing schedule. While you can’t schedule everything ahead of time, a content calendar will help you get a starting point for deciding what content you want to post when. Attempt to plan content for the next quarter, or if you’re feeling ambitious, the next six months. First, start with your website. What are some ways that you can reach your business goals by adding content to your website? A blog area on your website is a great spot to add content without disrupting the most important information on your other pages. Take a look at some of the carriers your agency works with. What are some topics that they cover on their blogs or elsewhere on their websites? Consider holidays and other seasonal factors when creating your content calendar. Are there seasonal topics that would be important to your audiences? From there, you can take the content you plan to share on your website, and plan to post those same topics on your soon-to-be social media sites. Now you have an idea for the content you’re going to create! Let’s get started on developing your online presence.
LinkedIn: Plan your LinkedIn posts to focus on business insights for other people in the insurance industry. According to a study done by The London School of Economics and Political Science, the average age of users were between the ages of 30 to 64.
Your online presence
(Stage 3 will outline how to set these up, the best times to post for each social media site and exactly what to include in your posts for the best engagement.) Facebook: Plan your Facebook posts to be tailored to a local audience. According to Statistica, 79% of actively engaged Facebook users were between the ages of 30 and 49 years. Facebook will be the best spot to target a large chunk of your target audience.
Instagram: Plan your Instagram posts to be mainly “just-for-fun” posts to connect your agency’s community together. Instagram is a fun platform that will help your customers and potential customers get an inside look into the office and the workplace culture.
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Stage 3: Starting Your Website
Once you have established your marketing plan and refined your message, you are ready to create your website.
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Your Website
Stage 3: Starting Your Website The most visited web pages should be the easiest to find. If they’re not, it’s time to rearrange your layout. Check your analytics A Google Analytics account will help you to understand what pages are most visited on your website so you can better tailor your content for what your audience needs. (For more information about setting up a Google Analytics account and learning how to use it, go to page 26.) Keep visitors engaged Your website should be visually appealing. Break up large chunks of text with applicable images to keep your website visitors interested.
Your website should be the cornerstone for all information coming from your agency. If you don’t have a website, there’s no time like the present to get started! Some great options for a starter website are Wordpress, Wix, Squarespace or Weebly. These sites offer easy-to-use platforms without needing to know how to code to get started. If you are looking for a more comprehensive website, consider working with on of Big I’s preferred partners. ITC, Forge 3, Titan Web, Advisor Evolved and Marketing 360 all support the Big I and know how to make a high-quality insurance agency website. Now that you have your website set up, it’s time to optimize it. Prioritize your top-visited webpages On average, users spend about 15 seconds on a website, according to Tony Haile of Chartbeat. What does this mean for you? This means that those visiting your website don’t want to have to spend a lot of time searching for what they’re looking for. If they have to spend too much time searching, they might go elsewhere to find the information easier.
Ensure your website is mobile-friendly Test your website on a mobile device. According to Statistica, over 52 percent of all web traffic worldwide is done on a mobile device. Testing your website on a mobile device will help you to see what over half of your website visitors will be seeing when they visit your website. Have a complete website An ideal website has multiple sections, an “About Us” page sharing your story and background, a page for each general coverage (Home, Auto, Hobby Farm, Small Business, etc.) which are organized in a way that is easy for the visitor to navigate, a “Contact Us” page with information on how a visitor can inquire about a quote and any other pages you think are necessary such as a “Meet Our Team” page. Including all these web pages will answer the 5 W’s and how (Who, what, where, when, why and how). They know who (your agency), what (type of insurance coverage), where (your address/location should be included), when (anytime someone visits the website), why (your About Us page and homepage) and how (Contact Us or quick quote page) A customer on your website should have no difficulty having their common questions answered after reading and you should feel compelled to request a quote to start the process. Once you have your website completed, reach out to Mallory Cornell (mallory@iiaw.com) to have the IIAW review your website for E&O exposures.
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Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
You’ve finished your website, now it’s time to start establishing your presence on social media. There are a lot of sites out there, but we’ll help you decipher which social media sites will be best for your agency.
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Your Social Media Sites Now that your website is optimized, you can establish your social media presence. Social media is a great way to freely engage with your audience. You can get to know your clients, and your clients can get to know you too!
Rules to follow on all social media platforms: 1. Keep your pages consistent. Create your social media platforms under the exact same name as your agency. For example, if you decide to create profiles for your agency on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, keep your profile name the same on all platforms. This will allow your clients to easily find you no matter what social media site they’re looking for you on. Along the same lines, make sure your profile photo matches on all platforms. We recommend using your agency logo as your profile photo to get started.
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites When you sign up for a free bit.ly account, you can edit your shortened links to include your company name or create fun links and edit the link preview that will pop up. 5. Post original content on each platform. While it’s easy to post the same content on multiple platforms, we don’t suggest doing this. On each social media site, you’ll grow different audiences and each audience will respond best with different content. Focus on the best performing content for each platform and spend time developing these strategies.
6. Create your content. You don’t need to be a graphic designer to create a social media post. There are free and lower-priced tools that provide templates and images to create your own graphic. IIAW members have access to Trusted Choice’s “Content to Share” library. These graphics are already created and all you have to do is save and share the images. Another option for creating graphics is to use Canva. Canva offers a free account and also a $9.95 per month paid subscription which gives a wider variety of templates and images. The templates feature a drag-and-drop functionality to make this online program very easy to 2. Create a publishing schedule and stick with it. Keep your pages relevant by posting up-to-date content on a regular basis. (We will outline the best times use. Check it out here. to post on each social media site below.) Now that you’ve gone over some basic rules for all social media sites, let’s dive into each platform and how you can make them work for you. 3. Allow your agency’s personality to shine through your social accounts. You want your social media platforms to be a go-to spot for engagement, and the most engaging content is humanizing content. Social media allows you to show the human side of your business and allows you to build a community that others will want to be a part of. If it aligns with your brand’s marketing plan, stay away from overly formal content on your social media pages. You can share formal ideas, but make them fun to understand and/or interact with. 4. Shorten Links. Social media posts are meant to engage readers and encourage them to visit your website, when possible. Instead of pasting a long link in the body of your post, use bit.ly to shorten the link to make it more visually appealing.
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Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
3. When to post to your Facebook Business Page:
What’s a Facebook page without consistent posts? Irrelevant. On average, 1.66 billion people log into Facebook daily and are considered “active” users, according to Core Facebook Vitals. To keep your page relevant to even a sliver of these active users, you will need to post content weekly at minimum. According to Hootsuite, the best times to post on Facebook are between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On weekends, Facebook is one of the best ways to reach your customers and build a following for your agency. Starting a Facebook business page is FREE and the plan to post between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. recognition your Facebook page can give your agency is priceless. 1. Setting up your Facebook Business Page: As we mentioned before, your page’s name should reflect your agency name. You can add your logo as your profile photo to start. Next, start filling out your page information. The most important info on your page is your website, address, phone number and email address. 2. What to post to your Facebook business page: To create the most engaging content on your Facebook page, here’s a quick formula:
Photo or graphic (image+text) + a caption in the text box + a link to your website or related website (when applicable) = great Facebook post. If you decide to add a graphic to your Facebook post, make sure the text on your image does not take up more than 20% of the image. Facebook users tend to ignore images with more than 20% text. If you decide to run an ad later on with this post you will need to keep it under 20% text anyways. If you need more space for information, use the text box to include that. Keep the graphic to a visually appealing attraction to your post.
Once you start posting on a regulated schedule, you can view your page’s analytics by clicking “Insights” on your page. This will show you statistics as to who your audience is, what times they are online and what kind of content they interact with most. This will help to create content better targeted to your followers.
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Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
Engaging with your audience: Facebook is a great outlet to connect with your audience! Keeping your page involved in local and global conversations will allow those outside of your community to become involved in your media presence, plan to take time every day to respond to public comments and private messages on your Facebook page.
Facebook Business Page messaging is a feature that page admins can turn on and off for their page. Once the feature is turned on, people will expect responses to their messages. Only turn on your messaging when you can commit to responding to messages. If someone sends a message and you read it but don’t respond, that person can see that you’ve read their message and didn’t respond. You can find your audience analytics by clicking “Insights” on your page and then, click “People”. 5. Receiving Facebook messages Facebook is a great platform for customer service. Since Facebook is used 24/7, people will often private message business pages to easily get responses to their questions, comments or concerns.
For more information about how to use Facebook Business Messaging, visit Facebook’s Admin’s Guide to Page Messaging here.
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Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
LinkedIn LinkedIn is a great option for growing your professional agency audience. More than just for finding qualified candidates when you’re hiring, LinkedIn can help get your in touch with other companies and contacts that could be looking for your services. 1. Setting up your LinkedIn Company Page When setting up your LinkedIn, make sure you’re creating a LinkedIn Company Page instead of a personal profile. LinkedIn Company Pages on average receive twice as many visitors than those with personal pages, according to Hootsuite. A well-developed LinkedIn Company Page is the perfect spot to establish industry expertise. In addition to connecting with other industry professionals, you’ll have the ability to drive business results, raise brand awareness, promote option positions in your agency and educate potential customers on your products and services. For more information about setting up a LinkedIn Company Page, click here. Once set up with your Company Page, begin filling out as much information as you can, like your agency’s website, contact information and key leaders at your agency. Allowing other LinkedIn members to see who leads your agency will help to gain more connections both on the platform and in real-life. 2. What to post on your LinkedIn Company Page The top way to grow your LinkedIn audience is by providing valuable information on your company page on a regular basis.
You can share content from external sources on your LinkedIn Company Page to show your followers that you are involved in industry news, even if your team didn’t create the content. Always make sure when you’re sharing a link from an external source to add in your own thoughts in the caption to involve yourself in the content instead of just promoting another company’s work. Just like we mentioned with Facebook, each LinkedIn post should contain an image. According to Hootsuite, posts with an image get 98 percent more comments. If your agency has a YouTube channel, link your videos in your LinkedIn posts. Not only do YouTube videos play automatically in followers’ news feeds encouraging them to interact with your content, but it can also generate a 75 percent higher share rate, according to Hootsuite. To learn more about creating LinkedIn content that will receive great engagement, click here. 3. When to post to your LinkedIn Company Page LinkedIn is a business tool, so keep your postings to business hours when most people are checking their LinkedIn news feeds. According to Oberlo, the best times to post on LinkedIn are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Stay away from posting on weekends and after typical business hours when most followers have logged out. 4. Connecting with your audience A big draw for most thought leaders on LinkedIn is to connect with others who are passionate about the same topics. It’s important to respond to comments on your posts to show your audience that you want to be a part of the conversation, not just the initiation of a topic. Encourage your agency’s employees to connect with your LinkedIn Company Page, and when applicable, engage in conversations on your page important to them. Members of your agency are part of your target audience on LinkedIn, so ask them what they’d like to see and tailor your content to what they’re looking for.
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Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
Twitter With over 300 million active users, Twitter is an excellent platform to reach new audiences that you probably wouldn’t reach elsewhere.
3. What time to post on Twitter According to Hootsuite, the best posting times are 12 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. daily. Most people are checking their Twitter accounts at lunch and again after work. 4. Engaging with your Twitter audience
1. Setting up your Twitter profile Setting up your Twitter profile takes little-to-no time. Remember to keep your name the same across all platforms, add your logo as your profile photo and add a short bio about your agency. 2. What to post on your Twitter While Facebook and LinkedIn are made for more long-form content, Twitter is the place to keep your messages short and to-the-point. Tweets have a maximum length of 280 characters. Like Facebook and LinkedIn, each tweet should contain an image, a link (when applicable) and a short caption. What sets Twitter apart from other platforms is the use of hashtags. Hashtags are a great way to get your tweet out to a larger audience than your followers. Remember using hashtags to keep them relevant to what your tweeting about. Twitter will show you trending topics and if applicable to your business, it’s a great spot to gain more followers by joining the trending conversations.
To start engaging, follow important industry leaders and get involved in their conversations. Next, make sure to respond to those engaging with your content, when possible. When mentioning followers, brands and other businesses, use an “@” before their name to include them in your conversation. Oftentimes, this will engage those mentioned and their followers too.
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Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
Instagram Depending on your target audience, Instagram may be a useful platform for you to showcase your agency, the people who work at your agency and your products/services. If you decide Instagram is a good way to engage with your audience, here’s a quick guide for how to develop your Instagram content. 1. Setting up your Instagram Business Account Setting up an Instagram Business Account is simple! All you need is to enter an email address, your username (same as all other platforms), add a profile photo (your logo) and enter a short bio. After the initial set-up you can connect your Instagram account to your Facebook page for an easier way to share your photos quickly to Facebook. 2. Set up a Linktr.ee account When you’re editing your Instagram profile, you’ll see that there’s room for only one link. When you’re releasing new information on your website or you want to direct your followers to your other social pages, it might be hard to pick only one link to include in your bio. (Especially, since you cannot link in the captions of your photos.) With Linktree, you don’t have to choose just one link to promote. Linktree is a free tool to help you optimize your Instagram traffic. Linktree allows Instagram users to share more than one link with their audience in a visually appealing way.
Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to add Linktree to your Instagram account: 1. Create an account - just go to Linktree and sign up with your Instagram account. 2. Add as many links as you’ll need - click on “+ADD NEW BUTTON/LINK” and paste the desired link. You can name the link however you’d like. For example, if you’d like to add your agency’s website, click “ADD NEW BUTTON/LINK”, then paste your agency’s website and name it “Visit Our Website.” Your website should always be the top link on your Linktree. 3. Past your Linktree link into your Instagram profile. Done! Some links you should include in your Linktree are: • Your agency website • Your agency’s “about” page * A link to your products/services • A link to your contact page on your website 3. What to post on your Instagram Instagram is simple! All you need to post is a photo and a caption. Links in your captions aren’t clickable, so instead, direct them to the “link in bio” if there’s something you want them to look at. To keep your Instagram visually appealing, pick a color scheme and make sure all photos you upload stick with that color scheme. Next, if you decide to add filters to your photos - add that filter to all photos. Great photos are necessary to getting good Instagram engagement - try taking photos with natural light and plan your photo feed in advance.
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Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites
4. When to post on your Instagram page:
Planning out your social media content calendar
Instagram is a highly used app across the world every day. Later.com analyzed 12 million Instagram posts to find the top 3 global best times to post on Instagram for each day of the week.
Once you’ve set up your accounts, it’s time to start planning out your social media content calendar. While the thought of publishing content at certain times on certain days for each individual social media platform may seem daunting, there are some helpful tools to assist in scheduling your posts.
Once you get your Instagram account up and running, it’ll be easy to see which time slots work best for your audience and from there you can further tailor your posting timeline. Monday: 6 a.m., 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. EST Tuesday: 2 a.m. 4 a.m. and 9 a.m. EST Wednesday: 7 a.m., 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. EST Thursday: 9 a.m., 12 p.m. and 7 p.m. EST Friday: 5 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. EST Saturday: 11 a.m., 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. EST Sunday: 7 a.m., 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. 5. Engaging with your audience Compared to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you’ll experience much less engagement. Instagram is used for quick browsing and liking, whereas the other social media sites are focused on conversation pieces. However, when you do receive a comment or private message, try to answer as quickly as possible. You should follow other accounts that are related to your business. From there, you can interact with their content to get more engagement on your own posts.
Tweetdeck - If you’re going to plan your tweets in advance, head to Tweetdeck to schedule them. Click “New Tweet” in the top-left corner. Then type up your tweet and click “Schedule Tweet” to schedule your tweet in advance. Tweetdeck allows you to see recent tweets from the accounts you follow, your notifications, your direct messages and trending topics so you can plan out current topics to stay engaged in up-to-date conversations.
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Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites Facebook Publisher - already built into your Facebook Business Page, Facebook Publisher will let you quickly search through past published posts and schedule posts in advance. You can schedule these posts by clicking “Publishing Tools”.
Hootsuite - connect multiple social media sites through Hootsuite to publish posts across a variety of your social sites in advance. This platform is free to schedule up to thirty posts across a max of three platforms at a time. Hootsuite also allows you to scroll through the newsfeeds of multiple social media sites at once. This will keep your engagement on all platforms easier to have each newsfeed in one place! To schedule a post, you can click “New Post” in the top-right corner.
Then, click “Schedule Posts” and “Create” to start drafting your post. You can then select the time and date you’d like to post on and click “Schedule” to finalize the scheduled post.
Then, select the accounts you’d like to post the same message to, type the message and schedule it for the time/date you’d like it to publish.
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Later.com - Later.com is very similar to Hootsuite by allowing you to schedule multiple social media sites at once. With Later you can use a visual content calendar to schedule your posts (this is a great way to make sure the images and graphics you’re using on social media are following your brand standards and using the correct brand colors to keep your sites cohesive. Choosing between Later and Hootsuite is just a matter of preference!
Stage 4: Starting Your Social Media Sites Next, a window will pop up asking you to enter the caption you’d like to show with the media.
First, add your accounts to later.com. Then, click on “Calendar” to start your scheduling process. Upload the media that you’d like to be attached to the post, then drag the image/graphic/video to the time and date slot for when you’d like to schedule the post.
Add your caption and verify the time/date is correct. Then, click “Save”.
Your digital footprint
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Stage 5: How to Improve Your Digital Footprint Now that you have established an online presence with a website and social media accounts, it’s time to further solidify your digital footprint by adding different tools to your website and online presence.
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Stage 5: How to Improve Your Digital Footprint Google Analytics
2. Set up a property in your Analytics account. A property represents your website or app, and is the collection point in Analytics for the data from your site or app. 3. Set up a reporting view in your property. Views let you create filtered perspectives of your data; for example, all data except from your company’s internal IP addresses, or all data associated with a specific sales region. 4. Follow the instructions to add the tracking code to your website so you can collect data in your Analytics property. Watch Video: Google Analytics: First Steps
Google Analytics is the popular platform to help you see the performance of your website including number of visitors, which pages are most popular, bounce rate, duration spent on page and more. For beginners, you are able to see what pages are most popular and spend more time on making sure they are complete, useful and always updated. If you dig deeper into the platform, you can start tracking how an individual uses your website such as what page they start on, what page they go to after and what page they leave on. You are even able to see realtime statistics on who is on your page, their location and more. How to Add Google Analytics to Your Website To begin the process, first create an account. Google has created step-by-step directions. To start collecting basic data from a website: 1. Create or sign in to your Analytics account: Go to google.com/analytics Do one of the following: To create an account, click Start for free. To sign in to your account, Click Sign in to Analytics.
Google makes the setup process relatively straight-forward when adding Google Analytics to your website. After you set up an Analytics account, you have a unique code that needs to be added to the back-end of your webpage. Google provides this “script” which is a fancy name for a code that when loaded in a browser, pings Google Analytics to let the program know that the user is accessing the particular URL (which corresponds to a webpage) and more. The script is accessible by: 1. Going to Google Analytics https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/ and logging in 2. Click on the settings icon in bottom left of the screen 3. Click on Tracking Info under the Property section 4. Click Tracking Code 5. There you will see a Global Site Tag to add to your site. This tracking code can be added a site-wide Meta Tag field if your platform has that. Otherwise, this code needs to be placed above the “<head>” section of the HTML code. Once this is implemented on every page or sitewide, you are all set up and can let the tracking begin! For more information and details about Analytics, review Google’s Help Page.
Stage 5: How to Improve Your Digital Footprint
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Google Search Console
How to Set Up Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a tool that measures your search traffic in Google’s search engine and shows what individuals search for when they are seeing your website pop-up. It also displays where your website shows within the search results (rank order) and the number of clicks. There are other analytics such as site performance each day as well as a section they call “coverage”. This is where it shows the results of Google’s system “crawling” your website and identifying potential issues on web pages that hurt its search result ranking. It is a powerful tool, especially for agents, as you can see what people in your area are searching Google for and where your agency is showing in search results. You may be surprised how many views/impressions your website receives in Google Searches.
Go to Google Search Console’s website, here, where you can click “Start now” to create your account. This will start the step-by-step process. After entering in your website URL, you may get to a step that may cause confusion. It’s going to ask to select a property type, as shown below. It is recommended to select the URL prefix option as that is easier for setup, however, if you or your MSP that handles your website has access to the DNS configuration, the option on the left is the better option. Domain Verification It asks, “Verify domain ownership via DNS record”. This is asking you to verify that you own the website by uploading a string of text to a particular part of your website.
Depending on your website, accessing the DNS configuration may be difficult.
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Stage 5: How to Improve Your Digital Footprint
URL Prefix Verification
Google My Business
This option is easier to verify. After entering your domain (https://________.com), it asks to upload a file to your website. If you have a file manager or a resource manager, this is the best place to upload the file and verify you own the website. If you already have Google Analytics on your website, you are able to verify your domain that way as well. Tip: With the URL Prefix Verification, every form of your URL will need to be verified including both https:// and http://.
Google My Business is a free business profile on Google that you are able to manage and customize. For instance, when you use Google Maps or search on Google, “Insurance near me” or “Insurance in [city]”, the first few listings are often business listings. How your business appears can be customized through the Google My Business profile. Setting up a profile is easy and helps refer people to your website or easily find your phone number to call you. It’s absolutely necessary to have a Google My Business account to target local customers.
Here is a quick video demonstrating the verification process.
Here are the steps to creating your account:
After you have set up Google Search Console, begin monitoring your performance and seeing what queries or searches are receiving the most clicks and what are receiving the most impressions. It’s recommended that you play around with the site and analytics to see all of the different data points and your most popular pages based on search results.
1. Go to Google My Business (Google.com/business) 2. Select “Manage Now” 3. Enter Your Business Name 4. Enter Business Address 5. Select appropriate check boxes 6. Choose your business category 7. Add your phone number and website 8. Choose verification option - they offer a variety of ways including postcards, phone, email, etc. 9. You’re Done! But now it’s time to optimize your business page.
Another task to complete within Google Search Console is to upload a sitemap. This allows Google to crawl and index your site faster and can help with improving your ranking in search results (or where your website shows in search results). If you have a sitemap on your website, this can be linked directly, or you can use a tool such as XML Sitemap Generator and have a sitemap created for you. This XML file can then be uploaded to your website’s file or resource manager and that link can be copied and pasted to Google Search Console’s “Sitemap” section. Just like Google Analytics, once you are set up properly with Google Search Console, you are ready to indulge and sift through all of the data points collected. This is another very powerful digital marketing tool.
Steps to Optimizing Your Google My Business Page 1. Go to the Google My Business dashboard 2. Click the listing you’d like to work on 3. Select “Info” 4. Complete section by entering in applicable information such as hours, description, attributes. You are able to edit each section by clicking the pencil on the right side. 5. Next, go to the “Photos” section and add photos! You are able to add your logo, cover photos, interior and exterior photos, your team, etc.
Stage 5: How to Improve Your Digital Footprint For more information regarding the setup of your Google My Business listing, HubSpot has a great step-by-step post with screenshots. Within Google My Business, you have access to very important analytics in the “Insights” section. Here you will see Google search queries that were used to search your business, where customers view your business, customer actions and where direction requests to your business came from. These are critical data points to keep an eye on to see what your business is doing well and where you can improve. If you are not getting the attention you think you should be, it may be worth spending more time in refining your profile until your business profile performs in search results at the level you desire. You may even consider looking into Google Ads, the advertising platform on Google. Google Ads You are likely familiar with ads that appear on Google searches. Due to the popularity of Google, Google Advertising is one of the best ways to generate leads. It’s a fact that the first search result receives a large percentage of the clicks in the results, but to be first in the search results isn’t always cheap. Get started with Google Ads here. 1. Go to the Google Ads page. 2. Click “Start Now” 3. Select your campaign goal 4. The type of campaign or ad you want to display. Each type of ad is explained below the icon. 5. Select the type of action you want the user to perform (such as going to your website) 6. The next page allows you to choose your Daily budget and the type of bidding. If you setup conversions (such as completing a quote request), that is a good option to choose, otherwise clicks is the next best option. Bidding means that Google will automatically “bid” with the highest bids for a certain action will be shown in search results. For clicks or conversions, you are only charged when that action is performed (someone clicks to go to your website), NOT when your website appears in search results.
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7. Select additional options as necessary 8. The next section will show Set Up Ad Groups. Here you will select different groups. But the most important part is selecting keywords. a. keyword = broad match = anything related to those words may trigger your ad to show in the results b. “keyword” (in quotes) = phrase match = if certain parts of the phrase in quotes match the search query, your ad may show in the results c. [keyword] (in brackets) = exact match = your entire phrase in brackets must be part of the search query in order for your ad to show The best option is up to you. It’s recommended to be specific and brainstorm phrases someone looking for your business would search. For an insurance agent in Madison, WI, they may choose “Insurance in Madison, WI” or “Auto Insurance Quote in Madison, WI” (in quotes) to avoid a broad match and make sure the user searching is more likely in the market that you serve. You can add as many keywords as you would like. Obviously the more keywords you enter, the more clicks on your website. If you are looking for a specific market, only having 3 or 4 keywords may be appropriate. After you are done with keywords, click “Save and Continue” 9. On the next section you create your ads. You select the URL, the headline and a description. 10. Lastly, Google has you enter billing information and you are on your way to publishing ads on Google search results! If you need assistance with this task or looking for more information on Google Ads, Google created a very informative guide here. You will find best practices, YouTube videos and more to help you with your marketing campaign.
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Stage 5: How to Improve Your Digital Footprint
Facebook Ads Facebook advertising is another way to further increase your digital footprint. Within Facebook, there are two options to advertise, first is by “boosting” a post and the other is through the Ad Manager. Boosting a post is quick, easy and requires an existing post on your Facebook page while the Ad Manager is more customizable and complex. With Facebook, you can decide what metric will determine when you are charged. Typically, each like or link-click will cost you a few.
Boosting a Post 1. Create and post a Facebook post from your business 2. View the post and click “Boost Post” 3. Follow and complete the options provided including what results you would like from the post, the post button, duration and budget, and most importantly your audience. 4. Once this is complete, select “Post” and Facebook will review your post and publish!
Note: While Facebook no longer has the 20% text rule in images. we still suggest keeping your text under 20% on an image you plan to promote to reach your entire audience potential. According to Instapage, “Under Facebook’s new guidelines, an ad won’t be outright rejected if it contains more than 20% text, but it will have its reach limited - significantly.Instead of using a “run or reject” system, Facebook will categorize your ad according to the following ratings:
After you’ve boosted a post on Facebook, you will see the stats right under the boosted post.
Stage 5: How to Improve Your Digital Footprint Creating an Audience An audience in Facebook’s Ad Manager is one of the most critical aspects of advertising on Facebook as it determines who your ad is shown to. Your audience can be defined by location, age, gender, languages, behaviors, interests, demographics, connections and look-alike audiences. As you can imagine, you can get quite detailed with who your ad is shown to. The most important options are location and demographics. Depending on what your post is describing or trying to sell, your target demographics will change. However, for the most part, the location of your target market is going to stay relatively the same, so don’t forget to set the location or else the whole world could click your ad and that is ineffective/wasted marketing dollars.
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c. Ad i. Identity ii. Format iii. Media iv. Text & Links v. Languages vi. Tracking In general, a Facebook Ad can be as simple or complex you would like. The more details you add, often the better the results will be. Again, use the audience filter wisely to narrow your target audience down by location and choose the style and formatting you like best and that you believe resonates well with your prospects.
Ad Manager 1. Go to Ads Manager (This page shows your Ad Accounts) 2. Click the top left corner and click “Ads Manager” 3. This is your dashboard where you can see Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads. Think of it as multiple Ads make up one Ad Set and multiple Ad Sets make-up one Campaign. So create an ad, you need to go to “Campaigns” and select “+ Create” 4. This will allow you to select a variety of options a. Campaign i. Special Ad Category ii. Objective b. Ad Set i. Traffic ii. Dynamic Creative iii. Offer iv. Audience v. Placements vi. Budget & Schedule
If you need a detailed walkthrough of the Facebook Ads Manager, Hootsuite offers a very detailed Guide titled, “How to Advertise on Facebook in 2020: The Definitive Facebook Ads Guide”.
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Stage 5: How to Improve Your Digital Footprint
How to Create a LinkedIn Ad 1. Create a LinkedIn page for your business by clicking here. 2. Next, go to your Campaign Manager. This can be accessed by clicking the 9 dots organized in a square in the top right corner and clicking advertise. Otherwise click here. 3. Create an Ad Account (More information Here) 4. Now go to Campaign Manager 5. From the Campaign Manager, you will see you have Accounts, Campaign Groups, Campaigns and Ads tabs. Accounts will show the business name associated with the ad - most will only have one but if you have multiple locations, you may have multiple accounts. Within accounts, you have Campaign Groups which are made up of Campaigns and then Campaigns include 1 or more ads. 6. Select Create a Campaign button. 7. Select options you would like such as your objective, ad spend, etc. 8. Next, there is an audience section for you to complete. First, you’ll see a location filter. (Make sure to filter the location to only include your target market area. Don’t waste your ad dollars.) You may be as broad as Wisconsin or you may type in a list of cities. a. As you narrow down your audience, LinkedIn requires you to select “Narrow Audience Further (And)” for each additional filter you add. b. Add filters that are appropriate for your advertisement. This may include age, the industry individual works in (under Company) or interests and traits. It’s important to be broad but you also want some filters so the ad is appropriate for the audience 9. Select ad format 10. Upload your ad 11. Review and Launch You can also take a post you’ve already shared and “boost” it just like on Facebook!
Google Chrome’s Lighthouse Give yourself a pat on the back for making it this far! You’re doing great! The Google Chrome browser has a tool built into it that is actually designed for web developers, but provides great value even from a high level. This tool, Lighthouse, is an open-source, automated tool for improving the performance, quality and correctness of your website. According to the overview page, “When auditing a page, Lighthouse runs a barrage of tests against the page, and then generates a report on how well the page did. From here you can use the failing tests as indicators on what you can do to improve…”. The reports page that Lighthouse provides is very detailed and uses a lot of web developer jargon. It may not be a report that you are able to fully interpret, which is okay. If you use a MSP or web developer for your website, they should be able to utilize it to improve your website. Even from a high-level, the report is able to provide you with a score of each page you test and may have recommendations that are relatively basic.
Stage 5: How to Improve Your Digital Footprint Here is How to run a Lighthouse Performance Audit:
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By utilizing Lighthouse and implementing recommended changes, you will improve how your web page performs on Google search results. Remember, the audit is only for that single page you are on, not for the entire website. In order to scan and audit your website, you need to repeat the audit on each individual web page. If time is limited, your homepage should be your first priority. This is another powerful tool and a way for you to improve your website. After making changes, your web page may not look any different, but when Google “crawls” or scans your web page, making these changes will improve the performance. For more information, view the Lighthouse information page. You may also be interested in watching a demo video from Google Chrome Developers here.
1. Download the Google Chrome browser here 2. Open Google Chrome 3. Go to the webpage on your website that you would like to test 4. Right click on your mouse 5. Select “Inspect” 6. On the new window that opens up, within the top menu click on the two right arrows (just right of the “Performance” option) to extend the menu 7. Select “Audits” 8. Select the categories you would like to test (you can select all the categories) 9. Select whether you want to test it on a mobile or desktop device 10. Click “Generate Report” 11. Review Report To Export Report 1. Click the three dots in the top right under the X (not to the left) 2. Select “Print Summary” or “Print Expanded”
SEO & Search Result Focus
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Stage 6: SEO & Search Result Focus You may have heard of search engine optimization (or SEO), but what does that all mean? SEO is a fancy term for describing how your website performs relative to other similar websites (your competitors) when a person makes a search on a search engine (Google, Bing, etc.) If you are “improving your SEO”, that means you adjusting your website to appear closer to the top of a search engine’s search results. The first few search results receive a majority user’s attention and clicks, and if you aren’t on the first page of search results then most likely, they aren’t going to find you.
Stage 6: SEO & Search Result Focus Before we dig deep into enhancing a web page to perform better in search results, it’s important to understand how the order of Google search results is determined. Google created an algorithm to determine a page’s “PageRank” score based on many variables. The search engine uses automated programs, referred to as spiders or crawlers, to index and read websites. When a search query is submitted to Google, the engine “searches” the internet for relevant pages that match the keywords and intent of the search to provide a lengthy list in order from most likely to what the user is looking for to least likely. Google won’t ever share this algorithm or confirm what weight each factor may be, but based on research and some broad public statements, people on the outside have begun to figure it out.
You likely know that a web page that answers the user’s question or includes the same “keywords” as the search query is going to show up higher. We will be talking a lot about keywords, so what are they and how can you include keywords on your website? Keywords are how many users search Google and the important part of a query. For instance, if Googling “What is an umbrella insurance policy?”, the important keywords would be “umbrella insurance policy” as that is the relevant and key part of the search. If you start including keywords on your webpages, it is more likely that your website will perform better. Keywords should naturally be included on your website just due to the nature and content of webpage content but you can boost your SEO by simply including keywords in titles, urls, and first sentences on pages.
35 Now you may be wondering, what keywords or phrases do you want to include? This is entirely up to you! A good starting point would be to have clear and descriptive titles on each page and having the location in the first sentence. For example, on an auto insurance page, you could include Auto Insurance as a title and the first sentence may be, “At ABC Agency, we offer insurance coverage for your car, truck, van and any other automobile in southern Wisconsin (or include city) as we work with a variety of insurance carriers being an independent insurance agency.” There are a few different things to point out in this example. First, is that you do not want to just repeat keywords (auto insurance) over and over. It’s better to use synonyms such as car insurance or automobile insurance to capture a wider range of keywords and reduce the likelihood of keyword stuffing (excessively adding keywords to your website). The location, name of agency and insurance is also mentioned in that sentence to help brand the web page, help with location-based searches and keep insurance as a top keyword. A great activity for brainstorming keywords is to go to each page on your website and think what a user or customer may search. You may think of “auto insurance in [city, state]”, “low insurance rates for my car” or “Where to buy car insurance near me”. Now you identify the keywords in these phrases (auto insurance, city/state, low insurance rates, buy car insurance) and incorporate those into your content. However, still try to keep flow with your content and avoid awkward or odd-sounding sentences - Google is smart and will notice when you try to “cheat” the system. For starters, the public knows a PageRank is heavily influenced on: • The frequency and location of keywords (titles vs in a body of text) on the web page • How long the web page as existed (more experienced web sites are more likely to be relevant) • The number of links to the webpage from other websites (the more links on the internet to the webpage, the more likely it is a truthful and relevant source)
36 However, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the long list of factors. There is a long list of factors that can improve your rank which we will touch on in a little bit. The fact is that Google uses a ranking to give each web page a score based on the Google search query and what influences this score isn’t known for a fact but only derived from trial and error. There are also factors that can decrease your score as well! If you are going to try to outsmart Google, it isn’t going to work. Some have tried this by making text blend in with the background (effectively hiding it), so you could add paragraphs of text to improve keyword matching or linking to a webpage numerous times on your own website, but Google can tell when it’s being tricked.
Stage 6: SEO & Search Result Focus now. If you aren’t sure, go to your website and look at your URL. If it starts with “HTTPS” then you have a secure site with an SSL certificate. If it shows “HTTP”, you don’t have an SSL certificate enabled or configured properly. This article explains in detail about HTTPS vs HTTP. Website Responsiveness (Mobile Friendly) Is your website mobile friendly? If it isn’t it could be impacting your search results. With more and more users searching the web from a phone or tablet, it’simportant your website displays correctly on those devices. Website responsiveness means that regardless of screen-size that the webpage is fully-functional and readable. You can test if your website is responsive by going to your website and changing the window size of the browser.
In return for trying to “beat the system”, Google reduces your PageRank score. The best secret to creating a high performing website is to make it relevant, fully-functional and overall being the best website for the user. In recent years, experts have been trying to figure out the most important factors as they continue to change. Now, some say user intent, webpage security, website responsiveness (mobile friendly) and user experience to name a few. User Intent User intent is all about Google providing the most relevant and useful pages to give the user what he or she is looking for. Now, when you search Google, if you write a question, it will show an answer from a website without even having to click. Google also shows a list of products if you search for an item and even pulls up local businesses when you are making a search that could be location based such as, “best pizza place”. The best thing to add to your website is quality content that answers questions directly. Don’t try to rank for general topics, you want to rank on the specific questions users have. Webpage Security Webpage security is important not only for the user, but also for search results and ranking. If your web page doesn’t have an SSL certificate, get one
To do this, click on the box in the top right corner between minimize and the “x”. Now click and drag the edges of the window and see if the website “responds” and changes based on the size of the window. Even make the window as small as possible and see if the website is user-friendly. You want to be sure that the website can be used without having to scroll left and right on the page. Another option is to use a free mobile-testing tool online. Google offers a mobile-friendly test for free here.
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Stage 6: & Search 3: SEO Getting StartedResult in theFocus Digital World User Experience Just like the level of customer service you provide, the user experience on your website should be extremely positive and enjoyable. In order to tell the user experience on the website, Google uses indicators such as click-through rate, bounce rate and session duration. All of these metrics can be found on Google Analytics. The click-through rate is defined as the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions or number of times an individual is exposed to your link. The bounce rate is defined as the percentage of single-page sessions. This means the percentage of sessions in which the person left the website after only visiting the first page - the user didn’t click on any links or venture elsewhere on the website. Lastly, session duration is the total amount of time spent on one page with a longer session duration being better than a shorter duration as that implies the users are reading and interacting with your content. As you can tell, Google has designed the search engine to show the highest-quality and most relevant pages first. You can put some effort and focus in putting keywords in titles and the first sentences on webpages but more importantly is to have a website that users enjoy going to. A website that has all of the right keywords but isn’t very popular may not show up on the first page because the bounce rate, click-through rate and session duration are all poor meaning that the page isn’t relevant to helping the user. The true secret of SEO is maintaining a website that truly helps, assists and is what the user is looking for.
In addition, here is a list of SOME of the other things Google looks for when determining search result order: • Fast loading page • Content answers searcher’s query • Sitemap is accessible and indexed with Google • Links have ID text • All PDFs and other documents have “live text”/are not images • Titles and first sentences on pages include keywords • Web page is linked elsewhere/cited on other sites •Links describe the page they are going to, not just “Click Here” •Description tags have keywords • Content recency (new, updated content like blog posts)
• Reading level of content (should be at a basic reading level) • All images have alt text (alternative text), descriptions, titles, captions and a relevant file name • Page doesn’t have too many links • Contact Us page on website • Terms of Service and Privacy Pages are accessible • Metatags with keywords • Using Google Analytics and Google Search Console • Repeat traffic • Location of user • Penalized for keyword stuffing and over-optimization
Resources:
The Beginner’s Guide to SEO For a complete walk-through of improving SEO on your website, read this detailed SEO Guide. For a list of 200 (suspected) ranking factors on Google, click here.
You did it!
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Now more than ever, adopting a strong digital marketing presence is critical for new and renewal business. Following the guidelines presented in this playbook will help you to create and maintain an established online presence.
Treat digital marketing as a strategy and a journey, not a task. When you continue to dedicate time and effort to digital marketing for your agency, you will push yourself above and beyond your competition. The more you can do to elevate your agency as a digital agency, accessible 24/7, the more leads you will receive. At the IIAW, we continue to provide our members with valuable resources to assist in your digital marketing journey. Our dedicated team is always happy to help you, our members, with any questions, digital marketing or otherwise.