Infograph: The Inbound Marketing Explosion

I came across this infograph done by the folks at InboundWriter that shows how inbound marketing is quickly becoming the preferred method for obtaining customer for businesses.  (Inbound marketing refers to creating valuable, insightful, and educational content that brings readers to your site where they are converted to prospects and eventually customers.)

There are just a few things I want to point out from this infograph that stuck out to me:

• Inbound Marketing typically costs about half as much as traditional outbound marketing to obtain leads.
• Almost twice as many small companies (1-5 employees) use inbound marketing as a strategy for their business as large companies (more than 500 employees).
• While large companies are still using traditional marketing methods like trade shows and paid search for business, small companies are focusing more on social media and blogs to find leads.
• Inbound marketing has a lead-to-close ratio of 15% while traditional inbound marketing has a lead-to-close ratio of only 2%.

What does this mean for insurance agencies?

The real question now becomes what can insurance agencies do to capitalize on this information?   I recommend agencies do 3 things with their inbound marketing strategy to drive more leads, prospects, and customers to their companies:

1. Develop a consistent inbound marketing strategy.  It doesn’t matter if you decide to use a blog, social media, email marketing, or some combination of all them if you are inconsistent with your postings.   You must set a goal to post some sort of creative information at least once a week to have any success.
2. Focus on creative content.  Insurance doesn’t necessarily lend itself to creative topics all of the time.  That’s fine, though, because you can still provide insight into interesting and insightful that aren’t related to insurance at all.  This goes to our value marketing concept where we encourage agencies to share anything they think will be educational and engaging for their clients.  (For SEO purposes, you should still spend some time delving into some insurance-related topics.)
3. Be patient. It’s important to remember that inbound marketing doesn’t lead to immediate prospects or conversions.   Rather, it allows your lead to develop a relationship with your company and view you as an industry expert prior to them ever calling your office.   This will take at least 6 months and oftentimes closer to a year.