PPC Basics for the Insurance Industry

Finding your insurance brokers target audience

Watch TV or browse the web, and it feels like insurance companies are everywhere. In this hyper-competitive market, it’s necessary because it’s both high-volume and high-revenue. And that means utilising every channel available to gain an edge.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal in this growing market, and one of the best digital marketing tools for law firms. According to one study, the PPC industry has risen by nearly 9% per year for the past five years, to achieve a market value of £21.7 billion.

Mastering PPC gives you a weapon to reach your target audience and maximise your revenues. Here’s what you need to know about PPC and how it works in the UK’s insurance business.

What is PPC for the insurance industry?

PPC advertising is a strategy where an insurance provider or agency bids for a target keyword, and each time a lead clicks on that Google search link, they’re charged for each click. How much each click costs depends entirely on the competitiveness of that keyword.

The point of PPC is to take advantage of search traffic and convert people as they visit your website. When done correctly, it can drive enormous amounts of revenue because 65% of people who click on PPC are actively looking to make a purchase.

The types of PPC strategies for insurance brokers

Insurance brokers seek keywords that yield the most results for the lowest possible cost. The goal is always the same, but refining your strategy is the tricky part. Generally, there are five major areas insurance agencies should focus on:

Keyword Targeting – Uncovering the keywords relevant to an audience with high-purchasing intent, while not being so competitive as to be too costly to run PPC ads on.
Ad Copy Optimisation – Creating clear, compelling copy that gets people to stop scrolling and click. Of course, your ad copy must reflect what they’ll find on your landing page, or they’ll click away.
Advanced Targeting – Using advanced targeting techniques, like geographic targeting and remarketing, to bring in people who actually convert, rather than just window shoppers.
Bidding Strategies – Manual bidding allows you to control budget and spending, but automation also plays a role. Refining your bidding strategies to achieve specific goals, like conversions, Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), or Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA).
Landing Page Optimisation – The perfect PPC ad is irrelevant if your landing page is ineffective at convincing people to purchase an insurance policy. Tweaking with the elements on your landing page is key to not undoing all the good work you’ve done on refining your PPC ads.

Success is ultimately measured by the number of insurance policy purchases people make when clicking on your ads. What works for one insurance brokerage won’t necessarily work for yours, which is why A/B testing and constant monitoring are pivotal to your success.

How much should insurance brokers be spending on PPC?

It depends on how ambitious you are and what you want to achieve. Likewise, your geographical market and the type of insurance you’re selling will define how much you have to spend to gain traction.

However, it’s worth mentioning that although you can run PPC ads for as little as five cents per click, insurance is the most expensive industry to target. A study of the U.S. market found that insurance keywords averaged at $54.91 per click, and it’s all down to the immense spending of the big insurance companies.

The main benefits of PPC for insurance brokers

Insurance brokers stand to open up a whole new channel when integrating PPC into their ad mix. Some of the main benefits include:

Increased visibility
Enhanced brand awareness
Ultra-precise targeted advertising
Cost-effective lead generation
Quick results

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Of course, there’s a steep learning curve to PPC. Blunder around and it’ll eat up your budget quickly, which is why insurance agencies choose to hire PPC experts to set up and run their campaigns. Tao Digital offers a number of marketing packages for insurance brokers.

Setting up a PPC campaign for an insurance brokerage: The basics

Creating your first insurance PPC campaign is simple enough. The difficulty is in refining it. If you’re new to PPC campaigns, here are the basic mechanisms for building your first campaign:

Decide on your goals (lead generation, brand awareness, quote requests, etc.)
Identify relevant keywords. The Google Keyword Planner is an ideal tool as a starting point.
Create your ads that highlight your selling points and fuel clicks.
Build dedicated landing pages to convert visitors and accurately track your results. Ensure that it matches the content of your campaign and ad.
Set up a budget that makes sense for you. Too low and your ads won’t appear. Too high and you risk overspending.

Although it sounds simple, the complexity of PPC ads is in testing and ensuring that your returns measure up with your spending. Like all types of ads, there’s a learning curve, so start small and scale up as you start to see results come in.

Tracking the results of an insurance broker PPC campaign

Switch on analytics and enable conversion tracking with your first campaign to see what’s working and what isn’t. It will tell you more about where you should be allocating your budget and what resonates with your target audience.

Tracking is also the key to effective A/B testing because it will tell you where to make adjustments, whether to your ad or your landing page. Plus, as you get more experience, you can begin using tracking to drill down into different metrics, such as audience demographics, location, and more.

Without tracking, you’re essentially taking a shot in the dark every time and hoping for the best.

Insurance broker PPC with Tao Digital

PPC ads are among the most powerful advertising tools for the insurance industry, but they’re also highly competitive and difficult to master. If you’re going to dislodge the competition and make a profitable return on your ad spend, you need the touch only a professional can bring.

At Tao Digital Marketing, we have the experience to steer you through the growing pains of PPC ads through our PPC management and start generating results for your insurance agency quickly. If you’re looking for a bespoke strategy that drives growth, contact the Tao team to learn more about how we can support your brokerage now.