GLIGA Blog

Our agency is pretty active on the Internet. We post on blogs and sites like this one to hopefully contribute to the website or blog while also building our brand.  The problem started when we got the big idea to automate our social marketing with Facebook and Twitter. My biggest concern was being active enough to increase the amount of followers or fans so we could spread our message and make people aware of our products and services. We know landlords and investors struggle with finding an agent to insure them and we want them to know we are here.

We started by hiring an ex insurance agent who told us he was the insurance specialist of social marketing. He realized that many agents either did not want or didn'thave the time to build a successful social marketing campaign. And he also realized if someone was going to do it for them, they would have to have a basic understanding of insurance concepts and be able to access various resources.  Lets face it, its called Social Marketing for a reason, and the technicality of insurance doesn't make it any more social. And if you are not on there on the website all the time interacting with people the results will be poor at best.

So we signed up with the social marketing guru and watched as my followers list was blowing up my email. 10-20 a day. We felt pretty good until we went to our twitter page. When we looked at the people we were now following, these people were fowl. It appeared to us that he was following anyone in the Detroit area so they would follow us. Sort of a quid pro quo I guess. A short time later we get an email from Twitter saying our account was shut down due to aggressive following behavior. I'm thinking, "Maybe they are confusing us with the people we are following?" But no, they are still active! We are the aggressive ones because it is considered spamming to follow too many people too quickly. I thought it was strange that was even a rule, but they make the rules, I just have to follow them. No pun intended, OK, it was intended. Haha.

So we went back and looked at our activity and noticed not only was he aggressively increasing the amount of people we were following, he was posting links to websites and articles to other website and blogs. We don't mind being a directory or insurance resource, but we want to focus on educating people about our agency and the products and services we can offer. Not what the rest of the Internet is doing.

Needless to say, if you hire a social marketer, be careful. Social marketing is probably best left to you or someone in your organization who cares about you and your company. Our new plan of attack is to give twitter and facebook access to all company members so everyone can post and create activity and interact with the community we build through social marketing. That's our story and we're sticking to it.

The Home  Insurance Specialists

www.mylandlordinsurance.com

I am an insurance agent in the Detroit Michigan area.  In March of 2004 I officially started my independent agency GLIGA (Great Lakes Insurance Group Agency) entirely by myself. I had been in the insurance industry since 1998 selling life insurance and decided to try selling home and auto insurance. I sold the very first policy and still sell policies today.

When I started my agency I was also working at Target from 4am-1pm 5 weekdays. I would leave Target and go home to change so I could go into a little office I rented to return voice mail and market myself until 9pm that night.  I hated getting up at 3 am and I still am not crazy about getting up at 8 am but I had to find a way out of the 4am-1pm trap I was caught in. I was glad to have the job but knew my future was limited and I was earning $9 an hour with a wife and four kids and one on the way. My wife couldn't work because the cost of child care for our preschool aged children would have cost more than she could make at any job she could find.

Every day I would go to my little office that cost me $300 a month plus $250 for a phone and try to find customers.  I quickly learned that the fastest way to generate clients was through referral. Not BNI, chambers of commerce, or business after 5 meetings, but through getting to know people who would send me customers because they needed my help.  I knew a couple of Farmers agents and I started with them. They would send me the stuff they couldn't write and I wouldn't go after anything else they had.  That way I would get some business and the agent could protect whatever else the customer had with him.

My checks eventually grew to $2500 a month. Not a killing, but when you are making $360 a week, $1600 a month, that was enough so I could quit Target. Sleeping in until 8 was awesome. I felt like I was on vacation. I actually was coherent and alert upon waking up. It was great.

Now I needed to turn it to high gear. I started recruiting to show new agents how to grow a predictable book of business.  We quickly became an agency that wrote 200-300 policies a week with several agents and staff. Today in 2009 we are licensed in 8 states and soon to be more with multiple agency locations. We continue to grow our agency force, locations, and referral base in Detroit in the worst economy anyone around here can ever remember. We are not just the Big 3 here (Ford, GM, Chrysler), we are the suppliers to the Big 3. So when the Big 3 goes down we all go down.

Over the last year we have focused on our Internet advertising. We generate exclusive leads every day and our conversion rate is high because we are perceived as experts in our field. I target niche products so I don't get drowned out by all of the other insurance websites out there. My website is not great, http://www.getgliga.com, but the marketing is. We spend about $500 a month on advertising and I am now looking for website referrals sources. I try to partner with websites that have products that compliment mine where my product is not represented well. Activerain.com happens to be one of them. I try to contribute to high quality sites hoping that they will enhance my image and visibility on the Internet and eventually lead to future customers.

One site I found to be very helpful in marketing my business was an online local directory. This is a website that targets customers by IP address and pushes the local businesses to the local customer. When someone gos to the website it automatically knows where they are physically and lists the local businesses in the margin. I can target my zipcode 48076 and the zip codes around me so when my community is on Facebook, Twitter, Google, Boomj, I will get a chance to be seen by them. It is easy for them to do business with me because we are in the same town. So when my customers see me they have seen me many times and start to think I am everywhere. It is pretty awesome and I have already seen customers come in the door.

This company charges me about $100 a month to target 10 local zip codes. I get to put in my business details, pictures, video, web link, and coupons on there so a potential customer can get to know us way before they decide to buy from us. I have had customers come in telling me what they wanted before I even had to explain the products because they are educated consumers. The sales cycle is dramatically shortened and I am able to focus more on the relationship with my customer than I do on building trust and credibility.

The last great thing about this program is that I can also sell the ads to other people. Because I am a customer and have actually seen results, I am able to help other people build their business also and get paid to do it.  Google, Yahoo or any other website has never asked me to sell ads for them. I probably wouldn't know how anyway. This is point and click setup is easy for anyone and all I have to do is tell people about my success and it sells itself.

If you are looking to advertise in specific zip codes for a small amount of money on a website that is highly ranked and has a large network of partner sites and referral networks then you should look at this website. If you are looking to make some extra money (40% commission for as long as they are a customer) and help other people market themselves so they can be the last ones standing when this economy gets done shaking out, then you should take a moment to go through it.

To check out how to advertise on the network, go to http://localadlink.net/gliga and click on the One Word on the bottom of the page. To check out how to sell ads go to http://localadlink.net/gliga and click on the One Opportunity also on the bottom of the page. Doing both is what I did. I get the 40% commission on my own ad and I get to tell people like you how to increase your web presence and get paid doing it. If you have any questions you can email me at donstevens@getgliga.com and I will be happy to share.

I am not a marketing guru or life coach, just an insurance agent trying to pay the bills like a lot of people. I believe with real hard work and persistence, we can succeed no matter what stands in our way. If we continue to try and never give up we will make it big, or at least have one heck of a story to tell when its over. Either way it will be a life that was lived. Thanks for your time and interest in my story.

Donald Stevens

The Home Insurance Specialists

http://www.getgliga.com