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What are some successful marketing strategies that have worked for you?

I am starting my own insurance agency and am trying to build up my book of business through effective marketing. Although I have been working on some good strategies so far, I am looking for any advice to push it to the next level. What strategies have been successful for you?

Public Comments

1. List your site in quality directories like www.5business.net
2. I firmly believe that direct sales (cold and warm calling) are terrific ways to reach people. They are free and time after time I'm able to generate sales this way. I would augment any marketing with 5-10 calls per day to people introducing yourself. Make a note of who is potentially interested and continue to follow up with them. Some good sales resources: Top 25 Habits of Successful sales people, millerheiman.com and salesguy.org.
3. We are assuming that you have a website up and running. The following article will prove helpful to you in streamlining your SEO metatags in order to attract more Net traffic by higher search engine placement. The most effective way to advertise on the Internet is to first set up a website and publish its domain name on major search directories such as Google.com, Yahoo.com [at http://www.google.com/addurl/?...... and MSN.com since 85% of Internet shoppers rely on these search directories to provide them with goods and services. In a sense, these search directories are a very large Internet Yellow Pages. Nevertheless, should your website or opening webpage fail to contain "generic" keywords, then anyone using such "generic" queries will not be able to discover your website. Your domain name [URL] of your website, in a sense, will be invisible, undiscoverable. You may want to consider some simple algorithms which, when observed and committed in designing of a website with placement of various critical metatags that can surely achieve a high search engine presence and increase Internet traffic to your website. These metatag strategies work well with published webpages at Google and Yahoo. Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based website, make sure to fill-in the property entries such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can be readily indexed by search robots. Also consider the Internet audience and their incoming setup. For example, if they are on analog/dialup, Flash webpages take too long to load up and therefore analog users will likely lose interest and discontinue entering the Flash site. On the other hand, anyone on hi-speed DSL lines, will welcome Flash pages which load quickly. So before designing a pure Flash websitge, ask the simple question, "Who's my end user - is he on dialup or DSL?" And if you had to choose between these two users for maximum marketability, then select analog users since 80% of most resident users are still analog Internet subscribers and pure HTML designed webpages is best for them. A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text, is far easier to be indexed by search robots. Limit the use of stylized text saved as .gifs since as a graphic, they are not indexable by search robots. Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots are unable to properly classify textual material. Placement of Metatags: A ranking or search order does take place with Google and Yahoo and it begins with the "Title" metag which should consist of no more than 60 characters separated by commas. The "Title" should describe in generic terms, the goods and services, followed by a location from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state. The placement of a domain name which is not generic within the "Title" is not appropriate, unless your domain name is a major recognizable brand name. The second metatag is the "Description" which is usually up to 41 words to form a complete paragraph which best describes one's goods and services. It is not merely a list. And the very last category - "Keywords" are also somewhat limited to 15 words which can be plural and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries which could be mistaken as "spamdexed entries" which is defined as the loading, and submission of repetitive words into a particular metatag category. "Spamdexing" when discovered on a webpage and reported to Google's spamreport.com can result in the elimination of your website from their search directory. Here's an example of a very highly-placed website on Google.com: Begin with the very "generic" search query "sandwiches downtown los angeles," taking note to not abbreviate Los Angeles to "LA" and of course, leave out the parentheses ("). It will bring up some 2.4 million+ search results. Check out where "Nazos.net" is ranked. It's on the FIRST FRONT PAGE [ranked #5]! Again, Nazos.net's high web presence was achieved by proper web design and placement of relevant metatags according to Google's publication guidelines. Good luck!
4. Do some social networking: Ryze, Facebook, My Space etc... You want to get you and your business name out there. Hang out wherever your "target market" does (forums, yahoo groups etc) and be the expert. Also, have a presence on Merchant Circle. It's similiar to the Yellow Pages, but they have a lot more features.