Most insurance agencies understand, or have at least heard enough times, that social media marketing is important and not going anywhere. But, why is it so important? Branding is a huge benefit to having a social media presence. Whether you are active on social media or not, people will talk about you on the networks. So, for the sake of your agency’s brand, you should be there controlling the conversation. Social media allows a more casual look into your agency; it allows your customers and prospects to feel a connection to your agents and your business.
Another big benefit to social media is bringing traffic to your agency’s website. If a prospect is interacting with your social media pages and chooses to visit your website, they are more likely to fill out a quote request or contact you than someone who finds your website randomly. That prospect is already a “warm opportunity”; they already have an idea of who you are and what you do.
A question I get at Zywave consistently is which social media networks are the most important in the insurance industry? The short answer is: you should have a presence on all of them. Every customer and prospect will have their social media preferences. However, in terms of what networks are bringing the most traffic to insurance websites, that is a different story – there are strong trends.
Social Media Traffic for Zywave Clients
As we approach the second half of 2015, let’s take a look at what social media sites are bringing Zywave clients website traffic and where we think trends are headed.
- Facebook: 78% of social media traffic
- LinkedIn: 8% of social media traffic
- Twitter: 4% of social media traffic
- Pinterest: 3% of social media traffic
- Google+: 1% of social media traffic
The rest of the traffic Zywave clients get from social media is divided among sites like Yelp, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Tumblr, Vimeo, and YouTube.
Not surprisingly, Facebook is bringing the most traffic from social media to Zywave client websites. Facebook tends to be the social platform our clients tend to start with, as many of them already use it in their personal lives. Facebook also has the most monthly active users (1.44 billion), so it is more likely that the majority of your audience is there.
The numbers of pages website visitors are viewing when coming from social media falls in line with the list above.
- Facebook: 36,662 pageviews
- LinkedIn: 4,997 pageviews
- Twitter: 2,845 pageviews
- Pinterest: 1,678 pageviews
- Google+: 983 pageviews
Interestingly, the average time these social visitors stay on our clients’ websites varies in order from the lists above.
- Google+: 7 minutes, 17 seconds
- Twitter: 2 minutes, 40 seconds
- Pinterest: 1 minute, 48 seconds
- LinkedIn: 1 minutes, 11 seconds
- Facebook: 1 minutes, 10 seconds
Although Google+ is bringing much less traffic to our clients’ websites compared to the other networks, it is likely that the quality of those visitors is higher. The smaller percentage of visitors coming from Google+ is staying on our clients’ websites for a longer period of time. This could mean those visitors are spending more time reading our clients’ website content, learning who they are, what they do, and perhaps making them a higher qualified opportunity for the agencies.
Bottom line, your agency should eventually integrate all of the major social media networks into its digital marketing strategy. When it comes to what we see with our clients here at Zywave, Facebook tends to blow the other networks out of the water in terms of the amount of people the network brings over to their websites. Once an agency has a handle of Facebook, posting consistently and regularly and engaging with their “fan base,” we recommend tackling LinkedIn. LinkedIn is more professional and can be a significant help in connecting with local businesses and commercial clients and prospects. Twitter and Google+ strategies can fall in line after that.
What networks is your agency using most often? What networks send your agency website traffic and opportunities (calls, website forms)? Leave your feedback in the comments!
Northbrook Insurance gets a lot of traffic from Pinterest. It’s consistently in our top 5 referral sites month after month. We do also see Facebook sending traffic, however they don’t stay long. I also believe that Pinterest is one of the big reasons that a blog posted nearly a year ago is still on our top visited pages!