6 Marketing KPIs for Life Insurance Agents
You’ve probably heard that being an internet life insurance agent makes you an internet marketer.
Well, it’s true.
Having a strong digital presence is critical to driving leads, engaging customers, making sales, and receiving referral business from said sales.
But how do you know if all your blog posts, tweets, status updates, and emails are really making a difference?
Simple: It’s called tracking.
To track your digital marketing efforts, you’ve probably looked to Google Analytics, or if you’re a current Ninja Quoter customer, then Ninjalytics.
You’ve seen stats that show you traffic from campaigns, unique visitors, click-throughs, and more.
However, this data is nothing more than a series of numbers and rollercoaster-looking graphs if it doesn’t relate to your business goals.
That’s where Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) come into play.
KPIs are used by all sorts of companies to track progress toward various goals.
As long as your KPIs keep getting better and business is growing, than commissions will follow. Focusing on improving KPIs one at a time will make you a better business owner and a more profitable life agent.
In other words, KPIs are your new best friend.
6 KPIs For All Life Insurance Agents to Track
Every type of business has different KPIs that make sense for them. Below are the six digital marketing KPIs we believe are most important to independent internet life insurance agents.
1. Engagement on website
As an internet life insurance agent, your website is your #1 salesperson (behind you, of course) working around the clock to attract new leads and guide them through the sales funnel.
You should always be striving to increase the volume of traffic to your site as well as the conversion rate of those visitors.
Metrics that you should be constantly tracking to understand how your website is performing include:
Number of unique visitors
Leads generated
Return visits to the website
Time spent on the website
Popular pages and navigation paths
Track these numbers in a CRM dashboard or spreadsheet and review them every month.
You should also be setting goals. Two that we recommend are:
3-5 minutes spent on site of an engaged prospect
5-7% conversion from site traffic to lead
For niche websites or agents who have developed a buyer persona, these numbers may be higher.
If you are not reaching these numbers, you should rethink your call-to-action (or CTA). One suggestion is to add a site bar sticky widget so the quoter never leaves the view of the consumer when they scroll.
Tip: When experimenting with different design elements or CTAs, change one aspect at a time and let it sit for two weeks before changing anything else.
For instance, if you decide on a scrolling widget, do not change the headline, copy, or colors. Each change is a micro-experiment and you need enough data to make an educated decision on further changes.
*If you are a Ninja Quoter customer, you’ll have detailed Ninjalytics data up to the total number of leads, including:
Viewed quoter
Ran quote
Selected quote
Completed application
Quote only leads
App leads and total leads
2. Traffic Sources
Stay on top of where your traffic is coming from and understand which of the four categories it falls under: Direct, Referral, Search, or Campaign.
Direct traffic: Users that visit your site by typing your URL into their browser
Referral traffic: Users that visit your site by clicking a link on another website.
Organic traffic: Users that discover your website by searching relevant keywords in Google, Yahoo, or Bing and then click on your listing.
Campaign traffic: Users that visit your website through a dedicated paid campaign, which could be PPC on Google, Yahoo, and Bing or display ads through media buying and ad networks.
Keep track of overall traffic numbers as well as the number of leads from each source.
For best practices, you’ll want to track the quality of your leads, which you can do by dividing them into two categories: good and bogus.
When you receive a lead that contains useless information and no viable way of contacting them, that’s a bogus lead.
Success indicators for traffic sources can be easily seen by tracking your KPIs in a spreadsheet.
If there’s an increase in traffic for one source while the rest remain at the same level
If you see more conversions from certain sources
Remember to give yourself at least 90 days of data before shutting down or changing your traffic strategy. Oftentimes, success takes time to see.
3. Marketing Activity
Keep track of your digital marketing efforts to know if you’re spending your time correctly and providing the right type of value to your customers.
At a minimum, you should be engaging in content marketing and SEO, although you may also be posting on social media, creating videos, and running ads on Facebook.
For content marketing, we recommend you track the following KPIs:
Unique visits: Tracking UVs gives you a good baseline for how different types of content perform over time.
Geography: Know where your content is being read so you can allocate your budget accordingly.
Mobile readership: Understanding how people are reading your content will help you make decisions for responsive design.
Bounce rates/time spent: Track how much time people are spending on your content pages, like blog posts, to see if your content strategy is working.
Comments: Are your posts getting comments from potential clients asking for more information about your post topic? Many agents will have readers ask specific questions about their medical situations on a blog post, so take the option to comment seriously and be quick to respond.
For SEO, you should be tracking the number of quality links pointing to your site and content. A strong link-building strategy not only increases traffic to your site but also helps build industry relationships and your online brand.
If you’re unfamiliar with link building or need a refresher, we suggest checking out Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to Link Building.
4. Landing Page Conversions
The primary goal of any landing page is to generate leads, either through an instant quote or an opt-in registration form.
Tracking your landing page conversions is a critical KPI so that you can know if your content is resonating with your visitors and if your design elements and CTA are converting.
To know how your landing pages are performing, track the number of unique visitors to your landing page and the number of people who complete your sign-up goal (i.e. run a quote).
We suggest aiming for a conversion rate of 30-35% on your targeted landing pages.
If you’re below this rate, then you need to start making adjustments.
One great way to do that is with A/B testing and paying attention to how your CTAs, images, and copy relate to your chosen niche and to life insurance in general.
Tip: Learn landing page best practices from the experts at Unbounce who scrutinized six different insurance examples. The strengths and weaknesses they found with each can be applied to your landing pages.
5. Mobile traffic
It’s no surprise that more and more leads are coming from mobile these days.
For internet agents who engage in content marketing, are on social media, and have strong word-of-mouth marketing, traffic from mobile will only continue to increase.
One Ninja Quoter customer reported that mobile accounted for 52% of all traffic to their landing pages. This is quite a bit higher than many other industries!
When tracking your mobile KPIs, it’s important to get a good idea of your current mobile presence.
Are your landing pages optimized for mobile? Can people easily click on your CTA using a small screen and their fingers? Is your site easy to navigate from a cell phone or tablet? Can people easily click on your phone number or contact buttons?
These are all aspects to consider when designing your digital experience.
To track your mobile KPIs, we suggest the following metrics:
Number of lead conversions from mobile devices
Bounce rates from mobile devices
Conversions for each landing page from mobile devices
Do not underestimate the power of mobile optimization to drive qualified leads and generate sales.
6. Online campaigns
Paying for traffic online is a great way to drive consistent numbers to your landing pages.
However, since you’ll be paying money out of pocket to run campaigns, you need to track results very closely to make sure your advertising efforts are working.
For life insurance agents who are already using paid strategies and considering them, here are the most common types:
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Display Advertising
Facebook Advertising
Insurance Ad Networks
Affiliate and Affinity Marketing
The best way to measure the effectiveness of these platforms is to calculate the Cost Per Lead:
(Total Spent on Campaign) / (Total Number of Leads)
You should know the average value of a lead and whether or not this ratio is a good deal.
Give campaigns 30 days before changing them as these things do take time, but shut them down if you find they’re costing you more money than they’re bringing in.
Final Thoughts
As you track your digital marketing KPIs, make sure you’re aware of your total marketing costs (lead costs + money spent on marketing) and cross-reference them with your sales data.
At the end of the day, digital marketing should be bringing in more money.
As you begin reviewing your KPIs month after month and noticing trends, ramp up your efforts on strategies that are showing growth and shut down any that aren’t benefiting you at all.
If something shows very small growth, then test different elements to see if your numbers improve over an additional 30 days.
Remember, digital marketing is a marathon, not a sprint, and your tactics will always be evolving and improving.
