If you went back about 25 years and someone told you to go Google yourself, that would have had a whole different meaning and you couldn’t do it in public. But today sales professionals, small business owners and insurance agents should go Google themselves. Why is it important to Google yourself? According to a recent Google survey, approximately 84% of customers Google or use a search engine to not only check out your product and service but also you as the salesperson, business owner or insurance agent. So, what does Google have to say about you?
It can be embarrassing as a sales professional or life insurance agent to set an appointment with a prospect and tell them how long you have been in the business or insurance industry and how good you are to have them Google you and “you can’t be found”. It raises suspensions that maybe what you told them on the phone is not real. You have no online presence. This is not really good business in today’s information age. How are you going to overcome that if the prospect even keeps your appointment?
First you need to Google yourself. Now to be accurate with your Google search, be sure to log out of any Google accounts you may have open. Your Gmail, Google calendar or Google + account, close them all. Otherwise, you will get a personal Google search because they know it’s you. With all of your Google accounts closed you will now see what everyone sees when they search for you. If you have social media accounts like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter they will show up fairly high in the search. If you still believe you don’t need those “things” in your life, you may show up as a family member of an obituary or your last DUI stop. This is probably not what you want a prospect reading as a first impression.
Go open social media accounts, they are all still FREE. You need a Facebook and LinkedIn account at the very least. You are still in luck, because Google loves LinkedIn and as soon as you get your LinkedIn profile completed, do another search and you will be instantly near the top. The other nice thing about LinkedIn is you control what is said about you. LinkedIn is your personal resume. These are your endorsements and your recommendations from your clients and co workers for the prospect to read. More prospects read your LinkedIn profile than any other personal information site on the web. LinkedIn is universal. So the next time a sales manager or business owner tells you to go Google yourself, just know it is now a good thing if you are prepared.
“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant”.—Mitchell Kapor
Image by ddpavumba at www.freedigitalphotos.net
Tim Wilhoit is owner/principal of Your Friend 4 Life Insurance Agency in Nashville, TN. He is a family man, father of 3, entrepreneur, insurance agent, life insurance broker, salesman, sales trainer, recruiter, public speaker, blogger and team leader with over 26 years of experience in sales and marketing in the insurance and beverage industries.
Two times in 1st page, Tim
Tom’s that’s awesome! Keep up the good work.
Great info as usual Tim. In speaking with agents across the country the reality is very few understand the importance of what your article conveys. I met recently with Steve Anderson, a well know consultant to the industry. He has also written extensively about this subject matter,and I had a rather interesting discussion with him.
Insurance agents really need to get the ball rolling for online marketing if they expect to survive in the future. I know that seems like a bold statement, but if the statistics you site are accurate and I believe they are, not proactively investing in online marketing starting immediately is a significant mistake insurance agents make…of course I’m only slightly biased based on the fact I own a marketing company building online platforms for agents and other business owners, but I also own a successful independent agency and I can tell you we are absolutely killing it with new production and significant revenue increases all because of our online lead generation systems. (We are not a new agency, established in 1999)
We no longer have a telemarketing department because it is unnecessary, we have not purchased leads for years, and the only monies invested in our agency are allocated to video production and online marketing
Sorry for the multiple posts, for some reason I could not post it completely. The bottom line is that agents need to start making investments in online marketing. If you are spending money on a low return advertising platform start re-directing some of those funds into online marketing.
Because some agents have been burned financially by (in some cases up to 200K) other marketing companies selling ‘systems’… understandably some agents are hesitant to pull the trigger to invest. In about 2-3 weeks we will be completely revamping our offerings based on the advice Steve Anderson gave me (thank you Steve) when I met with him and we will now offer starter systems for agents, and as agents are ready to allocate additional resources they may add to those systems in a Ala cart fashion. So for instance an agents can hire our company to build a custom (non template) website system with or without an SEO option (so they can do SEO themselves) and later if they discover their SEO efforts have failed they can engage us to provide the SEO services or add a social media marketing package to their system.
In this way agents are not committing to investing $30,000 for one of our more comprehensive packages unless they completely understand the power online marketing truly provides proactive agents…a number of agents in my area have invested with companies selling the super expensive packages and they are all on page 2-10 of Google. My targeted websites are all on page one and that is why my phones ring with leads every single day…if your websites are not on page one for many, many insurance keywords, your phones will not ring with leads. Page one is where you need to be with your videos and websites if you want online leads and the prospects shopping for insurance online.
Online and social media marketing truly is the future, it is not sponsoring your local pee wee sports team, paying for bill board advertising,, buying shared internet lead that 8 other agents get at the same time, direct mail, newspaper inserts, yellow page advertising, telemarketing, or pay per click (too expensive for personal lines)
It’s online and social media marketing.
Sorry I am officially off of my soap box. 🙂
Get back on the soap box @jack Thomas , I enjoying this!
Jack,
I actually thought about you as I wrote this blog article this week. You are 110% correct. Our industry is filled with dinosaurs like me that saw the need for change and as I am no where near what you can do, I have been working on it. There is a lot of agents that need your business NOW. I hope that most agents figure this out before it is too late. You are welcome on THIS soap box as long as you like! I really appreciate your sharing!
good Advice Tim!
Hey Tim I appreciate that!
You are an exception to the rule for sure, you get it and you are taking action to explore what you need to do. This is my 25th year in the insurance biz so those grey hair are more plentiful. I started in 2007 learning SEO and it is all I do now. It is an ever changing science, what worked 6 months ago may not work so well today so you need to dedicate (if you are going to learn it yourself) at least 15-20 hours each week, but the best teacher is experience, try different ranking techniques and see what happens. The only challenge with this is that you can blow up a website and destroy it by taking the wrong approach, it is not as simple as erasing what you have done…for those who don’t have the time to invest (or are risk averse) should hire our company! If I destroy your website I will build a new one for you! (at no cost)
Because of that our approach is very conservative…I have spoke with a few agents that hired out of country back linking services only to later see their rankings go from page one to being de-listed or on page 10 (which is essentially the same thing)
Tim – I am not savvy on the internet. How does a guy like me “Google Myself” on the computer? Marvin Newman 203-972-8165
Marvin,
It is very simple as explained in the article. Just be sure you are not logged in to Google. i.e. Google +, Gmail, Google Calendar. Then just type your name in the google search bar. Now you see what a client or prospect sees. Call me if you need further help 615-294-5677, Always glad to help.
Wow! I learned a lot about “Joe Hancock” by following your advice. I found out there are at least 566 Joe Hancock’s in the US, and at least 64 in NC alone. However, I only found one ME! Way back in 2006 I wrote an Ezine article titled “So You Want To Be Your Own Boss and Run Your Own Business!” I had completely forgotten about the article.
I was shocked to see that it is still on Ezine. My contact information is wrong but the article is still there! Amazing!!
Joe,
That is very interesting. Not sure why your LinkedIn profile would not come up before an article from 2006, unless the article gets a lot of traffic. Try to be a bit more active on your FB and LinkedIn postings. This will help push you towards the top of some of those 566 Joe Hancocks. At least your name is not John Hancock, that would be very difficult ot overcome!
Hi Marvin! Just go to http://www.google.com and type your name into the search box. It is that simple. Good luck!
sjm
I searched for someone and it gave me every other name but the one I searched for. Another time I searched for some computer help and the first six listings were pre-2006 articles. Not sure why the search engines work the way they do but I’ve come to expect them to be not a lot of help unless I’m buying something.
Michael, I am certainly no expert at Google algorithms but my best guess is no one is searching that name on any consistent basis. Therefore, it is the old info that pulls up first. My advice for that person would be to become more active online especially with social media interaction. Thank you for sharing that.
Marvin, one thing you will want to do is put your name in parenthesis to be sure that you limit your results to people with your exact name. So “marvin newman”