Founded by Fidelity Investments in 1999 and acquired by ComparisonMarket in July 2003, Insurance.com is the largest consumer insurance aggregator on the Internet today. The privately held Cleveland-based company partners with such major underwriters as Travelers, The Hartford, Liberty Mutual, and Safeco to provide online customers with quotes upon completion of a short questionnaire. Core to the company's business model is a robust database and reporting system that enables it to provide up to four accurate quotes in real time for auto insurance policies. This fast response, tailored to each customer, motivates shoppers to either purchase online immediately or call a sales center toll-free.
| "AdWords
has taken off beyond
what I had hoped for." |
Approach
In the late summer of 2003, Marc Zeitlin
moved into the Internet-based business from parent company ComparisonMarket
as director of Marketing. It was then he learned that Insurance.com
was already a Google AdWords™ advertiser. The site had been running
ads under the original CPM-based AdWords program (it was retired in
December 2003 in favor of a cost-per-click model). He also discovered
that the CPM approach was one of the company's best sources for qualified
leads, so he was concerned that CPC advertising would not perform as
well.
During the fall of 2003, Zeitlin learned more about AdWords' CPC approach
and decided to test it, with the goal of obtaining a large number of
leads that would convert to sold policies. The test was developed shortly
after Zeitlin was released from the hospital after undergoing an emergency
quadruple bypass. During his month of recuperation, however, he felt
encouraged about AdWords. "The new program performed so well we decided
to keep it running with an expanded set of keywords," he says, adding,
"It was so easy to manage, I could literally have done it from my hospital
bed."
Results "With
TV advertising, you'd be
lucky to get an ad on the air and
see some results in anything under
a year. With AdWords, we started
getting clicks in about 10 minutes,
and it hasn't stopped."
Happily, Zeitlin made a full recovery. As
the year ended, he set a new daily maximum ad spend for AdWords. But within
a few hours of launch the first day in January, he didn't see ads running.
He called and reached his AdWords account rep on New Year's weekend. She
told him that the site had gotten so many clickthroughs that the daily
maximum was exceeded in just a few hours. Recalling this issue later,
Zeitlin said he was very pleased with such "outstanding service, including
helping me on the Sunday after New Year's Day. The fact that I could adjust
the program on a holiday had a significant impact on the launch of this
campaign."
After reviewing the results of this initial foray into the CPC-based Google
AdWords, he was incredulous. "Not only did the clickthrough volume and
sales both come in at roughly triple what we had projected; the quality
of leads continues to be very high," he says.
Insurance.com defines conversion as a completed quote to sale: customers
request a quote, receive a quote, and buy a policy. Using these criteria,
Zeitlin says that the new AdWords is delivering substantially more than
other similar programs. "AdWords has taken off beyond what I had hoped
for," he says, citing the features that he especially likes. "The ability
to rotate ad copy and match it to keywords is fantastic," he says, "and
so is the fact that we can see data and performance real-time and make
adjustments to the campaigns as needed. AdWords forces us to be smarter,
and then we win by having the best creative and best keyword list, which
is extensive." By being smarter, Zeitlin says that since January 2004,
the company has gained a significantly higher volume of business at a
lower cost-per-click. "We have more business, and we're paying less to
get it." He adds that now leads are further optimized by using AdWords'
regional targeting feature. "Auto insurance quotes are designed at the
state level, so being able to craft our advertising efforts on a state
by state basis is a big advantage," he says.
Since immersing himself in pay-for-performance advertising, Zeitlin says
Insurance.com now spends a very significant portion of its entire marketing
budget on paid search advertising. For this veteran marketer, it's a whole
new world: "With TV advertising, you'd be lucky to get an ad on the air
and see some results in anything under a year," he says. "With AdWords,
we started getting clicks in about 10 minutes, and it hasn't stopped."
Given Insurance.com's success with AdWords, Zeitlin has also opted to
join AdSense, Google's ad program for content publishers to run ads on
their sites. "We're already getting 10 percent clickthrough from AdSense
ads," he says.
Personally and professionally, Zeitlin is feeling very optimistic these
days. He characterizes AdWords as being, "real-time capitalism. People
vote with their clicks, and we win their business if we can deliver the
goods.
About Google Advertising
Google AdWords is currently used by
thousands of businesses worldwide
to gain new customers in a costeffective
way. AdWords uses keywords to precisely target
ad delivery to web users seeking information about a particular product
or service. The program is based on cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, so
advertisers only pay when an ad is clicked on. Advertisers can take
advantage of an extremely broad distribution network, and choose the
level of support and spending appropriate for their business. For more
information, go to www.google.com/ads.
