Challenge
The Ostic Group is a local insurance broker with offices in Guelph, Shelburne, Elora, and Fergus. They provide a variety of personal and commercial insurance services to homeowners and businesses in the Wellington County and Dufferin County regions. At The Ostic Group, their brokers live and breathe their core values of integrity, respect, professionalism, personal responsibility, and humour every day. Their company has an established history of providing insurance excellence to the local communities, dating back to 1880.
Solution
Intrigue began helping The Ostic Group with their marketing in 2014. At the time, the main goals of their organization were to enhance their digital marketing and increase leads year-over-year. Since working with our team, The Ostic Group has experienced consistent year-over-year growth in online leads and has also achieved a number of other important marketing objectives, including: Measuring the effectiveness and return on investment (ROI) of all marketing channels Increasing the number of referrals from current customers Becoming the community leader for local insurance in the Guelph, Shelburne, Elora, and Fergus area The Ostic Group’s digital marketing campaign includes a mix of different services, including: Website Design SEO Services Blogging Email Marketing Google Ads Facebook Ads Local Video Advertising Website Design & SEO Work One of the largest pieces of work completed for The Ostic Group in 2018 was a design update of their website. Based on current marketing trends and user data, our team made improvements to enhance the site’s overall user experience (UX), conversion rate, and search engine rankings. Our team approached the project with the following key objectives in mind: Ensure it is easy for users to find what they are looking for on the site and navigate there with as few clicks as possible. Make it simple for users to submit a quote request on individual service pages. Help improve the search visibility of individual service pages with valuable content and enhanced technical architecture. Ostic Group SEO Results Graph These improvements to the site design and UX resulted in a 35.9% decrease in bounce rate across the site year-over-year. The conversion rate optimization (CRO) was a major success for The Ostic Group and yielded an impressive 450% increase in conversions over the same period. In particular, conversions for niche services made large improvements, as a result of increased traffic to those specific pages. Overall, the SEO work completed on the site resulted in a 34.7% increase in users and a 26.9% increase in sessions. It also greatly increased the profile of the company’s four Google My Business listings, resulting in a high number of direct phone calls. Blogging Our content strategy for The Ostic Group aimed to address timeless (or ‘evergreen’) content, including questions or challenges about specific insurance situations or products. This strategy was designed to attract new visitors to their site, showcase the company’s authority in the industry, and increase traffic to their site year-over-year. In 2018, blogging was responsible for over 5,500 sessions on The Ostic Group site — which was a 50% increase from their previous year. ~40% of users found the blogs using Google searches. ~25% of users arrived on the site because they were subscribed to The Ostic Group email newsletter. An additional 25% came through Facebook. The remaining 10% came from referral or direct traffic. Ostic Group Blog Traffic Pie Chart Although blogs are not designed to convert new visitors directly into leads, the blogs were responsible for 12 direct conversions and 12 assisted conversions in 2018. Many of the other leads were attributed to remarketing efforts, which were assisted by the blog strategy. Email Marketing The monthly email newsletter for The Ostic Group has been a consistent source of traffic and leads. Their newsletter brings between 100 to 250 visitors to their website on a monthly basis, depending on the season. Their email marketing is outstanding for their industry. Their emails have an average open rate of between 25% and 30% (up to 10% higher than the industry average) and an average click-through-rate of 2.7%, which is also higher than the industry average. Google Ads Google Ads have been a strong performer for The Ostic Group, despite the fact that the insurance industry is well-known for its high average Cost Per Click (CPC) on ads. Our team was able to develop a successful strategy, targeting niche insurance products that were less competitive but still offered an opportunity for positive returns. In 2018, Google Ads generated nearly 200 leads for The Ostic Group. Over 50% of these leads came from contact form completions, with the remainder of the leads coming from phone calls from the website or ad extensions. The website design updates also contributed to several improvements in user metrics for paid traffic, resulting in a 19% lower bounce rate and a 50% increase in session duration. Facebook Ads Our Facebook Ads strategy was designed to complement our other initiatives, by running ads that would remarket to users who had already visited a specific page on The Ostic Group website. In addition to remarketing, our team also ran ad campaigns for specific insurance services. In total, the Facebook campaign was responsible for bringing 2,800 sessions to their website in 2018. In particular, Facebook Ads generated ~50 leads for The Ostic Group. Over 75% of these leads came from contact form completions, with the remainder of the leads coming from phone calls.
Results
In 2018, The Ostic Group received ~300 qualified leads from online initiatives. When you break down the source of these leads, ~25% of them are contact form completions on their website and ~75% were from phone calls. For their phone calls, we were able to identify the following channels: 21% Organic Traffic — These visitors found the phone number on the website, after searching on Google. 17.5% Paid Traffic — These visitors found the phone number after clicking on a Google Ad or a Facebook Ad. 61.5% Local Search Traffic — These visitors found the company’s Google My Business profile after finding it on Google Maps, in the Knowledge Panel, or in a local pack result. So what does all of this mean for The Ostic Group? The end result of our digital marketing efforts is that the average cost of an online lead or phone call for The Ostic Group is ~$200. Given the lifetime value of a customer for an insurance broker like The Ostic Group, their team will only need to convert 1 out of every 10 leads into a lifetime customer to see returns on their digital marketing investment.
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