Allstate Insurance, Northbrook, Illinois

Zurich North America, Schaumburg, Illinois

CHALLENGE

At Allstate my objective was to build a PPC search-marketing program that could compete internally with the more established traditional marketing programs and externally with competition that had more experience and resources.  The program began with an experimental budget of 100K in buying branded keywords.  My team successfully ramped the program to an annual spend to over $20MM in 18 months by successfully managing and demonstrating the return on marketing investment.  

IMPACT

Through our efforts we turned our search-marketing program into a top revenue generating marketing tactic along with direct mail and successfully battled against competitors with triple the budgets.  To win, I focused our efforts on two major efforts on weekly keyword optimization and conversion effectiveness. We increased quoting traffic by 30% and reduced cost per click by 50% driving Allstate’s direct channel to a 35% YOY growth.  A phenomenal achievement when you consider the personal lines auto business as a whole has relatively zero growth.

ANALYSIS

Keyword optimization efforts included position testing, week parting, and keyword bidding.  Methodically, we built the program week by week.  We tested positions for conversion effectiveness, bidding higher or lower on stronger or weaker days, and optimized our keyword buys between our branded terms, generic broad matches and secondary keyword sets. 

The other major effort was conversion effectiveness.  To get at least our fair share of the marketing budget, we had to do more than just show we could generate clicks.  Conversion point optimization, measurement and tracking were key in proving premium / revenue growth.  Employing A/B and multi-variable testing on our landing pages was essential in optimizing conversions.  One thing I know, you can guess and use practices to start, but nothing beats a strong testing and program. 

We also worked on innovative ways to measure our program.  Because most of our conversions took place offline in a call center, we worked to created a measurement element we called Dynamic Telephone Numbers.  Basically, as visitors, browse the site or went through the quoting process we displayed a unique telephone number.  So now what we used to consider abandons by measurement, were now tracking as revenue to specific keywords.  Tracking the terms all the way through off-line sales.

At Zurich, I’ve been asked to do the same thing starting with North America as the model and moving globally in 2010.  This time instead of dealing with a major lead line in auto insurance, the challenge is developing a B2B program with over 100 lines across 15 different industry groups.  Although we’ve only been in market for a few months, our paid search program is already out performing all other marketing tactics.  Our challenge now is to find the volume.

| next >>