For decades yellow pages ads were the leading source of new customers for most insurance agencies.

How many times in the past twelve months have you picked up a yellow pages to look up who to call? The same goes for your prospects. Searching on the internet has replaced yellow page usage for those prospects, so it’s critical that you are found when they do that search.

Being found in the yellow pages was relatively straightforward – you paid to be found. The more you paid, usually, the more likely you were to be found.

Being found on the internet works in much the same way

No, there’s not an “internet salesperson” who’ll let you pay them more to be found more easily, but the more you “pay” in terms of time and effort, the more easily prospects will find you when they search online.

The better the content on your website, the more content you have on your website, the more unique the content on your website, the more likely yours will be the listing near the top of the page when they search.

There’s obviously a lot to learn and do to maximize all of that, but there’s ONE really easy, straightforward step that you can take TODAY.

Complete your Google Places listing

Go to google.com and search for your city name plus the word insurance. What do you see? Here’s the result for “Wichita Falls insurance”.

The top 3 listings and the ones under the map on the right are companies that have paid Google to appear in those spots. Their ranking in the display is determined by how much they offer Google multiplied by how often people click when they see that ad, so you need both money and skill in ad writing to do well with those.

That map, though, and the agencies that show right under the paid ads – those are Google Places results, and you can have that for FREE and with only a little effort. That Google Places listing is the second most important ad for your agency (the first is your web site).

Simply go to Google Places and click on the link under “Get your business found on Google”.

You’ll need a Google account, but that’s free and easy to create if you don’t already have one.

Getting listed in Google Places takes only a few minutes’ effort and will pay off for years. Please, if you have not already done so, complete/claim your listing – you’ll be glad you did.