Getting found online can yield a healthy lead flow for independent insurance agents, and Google My Business (GMB) is a great way to rank organically when people are looking for your services.

What is Google My Business

According to Google:

“Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. If you verify and edit your business information, you can both help customers find your business and tell them your story.”

How Google My Business can Bring Business to Independent Insurance Agents

When it comes to acquiring leads, there are a few mainstream channels:

1. Hosting events
2. Running ads
3. Buying leads
4. Referrals
5. Organic search results

Let’s focus on the last one – organic search results. 

What does “organic search results” mean?

When you type in an inquiry to a web browser’s search bar, there are millions of results that are displayed. The ones that don’t have an ad label on them are organic.

Ad Label Example

Let’s take the case below with a search of “independent insurance agent for medicare los angeles”. This is rather specific, and yet there are still over 2 million results that appear for that search query.

The ones on the top — yelp.com, angieslist.com, etc. — are websites that are coming up under an organic search:

There is a lot of work to get a website to rank in the displayed results above.

However, if you keep scrolling, you will notice a map with a few companies listed underneath. Sometimes this map and/or company profiles appear on the side of the search results.

In any event, this is the potential benefit of having a beefy Google My Business profile – your business can be one of those listed in the local search engine results.

You can follow the general set-up instructions here: https://www.google.com/business/. You will need to set up a Google account log-in if you don’t already have one.

Key Factors Independent Insurance Agents Should Include in GMB Profile

Setting up a GMB profile isn’t enough though. You need to include as many details as you can. Let’s look at a few key sections:

Info

Make sure you enter as many company details as you can – hours, phone number, website, etc.

Many independent agents are under the impression that you can only have this type of profile if you have a store front or physical location for customers to come to. This is not true! Here’s a screenshot from a Google My Business profile that shows the back-end setting option for this:

Include your service areas though so Google can display your results in the most appropriate searches. Your service area can be states, cities, counties, and even zip codes.

Services

Under services, you will have the option to select specific categories. These must be chosen from the dropdown options. Choose the one that best fits your business. “Insurance broker” is in there though, so hurray!

Once you have selected a category, you can add services under each category. There will be some listed by default, however if what you want isn’t there, you have the option to “Add custom service”. Deciding what to call those custom services is going to take some keyword research on your part, but here’s a jumpstart:

• Medicare Supplements
• Medicare Advantage
• Turning 65
• Annual Enrollment Period

Reviews

You need them! They help get your GMB profile ranked. Ask people for them. Draft an email to clients and include a link for them to leave a review. To find your “Share review form”, go to “Home” on the left toolbar. Halfway down you will see this:

Don’t forget to reply to each review that you get. Google likes that.

Photos

Load up a few images from events you have hosted. Other ideas are images of you. You can even upload videos. Don’t have anything to start with? Utilize some stock photos. Remember, you want to be relevant to your target audience.

Posts

This is one of the most important features Independent Insurance Brokers can consistently leverage on Google MyBusiness.

Post information about your industry:

• Blog posts with excerpt and link
• FAQs
• Event promotions
• Links to a page on your website

Include an image if you can.

Note, posts expire each week so make this a regular habit. Remember to incorporate keywords that prospects will be searching by.

How much does it cost to set up a Google My Business Profile?

Just your time. This is something that Google puts out for free.