Heated Competition for Top Health Insurance Google AdWords

[Brian Anderson]

A new AdGooroo report (link to article below) shows an average of 171 different health insurance advertisers – including health insurance providers, a health insurance agency, government-sponsored exchange sites, an online health insurance seller, a dental network provider and lead aggregator sites – bid on the top 20 health insurance-related keywords.

Nearly 28,000 advertisers spent $103 million sponsoring those 6,003 health insurance-related keywords during the first half of 2014, at an average Cost Per Click of $3.16 and an average Clickthrough Rate of 3.86%.
Anybody here spending money on Google AdWords? Has the return been worth the investment?

Insurance Forums | 171 health insurance advertisers bid on each of top 20 Google AdWords, on average

 

[SecureHealth1]

A new AdGooroo report (link to article below) shows an average of 171 different health insurance advertisers – including health insurance providers, a health insurance agency, government-sponsored exchange sites, an online health insurance seller, a dental network provider and lead aggregator sites – bid on the top 20 health insurance-related keywords.

Nearly 28,000 advertisers spent $103 million sponsoring those 6,003 health insurance-related keywords during the first half of 2014, at an average Cost Per Click of $3.16 and an average Clickthrough Rate of 3.86%.
Anybody here spending money on Google AdWords? Has the return been worth the investment?

Insurance Forums | 171 health insurance advertisers bid on each of top 20 Google AdWords, on average

YES!

I could spend all night relaying my experience with adwords, but I will make it short until another time. I accidentally gave it a try 6 years ago for ind health. I have never gone back to all the old schools ways since then. I haven't meet a client face-to-face since then, nor have any of my agents in my office, and yes, this even works for Medicare which everyone on this forum will tell you all seniors WANT to meet face-to-face. There is a great deal of learning that goes into it or you can loose a lot of money fast. But I assure you, their is NO BETTER marketing tool that has ever been in existence, EVER! Just think about any other marketing service that makes that much money? Their isn't any. Why is ehealth so big? Why is selectquote so big? BECAUSE OF GOOGLE and all the other online channels. This can be used for any conceivable product. Just have to be willing to learn, or should I say succeed and grow? I tend to stick to myself around here, but I have much to say about this topic..

 

[Brian Anderson]

Interesting - thanks for sharing, SecureHealth1! Curious about the bidding process and how that works.

 

[Chazm]

I would love to use adwords to get traffic to my site but I'm afraid to lose tons of money just "trying" to figure it out

 

[Bob Klee]

Interesting - thanks for sharing, SecureHealth1! Curious about the bidding process and how that works.

Brian,
We do a whole bunch of PPC advertising. Sam knows us well. The bidding process/methodology is "secret sauce" to most that have 6+ figure spends online.

One can lose a bunch of money in a hurry if they don't know what they are doing...but the flip side is true as well or we wouldn't be spending so much

Chazm: It takes a a lot of A/B testing...constantly testing/measuring results. But one can do it on the agent level if they take the time to learn. There is lots of info online if one has the time to do the research.

Bottom line: PPC does work, but it takes work to be successful at it. Especially in the insurance space.

 

[Justin Bilyj]

SEMrush - service for competitors research, shows organic and Ads keywords for any site or domain

good tool to use for ppc

 

[LTCi Consultants]

Pretty steep learning curve with PPC but the resources are out there to educate yourself.

 

[Jbbarea]

I spent 20 years in the call center space with the last 6 in large Insurance Call centers. I've seen PPC and SEO guru's come and go. However the truth of the matter is, there is a LARGE learning curve and while for the long run you CAN eventually learn it, and save money, in the short term, you are better off paying someone to do it for you. It took me a while to figure that out, but I'll never go back. Why? Because I sell insurance. If I was a PPC master I'd rather be doing that for a living. It's a lot less stressfull and can pay just as well. You can get guys out there to do your PPC for 200-500 dollars per month assuming your websit is already set up. You can blow that much with just 1000 piece mailer to get a 1% return. But remember that Hundreds of guys are doing the same thing, so you have to set your expectations correctly and find the right niche. FYI, if you don't have a decent converting site, FORGET about PPC. In the end you can drive all the traffic you want, but if they don't put their name and phone number in, what's the point.