The Paul Murphy Insurance Agency is not your typical agency.

In a time of economic uncertainty, Paul Murphy saw the opportunity to grow his business. Through a clearly defined Internet marketing strategy, Paul Murphy Insurance has been able to use the Internet to generate a consistent flow of exclusive home and auto prospects. In less than three months, his agency went from having zero new policies generated via the Internet to consistently writing new home, auto, motorcycle and recreational vehicle policies daily. Now, less than a year later, Paul has increased his new business by over 230% (in this economy!)

We had the opportunity to interview founder Paul Murphy to discover how he's leveraging the Internet to grow his business. Here is what he had to say.

AR: What has made your Internet marketing strategy so successful?

PM: We've adjusted our focus to making sure we're increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to our Virtual Insurance Office (website). Also, our strategic partnership with Astonish Results provides us with a comprehensive system to follow-up with prospects and our existing customers.

Our main focus right now is the creation of our new CRC department. The CRC (or Customer Relationship Center) will become the new nerve center of our organization. We will be able to manage and track all inbound and outbound sales calls, create email marketing campaigns, measure results, and make adjustments immediately. We see this as the cornerstone of our agency.

AR: How do you ensure that a new employee is productive from the start?

PM: Arm them with all the right tools, processes, and training right from the beginning. We also find it's important to provide leads to get them started in the right direction and a positive work environment to keep them motivated.

AR: How has training helped improve your results?

PM: Continuing education is important to any industry. The proper training from top to bottom ensures success now and in the future. Our partnership with Astonish Results allows us to utilize Astonish Coaching. They're training staff has made a tremendous difference in our productivity, processes, motivation, and management.

In addition to the on-site training, the Astonish tools allow us to monitor all inbound phone calls. This has been critical in better management and training of our people. CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT is one of the primary principles driving our culture.

AR: How have you used technology to grow your business?

PM: First we made a commitment to develop and implement a clear Internet marketing strategy by partnering with Astonish Results. We believe in providing our employees with the best marketing tools available. This sends a clear message to our customers that we're the right company to do business with. On the Internet, the competition is pretty fierce. It's important to make sure you stand out.

AR: Is email marketing part of your new marketing strategy?

PM: Absolutely. Email marketing is an effective tool that allows us to generate new business opportunities inexpensively and stay in touch with our current customers automatically.

We've implemented a great email-marketing tool called the Astonish Results Virtual Profit Center. It's set up to automatically help us execute out-bound marketing campaigns, sales follow-up emails, monthly communication to our customers, cross-selling emails to our current clients, and many other email campaigns. The results we've seen are increased lead flow, closing ratio, customer loyalty, and a reduction of our direct mail budget.

AR: How is your new website different from your old website?

PM: Our new Virtual Insurance Office stands out from the rest. It's like nothing else in the market. The interactive site walks customers through the entire policy activation and claims process. We get great feedback from our customers on how simple and easy it is to use the website navigation. It's amazing how many people comment on the Virtual Insurance Agent. As a result, our contact rate has increased by 390% since switching over to our new website. More contacts mean more opportunities to close more business.

AR: How do you gather emails?

PM: We ask every person we speak with for their email address, as well as purchasing databases of people who are interested in our insurance products. We try to think outside the box - quality email addresses are everywhere you look. We make it a part of our daily activity. In addition, we offer visitors the opportunity to enter our online contest. The "Go Green" campaign is a nice way for our CSR's to politely ask for email addresses.

AR: Why is it important for insurance agencies to generate leads on their own website?

PM: More leads equal more opportunities to make money. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. This is a numbers game. You need more leads and a better conversion ratio in order to make more money.

Also, when you buy a lead, you're paying a third-party lead provider to grow their business. We're interested in building our brand, not the brand of third-party lead providers. We realize this takes time, but it's a sustainable business model and it's an investment worth making.

AR: Why is it important to market your website?

PM: Placement on the Internet is KEY. You can't expect to launch a website and have it start generating leads. You need to have a clear strategy on how you're going to drive traffic to the website.

AR: How important is the sales process in this whole equation?

PM: It's very important. You need to understand the products that you're selling and how to move a prospect through the sale. The Internet just allows us to have more opportunities to sell insurance; it doesn't sell it for us.

AR: Why do you think so many insurance agencies are behind when it comes to the Internet?

PM: It's still an uncharted territory for independent agents. Like any other marketing initiative, the startup cost may seem high, but the results can be staggering once you take the chance. We want to be ahead of the curve, not behind it. We're investing in the future of our agency. Our customers and our employees are our most valuable assets, and we are committed to providing them with the latest technology to efficiently grow the agency and improve our customer satisfaction ratings.

See the system that Paul Murphy uses to grow his business. Schedule a free Virtual Presentation of the system today.