Holy Crap....What did i Get Myself Into?

I sell Health Insurance....and I started a PPC in Google using terms like

-low cost health insurance
-health insurace (my state)
-family health insurance (my state)

Holy Christmas...i can't believe the bid costs for these keywords!

Lead companies are selling leads between 10-15 a pop...but the bid costs for these terms on the first page seem to be the same price. Effectively that means i will pay about $40 per lead....!


Any ideas on how to deal with a competitve market-keyword?

 

yahoo search marketing! lol - they are always cheaper and i've found them to work well enough - i haven't advertised with adwords in 2008 yet because the bids keep changing and i didn't have the time to pay attention to all of them.

try other phrases

 

...better luck just marketing an affiliate program in such a saturated market my friend!

 

"-low cost health insurance
-health insurace (my state)
-family health insurance (my state)"

i think if you specify highly targeted phases the prices are high

try specifying the keywords as health insurace, family health insurance without your state. then target the advertising to only your state. then you will be able to get lower prices and more clicks as well

 

Also, with insurance, zip codes are pretty big. Most companies have info of which zip codes are the "hot spots". Try optimizing for those certain zip codes.

 

What is an affiliate program....and how would this work for me?

thanks man!

~T

 

what the f*&k is the internet?

 

hahaha... that tickled my funny bone!

 

Hey dude.. I'm sure I an get em down a lot for ya... You just need to be relevant as mother****** and you'll be able to make it a whole lot mor worthwhile.. I've never messed with health insurance, but I'm sure you can get cheaper clicks than what you currently get..

Or just go the "free way"!

- Chris

 

Unfortunately the health industry is cut throat when it comes to bids, leads and even industry best practices.

But there are a few things to remember...

1. The leads you are buying from leads companies are A) several hours or days old B) Sold to many companies or brokers at $15 and are non exclusive.

2. Competitive advantage... while your cost per click will be much higher, the conversion opportunity will be thousands of times higher than a $15 lead. Why? Because your lead is real time. Someone could fill out you lead form and you could be calling them minutes later to close the sale. How much would that kind of lead be worth to you?

3. Even if you can't close that lead, you could be selling that lead to many other companies for $15 to regain your expense on a lead you know you can't convert... LOL, sneaky and grey marketing... but so is the health insurance industry

 

I'm sure you've got lots of pms from "account managers" making ridiculous promises to you already, but the fact is you're in a very competitive niche and bidding on generic keywords in that niche is not going to work. You should focus on the states that you're licensed in only, (you can target these only with adwords) and then look up the names of competitors in those states. Bid on THOSE keywords, (compeititor names), so your ad shows up when people search for your competition. You may find that even bidding on peoples names that are competitors works...

 

Thanks guys....lots of good tips.

Yep....competition is INTENSE!

Google is telling me to get on the first page is going to cost me $6....WHAT A CROCK!

I would venture to say that it will cost me at least....$15-20.....to get into the top position for highly competitive terms in my industry...

I've never seen More Competitive Keywords...then in this industry (sigh).

 

server hosting and server management is more expensive

 

Wow...i find that hard to believe that Server Hosting is more expensive.

How do they justify paying $7+ ppc?

 

are your pages relevant to the keywords and ads?
Is your main parent keyword in the title tags, and H1 tags of your pages?

That would raise your QS and lower your bids.

 

these industries are just way to competitive and no matter how much LP optimization you do, you are not going to get CPC much less

 

Not a market I've entered so I guess your right.
Scary money, don't let it run over night!

Sean

 

Thanks Guys....seems like i am stuck with high PPC.

What would be nice would be some system that would give me a true cost estimate of PPC (on Google, Yahoo, MSN).

ALSO....this makes me wonder How Profitable the Lead business is..

 

The lead business is very profitable. But remember most organizations will sell one lead to 4 companies so what would cost $15 to generate is sold to 4 different companies and that's how they can afford to bid so high.

 

I guess investigate your marketing options