Justin Hockley

Hockley & O’Donnell Insurance Agency
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

The dog, the toddler and improving the family businesses are what keep this guy up at night. Hockley’s secret superpower is digital marketing, which has become indispensible in helping four agencies and a financial services firm succeed.

ADVICE?

Know what you are. Continue to learn about your consumer. Listen. Track your advertising dollar. The agencies I work with have different names and locations. What works for one does not work for all. Success comes from keeping the goal for an advertisement in mind, then trying, tracking, trying again.

FACEBOOK?

We use it as an advertising platform to target demographics and track interaction—at a fraction of the cost of search-engine or pay-per-click marketing. We tried those, but the search term “insurance” is popular and expensive and was not generating the results we need. We’ve learned the power of generating our own marketing lists from Facebook ads and contests. As we do this, we continue to add contacts to a digital marketing campaign.

SEO?

Each month we track search terms and where we rank in local organic searches. How often a term is searched varies by location, guiding our targeting focus. We track leads from the website, ROI, close ratios and a few other metrics. The results help us identify what is working and where we can make adjustments.

SEO RESULTS?

We see three types of prospect in personal lines from SEO: the prospect who owns a home, multiple cars or even a rental unit and who needs an adviser; the prospect who asks for a quote and is a shopper; and the prospect with many traffic tickets or other issues who needs insurance today and is normally a non-standard market. We see success in writing all three, but category one is where we see the most success. 

FEEDBACK AS A TOOL?

Normally, graphing client feedback results in a bell curve. The left shoulder of the curve is very important to us. It is the pivot point. It is where we can have real impact. We look there to understand what client concerns are and what we can do to address the concerns. I think of opportunities to move those clients from the left shoulder to the right shoulder.

INDUSTRY STRENGTH?

Independent agencies can look and feel like the direct writers, but we have a vested interest in the communities we serve. That has an impact. One thing our industry does right is adapt—to changing consumers, coverage needs and technologies. 

INDUSTRY WEAKNESS?

We hope for things to happen or change, but we do not take action. Sometimes you have to be willing to be the action or change that creates inspiration for others to do the same.