In the last year or so, four seismic marketing events occurred that will forever reshape how insurance agencies develop new business and sustain it. There’s no secret to event number one; it’s Google’s highly publicized reformulation of their secret algorithm, which I have written about extensively. The second event was a new study from Cornell University about the importance of search rank, and how businesses search other businesses, and how consumers search companies. The third occurrence was the release of a report from the Nielsen Norman Group that pretty much threw any long-winded, rambling web writers off the cliff. And finally, a new article in Forbes Magazine titled The 2014 Content Marketing Imperative that brought content marketing to the forefront by extolling what most of us had known for years.

If these four occurrences don’t provide the impetus to fuel your content marketing strategies, than I suppose nothing will. This is the way insurance agencies need to bring their products and services to market, and because of the nature of these seismic events, agencies are left with few, if any, alternatives.

Now, let me explain. As you undoubtedly know by now, Google upped the percentage of relevancy by which content plays a role in your search ranking. In part, they did this to eliminate web spam, which is non-relevant content; but at the same time, they did it to reward businesses, insurance agencies included, who populate their websites with fresh, engaging content on a consistent basis. A significant wrinkle within the algorithm is that fresh content means original content – no longer does canned content qualify as original content. In short, if you want to be rewarded by Google, update your website’s content weekly, if you don’t, Google will penalize you with a descending search rank.

But why is search rank so important? Here’s where the report from Cornell University helps us understand how people use Google, and for insurance agencies, it’s downright frightening. For starters, more than 90 percent of all organic website traffic comes from sites that appear on page one of a search engine results page (SERP). Consequently, more than 90 percent of the content consumed, and you need to be part of that 90%, comes from page one. So, if you’re not on the first page of search, you’re basically out-of-sight and out-of-mind. But here’s where it gets mind-boggling. 56% of web users never make it past the top three listings on Google’s first page. So why is content marketing so important? Because content is one of the only ways to be on page one without paying for it.

But creating content is only part of the equation. As everyone knows, content needs to be engaging, customer and prospect-centric, and it should tell a story whenever possible; that’s the price of admission to content marketing. But what should content look like on a web page so your site is more “sticky”, so people return time and again, so your bounce rates are low, and Google recognizes all of this activity? In the Nielsen Norman Group research, we learn that web visitors to your site only read 28% of what’s on your page. Ouch. Make adjustments accordingly. We also learn that at the 250-word count, using eye-movement technology, people lose interest, and at the 400-word mark, you’re all but toast. So start editing, or as we say in the copywriting business, “it’s time to kill your darlings.”

We know that Google rewards original and frequent content. We also know that you must be on the first page of search, for any search engine, and content is one of the only ways to get there. That’s why Forbes Magazine has chosen to write extensively about content marketing. Organizations like the Content Marketing Institute and TMA+Peritus, the company I work for, have steadfastly promoted content marketing since the turn of the century. But now Forbes has brought it mainstream by citing the statistics that we’ve been citing for that last few years.

• 60% of buyers have their minds made up before you even know who they are, so get your website and your content in shape as quickly as possible
• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional promotional activities and generates 3 times as many leads
• The website conversion and qualified lead conversion rates for brands using content marketing is 6 to 7 times higher

Need more reasons to implement your content marketing strategies in 2014? Here’s one more – almost everyone, regardless of agency size, is going to be doing it. Watch for my next article available soon: My 2014 Content Marketing Predictions for Insurance Agencies.