Every broker and insurance company knows it costs more to win new customers, than retain existing ones. But how much does it cost by region across the UK?
The answer, as you might expect, is that it costs more to reach someone living in London,using cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, than anywhere else in the UK, according to new research from Marin Software.
Marin compiled an online ‘shopping basket’ containing goods and services bought by households. It then calculated the average CPC to advertise the items in the basket via a search engine, by analysing 600,000 searches across the UK.
As one of the products which tends to be bought online, every insurance marketing manager and SEO consultant needs to be aware of these costs.
With an average CPC of £4.25 for the basket items, London is 75% more expensive than lowest placed Bath at £2.43. Marin also explored how the cost of advertising the same product varied across 50 different UK cities. Key findings include:
St Albans is the most expensive place to advertise home insurance, with a CPC of £18.48. This is 38% higher than the cheapest place, Leeds. Home insurance is one of the most expensive search categories in the UK. However, there are huge rewards for savvy marketers that identify areas which are cheap to advertise in, but where demand is high. For instance, the area of Horsforth in Leeds is over-indexed compared to the national average for the amount of money spent on insurance compared to household expenditure.
There is a huge price differential when it comes to credit cards. Advertisers are charged a CPC of £10.25 to reach consumers in Gloucester, 50% higher than bottom ranked Winchester. Advertising mortgages in the Scottish town of Perth costs £6.84, compared to just £2.59 in Newry, Northern Ireland.
Irisini Davis, Marketing Director at Marin Software, said,
“There are huge variations in the cost per click (CPC) advertisers are charged to market particular products across the country. This imbalance creates huge opportunities for savvy digital marketers to optimise their spend by geo-targeting search marketing campaigns. Moreover, brands should consider offsetting high CPCs by implementing a cross-channel digital strategy which overlays search intent and audience targeting on paid social.”
To see the list of the most and least expensive keywords for different products and services across the UK, follow this link.
Insurance-Edge.Net Top PPC Tips:
Setting up Pay-Per-Click campaigns on Google, or Facebook is a good way to test the response for insurance products, or by geo-location, time of day, time of year etc. Our top tips include the following;
Always set a daily spend limit
Do lots of keyword research on your ad copy before advertising
Peak hours of search for insurance tend to be 4-8pm weekdays, sometimes you might see a surge on Friday lunchtimes, or Monday mornings.
You will see spikes in searches for niche products like `motorcycle insurance’ just before the Easter holidays, when bikers get their machines back on the road.
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