Google Ads and PPC in general for the insurance industry is always a tricky proposition as its not unusual to see cost per clicks of £20 – £50 for the top keywords, so turning a profit from PPC is extremely difficult without expert campaign management and optimisation.

The main difficulty for PPC in the insurance industry, however, is the massive volume of traffic generated by short tail phrases (“car insurance,” “insurance”), as well as the looming presence of comparison engines, which often take up at least 30% of the results page.

So is it even possible to compete in this sort of environment? It is, but expert PPC management for car insurers is required.

What makes the car insurance industry different?

For starters, the keywords are quite costly, in fact in the UK the insurance industry has the highest CPC of all

We also have a general suspicion of insurance firms as a result of high renewal prices, which means brand loyalty suffers — give a better deal for the same product, and consumers will switch.

There’s also a lot of competition inside the search results, with the minimum first-page bid frequently in the double digits and almost always four advertisements (with all extensions) at the top.

Typical cost per leads in the car insurance industry is around £60 and that is certainly what we have observed on un-optimised accounts

Pay per click management for MyFirstUK

When we first started working on PPC management for car insurers MyFirstUK there were 3 distinct campaigns, these being Convicted insurance, Young Driver Insurance and New Driver Insurance. Based on the success of the PPC campaign this has now expanded into other areas and overall spending increased resulting in considerably more business.

The initial cost per conversion for convicted driver insurance was £62.85 per completed form on the un-optimised account.

Through proper management and optimisation, this has now been lowered to around 5 x less than half this amount at £12.60 / conversion!

This has resulted in massively increased clicks and numbers of forms submitted whilst also lowering costs. The same is true for our other campaigns with even more dramatic results. Learner driver insurance for started off with an average cost per conversion of £24, which is now down to just above £3, a staggering 8x less than before.

It’s a similar story with conversion rates.

For example, in November 2019 the average conversion rate for new driver insurance was around 13%, which is a pretty good figure by most standards. By October 2021 we have improved this to an average conversion rate of just over 38%

The average conversion rate for all campaigns improved by a massive 1348%

Our optimisation strategy has also resulted in unheard of conversion rates for high volume keywords, in some cases up to 50% and above, saving our client a fortune in PPC costs and allowing them to compete in a highly competitive industry.

We always try to make sure our service is effectively free when compared to an un-optimised service.  Overall we’ve achieved 26.4k conversions at an average cost of £5.57, with a total cost of 147k.

The same amount of conversions with the default setup would cost 926k, so we are effectively saved our client almost £800k compared to an un-optimised campaign.

What we do to achieve this

Typical weekly tasks included

• Processing and evaluating user search terms
• Comparing historical keyword and ad performance to current and adjusting/testing as necessary
• Managing negative keyword lists
• Checking competitor keywords for potential test items
• Adjusting ad positioning for most effective results
• Checking/adjusting schedules based on current and past performance. Adjusting to meet current traffic trends
• Adjusting ads based on performance/comparison with historical
• Checking demographics and adjusting based on performance
• Ensure CPA’s are being met and cost per conversion is within optimal ranges
• Manual check that ads are showing correctly
• Monitor additional user metrics per keyword for bounce rates/time on site
• Research keyword trends and ensure we are meeting demand
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Top performing keywords

Following our undertaking of PPC management for car insurers MyFirstUK the company is enjoying great results with top-performing keywords and click conversion rates.

The top ten performing keywords and cost per click rates with our PPC management for car insurers MyFirstUK are as follows:

1. Insurance for young drivers with a click conversion rate of 39.32% and the average cost per click of £0.83
2. New driver insurance UK has a click conversion rate of 33.24% and an average cost per click of £0.78
3. Car insurance for disqualified drivers has a click conversion of 27.65% and cost per click average of £2.39
4. Car insurance first-time driver has a click conversion rate of 29.05% with a cost per click of £0.64
5. Young car insurance has a click conversion of 30.83% and cost per click of £0.77
6. Car insurance for convicted drivers has a conversion rate of 46.07% and the cost per click is £5.53. Bear in mind, the initial conversion rate was £62.85 per completed form on the un-optimised account
7. Under 25 car insurance has a click conversion of 23.44% and the cost per click is £0.86
8. Cheap new driver insurance has a click conversion rate of 40.7% and a cost per click rate of £0.88
9. New driver insurance has a click conversion of 44.23% and cost per click of £0.96
10. Insurance convicted drivers has a click conversion rate of 41.56% and cost per click rate of £5.02.

Most popular pages

Below you can see the most popular pages following our ongoing PPC management for car insurers MyFirstUK for the period Oct 11 to Nov 7 2021.

As you can see the top five most popular pages are as follows:

1. New driver insurance with 1, 953 unique page views
2. Convicted driver insurance with 832 unique page views
3. Learner driver insurance with 773 unique page views
4. Scrap metal insurance with 412 unique page views.

Landing page performance statistics

Let’s take a look at the landing page performance statistics for MyFirstUK for the period Oct 11 to Nov 7 2021. The top five can be found below, showing the conversion rates for that period along with the number of sessions and the number of completed quote requests:

1. New driver insurance took the number one place with a conversion rate of 35.51%, 1,422 sessions and completed quote request of 505
2. Convicted driver insurance has a conversion rate of 26.92%, 754 sessions and a completed quote request of 203
3. Learner driver insurance has a 22.08% conversion rate, 539 sessions and a completed quote request of 119

In summary

With our expert PPC management for car insurers it has been possible for MyFirstUK it to compete within a highly competitive market at a reasonable cost and a high ROI

Thanks to our help the company has seen average conversion rates for all campaigns improved by a massive 1348%.

MyFirstUK has managed to expand in many areas and has gained a lot more business from PPC campaigns and saved money in the process.

The initial cost per conversion for convicted driver insurance was £62.85 per completed form on the un-optimised account. With our management and optimisation, this has lowered to around 5 times less than half this amount at £12.66 / conversion and 832 unique page views for that keyword and seen an increase in form submissions.

While huge improvements have been seen for the keyword convicted driver insurance, MyFirstUK has also enjoyed big improvements for many other keywords in regards to monthly unique page views and an increase in completed form requests overall.