Read the Search ads that insurance carriers run, and they look like a sale flyer. One carrier says drivers who switched saved $900. Another promises an average savings of $611. A comparison site offers car insurance from $29 a month.
Then come the local agencies, if they show up at all. Their ads talk about service, experience and the towns they cover. None of them names a price.
That's not a weakness to fix. An agency can't win a price war with a company that sets the rates, but it has something no carrier ad can claim: the agent who shopped the policy. Its customers say so in their reviews, in words a searcher recognizes. This chapter covers how we write an agency's ads from those words, and how we launch them so Google can test them.
Carriers Lead With "Switch and Save." Not One of the 65 Local and Captive Agency Ads We Read Showed a Price.
Google keeps a public library of the Search ads that carriers and agencies run, the Ads Transparency Center. For this guide, we read up to 15 recent Search ads per advertiser from the last 90 days for carriers, national agencies, lead sellers and the agencies advertising in our example market, Cleveland-Akron.
The pattern was stark:
- Carriers: 35 of 167 readable ads showed a dollar figure, and 25 of those were switching-savings claims, like "Drivers who switched to Allstate saved $900" and "Save $611* on Average with Travelers."
- Lead sellers and comparison sites: 31 of 84 showed a price, such as "$29/mo Car Insurance, $0 Fees."
- Local and captive agents: 0 of 65 showed a premium or a savings figure. The only dollar amounts were one agency's bond limits.
The local agencies are right to stay out of that fight. A carrier sets its own rates and can afford an average-savings headline backed by its own data. An agency quoting several carriers doesn't know the price until it runs the quote, and reviews in our sample show what happens when the number moves: five low-star reviewers wrote that the final bill came in above the quote.
So the question for an agency ad isn't how to match "$900 saved." It's what the agency offers that the carrier's ad can't. The answer is already written down, in public, by its own clients.
An Agency's Own Reviews Already Wrote the Headlines: Shopped Around, Saved Money, Called Back.
We read 709 four- and five-star reviews on Google of agencies and agents in Cleveland-Akron. Here is what happy clients wrote about most:
- A fast answer or a callback: 99 reviews.
- Saving money: 89 reviews, 17 of them with a dollar figure.
- An agent who explained things or answered questions: 87 reviews.
- An agent who shopped around or compared carriers: 45 reviews.
- A staff member by name: 415 reviews, 59% of them, and that count misses names our list didn't include.
The words differ by kind of agency. Saving money came up in 46 of 232 positive reviews at independent multi-line agencies, about 20%, and in 8 of 104 at State Farm agents' listings, about 8%. Shopping or comparing showed up in 26 of the independents' reviews and 4 of the State Farm agents'.
Read a few and the headlines nearly write themselves. One client wrote that within hours the agent "had multiple quotes, multiple approvals, and even managed to get me better coverage that cost less than my previous provider." Another wrote that the agency shops around every few years "to make sure I'm still getting competitive rates."
Those reviews say what a carrier's ad can't: a person did the comparison for them. That belongs in the headline.
How to do it for your own agency:
- Open your agency's Business Profile reviews and read the last 50 or so, the four- and five-star ones first.
- Write down the exact phrases people use more than once: shopped around, called back the same day, explained my options, saved on my homeowners.
- Notice who gets named. If clients praise a particular agent or account manager, the ad can say "Talk to a local agent" and the page can show who that is.
- Read the low-star reviews too. They tell you what to promise only if you can keep it.
"Insurance Broker Near Me" Draws 40,500 Searches a Month. An Ad That Only Says "Independent" Misses the Word Shoppers Use.
Consumers often can't tell an independent agency from a captive one. In one Reddit thread, a shopper asked how to tell them apart because a search for independent agents returned captive offices too. The first reply was a search tip: try the word "broker."
Keyword Planner shows how many shoppers think that way. Across the US, "insurance broker near me" is typed 40,500 times a month. Even the longer "independent insurance broker" gets 1,900.
The agency ads we read rarely speak that language. "Independent" appeared in 11 local ads, all from two agencies. Wording about comparing carriers appeared in 11 of 55 local ads, again from only two agencies, against 42 of 84 lead seller ads. The lead sellers are the ones telling shoppers they'll compare. Most local agencies aren't saying it at all.
The fix is to describe what you do in the shopper's terms. If you place policies with several carriers, say that in a headline: "We Compare Carriers for You." If you re-shop policies at renewal, say that too. Before you put the word "broker" itself in an ad, check how your state licenses and defines it, because some states, New York among them, license brokers separately from agents.
52 of 144 Complaints About Agencies Describe a Callback That Never Came. A Speed Promise in the Ad Becomes the Front Desk's Job.
The low-star reviews in our sample say as much about ad copy as the high ones. Of 144 complaints at agency listings, 52 were about a callback that never came or an office nobody answered. That was the most common complaint, ahead of rude staff at 41.
Shoppers who never bought wrote plenty of them. Of the 158 low-star reviews we coded, 26 came from people who had asked for a quote or information: 12 described a rude reply, 8 never got a call back. One wrote, "On Tuesday, January 31 I still hadn't gotten a call back."
That makes speed a strong headline, and a dangerous one. A promise like "Callback the Same Day" answers the most common complaint in the market. It also invites the most common bad review if the office misses it. Chapter 4 set the rule that every claim in the ad has to appear on the page. A speed claim also has to hold up on the phone. Promise only the response time your office can keep on a busy Monday.
Pinning Headlines Shrinks What Google Can Test. New Agency Ads Launch All Fifteen Unpinned.
An agency's Search ad is a responsive search ad: you supply the pieces and Google assembles them. Each ad holds as many as 15 headlines of 30 characters and 4 descriptions of 90. For any one search, Google picks a few headlines and a description and puts them in an order it predicts will work.
You can pin a headline so it always shows in one position. Google's own help page advises most advertisers against it: a pinned slot is a slot Google can no longer test, so fewer combinations get tried against each search. We launch new agency ads with nothing pinned. Pin a headline only when you already know it wins, because it's been proven in your account. Google's Ad Strength rating, from Poor to Excellent, is feedback on variety, and Google says it isn't used to calculate Ad Rank or Quality Score.
Here's a sample set of 15 headlines for a home insurance ad group, built from the review themes above:
- Home Insurance Quotes
- We Shop Your Homeowners Rate
- We Compare Carriers for You
- Independent, Local, in Akron
- One Call, Several Carriers
- We Re-Shop It at Renewal
- Coverage Explained Clearly
- Talk to a Licensed Agent
- Your Agent, Not a Call Center
- Home + Auto, One Agent
- Serving Akron and Cleveland
- No-Obligation Home Quote
- Callback the Same Day
- Rated by Akron Neighbors
- Start Your Home Quote Online
Swap the town names, and drop any line your office can't back up. The callback line only stays if the office keeps it. The descriptions get the same treatment, using the 90 characters for what a headline can't fit, like the lines you place, the towns you cover and how the quote works.
Write each ad group's set in its own line's words, as Chapter 4 laid out. The auto group talks about drivers and cars, the commercial auto group about trucks and fleets. Google's help page also suggests at least two ads per ad group, which gives the account a second set of words to compare.
An Agency's Best Headlines Start on Its Own Quote Page and in Rival Ads. An AI Tool Is Only the Proofreader.
Reviews are the best source, but not the only one. Before writing, we read three more:
- The landing page the ad points to. Its own words and trust signals, such as carriers you represent, years in the community and licensed staff, are what the ad should echo, because Google judges the ad and the page together.
- Rival ads in the Transparency Center. Search an agency or carrier by name, open its ads, and use the menu to see more. If the list comes up empty, widen the date range. Some agencies' ads run on their ad agency's account, so search that name too.
- The Ad Preview tool, for seeing which ads appear on your searches in your town without clicking anyone's ad.
AI writing tools come last. They're useful for checking character counts, catching repetition and suggesting a variation. They're poor at the starting point, because they don't know what your clients say about you. A headline from a review is something only your agency can say. A headline from a tool is something every agency can.
An agency's ads are never finished. Each quarter, we retire the headlines clients respond to least and test new ones lifted from the newest five-star reviews.
Next: An Insurance Ad Can Count as Selling Wherever It Runs. Target Only the States Where You Hold a License.
With ads written from the clients' own words, the next step is where they show. Chapter 9 covers location settings and the campaign defaults to change before launch. Earlier chapters cover a page for every line, the keyword list and bids by line. Every chapter is on the guide's home page.
Our Google Ads management writes agencies' ads from their own reviews. Doing it yourself? Read your last 50 reviews on Google tonight and circle every phrase that shows up twice.
