Well, nearly a year has passed since we began the iCan Projects, and now things are about to change.

Although I am disheartened to lose my team, I am confident that with this gigantic change in our structure here at iCan-Media, it will only help to expand and grow our wonderful group.

Ian and Levi will now both be in different departments, splitting up the web group into their proper divisions( Levi Joins Oliver , Amaury and Dominique in the Technical team , While Ian is now moving over to the newly formed art department!) I will still be handling many aspects of the search marketing here, and will continue to post updates and ideas. Our search marketing campaigns are organically sound, and starting next year we will be attacking the web with marketing like no insurance company before! Thanks for reading my blog everyone, and don’t forget to sign up and comment sometime!!!

 

GmC

I wanted to give a quick shout out to our Quality Assurance technician, Skip LaCroix, Happy Spooky birthday buddy. Also, I wanted to welcome back my boss Ghen , the VP of media. He has been travelling Europe in a Stolen M3 … Just kidding!!! Jason, our Benefits manager, got an awesome new car IN Germany, and got a chance to drive it for a bit before they ship it out to the US.

Now that they are back, it’s back to work … crunching and deadlines for a bunch of new products! Our lead artist here in the web department, Ian Hench – Graphic Artist, is working on some sick new designs for the iCan Media website. We can’t wait to show off what he is thinking up for iCan Media!!!

Also, I have been slowly training the office to use their new blogs. Ray Brookstein can now post his thoughts whenever he feels the need. Dr Morgan is rolling along with her blog, and its turning into a great Health Information center! All in all we have made some great progress this week, launching the HCCUA Back Office – Our members love it, and getting ready for the agent template systems and the Agent back office next! On an SEO front I have watched as week by week iCanBenefit.com gain positions in all my major med initiative terms, as well as our group and affordable health insurance campaigns… Still maintaining that Low CPL on our paid campaigns , and getting ready for the pet sites launch and our first piece of Ecommerce Business!

I absolutely love it here at iCan, there is not a single dull moment, and Mondays go by like Fridays … Fast and furious!

As for my “Manic Monday” We are developing a new State Map for HCCUA, a new VOC System for all our members, and I am taking some time out this week to handle all of the CodeSource SEO clients time, and update CSEO with some fresh content and new pricing! We have come so far in the last 7 months time , developing not only the sites we promised at the beginning of the year, but all the corporate blogs , and the marketing campaigns for the Health Care Discount Plan, and our Major Medical Health insurance Division.

With the year winding down, the economy in a tight corner, our company is using this time to organize structure and complete all the outstanding projects each and every department has on their plates. This is a great time to be working for the iCan Group, as this place runs not only as an insurance company, but a huge Think Tank and business incubator! We all have put forth some great business ideas, and will be hashing them out over the next 2 months, until we decide which major direction we will be heading in the future! So stay tuned everyone, as the brilliant people that brought the controversial Billy Mays Health insurance campaign, will strike again soon!

The software is out there, and has been for years. The ability to look at every one of your customers as more than just a view or conversion , but to see what pathways they take , what causes some to disappear, while others become another proud member of HCCUA or an iCan Major Medical Health Insurance customer. Deep granulation is important for all websites, and Google has made it so simple to track your sites like a pro! The Google Suite of Webmaster tools , and services like adwords and adsense round off a great library of information about how to make Ad Revenue and properly spend marketing dollars, and analytics ties it all together , showing you how each campaign ,across e every engine , is performing.

Currently we are running Analytics for every site we have live, as well as in the planning stages to run banner and email campaigns using analytics tracking tags. Now if anyone ever tells you “it takes a professional” to setup analytics systems, they are completely wrong! You can get completely setup for a website in less than 20 minutes, complete with all marketing channels tagged and bagged and ready to present in your dashboard reports.

For a company our size, I still utilize Google for my tracking, as I can implement everything on multiple campaigns easily, and make changes on the fly. Initially, you are given a pretty verbose “report” on your dashboard page, but you can add information from any marketing channel to your dashboard, and produce professional reports in PDF right from the site. Now there are other incredible platforms for analytics, such as Omniture, which incorporates a number of much more advanced functionalities, and are definitely a huge step up from the free Google Tools, but if you don’t have a lot of money to spend… Google can’t be beat!

My suggestion, if you haven’t already, is to go ahead and sign up and get your site traffic really broken down Right away. You will be able to see “holes” in your marketing that is causing drops, and be able to turn a customer frown upside down

Till next time

Greg Chernoff

WebGeek

If you’re a “green under the gills” webmaster or even a seasoned “worked on seo before the phrase was coined” online marketing expert, seeing your rankings climb each and every month is always a thrill!

This month I have watched not only my major corporate product (The Affordable Health Insurance Co.) jump but also I have gotten first page rankings for Florida SEO, Florida Search engine Optimization, Boca Raton Florida SEO, and many others for Codesource-seo.com! (This site is like my son, and I’m so proud!)

Currently we are starting work on some exciting products here at iCan

• Our pet care line of products, which includes a pet discount card, and some awesome added bonuses.
• Our Retail line of health and wellness discounts!
• And a number of niche benefit products that I’m sure everyone will enjoy.

And we have a number of great new initiatives in the works.

• Blogs for Everyone!   �
  • Not only did we setup the marketing team with blogs, but now we have blogs in the works for
    • Dr. Lynn Morgan – HCCUA Presidents Blog
    • Ed Shatz – Member Services Blog
    • Ray Brookstein – Major Medical Health insurance Blog
• New Social Sites!
  • iCan Health Insurance on MySpace!
  • iCan Pet Club – Better then Pet Insurance – On MySpace!

And more on the way so stay tuned!

Now although I have gotten some great rankings , some incredible opportunities and interviews with a couple of hard hitting traditional marketers throughout my many years in the industry, NOTHING compares to working in a market like Health Insurance. From the Hundreds of Excellent competitive websites, to each and every one of the “giants” in health insurance having their own team of web marketers, I have had my work cut out for me. On that note, I wanted to give a small nod to the competition, and give you some pointers for beating the big guys!

1. Never Let the really big guys scare you:

   When I took this position, I knew that health insurance was a mighty large term to tackle, full of both big reputable and well known brands, and Joe the local health insurance salesman, all trying to take those top spots. Not to mention the Gov, and ORG sites dedicated to making my job all that much more difficult J After doing some serious Research into my competitor base, I found that all the top names have huge page indexes on all 3 engines, some serious link back from hundreds of affiliates, ISOs and the like. So let’s just call them all 800 LB Gorillas.

   Each of these gorillas has tens of thousands of indexed pages, link backs and plenty of authority, whereas most industries have SEO holes which are easy to find a “fit” with your current site… they have little if any at all ! But what is it that a big lumbering giant does not have? Speed and flexibility! So with some fleet footing and a handle on my patience (and the patience of my company) we started the task of creating a mountain out of our fresh new little molehill.

2. Make sure you have at least 3 original things that the rest don’t!

   For instance, some large organizations in this industry have no need for social or content based communities and networks. They never got involved in the social scene, and most likely will not start (unless they get to read my blog!) because they feel secure in their placement.

3. Never stop optimizing.

   Don’t expect to get anywhere by the “set it and forget it” mentality. There is always a fluctuation in keyword strength; there will always be another 20 new ways to say what you need to say online, another 50 pages of useful and original content that should be placed to show you know your niche. Remember with each day your optimizing, your 800 lb gorilla is watching their own position and hoping that one of the mid size competitors wont “get smart” and become visible!

In short, always stay on your toes, and don’t let a slow climb to the top discourage you. After all, even the big guys started at the back of the index at some point 

We are proudly beginning the customization process for our new openX banner management system! We have been serving banners thru a number of networks, but required some sort of management and tracking system which we could use to keep our publishers in check.

From all the research we have done, between paid networks, pricey software packages, and other open source platforms, I personally feel that OpenX ( openAds, ETC)  has always been a top contender for banner and RMA management. Now that they have upgraded and renamed yet again, I can see that there team is working hard on providing the most accurate, flexible and free system they can. On that note, in the near future my company plans on offering a nice donation to the guys who are making this all possible!

If your in the Georgia area, look for icanbenefit.com banners on comcast.net!   and if you want to see whats coming for iCan Media … Stay Tuned!

Now I realize, as my first post on my new blog , I should most likely be discussing the value of search marketing , my position here with iCan , and what we are up to… but as the entire company knows, I don’t always follow the norm!

I wanted to first thank my team , both my head programmer and artist helped to bring the development of the iCan network forward by leaps and bounds in the past 3 months, rocketing us into a dynamic Coldfusion based member and administration system that is a perfect blend of form and function. Yesterday, we gave a preview to all of the department heads, filling a room ,and getting tons of applause!

Also, thanks to the art department for finding this great image(its just my style!).

I have been working hard on developing a network of sites which I believe will propel the iCan network into major positions in the very saturated industry of Health Insurance.  Saturation, or just how densely populated the search engines are for a particular niche, is an ongoing battle for any search marketer in the majors, and this battle must be won!

iCan Media - the company I work for directly, is run by Ghen Sugimoto , Dee Halloran , and myself, along with Stephen Tucker, and provides all forms of marketing both online and traditional, and television direct response marketing.

In future posts, I will discuss every aspect of our online marketing , show examples of progress and more!

But for now lets just say, we have come a long way here at iCan , between the associations rapid technological advancement, and our artistic vision for the new iCan-Media.com site underway, we here at iCan have alot of work left to go , but are so proud of our achievements thusfar!