Professional services / Advertising
Paid search built around risk, not keywords
The challenge
Insurance is one of the most competitive categories in paid search, and HUB International served industries whose needs had almost nothing in common. A business researching employee benefits needed a different message than one evaluating cyber liability, and the budget had to stay clear of claims, careers, and consumer traffic.
- Market
- Professional services
- Capability
- Advertising
- Client
- HUB International
The outcome
0
Campaign themes structured by insurance need
Result
0
Deliverables across strategy, media, and reporting
Result
0
Search-intent filters removing off-target traffic
What we did
Rather than bidding on broad insurance terms, campaigns were organized around the specific coverage and expertise prospective clients were actively searching for: commercial insurance, business insurance, employee benefits, risk management, cyber liability, workers' compensation, commercial property, professional liability, industry-specific programs, and personal insurance services. That structure gave real control over budget, bidding, search terms, messaging, and lead quality.
High-intent searches were separated from informational research. Ad copy spoke to brokerage expertise and the ability to support complex risk programs, while negative-keyword lists expanded continuously to filter claims lookups, customer-service requests, careers and licensing searches, definitions, and free templates. More of the budget reached people evaluating a provider.
Insurance requirements differ by sector, so industry-focused campaigns aligned search terms and messaging with construction, healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality, real estate, transportation, professional services, education, nonprofits, and public entities. The messaging demonstrated that HUB understood the risks those organizations carry, not just the products that cover them.
Geography carried equal weight. Campaigns were segmented by priority market with location-specific keywords, market-level budgets, localized ad copy, service-area targeting, and regional performance analysis, so prospects reached the local office and advisor able to help them while the national brand stayed consistent.
Every click landed where the search pointed. A cyber liability query reached cyber-risk content, not a general insurance page, and an employer researching benefits found workforce-focused messaging and a clear path to an advisor. Shortening the distance between search, ad, and landing page shortened the distance to an inquiry.
Management was continuous: search-term analysis, negative-keyword development, bid adjustments, budget allocation, ad-copy testing, geographic refinement, device and schedule performance, match-type control, landing-page performance, and conversion activity. Budget moved toward the services, industries, locations, and terms showing the strongest business intent.
The reason the structure mattered more than the bidding is that a blended insurance campaign hides its own failures. Cheap, irrelevant clicks subsidize the average, the cost per lead looks acceptable, and nothing in the report says which coverage line is actually producing business. Separating need, industry, intent, and geography made each of those visible on its own.
It also made the negative-keyword work possible. Claims lookups, service requests, careers searches, definitions, and template hunting all look like insurance traffic in aggregate and none of them are buyers. Filtering them out of ten separate campaign groups is a precise operation; filtering them out of one blended campaign is guesswork.
A cyber liability query reached cyber-risk content, not a general insurance page.
Structure is the strategy
In a category this competitive, the advantage is not a cleverer bid. It is a campaign architecture that mirrors how buyers actually describe their risk, so budget, message, and destination stay aligned from the first impression to the inquiry.
Need, industry, intent, and geography became four separate levers instead of one blended average.
Let's put your budget in front of buyers
Tell us who has to find you and what they are trying to solve. We will show you where the spend is leaking first.